Recently it seems that to have a truly successful game, it needs to be, at least to an extent open world. You need to be able to do what you want when you want, ignoring any mission or story as you see fit and Freedom is great, but should everything be available straight away? By giving the player no blocks on what they can do until reaching a point does the story and the need for progression become pointless? Does unlimited freedom come at the cost of immersion? Yeah, a little.
When your girlfriend asks ‘How big is 7 inches ‘
My thoughts on this came from when I played Far Cry 4 and within the first 15 minutes I had so many why questions.. So so many.
A heads up, if you haven’t played the game I’m going to briefly describe some parts of the opening section, and some parts that happen a little later, so if you want it all to be a massive surprise.. sorry..also.. Really?
So, you’re on a coach, shit goes down, you meet King Ming, you see some torture and you flee. You escape with a group you have been told are Terrorists in the region and now, having been on the island for about 10 minutes, you’re shooting people in the face.
What!? Why? Can I even shoot a gun? Who am I, Rambo? Why am I shooting? I have literally just got here, I haven’t even eating an apple from the welcome hamper and I’m shooting people, who at this point I have no idea if they are good or bad in their pixel formed faces. But what about the torture I can here you all cry. True you do see some torture so it’s fair to assume you’re in the company of the villain, but later on you see your team mates torturing someone as well. So without any prior information, a discussion, some gentle persuasion you have picked a side and joined in a war.
Once in the jungle (Spoiler, there is a Jungle) you see animals running around, which you can shoot and skin. Right of the bat. There is no reason for shooting an animal at this point, you haven’t been told that you can, or why you would then you can skin it to create upgrades, but you don’t know this at the time, its only once you start skinning the recently shot pig that you get a prompt saying make a new fancy snout wallet. If you have played Far Cry 3 then you already know, but if 4 is your first outing then you’re just a guy killing and skinning animals for fun until you found out you could. But why would I need to create a new wallet right from the off?
And that’s the problem. Without a limit on what we can do and when, it makes progressing in the game dull and a little pointless. I did a mission not too longer after those events where i was being told by the mission giver how she will soon show me how to make new clothes from animal hide. But i didn’t care because I had already made myself a fancy new rhino hat and monkey trainers.
Because the game didn’t show me who the character I was, was give me any background to their story I had no understanding as to why I was able to fight or shoot, how i was able to skin an animal and then make things.. Nothing.
Games need limits on freedom to give the story some drive, some reason. Grand Theft Auto, Perhaps the king of being open world, limited you on where you can go the items you can buy etc until you had achieved something that warranted that ability. In that way the story seems to have weight, you have a desire to complete missions and move forward. Otherwise you’ve done everything and the story becomes pointless. You learn about the characters. In GTA 5, you understood why some characters were better at certain tasks because of the back ground you were given. Franklin is an excellent driver because of his background story. Michael can’t fly so when you find this out you have the option of flight school opens up. It leaves the possibility of excitement of something new, and it gives the reason for a flight school to be there.
Open worldliness is awesome and I love me some GTA and Far Cry, I just not necessarily at the impact of interest, story and immersion.
rumblefeature 