10 Things Open-World Games Need To STOP DOING
8. Making Worlds Too Big And Too Bland
In the open-world genre, 'bigger is better' seems to have become the key phrase every developer swears by.
As hardware continues to push what is possible to fit into a game, newer games have become quick to talk about how much more 'expansive' they are. However, size for the sake of size is rarely something to brag about.
One of the joys of open-world games is seeing something in the distance, and being able to trek over to it, encountering plenty of things along the way while mapping out an overall world layout. However, take games like The Crew 2 and Just Cause 4, and it becomes clear that bigger worlds tend to suffer from not having enough in them, thus not being worth exploring.
Repeated roads, copy and pasted buildings, and huge swathes of time without any quests or characters are some of the most immersion-breaking features an open-world game can be plagued by. The sooner developers begin to have a better understanding of how much their world can house, the better.