9 Ways All Open-World Video Games Are Starting To Suck

5. There's No Sense Of Pace

Skyrim Remastered
Bethesda/Wo33er

It's not a new complaint, but it still deserves to be said that open world games struggle to create a well-paced story.

Because of their inherently unfocused design, it can be difficult for sandbox games to create a sense of rising intensity and urgency when players can spend ten hours just wandering around helping farmers herd their sheep or whatever. In many cases - like say Mass Effect 3 - it actively doesn't make sense for the protagonist to do anything other than complete the most obvious task at hand (in that game's case, saving the world).

While this wasn't much of a problem when open world games were the exception to the rule, most modern major releases use the genre as a framework and haven't figured out a solution to solving the issue of this unfocused design, meaning that the quality of sandbox narratives hasn't improved over the past few years.

Advertisement
Contributor

Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.