Is it true open-world or psuedo open-world?

[easeldooor]

Open World is no load screens. We shouldn't be changing the definition so companies can make marketing claims. Skyrim had too many loading screens which broke the immersion of the game, so it wasn't a true open world game. So far I've only seen it with RDR.

True Open world has it's disadvantages like region scaling. The real achievement is overcoming that with brilliant game design, which so far only RDR and GTA have done.

Witcher 3 sounds like it will be like TERA, 3 big open regions .

After reading some of the books, I kinda wish the games were about Ciri, then she could teleport everywhere lol.

The solution for true open world massive designs though is simply fill it. Put some fast moving chasing quests to get you to the next area, maybe some fun horse riding style quests. This would make great use of the horse and open world and change the pace of questing a bit.
RDR does this brilliantly by guiding your through the world via its main quest . RDR isn't perfect but it shows the way.

 

[caruga]

Open World is no load screens.

Is it?

When I'm stumped for a proper definition, I turn to the dictionary. Since there is no Dr. Johnson of video games, though, I then turn to how people currently use the word. Much like 'RPG' there seems to be a bit of controversy surrounding the term.

I feel that continuity is perhaps the most important attribute. No question-mark as to what was between A and B--because there is no B, or C, or D, it's all 'A'.


*EDIT I'm wrong. If Half-life 1 & 2 did not have load bumps, they would be one continuous level--there's no teleporting. But it's not open by any measure.

 

[Asmodean778]

Where are people getting this notion that for a game to be "open world" it must not have loading screens?. The world is open world, if it's bloody open. It's as simple as that. That's like saying eg: Morrowind wasn't open world, because you had to get off the ship before you could explore it. Or, because it had loading screens on doors.

Stop trying to over complicate it, with symantics, and technicalities lol.

Saying that. I don't even want too much emphasis on this "open world" malarkey tbh. First and foremost. I play The Witcher games, because I love their story/lore and characters, plus the great game design.

Yeah, it's cool that they went open world, but I don't want that to take the front seat on this. Having the main component of it, the fact that it's 'open'. This isn't TES(modders canvas). And I really hope they stick to their roots, and utilise the 'openess' of the world to enhance that, and not to drive it.

 

[Xvenger]

oh dear now we got people calling Skyrim, a well renowned open world game, not "open world".....ok I'm starting to get confused, or maybe people are just trying hard to formulate their own descriptions anyway lol
:hatsoff:

 

[caruga]

This isn't TES(modders canvas).

Modders canvas, ha. Why have I not heard that one?

 

[Asmodean778]

Back in the day when a game was open world, it was because the developers needed to make it that way. To make the game, they wanted to make. Now it's turned into this PR marketing powerword, that they can use as headlines in articles etc.

You know it's bad, when Metal Gear Solid is now also brandishing the "open world" powerword in all their previews etc



I dunno, maybe I'm thinking too much into it, but it seems that this aspect of game design has turned very gimmicky over the last few years.

 

[easeldooor]

Is it?

When I'm stumped for a proper definition, I turn to the dictionary. Since there is no Dr. Johnson of video games, though, I then turn to how people currently use the word. Much like 'RPG' there seems to be a bit of controversy surrounding the term.

I feel that continuity is perhaps the most important attribute. No question-mark as to what was between A and B--because there is no B, or C, or D, it's all 'A'.


*EDIT I'm wrong. If Half-life 1 & 2 did not have load bumps, they would be one continuous level--there's no teleporting. But it's not open by any measure.

Open implies no load screens, or closing a session to open another one.

World is more subjective but it implies a large enough area, with at least 3 diverse locations.

Read Dead Redemption for example had at least 6 different style towns, 2 countries (parts of usa and mexico), mountain regions, forest, deserts, rivers etc. All on a relative scale but large enough to justify the word WORLD.

You could ride from one end of there world to the other with no load screens, and enter shops etc (I can't recall any forced load screens). That justifies the word OPEN.

Skyrim had an open outdoor world but every dungeon, gate, town and house had a load screen, so it was more a psuedo open world. It would have been more of a technical and design achievement if they removed those load screens.

The Open World term matters, in terms of user expectation, and the goal of seamless game play.

Other companies may claim open world but I've only seen Rockstar (RDR ) actually deliver one. So let's not lower the bar by redefining the goal. Rockstar made these games on ps3 hardware, hopefully other devs can use the new hardware to match and improve what Rockstar has achieved.

 

[kissybyc]

"Open world" does not equal to "no loading screens." I believe the term for that is "seamless."

Open world in my opinion means a gaming space constructed with its size and explore-ability close to what the lore of the game allows, under the budget/tech conditions of course. The question is not "are there loading screens," but "do the loading screens connect sections of the map that are supposed to be joined together?" In Fallout 3, I go through a loading screen when I enter Megaton, but that doesn't make it any less "open world." It only makes it less seamless, because after the loading screen, I appear, as I'm supposed to be, inside Megaton.
But there is also a quantitative side to it, because in theory we can have some weird lore that confines the player in a very very narrow space, and nobody would call that open world...

So, as you can surely see, this means "open world" will always be a subjective concept to a degree. For a baby, his bedroom can be "open world" while not so for us. The only perfect open world we have now is real life, but the Witcher 3 is mighty close. It is, however, not complete open world, as there will be empty space between regions.

That being said, there is absolutely no reason to be upset by it (in case anyone is). When one region in a 3-region open world game is larger than the entire world of some other open world games, I only have time to gasp in awe.

It is like, we have Fallout 3, which is open world; and we have Fallout NV, which is open world. Now we put those two worlds together in one game, but with a loading screen as player travels from one to the other, and all of a sudden people complain it's not open world anymore?

.....

 

[dragonbird]

Other companies may claim open world but I've only seen Rockstar (RDR ) actually deliver one. So let's not lower the bar by redefining the goal.

If you're saying that Rockstar is the only company ever to have delivered an open world game, aren't you redefining the term?

I'm wondering if this thread should be moved to the Community section for a discussion on what the phrase means to different people, like similar discussions on "What is an RPG?" or "Are video games 'art'?"

 

[thislsmadness]

Read Dead Redemption for example had at least 6 different style towns, 2 countries (parts of usa and mexico), mountain regions, forest, deserts, rivers etc. All on a relative scale but large enough to justify the word WORLD.

You could ride from one end of there world to the other with no load screens, and enter shops etc (I can't recall any forced load screens). That justifies the word OPEN.
And Novigrad alone is 6 times larger than all of that.

...and, on its own, the region of Novigrad is ~6 times larger than the entirety of Red Dead Redemption. It has a variety of land regions including bodies of water that you can actually dive in... the RDR guy cant swim at all. It has a city whose scale may be the largest of any Medieval game, it has a population of 1000 which is probably more npcs than you see in all of RDR (human or otherwise). There are also no load times when entering or exiting interiors.

Again, all of the above is just one region of the game. What you are essentially saying is that if CDPR just got rid of the other two regions (which are also each larger than RR) it would classify as a "true Open World"? That makes no sense.

 

[3dub]

Is it?

When I'm stumped for a proper definition, I turn to the dictionary. Since there is no Dr. Johnson of video games, though, I then turn to how people currently use the word. Much like 'RPG' there seems to be a bit of controversy surrounding the term.

I was wondering what this thread reminded me of its the old it's not really a RPG argument

 

[easeldooor]

I think the discussion comes up, because it would be ideal to have all the game content, without any load screens.

It's just another way of improving game design in general.

 

[1337Smithy]

Guess it's nice to hear exactly how the open world works... As I must admit I was a little curious since they have been coy as to whether or not the entire world would actually be open right from the start, but it seems like they're going for a more Red Dead Redemption style approach.

That said I don't think it'll be as restrictive as some people are thinking. If you watch the 15 minutes of Gameplay you'll notice that when Geralt is fighting those Wraiths, he's in Skellige and the Wraiths are only level 7. Doesn't make sense to me having level 7 Wraiths in a section of the game that the earliest point you can travel to it is level 10 or 15 (Unless something changed Skellige was meant to be the higher level area and level progression wise the last place you go to).
So I think chances are we'll be able to head to other areas fairly early in the game, it might be blocked by story progression, but it won't be like Blackwater in RDR where you have to get like 3/4 through the story before you're finally able to go there.

I think I heard somewhere that they skipped parts of the game after the prologue section so the journalists could experience a different part if they wanted. I think Geralt is level 35 there (you can see it when he enters the map)

 

[GuyNwah]

The desire to reduce load times to zero is a fine one, but it forces all of the game's resources to be resident in memory. Either you have to have a ridiculous requirement for RAM, or you have to reduce the quality of the game resources. No thank you, I will not join in endorsing either of those alternatives.

Finite loading times are a necessary trade for extensive high-quality resources. This game is going to have a disk footprint of 40GB, and that will be mostly heavily compressed resources. No way are you going to make zero load times with that. But would you rather have fewer resources of lower quality so you can have zero load times? I wouldn't.

Open world does not mean the world is so small that you can have it without loading doors. Open world means you can go anywhere at any time for any reason or no reason at all.

 

[sidspyker]

So now it's what an open world means and "if you don't adhere to my definition, you're wrong" combined with "loading screens != open world"

:rly?:

 

[Garrison72]

Lets be honest here. While I'm sure we'll have plenty of map to explore, their PR has been misleading. They've indicated time and again it's one contiguous map. I knew better; it was going to be a variation on the previous games - multiple hubs. Only now the hubs are huge. Great, that's to my preference. But don't mislead the legions of newcomers to the series who were expecting one large map.

 

[EliHarel]

This attempt to give some dictionary definition for Open World is as pointless as finding a clear-cut definition for RPGs (though I'll avoid that can of worms for now). What people need to understand, in both discussions, is:

1) These are games. There aren't any Oxford definitions, so take it easy.
2) More importantly - custom.

Custom is a very real thing, in any community. Especially when there isn't any written law to begin with. The gaming one is no exception. And in our community, the custom over the years defined certain games as Open World regardless of whether they had loading screens or not. I find that a really weird distinction. Definitions change over time in an organic manner, and there's nothing wrong with it. There's seriously no merit in insisting on sticking to some older understanding of a term, if today another understanding of it is so wide-spread. It's not a matter of principle.

I agree with @slimgrin , though - months ago I remember the game being advertised as a mutli-region open world. Now, just jumping to the main site, it's being defined as "A gigantic and limitless open world to explore", which isn't the case. It's multiple regions. And that 'limitless' rubs me the wrong way.

The thing is - I like that it's multi-region open world. I think it's a much smarter decision for a story focused game.

There are three things that can happen if you stick to one single map:
1) You severely limit your story. Your game starts out in Paris, and you have an idea about sending the protagonist to Berlin. But it's too far away, so you just drop it.
2) You severely break the immersion. You're still put Berlin in there, but suddenly it's just a five minute drive from Paris. That's weird. Don't be weird.
3) You develop the game for who-knows-how-long so you can scale it properly. That's not feasible.

It's what felt off to me in Skyrim - you have this 'huge' world on one hand, but then rivaling cities are just a spit away from one another. It won't work for TW3 - I can't have Kaer Morhen be a few seconds of sprinting away from Novigrad and Skellige just out of Vizima's castle window, and I can't have these parts of the game canned, either. They're too exciting. So multi-region is the way to go.

At the end of the day, I don't give a damn about the definitions. It's just a way to easily relay to people general things about the game. You guys can call it a linear corridor shooter for all I care, I think it's a bit pointless.

 

[MUPPETA]

I'm ok with hubs or as they called ( it 's normal cause they are so far )

(EXAMPLE) They say that takes 15 min in full gallop from Novigrad to No man's land (Johnny cave)

So i want that in that region/hub;(after is unlocked)
-To be able to ride horse(roach) without loading screen or using fast travel
-In skellige islands with boat from main island to smaller islands (after is unlocked)

 

[Zabanzo]

Lets be honest here. While I'm sure we'll have plenty of map to explore, their PR has been misleading. They've indicated time and again it's one contiguous map. I knew better; it was going to be a variation on the previous games - multiple hubs. Only now the hubs are huge. Great, that's to my preference. But don't mislead the legions of newcomers to the series who were expecting one large map.

From what I remember they always said that Skellige is separate map because of geographic issues. And we´ve seen before in 35 mins. that NML and Novigrad are one giant map.

 

[Garrison72]

From what I remember they always said that Skellige is separate map because of geographic issues. And we´ve seen before in 35 mins. that NML and Novigrad are one giant map.

Three separate regions divided by loading screens. If I'm wrong, I invite a dev to correct me.