DISCLAIMER : I'm starting a thread on this subject because I haven't seen this discussion coming up a lot ; most of the open world talks are about what it does good/bad, the lack of features and such. I don't want this thread to be about this.
I've finished the game two times, and I've been feeling the need to post about my experience because I think it has something to do with how the industry feels the need to develop games currently.
On my first playthrough, I did everything I could that was thrown at me by the game, from the most mundane thing to the most important of tasks. The story unfolded in what I'd call a great way (in my opinion) but I also felt like all the side content (by side content I mean : gigs, NCPD, pretty much all "mercenary" stuff) I did was somehow unnecessary. I couldn't really pinpoint why though. Sometimes I'd think it was because some of those were just filler content, but by my second time of playing I found out it wasn't really because of that.
On my second playthrough I decided to give a more "streamlined" approach to how I played, so I went with the main story bits, plus the side character stories, plus some other quests I picked and did along without really thinking about it (Peralez, Delamain, Sinnerman to name a few). My experience felt far more organic and eventually satisfying. When I reached the ending, I felt way more emotionnaly connected and invested in my character because I hadn't spent so much time "dragging" in Night City.
Which brings me to talk about the underlying issue here : I came to ask myself, would the game be better without it being open world ? Again, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't want this topic to be about the open world being broken or lacking features. I'm talking about overall design in games in general and the decision to make open worlds in narrative driven games. I can't keep wondering why open worlds designs are so popular despite being almost all the time working against the story mechanics. I felt the same when playing RDR2, I felt the same when playing basically every open world game there is (Horizon, every AC, Ghost of Tsushima...), and even to some extent while playing the Witcher 3 (I found the expansions, being way smaller in size, to be better paced and to tell a tighter story).
My point is, why investing so much in work and time in working around implementing an open world, when your game would feel far more tight and have a better pacing as a narrative experience ?
I've finished the game two times, and I've been feeling the need to post about my experience because I think it has something to do with how the industry feels the need to develop games currently.
On my first playthrough, I did everything I could that was thrown at me by the game, from the most mundane thing to the most important of tasks. The story unfolded in what I'd call a great way (in my opinion) but I also felt like all the side content (by side content I mean : gigs, NCPD, pretty much all "mercenary" stuff) I did was somehow unnecessary. I couldn't really pinpoint why though. Sometimes I'd think it was because some of those were just filler content, but by my second time of playing I found out it wasn't really because of that.
On my second playthrough I decided to give a more "streamlined" approach to how I played, so I went with the main story bits, plus the side character stories, plus some other quests I picked and did along without really thinking about it (Peralez, Delamain, Sinnerman to name a few). My experience felt far more organic and eventually satisfying. When I reached the ending, I felt way more emotionnaly connected and invested in my character because I hadn't spent so much time "dragging" in Night City.
Which brings me to talk about the underlying issue here : I came to ask myself, would the game be better without it being open world ? Again, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't want this topic to be about the open world being broken or lacking features. I'm talking about overall design in games in general and the decision to make open worlds in narrative driven games. I can't keep wondering why open worlds designs are so popular despite being almost all the time working against the story mechanics. I felt the same when playing RDR2, I felt the same when playing basically every open world game there is (Horizon, every AC, Ghost of Tsushima...), and even to some extent while playing the Witcher 3 (I found the expansions, being way smaller in size, to be better paced and to tell a tighter story).
My point is, why investing so much in work and time in working around implementing an open world, when your game would feel far more tight and have a better pacing as a narrative experience ?