Infinite Wealth was deffo a bigger map and set thereof then its predecessors (Like a Dragon was also substantially larger, as was Lost Judgment in comparison to its predecessor), but it did absolute numbers, so I dunno about that.
I think it comes down more to if it feels appropriately sized and filled. Prior Yakuzas were bursting at the seems with shit to do everywhere in their smaller maps. Breath of the Wild had new and interesting shit going on everywhere too.
I’ve gotta disagree on BotW. I love Zelda games and the mechanics of that game were an amazing shift in the franchise. But that open world was so boring. The same like 4-5 enemies, even the harder variants didn’t have different movesets. TotK was even worse with the depths and a majority of sky islands being empty and devoid of content.
But the e gameplay is so fun it’s a lot easier to forgive them than say AC Odyssey.
I’ve been saying this since it released. Cool mechanics, but boring world and gameplay. I’m still a bit salty about the loss of real dungeons, nothing in BOTW or TOTK feel as memorable as the previous games.
I would say that map size never was “most important”, at least not to the players, they’ve been complaining about huge but empty maps for years (the poster child of this, AC Odyssey was released in 2018, six years ago). It was just something devs and publishers pushed to one up each other in some kind of “bigger = better” way.
I’m so sick of action rpgs including crafting or an endless list of slightly different weapons. Give me a small mix of situational weapons at most and let the gameplay be how difficulty works.
It’d be nice if JRPGs would go back to the old school overworld design like in Star Ocean 2. It’s a good compromise between sense of scale and interactivity with the world.
Well then why did the newer LaD games have larger maps than Yakuza 0-6? I feel like Kamurocho was the perfect size for a game that’s always on foot, and while I enjoyed LaD 7, I think the map was too large and I had to rely on taxis much more than I did in older games. What they should’ve done is add the underground and interior stuff to Kamurocho instead of switching to a different map.
He was hired by Tencent after they launched LAD iirc, I remember some news but can’t tell when it happened in the post-covid era.
But I do find small, almost theatrical worldmaps or even sets of locations as a thing writers and designers can use to achieve greater effect. Y5 had Taiga Saejima’s town and mountain locations with vibes very different to what Haruka sees in Sotenboru, and it makes more sense and gives more space for gamedevs to customize these experiences than a gameworld where these are all interconnected walkable locations.
Here’s hoping! Not only has it ruined a lot of once-smaller games, but it’s also largely responsible for ballooning development budgets, so let’s get that down to something sustainable.
One of the most egregious cases for me was Assassin's Creed Odyssey. There was stuff for 40 hours aplenty, yet I spent most of those 40 hours killing the same goons over and over but with a different number over their heads, which meant I needed to spent more time in doing so.
If they had just aimed at making a memorable 30 or so hours, it would have been way better. This experience made me stop playing any Assassin's whatever games.
Opposite to this, there was "Still Wakes the Deep", which is a rather short but plentiful game.
"Indika, a nun looking to adjust to a monastic life. The twist in the tale comes in the form of her companion: she has a connection with the Devil himself"
That said, I never got bored of odyssey. It was was just a beautiful place to hang out. The game engine was amazing. With NPCs going about their business etc.
I wish someone would just use that engine for more stuff .
I meant it that I really enjoyed the setting, the characters and some game mechanisms. I just hated this need of making the game seemingly endless by repetition, and I wished I didn't have to be level X to be able to do Y, because the only way to level up was churning (for me that's a no bueno).
God of war and Jedi have done great jobs of finally showing AAA they can make a smaller game and still have a great following. I’m so sick of giant Ubisoft worlds that have nothing to do in them. They’re boring.
I haven’t played the Jedi games, but it’s crazy that the new God of War games are somehow a demonstration of restraint, as that one from 2018 is probably twice as long as I would have liked, and Ragnarok is longer still, according to How Long to Beat.
I know this is a cynical critique of capitalism, but even so, capitalists love lowering budgets and charging the same amount. Quite frankly, I’d happily pay the same or more to get a game with less bloat in a lot of cases.
Weird. In the West, we’ve been welcoming small(er) but interesting, unique or otherwise impactful games regardless of its size. Complaining about Warzone taking up 250GB on your hard drive and stuff. And that was 2020.
mine as well, mine was off so long I needed to manually update it via flash drive to connect to the internet for some reason, I just haven’t felt the need to use it
No, I meant to reply to you. “A lot of player freedom” is not at odds with a great story-driven game, and I gave an example of a game that fits both criteria, so I think it’s unfortunate that the perception is that you can only have one or the other.
For Naughty Dog? They have a solid track record of great games. I’m more enthusiastic than pessimistic, but it sucks it’ll likely be a PlayStation exclusive for a while.
I’m mixed on it. They just cancelled their multiplayer game because it wasn’t their ballpark, now they want a studio known for linear story-driven experiences to make an open world game (I assume). Could go either way.
Counter point: it’s a studio who made a groundbreaking open world series (jak and daxter) who only later became known for linear games returning to their roots
I feel like when developers have a good pedigree, they can apply their concepts elsewhere.
Blizzard hadn’t made a shooter before Overwatch, but definitely got it right in so many respects. Bloober team had some mediocre horror games, but was steadily getting better before they made the Silent Hill 2 remake. Valve made just shooters before Portal and then DOTA 2. Heck, easy to forget The Talos Principle, an existential puzzle game is made by the people who made “Uber DUMB MACHO SHOOTER Serious Sam”.
Oh yeah, and survival horror team Tango Gameworks making cartoon rhythm combat game Hi-Fi Rush.
Player freedom doesn’t mean open world. Crysis for example spoke a lot about player freedom because it gave you a ton of different tools to go through the levels as you wanted. But it was still a linear single player game
I’m reminded of the techniques Valve used for this type of thing in the Half-Life episodes.
Say, for instance, they have a bit of destruction physics that they think looks memorable and they want people to see. They’ll have a Combine soldier shoot at you from that direction, to force your attention that way. They may also set the event on a “Look Trigger” so that it will only happen while the player is looking at it.
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