Open worlds are often perceived as a vast area that people can explore without the usual constraints games put on them. Without defined paths to go down, certain areas you have to go to, or predefined stages, it gives the player a lot more freedom. However, I think many games recently have gone too far with this freedom. I have no problem at all with open worlds; several of my favorite games have them. I think some of them are simply too big.
Believe it not, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is almost ten years old. It was a massive game for many reasons – it launched alongside Nintendo Switch, was a new take for the series by going fully open-world, and introduced various aspects like voice acting in a mainline game for the characters.
Nintendo has released a new version 1.9.0 update for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and here are the patch notes.
A new Skyrim Switch 2 update delivers major visual upgrades, surpassing some console settings, but locks the game to 30fps and introduces noticeable input lag.
That's ridiculous, lol. I'm waiting for the guy that says its too cpu-intensive for the Switch 2. This game is old af and has been released like 17 times.
Totally agree with your comments on a Link Between Worlds. They've come too far with Zelda to be tinkering with their winning formula and make the game too open world. Give me a space to explore, sure, but there needs to be some structure.
The problem is when you make a huge open world and then put nothing to do in that world for the player to do.
It's not just having an open world, that world has to be some what interesting.
Basically if you want an open world game you should make sure the ideas are sound, and fun, before deciding how big you want to make it.
GTA for example has combat, driving, recreation, etc so no matter what there is something you could be doing wherever you are (even if it's just bike paths to take, with an npc now and again). ES/Fallout have monsters, animals, and completely random "story elements" of the world at large (all those skeletons/Etc that are like "what were they doing?" moments of discovery usually based on physics-enabled items... I love finding bears/monkeys in Fallout like some sort of Easter egg hunt). Many, many open world games have hunting/crafting and other activities now too or have for decades which add more to the game (fishing for example is one of the oldest side activities outside of combat related ones).
No Man's Sky (an example in the article) just suffered from repetitive busy work too often. You could explore to your heart's content but it lacked a cohesive world worth exploring as well (quite often anyways--some planets were better than others).
Just because a developer failed doesn't make open galaxy / world bad because it is big... Had No Man's Sky servers been better setup to handle multiplayer situations, The world may have had a different streaming experience where two Gamers actually may have met on a world/planet in a vast universe and may have been able to interact..... the failure could have been on purpose....restrictions place by Hello Games to prevent too many players from interacting (probably didn't work as intended and just shut everyone out).... other MMO have struggled with similar filters
Quite frankly, No Man's Sky was everyone's fault.... Hello Games Fault....it was to big a project for such a small studio to achieve (perhaps in any time frame). It's the Gaming Community's fault for Over Selling the game and pushing Hello Games to get the game out the door when the game really wasn't ready (regardless if the studio set a date or not)......
It is better for a game to be late - finished and polished ...than on time - crappy and incomplete....
The Game No Man's Sky wasn't ready ..... it shouldn't have been released....... and in releasing an unfinished game created a mess..
But there was enough there to show potential for a killer procedural open cites/world/galaxy game where creatures, aliens, and places will change and be different where you go..... where everyone has the opportunity to forge their own plot of land whoops.....whoops country......whoops galaxy........ but still be able to escape from people and discover new places........
While a Game Like No Man's Sky was a great preview to what is possible in open world gaming, No Man's Sky was definitely not a full game but a very large demo that should, at most, been charged to the public as a payed demo not a full price game....