3 big ones recently, this year was God of War Ragnarok, FF7 Rebirth and Jedi Survivor
Back when 3d games were new, tomb raider, prince of persia etc the traversal was the challenge, the gameplay.
Eventually they got watered down and simplified, now they are cleverly disguised choke points while the open world or boss ahead loads.
You’ll notice the squeezing between narrow walls to separate 2 areas or a simple climb against a flat wall just before a boss. I think Uncharted was the first to do this as they moved away from climbing and focused more on combat and puzzles.
There is no reason to actually have the characters climb anything if it’s not fun or there are better ways of traversal, GoW being the biggest offender here
Jedi Survivor embraces traversal more but still locks you out with invisible walls and floors that kill you
I think I might prefer the elevator loading screens from Elden Ring, at least you get to stretch out your fingers when waiting
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to describe games with loading screens of that kind (whether disguised as choke points or not) as open worlds. Sure, they might allow more freedom than a game that stays on rails for every step of the journey, but to me, “open world” also suggests something more.
Continuity while exploring the landscape, unimpeded by artificial barriers or immersion-breaking interruptions, is a big part of it.
Almost as important is that the world be interesting and diverse enough that I would want to spend my time exploring it. This is one of Skyrim’s great strengths: It’s full of unique things to discover, most of which aren’t marked on the map (except sometimes when you’re already there), and some don’t even stay in the same place. This ensures that exploring the world and paying attention is rewarding and satisfying. The Witcher 3, on the other hand, is weak in this area: Its world is mostly open, but practically everything in it is a copy/paste instance of a handful of events, and clearly marked on the map. Exploration quickly becomes a tedious exercise in running from dot to dot, doing the same few things over and over again. It doesn’t deliver the satisfaction I expect from an open world game. In a world like that, I get bored fast.
From what I understand, things like squeezing through walls were supposed to go away with the PS5. But, Ragnarok is still available on PS4 to cater to mass audiences, so they need that extra bit of time for loading.
Ironically, one game that’s handled open worlds a bit better is on a console less capable of handling them. Breath of the Wild uses it to promote exploring towards vantage points and then interesting sights.
Sea of Thieves does something similar. You start a session, and want treasure, so you take a basic and boring assignment with a treasure map. BUT, you spy a bunch of interesting happenings throughout the ocean and beaches on your way, and so your adventure becomes more complex. Coming across those at random feels a lot more fun than picking them as a targeted assignment on an objective board.
To be fair, even if the open world is not well used, it can provide a sense of connection for the world. It can be more fun than just having a mission select screen.
Ironically, one game that’s handled open worlds a bit better is on a console less capable of handling them.
This is even more interesting when we consider that BotW was not developed for the Switch, but for an even less capable console: the Wii U.
Hardware limitations haven’t been a real barrier to open world continuity for a long time, if ever. (Seven Cities of Gold allowed you to sail from Europe to the New World, and then explore it over land, with no loading screens along the way. That was on 8-bit computers with 48KiB of RAM, loading data from some of the slowest floppy drives ever, back in 1984.) Doing it on lower-end machines does require some planning ahead, but the effort is worthwhile, IMHO.
Breath of the Wild uses it to promote exploring towards vantage points and then interesting sights.
Not only that, but to incorporate verticality into the game mechanics. Reaching things that are surrounded by hazards, or taming especially wild horses by gliding to them from a mountain, for example.
I think God of War is fine since the entire experience is supposed to be one that does not get interrupted, there are never any camera cuts, and they hid a few loading screens behind portal effects.
I liked the Jedi Survivor style as well, it feels natural and doesn’t interrupt the gameplay. Much like Outlaws using cleverly hidden cutscenes to go from planet to space and other planets. It all keeps you in the immersion and experience. Climbing and other parkour stuff don’t feel out of place in these games, it would be quite boring if everything in games existed only on a flat plane and you’d never ever have to turn corners or climb anything, takes away the idea of exploration and discovering new things.
I much prefer the modern solutions over elevators and loading screens. Nothing is stopping anyone from just hitting pause and stretch their fingers if you feel like you need a break lol
God of War always struck me as the wrong game for that gimmick. Sure, there are no camera cuts, but you need to pull up your menu constantly to check the map, change gear, etc. It ends up feeling like there are hundreds of cuts.
It depends on the game. I wouldn’t remove the open world from Elden Ring at all, since sightlines are so important to you figuring out how to get somewhere. Horizon: Zero Dawn and Ghost Recon: Wildlands are two games that I love, but both would have been better if you just selected missions from a menu. In Metal Gear Solid V, they basically give you the option to play the game that way, which is nice, since there are open world systems, but you don’t really interact with them constantly. If you can get away with the Uncharted thing though, where you’re seamlessly moving from one thing to the next, it can be great for pacing and presentation. Especially since Bandai-Namco had the patent on loading screen mini games, a lot of developers ended up inventing “load bearing walls”, where tight spaces that you have to crawl through will mask a load screen between two scenes.
