getting tired of locked "open world" maps

Brako Von Cruel · Jan 11, 2015

I thought Batman Arkham Asylum did it very well.

A locked off island, weapon upgrades when it made sense. Batman doesn't go into every battle with all his gear, even in the films he gets what he needs for the job and adds new gadgets whenever he needs them.

Its not too bad these days, most devs try to put something in place instead of invisible walls, be it because you would just go on and on, explore parts too soon, inability to swim if the area is surrounded by water etc.

I'm playing Borderlands at the moment, and in that game some areas target you for breaching no go zones. Expected as theres nothing further out there. What does annoy me in gaming to this day? All these action hero's who can't walk over 7 inch high bricks/rocks
etc, and instead get stuck on the spot until you jump over it.

DigitalAssassin · Jan 11, 2015

^Haha, so true or when the fall damage is just ridiculous.

I can't think of the game, but one game you would get fall damage from jumping off, say, a wheelie bin. Barely 1m off the ground, haha.

Brako Von Cruel · Jan 11, 2015

Yeah a lot of games have weird moments like that.

In real life if you want a short cut you will, climb, squeeze through, tunnel through using an army of badgers, etc etc. But in gaming things like squeezing between 2 walls is often only tacked on as a sort of button sequence with a good animation.

I think FPS is the king of cheese when it comes to all sorts of mishaps.

Also for cool party gaming nerd kudos. Always do your Resident Evil running diagonally across the wall until you get through the open door way

YellowJacket LE · Jan 11, 2015

As long as i'm not paying extra real money to unlock the rest of the area i am happy enough to let the game run it's course.

Argontheos · Jan 12, 2015

Yeah heroes getting caught on inch-high curbs and debris is frustrating as hell. Ha ha. Fall damage too... the fall damage of Deus Ex: Human Revolution was hilarious IMO. {XD

DE:HR, a game that pushes human augmentation so far that the protagonist has to have augments to accomplish tasks regular peeps can do with their eyes closed. Drop from a first-floor window? Nah, need to augment or you'll die...

... wanna sit down? Augment those butt cheeks foo'!

LordKillerDNA · Jan 13, 2015

you could just do the whole story and forget the side missions until you unlock the north island. most games nowadays don't have any 'missable material' as far as I know. not like games back in the day where if you didn't turn halfway across the world to
get one thing in one small part of the story to get it (i'm lookin at you FFIX) then you'd miss it forever.

I am the person that does this as well. explore everything before mission 1. I do it to see if I can break the game somehow (which I have done before). but like assassins creed 4 maybe you can just do the missions until you unlock the whole world and then
go crazy. I also found out that with enough patience in black flag you can fully upgrade stuff like your mortar in the beginning of the game!

BootstrapGolem · Nov 1, 2018

dragon age inquisition has some annoying invisible walls in some of its maps, especially in the forbidden oasis...though that map is just all over stupid, having to go halfway across the world to make one little jump to get you up one level only to find
out the level you're on is the wrong one...so glad i did everything in there minus the shard temple, but thats a fairly simple path once i've found the rest of the shards in the game...

it also has some annoying instakill areas that jump you back to the closest safe spot...like lakes and whatnot. hard to tell where i can go before it jumps me back to shore minus all my health.

YellowJacket LE

As long as i'm not paying extra real money to unlock the rest of the area i am happy enough to let the game run it's course.

Argontheos

I'm debating blind on the FarCry front. Heh ha.

If I had my way the only way a player would be kept out of an area is with powerful enemies obliterating them. The player would get utterly rogered for going where they shouldn't. But you can't really do that any more in AAA games because publishers think
the up-and-coming gamers are the medals-for-taking-part-generation... they don't like dying, learning, or retrying. lol

They prefer getting checkpoints/autosaves with every footfall, regenerating health instead of pickups, crazy loot instead of challenging scarcity, assisted-aim instead of marginal skill, and "story mode" options in games like Mass Effect 3.

So instead of killing them, says big money, stick a barrier up and keep them out of an area they shouldn't be. Give them a hint and gameplay reminder every few minutes, have characters repeat objectives in redundant exposition, and solve puzzles for players
taking too long. Ha ha.

This... the generation that lapped up the likes of the torturous Flappy Bird. Publishers are out of touch. Ha ha!

I dunno man. I can see where you're coming from but if every important area had to be behind a loading screen/transition into another area... it would defeat the one-map, one-island, thing, surely.

Maybe the FarCry devs want to keep you in the world and never have you looking at a transition screen [Saints Row IV has tons of loading screens, I don't know about FarCry 4 lol] ... or moving between maps, and the cost of that immersion is fog of war, and
virtual lameness pushing you out of areas you shouldn't be until you've done the tasks you've been assigned in the story.

*shrug*

BootstrapGolem

i don't know..farcrys realism is on the same level as gta and maybe saints row 1, in that it's satirical realism and you won't be fighting godzilla donkey monsters during the story...but they have drugs so they can have fun with reality whenever they want.
i mean, they give you a little helicopter super early in the game, in the very first outpost you take over, and a wingsuit so it's not like they don't want you to go exploring.

plus judging from the list of future farcry suggestions, ubisoft is not super interested in realism.

BootstrapGolem

i could never really get into the sims, not the newer games where they've got npcs and quests and stories to do...i just want to build a nice house, create a lovely little family, and murder them all in horrible and humorous ways.

you bring up saints row 4 as a good open world, but its a prime example of what i'm talking about without the story problems you brought up. it's an open world from the get go (other than the prologue/tutorial levels) with pretty much every side activity
ready and waiting, without you coming across story spoilers or whatever, since you have activate the story missions on your phone/tablet/whatever.

i might be misremembering how the activities really worked, but i think they were all unlocked without you having to rescue the homie associated with that type of activity. certainly you could do them before they asked you to as part of their loyalty missions...

character customization in saints row is pretty great. when i was going for the kill with ground pound power trophy i made my boss up to look like the hulk.

Takeshi warrior

I think open world should not block you from exploring or forcing you to explore every inch of the game. In the old grand theft autos, I remember when you past a certain area, cops would be chasing you. However grand theft auto started to slowly move away
from forcing players to do certain stuff. I just wish you had more free will. Like why can't we make our own character and have him/her as the way we want? I connect with games and I like games better when I can connect with the character. Picture having your
own character and make them move up the business ladder or fight in the army or be a boss in a group. Seems like the more the open games expand, we are still limited on what we can do with the characters. Before in San Andreas you could do way more than GTA
5, some of you may agree or disagree

getting tired of locked "open world" maps