so this is what the botton of the barrel video game essayist looks like. Self pitying humor leading up to shameless plug and calling boswer's fury open world? yeah defenalty the botton
@@camwing Great point though, I can't fathom what ppl will call it in the future when looking back at the game. Yeah, maybe the release date, but then there was the remaster, does that get taken into account to?? Like, wha- okay I totally understand why you're upset about this now lmao
Rdr2 was the only game where I never wanted to fast travel. The beauty of the world was a factor but it really was because of the plethera of random events or abandoned places you could find. Also, you can still fast travel whenever. Just pitch up a tent and then you can tp anywhere on the map. Idk why you didn't mention that.
I kinda did, I mention that it exists, but it's just inconvenient. I mostly wanted to zero in on the game-playing-itself mode, and briefly touching on fast travel was an easy way to segue into it. The reason Red Dead 2's world works so well is that, even on the super long journeys across the map, you'll probably run into something interesting along the way. The way the video is cut together doesn't show it, but on the 6 minute trip from Emerald Station to Valentine, I ran into a prison transport, a man with a snake bite, and a woman trapped underneath her horse (which I obviously didn't see, since I was busy making a sandwich). The act of locomotion itself was the main thing I wanted to focus on, that's why I spent the first minute gushing about how incredible the world was before I got to my main gripe with it. Because with that gripe aside, RDR2 is a towering achievement of a videogame.
RDR2 is one of the games I just enjoy vibing in. I get so immersed every time I play and find real joy in taking it slow and roleplaying as Arthur. On a journey to a destination for example I will hunt some animals, make a camp come nightfall and cook the meat then sleep and carry on. Before I enter a cold or very hot area I will stop by an inn and change clothes. Maybe I come across some predators or bandits in the way or I find some NPC who needs help. In this way the travel also became more about the journey than the destination in spite of the actual traversal being „boring“ in a way.
i agree and i never fast travel either, but what you said about fast traveling isn't true. john can do that, but arthur can't. edit: i was wrong arthur can fast travel after getting an upgrade. but i still think you're missing the point of the game if you fast travel around
Yup. The wow factor lasted incredibly long in comparison with all other video games. 100 hours in, I was still absolutely floored by the views. So you know what? Riding a horse really is the best part of this game and I don't regret a single moment spent doing it.
What I really like about Death Stranding is that traversal of the world IS the game Going from A to B is full of danger. You need to prepare, evaluate the risks, choose a path and survive without destroying the packages you are carrying
That's exactly the type of game it was. Much like some movies, not all games are meant to be action packed and high intensity, some are meant to be an experience. Was Death Stranding the most fun game to play? No. But it was absolutely captivating
I've got over 300 hours in Death Stranding I had fun with the terrain more because I thought "ooh, a zip line there!", made a mental note, came back to put a zip line, and then saw further down where another zip line would be cool Or finding someone else's structure and adding to it Or going off the rails and building a massive zipline freeway over the whole mountain area because mountain climbing sucks
I'm so glad that someone else thought of death stranding, too. I love that game and travelling is so fun. I feel like the slower pace of the game lets you appreciate the vistas more, and if youve already seen it before, you can build the highways or ziplines.
Death Stranding very quickly became my favorite game, and one reason is the adventuring aspects were something I'd wanted in a game since childhood. In real life, traversing the wilderness is interesting and exciting because you have to plan how you'll navigate an incline or body of water and how you handle animals (I'm not getting out an axe and fighting every coyote I see to then skin them without washing my hands and trying to sell my roadkill to a checkout lady at Kroger). DS made the environment a sort of opponent where you can even just trip on a rock, or be weighed down and unbalanced, etc. The only other game that ever made me feel like I had to plan ahead and properly prepare for a journey was, somehow, the very original Final Fantasy, because I had to make sure I was well equipped enough to just get to the next dungeon and back, and had to be careful what terrain I was in because of the different monsters that spawned in different places. I wish more games made me actively engage with choosing how and where I travel every step of the way. Of course, there will be Death Stranding 2, but I kind of don't think the game should have a sequel, though I thought the same thing about The Last of Us 2 and was wrong about that, so here's hoping.
I feel like traversal can be made fun by making it challenging. In outward you can't see yourself on the map, meaning you have to use landmarks to know where you are and where you will be going. This allows you to get lost, and means you have to concentrate on where you are and where you are going. The same applies for Kingdom Come: Deliverance hardcore mode, and I personally find it makes traversing somewhat entertaining.
I think I had the best experience with BoTW and ToTK when I turned the minimap off. Really forces you to connect with the world. I wish more games could do that without undermining the whole experience, Razbuten did a great video on minimaps if you haven't seen it.
That's one way, but not the only way. Elden Ring traversal is challenging, and that's fun. But there's also a game called "Infamous: Second Son" which is the opposite of challenging. You're a superhero. You can run fast, you can fly (somewhat) and you can climb any building. That game is not fun because there's things to do in open world. It's fun because you can actually live out your Superhero fantasy in that open world. Same goes for Spider Man. It's feels sooo liberating!!!
I really wish more open world games had the balls to make the player actually read a map and navigate by landmarks and use orienteering skills rather than getting a magic GPS
@@fahimfaisal7571 talking about Superhero fantasy, there's Prototype 1 and 2's movement where you not only go from point A to B with style, but you're also a parkouring biological weapon that causes destruction.
I think that in red dead the travel was good because of the people and side quests you would meet along the way making every journey feel like an actual lived in world rather than an empty field
@@HhhhhhHfh Yeah like I didn't like rdr2 to begin with but saying a game gets boring after playing it multiple times is always an odd criticism. I usually don't care about replay ability at all because any game is only fun to me the first time no matter how much they add to make replaying it fun
@@Dachin55555 Not really as there are so many things and random events that happen around you in rdr2 that it would take a year to list them all off. If you’re talking about events that come to the player like a robbery or something then sure there aren’t many of those but if thats a problem then go engage with the countless things going on around you. Like for example i remember a cop beating up someone so i taunted him until we fought. Another cop pulled a gun on me and i put my hands up while the officer that i was beating up was walking away while holding his jaw. Stuff like that only happens if you go out of your way to make it happen. I could have just rode my horse on and disregarded the cop beating to dude but I didn’t. So if it gets boring then its your fault basically.
This reminded me of insomniac’s game before Spider-Man, Sunset Overdrive, and how that game’s traversal was so well made and fun that I never used the fast travel even if I was going across the map. The grinding and wall running was just such an enjoyable thing to do that to skip it felt like I was neglecting myself the game I wanted to play. It reminded me a quote from someone which was “if you need to use fast travel to move around in your game you have failed at game design.” Now I don’t fully agree with it since many games I enjoy I utilize their fast travel, but the idea of if a game can make me not want to fast travel then it’s definitely won game design
Same for me with cyberpunk 2077. Even though the traversal mechanics themself are not that exciting the world is so brimming with life and energy that zipping around it on my motorcycle was satisfying and enjoyable.
Yeah what also helped Sunset Overdrive was how compact the game world was structured, since it mostly relied on verticality. If they ever get to make a sequell i hope they add more indoor areas with like some sort of parcour.
Insomniac is truly one of the greatest modern developers. They rarely miss and have been killing it for decades. I'm glad Spiderman finally gave them the recognition they deserve
really like what you're doing with the channel. you and your brother have great style in regards to the writing, performance, and editing. not sure what your long-term plans with the channel are as it seems like you've got a wide range of interests and talents, but I am excited to see more stuff from ya.
Yeah, we're still trying to figure that out too, but I think we stumbled into a pretty sustainable groove with these last couple videos. Long-ish format gameplay analysis isn't exactly a new concept (obviously) so hopefully we can inject some originality into things. Unlike how I subconsciously plagiarized the thumbnail from your video on traversal mechanics😅 (I changed it as soon as I realized, I promise I'm not trying to rip you off)
I genuinely didn't think anything of it. Lots of people in this space have similar ideas in regards to everything from topics to thumbnails, and sometimes that means people doing the sameish thing. When I saw it, my assumption was that and not that you were trying to rip me off (especially as if there was any thumbnail text of mine I'd think someone would want to rip off, it wouldn't be one about walking being boring lol). Honestly though, if the other version leads to better CTR, feel free to go with it.
This was always a problem I noticed. The easy, and genuinely most effective method to make travelling long, mostly empty distances is just to have a fun character controller. Let me platform around, anything more than just holding forward. I think it's disappointing how few games want you travel these big landscapes quickly. Everyone loves a big sense of speed and really the only games I can think that manages that feeling is just cause, or just straight up driving games. I think that idea is what everyone got excited for when sonic frontiers came out, but that quickly tapered off as soon as the game was revealed to be more of a rail grind simulator than anything, which is one of the most automatic and least engaging mechanics in all of gaming... which is all to say that it was incredibly disappointing. I even had a problem with botw and totk because you just move so slowly, at least tears gave you some cool contraptions to throw a rocket onto but I just spent more than half of my time holding forward while gliding out of a sky tower, and good lord is that slow, and somehow faster than a lot of other methods. I just want more games to let me go fast man. That's all I want.
I've started The Witcher 3 at least four times now, telling myself "Okay, I just gotta push past the boring stuff and get to the good part" because of how many people praise that game. But every time I do, about two hours in, I usually end up giving up because controlling Geralt is just... generally unsatisfying. Making your character fun to control should be one of the first things you do in an open world game. I think that's why I was willing to put up with some of the more baffling design decisions in Just Cause 4. They really let you go fast in that game, and it's insanely fun.
@@camwingweird I've 100 percented Witcher 3 and thought his controls were pretty easy and fun but now I see everyone complain about them. Why do you find it not fun to play as him?
I tried playing it for the first time back in 2018, which was immediately after I finished Middle Earth: Shadow of War. That game has such insanely tight and responsive combat, and I think I was expecting a similar level of control in Witcher 3, so it just felt kinda clunky in comparison. My main thing is that the act of locomotion itself is kinda boring. It's not that it's bad, it's that in comparison to the other open world games I love, it just felt super vanilla. And compared to something like Shadow of War or Arkham Knight, none of the hits felt like they carried any impact, and I can't exactly put my finger on why. I've got too many games in the backlog to get through, but maybe I'll add Witcher 3 to that list. It seems like a good game to pick up and play on my Steam Deck from time to time.
@@camwing well I get why you thought it was boring lol. Shadow of war and Arkham Batman kinda set the bar high for combat and travel. Luckily I played those after Witcher 3. You should try it again if you have time. But I recommend not trying to do all the side quests and such since people get burnt out pretty easily. Also only use the horse for main roads and just run with geralt when off roading. And remember to change the camera angle in setting the next gen update added super close up camera angles that some people hate so if they annoy you can change them.
Great video mr wing and I'm not just saying that because I'm being paid in earwigs by the big man himself and if I was they've a nice crunch to them and I wouldnt blame me!
@@theegg8621 You said something wrong, we don't find it fun we find it nice at least this works for me, i love finding little things and secrets around teh map, also going on the horse is not only holding the forward button is also holding other buttons to do in other directions haha, anyway i could never find the horse thing "fun" but i like it nontheless, games don't have to be fun to be good, and RDR2 still have lots of fun things to do.
This video is very entertaining, informative and high quality. Also the very first thing I thought of when reading the title was the traversal of Just Cause 3, which is some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a video game, so thank you for shedding some light on it! You’ve earned yourself a subscriber, my good sir.
I agree. Video essays should be more like this. He described how the game needs to be actually fun, especially the movement, and I think a similar philosophy applies to video essays. This one could have been longer, and it would have been fine! SummoningSalts makes great documentaries, and those are usually 1 hr plus! My favorite example is the Entire History of Bloons. It's a great video, and it covers enough content it needs to be 4 hrs long, but the creator made it so interesting and entertaining, I somehow retained a lot of the knowledge. The best video essays are intriguing and engaging, well-structured, and actually enjoyable to watch. I feel like I genuinely learned a lot from this video, same with the TotK one, and that shows that you did something right. For all the video essays I've watched, this one was highly enjoyable.
I really wish I could enjoy Subnautica; I've tried it multiple times but it's never quite clicked for me. Just Cause 3, though? I've never wanted to -destroy- liberate public infrastructure more. Love the editing at 17:20, btw. Great video! Although I do think it could be improved with a tighter thesis. You gave some examples that I'm inclined to agree with, based on my own gameplay experience and other essays I've seen, but failed to tie it together beyond "good traversal 👍". If you gave some more ideas about what makes a traversal system excellent, or how to design the world to be complementary to the gameplay (or vice versa), there would be a bit more to take away at the end.
I completely agree about the thesis statement, but I realized about 75% of the way through the script that I didn't finish nearly enough of the open world games that I've started to determine what it was specifically I didn't like about them. I've started 4 different Assassin's Creed games, and the only one I finished was Unity, which I'm almost positive was because moving throughout the world was so satisfying. So instead of getting to the bottom of what makes a bad open world bad, which I think is an idea that's been done quite a bit (especially recently), I mostly just wanted to highlight some examples of traversal mechanics I really enjoyed. There's been enough of an outcry in the comments for a followup that I'm definitely going to make one, but I can already tell you now that it'll have a much tighter focus.
I too have never been able to enjoy Subnautica. The movement feels godawful to me, and I just don't know what the heck I'm supposed to do until I lose interest.
Subnautica didn't click for me until I realized how utterly unique the later locations are. It's the first game that's ever made me feel like I'm EXPLORING the unknown and it's now one of my favourite games of all time
I was completely unaware of Just Cause, and while I don't think it's a game I would want to play, I very much loved seeing that car spin up into the air. Great video as always!
The just cause games aren't good, But they're certainly fun. I adored my time with just cause 2 and 3 but I couldn't tell you the story even if you put a gun to my head.
@@thegreatgoobert5847So in Just Cause 3, you and your friend Moo-rio (but mostly you) try to blow up enough stuff so you can kill the moustache guy. Also there's a snarky radio man. I think thats the story
I took a week off of work from my full time desk job as a little birthday gift to myself, and instead of relaxing, I did a full 40 hour week's worth of work on a RU-vid video. My advice would be to probably not do that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seems every RDR2 reviewer is completely unaware that the game has fast travel, if you set up camp (anywhere) you can then travel to any town you want instantly for free. Only catch is you have to upgrade the camp through the ledger by playing some missions
I mostly hunt in rdr2, I have good honor, and like any good, self respecting gentleman of 1899: I hunt animals into extinction for pretty coats, boots, vests, shirts, and the like
This is why dying light has always been so interesting to me, never once while playing did i even remotely think of fast traveling, the interactivity with the parkour makes the transportation so engaging. Having to focus on every little jump and step makes the player stay consistently on the move.
This is coming from someone who is generally a fan of slow-paced media and overall immersive and atmospheric craft. So I think I'm the only one who liked traversal nature of Red Dead 2 including the cinematic cameras everyone else hated but I loved it due to the vibe and atmosphere it provided to me. It'd had been a while since a game respected my odd tastes so I was happy. And I was glad it wasn't afraid to not be traditional and slow things down. Type 2 fun I think it's called idk Yes, I am the only one thinks this. And I know that I deserve to be forgotten and called the enemy of gaming- I'm used to it.
Honestly the difference between how traversal works in these games relies on the underlying methodology behind the minds that make the game, Skyrim and RDR2 want to make these immersive and indepth worlds that actually feel like worlds, filled with atmosphere and spectacle. Super Metroid does a damn good job of this in some areas, the levels feel incredible to explore and it's not because of the gameplay because honestly in terms of gameplay Super Metroid is shit compared to the rest of the series, but its the areas, the forboding feeling that the areas inspire. I was playing ES Oblivion and even though it's an old as hell game made 800 years ago I stopped and just had to take a moment to enjoy the landscape, it was really pretty and done incredibly well, yeah in terms of gameplay I was just moving forward, but I still remember how fun it was traveling in the game, even thought the last time I played it was a year or two ago. I love Bowsers Fury but I don't remember a single thing besides having fun and big bowser, there was no real feeling of exploration, no feeling of awe and wonder, I was just hopping around this silly little jungle gym and thats what most games do when they focus on making travel fun. What each company wants is for the player to play it and to have an enjoyable experience doing so, Nintendo puts priority in fun and exiting gameplay and it does such a damn good job at it. I wouldn't really say that the travel in Skyrim and RDR2 sucks, I honestly like the feel of it, how slow it is compared to other games. Because real travel is slow, and tedius and true travel, like what you'll see in these games is something that you will rarely experience anywhere else, because it's pretty easy to die. BOTW came close to perfecting travel in my opinion, making it slow and steady, presenting danger and in some areas it was incredible, the cold places had to be prepped for, the hot desert and lava areas as well, but above all BOTW was made to be fun, and because of that travel was removed that beautiful monotony and spectacle that it had, that ability to enjoy the landscape and replaced it with fast travel, really cool fucking shield surfing, and horses. What I'm saying really boils down to, Morrowind was fun and I miss that feeling of adventure, of truly exploring the world.
Great Video! Really hammered in on the reasons I ended up liking Death Stranding, despite usually liking more reactive games. The satisfaction from learning how to traverse the world from A to B is amazing, and it itches a scratch that makes movement actually MATTER
Prototype (1 specifically) still has an amazing feeling traveral system, very responsive once you max out your skills and master the system, your agility is unrivaled and you go around parkouring with superpowers, what's not to love?
One thing I find very much worth mentioning about BotW. Some of the glitches and physics engine exploits are *very* fun to use. Wind Bombs especially, are very satisfying and very versatile. A slightly more consistent version of them that doesn't damage Link could honestly have been a been a very believable traversal method in TotK with all of the Zonai Tech in the game.
Amazing idea for a video! No matter how people feel about it: Forspoken had incredibly open world traversal. It had the same energy that Prototype and infamous Second Son had with how fast and smoothly you can get around. Not perfect, but definitely better than most games (especially compared to the awful movement in Final Fantasy 16?
I think weighing Skyrim against Bowser's Fury to determine the quality of their open world traversal is pointless, as they're in completely different genres and aim for completely different things. While yes, they are both open worlds, the open worlds serve very different purposes. Bowser's Fury is first and foremost a platformer game, where movement is at the core of the gameplay experience, and therefore the open world serves as a fun and seamless way to connect the bulk of the game's content while exemplifying the core gameplay experience - but its just that, a great way to seamlessly connect the main content of the game. With Skyrim and its open world, while the movement itself does boil down to pushing forward, the traversal entails so much more than pointing yourself in the direction of the quest marker and moving towards it, it's about all the things that will sidetrack you away from that quest marker. All the random encounters causing you to stop along your way, small points of interest often including little stories, mysterious caves along the roadside that entice you to delve deeper within, bandit occupied keeps, and sometimes even other quests entirely. Much like Breath of the Wild in that aspect. What I'm trying to say is, both games aim for very different things with their open worlds, and traversing the open world of both games is fun but for very different reasons, and though traversing Skyrim's open world doesn't personally click with you, that doesn't make it objectively bad. If you read through my comment, thank you. Sorry for the big wall of text, I'm just a young man trying to articulate my thoughts pertaining to a game I consider one of the most important I've ever played, and this took over an hour for me to write.
The intention wasn't to make a comparison between the two games (since there's very little to actually compare), it was to show how starkly contrasting the approaches were between the different gameplay styles. My intention with this video is to serve as less of an indictment of mechanics I don't like, and more as a highlight of mechanics I do. Red Dead 2 and Skyrim are both about the things you'll find on the way between destinations, which there is a LOT of in both games. The actual locomotion mechanics aren't the highlight, because they don't have to be. I've got 100+ hours of gameplay in Skyrim over the past 12 years or so, I just think the actual locomotion mechanics could be a little more interesting.
@@camwing What do you want from more interesting though? Get on a Dragon and fly there ignoring everything? That would invalidate filling the world and in turn punish people who like walking. The 9000 optional areas are now completely worthless.
I think the main issue at play with open world traversal is that we lump all "Open Worlds" into a single category when there are multiple types, and each type appeals to different kinds of gamers. Let's take Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, and Horizon Zero Dawn as examples. In Skyrim, there are no towers to climb to reveal the map and/or markers. You discover the whole world organically by either being directed there through a quest, or just stumbling across it. The core gameplay of Skyrim is rather shallow and repetative, but every single quest in the game is dressed up in lore. For me, personally, this is still my all time favorite open world game of all time, and the main reason is because I enjoy set dressing so much. Give me a story that is even the slightest bit interesting and keep the dialogue above awful, and I'll be hooked. In contrast to that, you have Horizon Zero Dawn that has a much more "traditional" open world exploration model where you climb up towers to reveal the map and activities to do in the area. Luckily, Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't fall into the pitfall of other open world games where the towers unlock literally everything in the area, but the reason that this version of open world exploration doesn't fall flat (for me) is because, again, all the quests you can do are dressed up in interesting story beats. While the majority of activities in Zero Dawn are fairly repetitive, they all have set dressing that fills in the lore of the world. You might have 50 different quests to kill certain enemies in certain areas, but the person asking you to do it will always have a different reason for it. Lastly, let's discuss Breath of the Wild. In Breath of the Wild, you have towers that you climb to fill in your map, but that's all they do. No additional map markers are unlocked through doing this, and really, aside from being able to look at a nicer map, it doesn't really provide you with anything gameplay wise (maybe you can find a few things by looking at your map alone). The quests in Breath of the Wild are also extremely repetative, and there are barely any in the game. Most of the "quests" boil down to the 120 shrines and Divine Beast quests. The main appeal of Breath of the Wild isn't the quests, it's the exploration and traversal. The bulk of your time in Breath of the Wild will be spent just moving through the world doing micro-activities on your way from point A to point B. This method of exploration is so satisfying that it has rightly been praised by every person on the internet. However, for me personally, this is one of the weaker open world games for me, and it boils down to the point of the open world. Breath of the Wild is personal choices over everything else. Every shrine gives the same reward, and you choose how to apply the reward, there are very few quests that have any kind of story to them, and generally these stories are extremely self contained. So, we look at these three games, and we can see that each has a different focus and they are going to appeal to different players, even though they will generally have broad appeal. Skyrim is great because of the lore and story, not the gameplay (not that it's bad, just hardly a highlight), Horizon Zero Dawn has a bit of mix between having solid mechanics and lore excuses to engage in these mechanics, and Breath of the Wild focuses on Gameplay over everything else, even payoff. There's nothing wrong with preferring one type of the other, but I do think that at this point we need to really explore the nuances of open worlds more than just "it's got a big interconnected map" because there's much more to them than that.
i mean with death stranding its not an unpopular opinion, its either you enjoy the fuck out of the game , or you hate it as fuck , for me i went there with a high sceptisism , cuz i played it on PC after years of its lunch and ppl was shitting on it mostly , but damn i didn't expect that i would enjoy that game , i don't know why cuz abviously the game play is not the most advance and flashy one , but the game just feels good
EXACTLY. I wish I could enjoy both Horizon games but I always get bored because of that pointless filler crowding the map! Love this video and love your sense of humor lol
Definitely make a part two because I need to see more games where traversal is the most fun part. I would also love to know what you think of Death Stranding for that very reason lol...
days gone has my hands down favorite travel system you have to be near or on your bike to fast travel and when you do it takes gas which means if you don't have a big gas tank you can't travel far and most of the time infestation zones block your ability to fast travel so it makes it where you have to actually ride your bike instead of stare at a loading screen for the early game and late/post game when you're trying to get 100% it's easier to go to the place you need just by fast traveling (although i never really do) also if you just fast travel it takes more gas than just taking shortcuts and going places yourself and i love it
My problem when I played it was the fuel. As soon as I started to have fun and appreciate the views, the fuel ran out. It lasted maybe 5 minutes at best. It's the wrong way to do gameplay. Don't give us a bad experience and then promise a good experience with upgrades. Give us a GOOD experience with a promise of a GREAT experience later on.
@@S0n0fG0D I never really had a problem with fuel tbh if anything, there was an over abundance of gasoline wherever you go everywhere has gasoline unless you're just joyriding around for extended periods of time at the very beginning of the game, you wont have to worry about gasoline too much if you fill up whenever you get the chance and by the end of the game, you can ride laps around the entire map without worrying about fuel
While not necessarily open-world, Sonic Frontiers is basically the opposite of Horizon: Zero Dawn. Traversing from one place in the story to another is easy, but the bulk of the game is running around the map and collecting items so you can watch a story cutscene, and with the bulk of the game being running around and platforming, Sonic Team made Sonic a ton of fun to control and run around (especially after update 2), and that is typically more fun than the destination (unless you're about the fight a titan).
I haven't gotten around to Sonic Frontiers, but I think it would definitely be interesting to explore in the followup to this video. This video was based on games that I've already played pretty extensively, so writing the script was mostly based on memory, so I think it would be a lot of fun to focus mostly on games I've never played before. I'll make sure Frontiers goes up on my list.
@@camwing Another thing is that, Frontiers' reception and sales had made SEGA continue to support the game by making updates, with the latest, Update 2, adding more adjustable gameplay options with an unlockable OP spindash that encourages New Game+ and replayability.
A part two would be great. One open World that got me liking open worlds again like botw was Elden Ring and of course tears of the kingdom. Cant stand this boring ubisoft like open worlds with thousand of fillerquests that all are the same.
The way you traverse and transition from subtopic to subtopic to full on subjects with in this genre of video essay is incredibly fluid unlike what what I’ve ever see, makes me feel like I’m watching a biased yet unbiased documentary at the same time because of your personal experience with these games. Really good content.
So basically the less realistic an open world is the more fun it is, because realistic world traversal is boring. But zipping around with crazy powers is fun.
All I'm saying is, if I could grappling-hook my way from my bedroom to my toilet every morning, I'd probably injure myself horribly and never do it again. But I'd at least try it once.
This was a fantastic intro to your content. Great video! "Sunset Overdrive" is some of my favorite open world traversal. I rarely used the fast travel in the game.
I do agree, Thats why games like Days gone work so well, your companion is basically your bike, upgrading, getting gas for you bike keeps you ingaged, also it handles so well. I could drive around all day without getting bored.
A thing I learned from watching Masahiro Sakurai's RU-vid channel is that Japanese devs have a strong belief in a central game design tenet: push/pull. Essentially, that for something to be fun, there has to be some kind of tension for the player in doing it; if you push at it, it pushes back, if you pull at it, it pulls back, there's some kind of tug-of-war there. Western game devs don't really seem to have centralized this core concept NEARLY as much as Japanese devs have, from what I've noticed. So when it comes to really basic things in game, like traversing a space, western devs seem to just presume, "well we want to make it as simple to accomplish as possible, and maybe make it easier/more convenient to skip the boring parts," so if the player pushes something in a direction, there's as *little* resistance as possible. Which is great UI design or UX design if you're talking about general software usage. But it's TERRIBLE *game* design. Because what makes something a *game* is that tension, that question of success. The Japanese devs look at traversal and think about how they can add that tension back in, not remove it or make it as simple as possible, but actually adding it back in. That's why there's a way to fail at climbing a mountain in BotW, or that you can get a high score when riding Plessy in Mario just moving between places - because there's tension there (both negative and positive examples) and just getting from point A to point B is fun in and of itself, and it's the lack of understanding this push/pull dynamic which is why in every Bethesda game they just add more fast traveling functionality and wonder why it seems that people like their games less and less. "We made it more and more convenient to get to the tailored content! Why are people mad?" is what the Bethsoft dev says, not understanding that half the fun of their games comes from what happens inbetween their bits of tailored content, and they've erased *that* bit of magic that people used to enjoy in their games (this btw is why Oblivion is the best TES game - the AI routines make the traveling between places extremely random and this adds tension).
That philosophy was taken to its natural extreme in Death Stranding. There's a lot going on in that game, but walking is by far my favorite part. I still can't believe how well they pulled that concept off.
@@camwing Lol exactly. I still remember thinking Death Stranding was what happened when Hideo Kojima heard people talking about "walking simulators" online and decided to make one himself without knowing that people were using the term as a pejorative.
Wether game design is bad or good is really dependent on what you’re trying to accomplish. There’s no objectively bad game design. If you’re trying to ease the traveling sections for the player, creating a fast traveling system would be appropriate. Also, I don’t think fast traveling is a contributing factor to people disliking modern bethesda games because Skyrim had it and that game sold a lot of copies and different editions throughout many years and people still look at that title fondly.
@@heybalanar Incorrect on the point of objectivity. For humans there are values that are universally understood to be positive or negative. So while there may never be any kind of true objectivity that humans can perceive from outside our own experience, from our limited perspective as both individuals and as a species, we can determine whether a value is positive or negative to an incredible hypermajority of reliability (something like 99.9999999% of the time) which is a *functional* objective reality for us. This means that yes, there is objectively bad *everything* not just game design, but also that yes, there is objectively bad game design. You're defending (whether intentionally or not) decisions that are best understood as category errors. Japanese game development has strong strains of coming out of toy development (Nintendo for example, before making games was making household toys and before that, playing cards) while Western game development has always essentially been a branch off of the development of general use software. The culture of making general use software thus bled into ideas of good game development in the west while the culture of making good toys bled into the ideas of good game development in Japan. Since video games are closer to toys than they are to excel spreadsheets or a word program in most instances, it is more correct to assume a toyific approach as opposed to business software approach to development is more correct for making good video games. Objectively.
the bethesda method is lazy, but i still love it. when you walk, you'll see more random ministories as encounters. gives a sense of adventure. my favorite and first playthrough was spend not knowing I was the dragonborn because I didn't feel like grabbing a stone tablet for some random mage and wanted to join the stormcloaks to cut the guys head of who tried to cut my head off lmao on my quest to do so i got constantly distracted by NPC's so braindead that I felt bad enough to help them, played until I reached around level 50 and walked through the main story as an overpowered superhero
I really enjoy these more frequent uploads, even though they take more effort to push out. Hoping RU-vid will push these out to a wider audience like the last one.
I want to play Subnautica but the game makes me so motion sick. I can play a little bit at a time but it's hard to play long enough to feel satisfied with how much I accomplished before getting ill. Any first person perspective game has this issue for me
I'm a huge fan of Subnautica for.. many reasons. I love how it really utilizes the fear of the unknown to scare players but in a way where it feels satisfying to face those fears and continue onward. Especially because the story is so interesting. Helps that I'm autistic and have a huge obsession with biology- particularly Marine and Speculative LOL This is such a fun video! I'm glad I watched the totk video and found your channel!
You are funny and clever, and this is a nice video. But your whole message is simply this: if you like the game, traversal is good. If you don’t like the game, traversal is bad. I like the Horizon games, and I love the traversal. There is always something interesting to see or do along the way - but I feel that way because I like the game. Same with RDR2. Whereas I don’t really like Spider-Man, and therefore the web traversal gets really boring after about 10 minutes. That Mario game from the beginning? It looks awful to me, but while you were gushing about how fun the traversal to the next level is because of the fun stuff you do along the way, I was thinking “that’s right, and that exactly why I love the Horizon games because travelling is just so much fun in those games”. So please - consider that maybe the traversal isn’t what you don’t like in the games you mention. Maybe the traversal time is simply where you have time to reflect on the fact that you just don’t really like the game?
I nowadays feel like most developers only create an open world to stretch the playtime. The joy of creating an interesting worlds seems to be lost in most modern AAA games. Instead we get worlds filled to the brim with boring shit that stuck to the wall during playtests. Ubisoft games are the worst in my opinion. They aren't necessarily bad but I only rush through the main story if I actually play one of their games (which is very rare nowadays) because that's by far the most interesting content. As a Data Scientist I must also say that I wouldn't be surprised if Ubisoft collects player data and has a pretty good statistic of what side content is played the most. There are many other games that use the shitstain method to design and fill their boring maps. But sadly there are also a lot of games that are open world even though the devs have no clue what the actual gameplay in those worlds will be. Kingdom Come Deliverance is such a game for me. I really wanted to like that game. Even pledged in its kickstarter but I just couldn't be bothered starting the game after 24 hours of playtime. One reason were obviously the large amount of bugs and bad performance on release. There were houses you could enter but Henry was suddenly too fat to fit through the door once inside. Almost everything was made to be played with a gamepad even though it was a game primarily built for pc (according to the devs). I will never forget when the game told me that the lockpicking minigame solely relied on gamepad vibration even though I didn't even had one connected to the pc which made it completely impossible to pick locks with mouse and keyboard. Traversing the map was also extremely boring. It was basically pressing w+shift until you arrive at your destination. There were neither dangers on the road nor interesting stuff to explore. Fast travel was essentially unusable on release since it would only get you about 5 meters closer to your destination until a "random encounter" happened. The resulting loading times (on a fast ssd) were far longer than just walking everywhere. It just left me with the feeling that I spend 24 hours in a really good looking medieval world without any gameplay other than walking around and watching cutscenes. It definitely didn't help that the story is extremely generic in the beginning. I've had a german children's book with essentially the same story of a smith wanting to become a noble knight and being a knight not being as adventurous as the smith wished. I do not hate slow games but KCD isn't just slow it's lacks any form of fundamental gameplay at least in the first 24 hours which completely shattered the immersion for me. (Another massive reason why I probably didn't like KCD is Divinity Original Sin 2 which came out only months before. I played the shit out of that game as I've been a Divinity fan since Ego Draconis. DOS2 is an incredible game and by far one of the best RPGs I've ever played. KCD's attempts at being a RPG just pales in comparison to whatever DOS2 manages to achieve but very few games come close to that. The only RPGs that ever came close or even surpassed it were Baldurs Gate 3 and Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous) The polar opposite is Dragon's Dogma. The whole world is just one big pile of enemies and at the player will struggle in the beginning but that danger makes the open world so interesting (actually just like Elden Ring). The player however wil llevel up and the struggle will get a lot easier but the player is supposed to have at least some port-crystals by then making fast travel possible and cutting down the walking time. This also really tells one big plotpoint in the game's story through its gameplay. The Arisen (the player character) is supposed to get stronger relatively fast to face off the dragon and killing the dragon is the main part of the game's story.
Outer wilds is basically the definition of great open wirld experience. The whole game is based of discovering by yourself, without any mission at all.
I stopped playing RDR2 after about 10hrs because I’d spent most of that time walking from the camp to the same small town and cleaning my horse. In 10 hours, the game failed to engage me in any way or even start telling a compelling story. Why people call it one of the greatest video games of all time is a mystery to me. In comparison, the entirety of The Last of Us is about 13 hours long and every second of that game is engaging and compelling. For all I know, RDR2 might become amazing at the 11 hour mark but it’s just not worth spending the equivalent of an entire, better game being bored.
Though great analysis, I don't think Spider-Man should just get a pass because it's fun. It is fun but it is not an in-depth traversal system. Unlike BotW, the player is not making engaging choices, the only option is to hold R2 and occasionally release it to gain momentum. The joyous feeling of swinging past skyscrapers negates some of that, yes, but at the end, the player is just holding R2. Combined with the repetitive crimes and the speed cap, it is no better than RDR2's traversal on the mechanical side. Miles Morales' tricks are cool but they are still not that in-depth. You simply hold square and move the left stick in any direction to perform most of the moves. Although the game does reward you for chaining tricks, it's not that meaningful as miniscule amount of xp and charging up Miles' venom bar (which is not hard to fill anyway) will not contribute to an intrinsic goal. Most players (including me) will do it for the cool factor which is a genuine motivator but ultimately just contributes to the fun side. There is a lot of depth that can be integrated, Web of Shadows did it ages ago. Spiderman PS4 or whatever it should be called, just streamlined the system to attract a larger audience.
BotW already stood head and shoulders above all other Open-World games in this regard for me, but the crazy thing is that TotK makes BotW look like a beta. HZD already felt super restrictive after playing BotW and I stopped playing RDR2 after 15 hours or so because the game just bored me to tears and the mission design, again, was extremely restrictive, not allowing for any creativity on the player's side.
Kingdom Come Deliverance, and Elden Ring deserve some mention. I feel Elden Ring is still somewhat linear, due to the world literally being shaped like a finger, you can’t go from Caelid to Leyndell without warping, or traveling 80% of the map via everywhere else.
Gonna be honest, I completely forgot about that game. Like, it didn't even cross my mind when I was writing the script. Grappling hooks are pretty great though, I'll give em that.
We have seen fun open world travel in the past. A long long time ago, in a little game called _Morrowind_ There were no map markers, each corner you turned held new dangers and experiences, and almost all quests had their own intricacies. The world was made to look large (mainly with fog due to hardware limitations at the time), but when you knew the way, distances were short to travel yet the roads still had many points of interest on offer.
I love morrowind but I think you may have missed the point of the video if you think it has fun open world travel. Until you get the spells and magic items to zoom around, travel is incredibly boring. Like the actual act of traversal blows. I've had several friends bounce off the game for precisely this reason when I recommend it
@@trombonegamer14I partially agree with you, but also remember traversing Morrowind world very captivating, if you only let it be captivating. NPCs gave you directions on where to go, based on what the world actually looked like. Often the journey from activating a quest to its destination involved reading road signs, looking for that one tree to turn right behind, then looking for the lake to the east where the objective was.
Ima say it. Unpopular opinion: I liked the Mary Jane sections of Spider Man. It gives Mary Jane something to do other than just be a love interest that gets fridged the minute Peter is off-screen. It gives her character and lets her shine on her own. In the comics, Mary Jane was hated by fans because the comic book writers of the time didn't know how best to write her. They had already made her effectively retired, and it didn't make sense for her to not be present on occasion in the comics. So they would cut to MJ going "God I hope Peter is doing okay. I worry about him so much." And then cutting back to spider man kicking the shit out of some bad guys. The problem there was that they wrote her as some stereotypically girly redhead with no personality other than her love for Peter. In the games, I actually really like when MJ was given some missions, because it let you get into the mind of an otherwise underutilized character. Now, could they have used some spit-and-polish? God yes. Give MJ more gadgets than a distraction device from Peter. Peters devices can be kept all on the suit, they are extremely compact, and MJ has way more clothes and way more pockets. Give her gadgets that Peter made for her now that they are together again, with personal touches specific to her. Give her a taser from the start and work your way up if you feel the need, but keep the sections there.
Wheres Witcher 3 in all of this. The way it handles open world is probably the greatest in the decade cause the way the map enhances with the story like how we start at velen which is technically a garbage dump and then proceed to Oxenfurt then Novigrad(Oxenfurt on steroids) then Skellige Isles(Absolutely beautiful) and Kaer Morhen and then ultimately Toussaint. Its so good. The side quests are never boring. And small quests niether. All are different. So much to do in the world.
It's literally just hold W until you get to the point of interest with the only difference being you're in a spaceship instead walking or riding a horse. Outer Wilds is a good game but the fanboys pissing their pants just at the thought of the game (like the guy above talking how it's perfect in every way) are so annoying.
@@sharku8417 It's more than just "hold w" tho. In-space travel isn't the best traveling part. In-planet travel has you using thrusters up, down, to the side, avoiding typhoons, giant anglerfish, falling balls of lava. Add in the variety of different gravity and the ship traversal is really enjoyable. The on-foot traveling is amazing too because you have to carefully decide where to go and when, and gravity puzzles and quantum shenanigans add to that (Also slowly imploding planet). That's all without even talking about the DLC movement with rafts, lights, etc. I can definitely see how @plugshirt1762 sees the game as almost perfect, because as they said, it's so unique and it does all of it's unique things really well. It's not a massive game, so it doesn't have 'normal' gameplay, but that's why I think people like it so much, and why I love the traveling too.
@@sharku8417 if you’re going to trash talk me you could at least bother replying to me or making an actual point ffs. The other guys reply though spells out am everything I would have said so it would be a bit redundant to restate it all
for me, another reason spider-man worked so well (to the point where i've 100% it and Miles Morales) is that the open-world objectives are way more focused. comparing its late-game marker-filled map to zero dawn's, and there's like an eighth or so of what middling dawn has - and because of that, you actually give a shit about doing them (and because you unlock more as the story goes on, but can still view the full list - so you know that it's limited and won't constantly add more pointless bullshit for no reason).
This is a fantastic video! To add to open world traversal and good open world video games. I think how the game responds might be a factor? Admittedly I’m more familiar with metroidvanias and platformers but the way the game reacts to what you do just feels very important. I adore Outer Wilds and piloting the ship and exploring the planets is really fun to me, and I play on keyboard! I think the map being so small while feeling so big helps (since there’s less space in between everything) but exploring in that game is just great. Partially cause the game’s story and mystery is just fantastic but also cause there’s a lot of things to take into account while playing Outer Wilds, from your speed, to the gravity, to your resources to how the area changes overtime. But also due to one Really Important Kinda Spoiler Game Mechanic your encourages to go and try doing something dangerous. Traversal is almost like a science experiment really. If I do X what will happen? How much fuel can I use? Is it possible to do Y? And it just makes it all the more fun. A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game are also fantastic, they have different ways of movement but the way there maps are made are Really Good for similar reasons. There’s so many Ways to traverse in those games, so many different ways of getting to a place, and since the maps are pretty small, everything’s more interconnected. When you climb a mountain fall because you overestimated the amount of energy you had, there’s a bunch of other ways to get to where you need to be if you just look around, heck falling down the mountain might of made you notice a completely different path, which encourages exploration and problem solving and what not. Honestly I can talk forever about games which have good traversal, it’s always really important to me that it feels interesting. Uh Good video if you ever make a part 2 I’d be really happy to watch it.
Funny you should bring up A Short Hike, my brother/co-editor brought it up shortly after I finished writing the script and had already recorded the audio. I know it's not necessarily an open world game, but it has some really awesome looking traversal mechanics, so it's sitting on my Steam Deck waiting for a couple hours of free time to play. I'm really looking forward to it. And I kinda feel like Metroidvanias belong in their own category. They're definitely open world, but it's almost like, a sub-category that could be nestled underneath the open world genre. That said, I especially love the traversal mechanics of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, moving throughout that world is insanely satisfying
I totally get what the issues with Horizons open world and that fatigue can set in but it wasn't a problem for me in Horizon where it was in AC Odyssey. The connection between the open world and the story for me was Aloy herself because as she learns more about the world the player is exploring more of it, but yeah I get how that may not be the case for everyone. Also for traversal the Gravity Rush games, especially 2 has my favourite movement in any open world. Its fairly simple as you can basically just tap R1, point the camera, tap R1 again and go but the way the character is animated and the music accompanies it makes it one of my favourites ever
BotW is the only game I’ve played that really nailed open world exploration. RDR2 comes close, and does TotK, but TotK suffers from that it uses the same map as BotW, and that made it less special than BotW’s world. However the game itself is better than BotW, but BotW will always be my favorite of the two because of the original ideas that was groundbreaking on a level I haven’t seen since.
Xenoblade Chronicles X has the best vertical map design and non trivial platforming/parkour of all open world games. It's no wonder their dev team made Zelda BOTW map feel really good to explore even though it is basically Xenoblade X for kids.
A Developer of "Horizon: Zero Dawn" being salty about Elden Ring's non-linear progression is probably the best example of people that just... don't get it at all but are still allowed to work on games anyway.
I love the horse traversal in RDR2 and I wouldn’t change anything about it. I spend hrs just riding around exploring, looting, sometimes abduct someone who was mean to me
most open world games have the boring ass, "you can walk and run, that's it", but botw has both of those as well as gliding, climbing and of course the glitches that've been discovered over the years, and best of all everything feels great to play and do. sidenote: does anyone else feel like breath of the wild was a demo of tears of the kingdom?
man, i'm the opposite. can't get into the switch zeldas (or open-world games in general) because of how mind-numbingly dull the entire thing becomes after even just a couple of hours.
This issue is what chased me away from Assasins creed. I felt like doing mundane work instead of being in a cool game. One game you don't mention here is Ghost of Tsushima, I loved it.
RDR2 is by far the best game I have ever played, the travel and exploration being one of the best things about it You seem to have missed as well as the real time travel that you highlighted there is also instant fast travel via the map in you camp or your camp fire in the wilderness once you upgrade Arthurs tent
for the record,red dead fast travel is not “inconvenient” you buy 2 upgrades from the camp ledger and you can instantly fast travel anywhere on the map from your camp that literally goes anywhere with you.
