Open Worlds that Truly Live. 

I was a Nintendo kid growing up and never really had access to open world games. I think the first one I ever played was the Android port of Vice City, and I never got past the rc helicopter mission. Eventually the Wii U came out, and I finally got to play “proper” open world games like Assassin’s Creed 3 and Watchdogs, and I absolutely hated them. I thought they were so boring, because in my 9th grade mind the point of an open world was only to goof around and do whatever you felt like. That’s what the RU-vidrs I watched play GTA4 online seemed to do, so obviously that’s all there was to enjoying games like that, right? It wasn’t until I decided to play my brother’s copy of Assassin’s Creed Rogue on his PS3 that I really got just how badly I misunderstood open worlds. I enjoyed the Hell out of Rogue’s map, how that map related to the story, what mysteries it had to uncover, all of it. So of course I played more games, more Assassin’s Creed, Saints Row, Far Cry, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Yakuza and came out loving some, being disappointed by others, and disliking a few. Assassin’s Creed 3 ended up becoming one of my favorites funnily enough and through the same Wii U version I initially hated too. In the end I’d say that my view of an open world stopped being about what sort of limitless shenanigans the player can get into, and became something along the lines of being a vehicle through which an experience can be given in much the same way that a series of linear levels can offer the experience of a virtual obstacle course. I still hate the first Waychdogs though. That hasn’t changed.