Not that the franchise franchise invented them (because there are so many other games on the chart, including a Zelda on NES), but the iterations of this series have contributed to shaping the image of how a world should be built open today.
The first Assassin’s Creed provided for visiting cities, where you can collect the notorious flags wandering around for the same. The franchise h
as evolved exponentially to each chapter in this sense, generating what is commonly called ” Assassin’s Creed ” in the common jargon“. Secondary missions, characters to talk about, objects to be discovered and collectible of all kinds (often less than useful) are now the basis of every open world game that you respect.
From Super Mario 6
4 , where there is actually the chance to carry on the game as it prefers, it is now under water under the bridges. We have had products like Ghost Recon: Wildlands that offer possibilities at every corner of the boundless map of Bolivia;
but also productions such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt , which makes its secondary missions of coveted adventures and sometimes even more admirable than the main adventure; for productions like Mad Max, a timid attempt to bring a different setting accompanied by gaming mechanics views and magazines. In all of this, we should also mention Grand Theft Auto V , with a huge city full of things to do and always alive, which is still awesome in its realization today.
Open world games have become, for some years, the quintessence of video gaming for a large number of users. The more hours you grow with the collectable, the higher the perception of having an “infinite” game, but which in some cases is more empty than many others. All this because of the evolution and success of the Assassin’s Creed series .
Take Skyrim, class 2011. Many have been honored as an immortal masterpiece today, so much so that it is always compared to today’s productions that share the genre. Personally I do not agree. Skyrim is evocative, immersing you in an aesthetically well-groomed and galvanizing world at some moments, but I’ve always found it very empty and cold, and not beca
use the settings are mostly winter. Skyrim’s world does not fundamentally exist until the player interacts with us, n
on-gaming characters are standing still waiting for the user’s intervention, and the world does not live outside of it. Is it a huge game? Undoubtedly, but how many casual caves are needed to realize how Skyrim forces us to do what we do only by inertia and not by will?
The trick is there and it is also apparent
if The Stanley Parable and Bioshock have taught us to remove the veil from the illusory “infinite choices” given by the players, it is also true that there is a way and a way to accompany the players in their own open world . In general, the trick is to ma
ke the player believe that the world exists outside of personal actions. We have already mentioned The Witcher 3 and its incredible and multifaceted scenario, made up of people with interesting names, surnames and personal stories, Geralt lives together with the world around him, and his actions make sense. Red Dead Redemptionis another example of a cred
ible, enveloping world, with more or less real possibilities of influencing it. But the world with which the architects of the open world will face today is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , with good peace for your soul.
Switch launch title makes it simple, so to speak. The enemy is seen from the first minute of the game, it is literally on the horizon and it is up to the player to choose how and when to face it, giving them the keys to creating for th
eir own adventure. It is as if a television network offered its viewers to choose the storyline of a movie or TV series, imposing as a single constraint a final situation to arrive.
In this way, returning to Breath of the Wild , any action the player takes is solely moved by his own will rather than from the list of secondary mi
ssions to complete (which is also present). In addition to this, the world is alive, there is always something to discover, a surprise in which to sneak, and every glimpse is not the same as another. The Korogu (twentieth-century, perhaps a bit too big at Nintendo) are collectibles that, however, hide mini-puzzles, a small challenge to the player besides the simple wandering.
