Open World Games: What Are The Good Ones?

 

I will make no secret of the fact that I do not especially care for the open-world genre. They’re not all bad, and as we’ll get to some can even manage the feat of being palatable to this ol’ grumpus of a person. But in general, yes, I’m pessimistic about the genre, specifically its tendency towards content-for-content's-sake often resulting in bloated, aimless game worlds.

That having been said, sometimes a studio comes along to use the open-world mold in order to make something actually quite compelling and distinctive, works that transcend their genre trappings to become something greater. So what are the good ones, according to me? Well…

 

7. Deadly Premonition

I’m not about to act as though Swery - real name Hidetaka Suehiro - is as creatively beyond reproach as he seemed at the time of this strange 2010 cult classic’s release. His work reflects a lot of imperfect or questionably unchallenged views about the world and, in particular, certain marginalized communities; this was perhaps best illustrated by the less-than-admirable content in Deadly Premonition 2, and the somewhat disappointing fashion in which he addressed (or rather, failed to address) the backlash.

Still, for what it’s worth the first Deadly Premonition is a unique and worthwhile artifact of that odd moment in the seventh console generation where you could legitimately sneak an out-of-left field mid-budget supernatural crime-thriller borrowing HEAVILY from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks onto the major platforms. Francis York Morgan remains endearingly eccentric yet also something of a tragic figure, with the rest of the cast settling in a groove where their idiosyncrasies and bizarre requests of Morgan play into the game’s apparent bemused affection for small town Americana. 

Running around the town of Greenvale and completing side quests may not always advance one’s understanding of the central murder mystery, but you do start to feel attachment to the place and its people. Which, naturally, makes the escalation in otherworldly violence and occurrence of cruel behaviour all the more startling and affecting.

6. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

People will swear up and down the virtues of Morrowind and Oblivion while in the same breath belittling, or at the very least downplaying, their most recent (single-player) successor. Well, I can’t speak to the merits of those games because they’re still on the f**king docket - some stuff has to go on the back-burner. Skyrim, though? I’ve got thoughts on that.

Here’s the thing: the game is absolutely arch in its plotting and world-building, just as it’s obvious in the artifice of its design. While I think that poses a problem in terms of investing in the overarching stakes beyond a very basic “be the hero, save the world” framing, there’s something refreshing about the level of honesty here.

Skyrim is equal parts toy box and themed amusement park wherein the player has free rein to mess around with familiar, yet distinctive fantasy iconography. It (and by extension its creators) know full well the base appeal of wandering through Ye Olde Fantasy Dungeons, battling Ye Olde Fantasy Beasts and Demons, and claiming Ye Olde Fantasy Riches as reward. This is fundamentally tapping into the same allure of adventure and heroic grandstanding that made its spiritual ancestors - tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons - so enduringly popular in the first place.

It doesn’t hurt that modern technology has reached a place where the full scope of the province of Skyrim can be beautifully, grandly visualized as a 3D space. The vast mountain peaks and wide expanses of grassy plains feel drawn from the pages of any number of fantasy novels, yet here they’re visible and explorable at one’s discretion.

Plus, on a mechanical and structural level, it isn’t all “pretty execution on a straightforward idea”. The various faction subplots - with their own focus on particular skill-sets and internal politicking in between all the spellcasting and swordplay - tend to be compellingly rendered, while the game’s approach to player skill improvement neatly rides the line between being coherent to understand and offering plenty of interesting options.

 

5. Fallout: New Vegas

This was a tough one on two fronts: first, with regards to deciding which of the Fallout entries on this list (we’ll come back to that) should be higher up; and second, where this stacked up in general. I’ll fully concede that New Vegas is a technically imperfect title with a purposefully manipulative plot structure that is, understandably, off-putting to those who took to the freeform world-is-your-oyster approach of Fallout 3. Plus, for as entertaining as the expansions are, Honest Hearts being a bit meandering and a lot "White People Decide What's Best for a Native Community" in its narrative focus, coupled with the Dead Money/Old World Blues/Lonesome Road trilogy being written by a self-destructive sexpest, is… well, not good.

THAT ALL HAVING BEEN SAID, New Vegas owns that plot structure and makes it work in terms of slowly acclimating the player not only to the scope of its setting, but to the full range of options - and slow burning consequences - that its wasteland entails. An already reliable 3D action framework courtesy of 3 is used as foundation for interconnected faction disputes, local disturbances, deadly encounters with fascinating beasts and technological monstrosities, and all the moral and role-playing nuance one expects of a faithful Fallout title.

4. Bully

I will absolutely go on record as saying I hold in my heart mostly contempt for the output of Rockstar Games. Don’t confuse this for moral outrage or some form of puritan overreach, mind you; my hang-up about Rockstar is that for all their grandstanding about being brazen provocateurs, their actual library of work reflects a much more pedestrian and scattershot creative mentality.

However, Bully straight up managed to impress and entertain me in spite of my misgivings, both concerning Rockstar and the game’s (apparent) premise. Transplanting the Grand Theft Auto games’ overplayed “satirical” edge to a New England boarding school, and the juvenile attitudes of its adult cast to Bully’s assortment of archetypal teenage ne’er-do-wells, may be one of the rare times it’s reasonable to call a writing choice by Rockstar “inspired” and “surprisingly clever”.

Jimmy Hopkins as a protagonist seals the deal, though. His campaign to get Bullworth Academy’s various inhabitants to get over themselves and get along by way of pranks, manipulation, and occasionally smacking a**holes around strikes the right balance between high school hierarchy melodrama, quasi-crime drama, and earnest attempt at basic decency. 

Bully’s also a game of running around town, collecting odds and ends, and attending classes made up of a range of minigames. Not every activity is a winner, but enough stick the landing - and improve Jimmy’s inventory and abilities in valuable ways - that it feels worthwhile to engage with them.

 

3. Fallout

Yeah, as much as New Vegas probably is the better, more mechanically improved game… there’s just something to the world and design of the original Fallout that feels almost timeless.

The framing of the Vault Dweller being sent forth to save Vault 13, a time limit ticking away in the background, lends proceedings a mixture of narrative weight and ever-present tension. That’s intensified further by the mystery and danger of Fallout’s map, a vast expanse of radiation-blasted deserted and half-eroded structures where the last dregs of humanity hang on for dear life.

Once the immediate crisis of the broken water chip is resolved, that’s when Fallout truly hits its stride. The escalation of the threats, the range of weapons and adversaries, the increasing complexity and consequence of quests - it’s as splendid as it is grim.

And, of course, everything to do with the Master and the final hour or so is just about perfection. It’s kind of amazing just how right they got it in 1997, on the first go-round, but there you go.

2. Yakuza 0

My only other experience with Ryu Ga Gotoku’s output being the criminally underrated sci-fi shooter Binary Domain (I am obliged to bring up that you should absolutely seek out and play the sh*t out of that game) did not prepare me for the eccentric brilliance that is the core Yakuza series, nor the focused yet ambitious design of Yakuza 0.

Splitting the campaign between the straight-faced Kazuma Kiryu and the barely-restrained Goro Majima, with each having their own cities as a hub and playground between all the complex crime drama proceedings, lends the game a scale and a range of activities largely unparalleled by much of gaming. That so many of those activities also have side stories and a variety of supporting characters whose plights and successes are genuinely endearing just makes the experience so much more impressive.

Add to that a truly expansive multi-style fighting system with equally dense skill trees, a central storyline that lays interesting groundwork for the rest of the series while also diving into profoundly fascinating (and heartwrenching) territory, and two whole separate sub-games of real estate and management with their own involved story arcs. It’s enough to make one’s head spin, taking in all the quality quests and character work on display.

 

1. Saints Row IV

But, I being who I am, nothing else quite supplants this one.

Saints Row IV takes the already solid framework of its series’ light riffing and cartoon escalation of the mould set by Grand Theft Auto, and layers on top a loving yet pointed parody of - among other things - the seventh generation's (and onwards) fixation on “bigger, more dense, more busy” design model for blockbuster games. 

The world is a virtual recreation of a previous game’s setting, littered with colourful orbs all but explicitly included to entice aimless wandering and just as senseless secret hunting. The cast is a strategically diverse assortment of thieves, murderers, government contract killers, and also just straight up Keith David. The quests are in theory repetitive busywork, the plot focusing on literally upsetting and dismantling the game world in spite of its (admittedly quite evil) creator’s wishes.

This brazen approach works though, partially because of Volition’s commitment to the bit and partially because - for all the potshots and gags at gaming’s expense - Saints Row IV is also just doing a lot of material better than other games. The Saints themselves get added depth and layers of characterization that make it hard not to care about their plight or get invested in their personal quests, the excess of the violence and carnage is defanged by the explicitly simulated nature of proceedings (so it’s okay to go ham with the black hole launcher!), and the game’s humor is much more about amusing non-sequiturs and witty banter than about sh*tting on other games.

Plus, not for nothing, it may genuinely have a few of the all-time great needle drop cues in gaming history, backed by a remarkable licensed soundtrack. Punch the shark, indeed.