Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 dev Tim Willits explains why the game was able to achieve massive success when so many big budget games have failed lately.
Games got bigger to their own detriment. Halo and Gears of War are open world games now, and they’re worse off for it. Assassin’s Creed games used to be under 20 hours, and now they’re over 45. Not every game is worse for being longer, as two of my favorite games in the past couple of years are over 100 hours long, clocking in at three times the length of their predecessors, but it’s much easier to keep a game fun for 8-15 hours than it is for some multiple of that, and it makes the game more expensive to make, raising the threshold for success.
Unpopular opinion: open world ruined Zelda. I thought I’d love the concept. But actually give it to me? Ughhh… Spend forever doing side quests because you don’t know if the equipment will only be good now or if youll need it down the road… No real guidance so you can end up just meandering around…
I liked the more structured narrative. Don’t get me wrong - it’s cool to play Link and just do whatever you want. But for a story game, a more defined linear path is more engaging imo.
Open world while still needing to go through the temples in a certain order. Various gadgets were required to progress, but crafty players often got around this. Pokemon would also be called “open world”, but could you just walk up to the Elite 4 from the beginning? Nope, had to get them badges first.
There’s “open to exploration” open world and “here’s a giant map, go wild”(a la Fallout/Skyrim). I prefered a Zelda with more guidance. Even Wind Waker, arguably the most open world, still had a progression the game tried to keep you on.
To me, they would be perfect games if they weren’t Zelda. That is to say, they are great games, just not what I expect from a Zelda game. Something I’d expect from Bethesda moreso(style, not gameplay lmao).
I feel like Wind Waker was the right balance between freedom and linear story.
Games got bigger to their own detriment. Halo and Gears of War are open world games now, and they’re worse off for it. Assassin’s Creed games used to be under 20 hours, and now they’re over 45. Not every game is worse for being longer, as two of my favorite games in the past couple of years are over 100 hours long, clocking in at three times the length of their predecessors, but it’s much easier to keep a game fun for 8-15 hours than it is for some multiple of that, and it makes the game more expensive to make, raising the threshold for success.
Halo as an open world is fucking awesome. I love Infinite.
The next step, in terms of budget and computing power required, which I eagerly await, is a massively multiplayer co-op Halo:
That’s probably gonna require billion dollar budgets and quantum computers to pull off, but it’s coming. And I can’t fucking wait.
Planetside already exists. Just do that and scale up to more planets
Unpopular opinion: open world ruined Zelda. I thought I’d love the concept. But actually give it to me? Ughhh… Spend forever doing side quests because you don’t know if the equipment will only be good now or if youll need it down the road… No real guidance so you can end up just meandering around…
I liked the more structured narrative. Don’t get me wrong - it’s cool to play Link and just do whatever you want. But for a story game, a more defined linear path is more engaging imo.
Wasn’t Zelda always open world? LttP was about as open world as they come back in the day?
Open world while still needing to go through the temples in a certain order. Various gadgets were required to progress, but crafty players often got around this. Pokemon would also be called “open world”, but could you just walk up to the Elite 4 from the beginning? Nope, had to get them badges first.
There’s “open to exploration” open world and “here’s a giant map, go wild”(a la Fallout/Skyrim). I prefered a Zelda with more guidance. Even Wind Waker, arguably the most open world, still had a progression the game tried to keep you on.
BotW and TotK are some of my favorite games of all time, but I really do hope we get another big dungeons focused game in the future.
To me, they would be perfect games if they weren’t Zelda. That is to say, they are great games, just not what I expect from a Zelda game. Something I’d expect from Bethesda moreso(style, not gameplay lmao).
I feel like Wind Waker was the right balance between freedom and linear story.
Just pretend it’s not a Zelda game then