Welcome to Collab Not Multiplayer’s 11th episode discussing the ways we as players interact with open worlds. We tell stories about how the world engages us but often at the cost of character immersion and/or story. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

Listen on Youtube or Spotify.

Open worlds have to depend on what the player makes of them because unlike most video game experiences, all the timing focus and even goals are left to the player. This can leave games trying to be everything to everyone and doing nothing very well. We tell stories in this episode about how we each experience open worlds and what we get out of them. We will revisit this topic later in our Tears of the Kingdom episode, so look forward to that.

*After episode notes: We never did say what the “Ascend” power does in TLZ Tears of the Kingdom. Ascend lets you flow through (yes flow the animation for this action is literally Link swimming upward through, I guess another dimension that lets you swim through solid objects) any overhang, ledge, ceiling etc. that meets the Ascend parameters. It’s a neat mechanic utilized to amazing and creative effect, but it does come out of left field and is never explained.
I think there is a great skit in the idea of Ascend being pitched in a developer’s meeting, if anyone wants to make one, I’d watch it in a heartbeat.

********Extras******

Memes!

Playlist!

I created another playlist to aid in further exploration of this topic.

1. How Nintendo Solved Zelda’s Open World Problem by, Gamemaker’s Toolkit
This video explains how the developers of Breath of the Wild adapted the world to encourage the players to engage with it, not just the story.

2. How Small Open-World Games Feel Big, by Razbuten
This video talks about how open worlds don’t have to be large or overwhelming to be meaningful or valuable, in fact to contrast…

3. The Structure of Open-World Games is Weird, by Razbuten
This video contrast the previous one, criticizing the overuse of open world structure in games. Some of the same points we touch on in our episode are represented here with other games we at CNM have not played.

4. The Open World is Dead, Sorry, by Extra Punctuation
In typical Yatzee fashion, this video pokes at the trend of making all big games open world, and gives some historical gaming context as to where that trend comes from.

🙂 You made it to the end of the post! As always, thank you for listening, watching and/or reading along! -Giggleklutz