Such a phenomenon as open-world games became the most famous and spread in the early 2000s. In those days, several of the world's...
Such a phenomenon as open-world games became the most famous and spread in the early 2000s. In those days, several of the world's largest entertainment and technology companies collectively invested billions of dollars in creating sweeping virtual worlds with ever-growing capabilities and details.
At the turn of the millennium, the first three-dimensional developments in this genre, such as Shenmue and Grand Theft Auto III, defined a plan for the development of non-linear games with huge spaces for player exploration. By the mid-2010s, projects in this genre had turned into almost photorealistic giants created by the workforce of entire development teams.
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In 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 was released - perhaps the most important, most convincing and successful of recent open-world projects. The game managed to make a new impetus in the approach of constantly expanding the playing space and perhaps even reach this logical extreme.
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However, the fact that such games are spreading does not mean that creating them has become easier. Ubisoft, a French publisher with a global network of studios, has begun to apply its own open-world formula to their flagship franchises, including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon and Watch Dogs. It turned out beautiful, but more and more similar games. As worlds grew larger and graphic capabilities grew, their production costs and development efforts followed suit.
What's new for the next decade for open-world games? What stories and new features should players expect?
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In the near future, the expected neon techno-thrillers Watch Dogs Legion and Cyberpunk 2077 are preparing for release. In their style, games pick up the popular trend for technological cyberpunk and pink neon and speculate in the gameplay with new features that, it would seem, should have been used for a long time. Ubisoft’s latest game shows dystopian London under siege by the government ( current reality ), while the role-playing game from CD Projekt Red depicts yet another bleak city in which corporations seize power over the lives of citizens (a parallel with intensive labor practice itself game studio).
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Brighter, more compact, and perhaps less pessimistic, the upcoming indie game Sable combines comic-style graphics with an open world reminiscent of the recent Breath of the Wild. The player will take on the role of a teenager on a pilgrimage. Events unfold in a desert filled with distant structures and people. There will be no mini-cards in the game, developers want players to focus on the world, absorbing its details, and their eyes and ears will tell you the direction. The creators were inspired by nomadic groups such as Berbers, Bedouins, and Native Australians. They hope that the game will be able to show how it is to live more closely with the environment.
The designer calls the game space-desert the sea, and quests or actions - islands of content. The gaps between them - “lonely, thoughtful spaces” - are designed to contribute to the calm contemplation of the player. After the release of Sable, a new trend may appear for more relaxed open-world games, which will not be a simple platform for completing various quests or collecting resources but will reflect the personal development of the character and his story. The emphasis in such games will be shifted from a large-scale epic story to the personal journey of the protagonist.
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Open worlds will still continue to grow in the near future, especially if Todd Howard's proclamation that Elder Scrolls VI is being developed “so that you can play it for a decade” is true. Such games are developed by huge development teams and they fill the game with content.
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A different approach can be found in games like Minecraft or Roblox . Many do not perceive them as open world games, although in reality they combine all the traditional components of the genre. For these games, the content is generated by the players themselves, which also encourages them to constantly return to the worlds they created.
Whether open-world games standardized by giant studios and publishers such as Sony, Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft will remain relevant over the next 10 years is far from certain. They are already incredibly expensive to create and are not going to get cheaper in the near future. The format may go to games that rely on user-generated content, or to experiments that expand the boundaries of our relationship with technology.
New game development tools will allow small teams to create large projects, as the MapMagic World Generator tool does, which the Sable development team uses to procedurally generate their environment. With the development of AI technologies, the work of developers will be simplified. New toolkits and programs will appear.
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Open world games are constantly changing and evolving, touching on new topics and adding interesting mechanics. An example is Death Stranding, an unusual open-world game, more like an experiment with the format from which the tool for meditation was made. Such strange decisions excite the gaming community, players are divided in opinions. Perhaps in the near future, more such projects are to be expected.
