10 Tropes that DO NOT Belong in Open-World Games

Open-world games are all the rage. While Battle Royale and Gacha games rake in record profits, single player games have all but swept recent award seasons, with open-world games taking top honors consistently.

It's not all roses, though. There are some games that push the envelope of open-world design and experiment with new mechanics. Others try to shoehorn old tropes, obliterating all the advantages of playing in a sandbox.

I recently played the first few hours of Forspoken, the latest offering from Luminous Productions and Square Enix. You can see my first thoughts here. While the gameplay and graphics were top-notch, the game design clichés from this list permeated the game.

Here are the ten sins that should be eradicated.

Chapters

One of the greatest things about open-world games is their innate immersion. The ability to move from one end of a game world to another should be promoted, not mitigated. Chapters in these games give you the impression that you are watching a story instead of experiencing a world.

Grand Theft Auto IV's DLC expansions are the earliest example of this I can think of. It was especially egregious in Final Fantasy XV. The introduction to each chapter is a gentle reminder that you are being guided on a pre-written adventure and have no actual control.

There is a way to do it correctly. An argument can be made that the section breaks in Middle Earth: Shadow of War were not as bad as other games. The practice should still be abolished.

Repetitive objectives

Okay. Repetitive objectives don't necessarily need to be eradicated. They do need to be heavily qualified. The standards for these ongoing side missions needs to be insanely high. It's too easy for a collection achievement to grind all progress to a halt.

Firstly, collecting tchotchkes can be a rewarding incentive to explore every corner of a game world. The backpacks in Marvel's Spider-Man are a good example of this. They can quickly become a tiresome, bothersome chore (think Assassin's Creed IV's shanties) or get tedious (we're looking at you, korok seeds).

Second, repetition in an open world can connect different environments with a common task that gives the world cohesion. Without creativity, this becomes a task that can ruin an entire playthrough. Worse, task-walling a weapon or armor set behind one of these is downright cruel.

Tutorials

We can figure it out. Or we'll die a lot.

Tutorials, especially those that force you to pick menu items while displaying long, boring text descriptions should remain on mobile games. And they aren't really welcome there either.

The truth is, most gamers take a minimal glance at the controller scheme and then jump off the cliff to the nearest enemy, swinging swords and spells to see if they can defeat something. As soon as we collect something of substance, we are exploring menus to see how we can best utilize it to bring terror to our foes.

New ability unlocks should have some visual cue that lets the player know they have something new to do. A splash screen describing the new ability should be forbidden. A scripted activity getting the player to practice said ability is beyond cringey.

Empty maps

Triple A open world titles are always subject to having their maps placed alongside other games to compare sizes. What tends to follow is a terrible measuring contest where people want to have the biggest, most expansive map ever that takes literal hours to traverse.

There are two potential consequences for this. The map can get littered with useless junk (see sin #2), which is somewhat thoughtless. More commonly, gamers are treated to beautiful landscapes devoid of activity.

Here's the ugly truth: gamers have seen it all. Deserts, forests, oceans, space stations. We love beautiful worlds, but we are here to play the game. It's ok to make the world smaller and keep it dense. Otherwise, it will turn into a fast travel nightmare.

Slow fades

God of War (2018) impressively ran through its entire story with a no cut camera. It would be great to see more games adopt this practice. In the absence of universal one shot games, developers should aim for as little interruption in the immersion as possible.

To mitigate loading issues, some games adopt a longer fade time between scenes. Forspoken does this in such an exaggerated manner that it breaks up any momentum. There are others that employ these longer fades, but this is the most recent, so it is top of mind for me.

The minimum goal should be to have no cuts between gameplay and cutscenes, reserving cuts for scene and location transitions. At this point, the standard should be having creative load screens for even fast travel loads, such as those in both Spider-Man entries. We are moving toward a world where load times are becoming negligible. These fades should go with them. Speaking of load times…

Load times

Both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X use SSDs which allow for fast loading. PCs have been using these for a while, and have the potential for fast loading inherently. Over two years into this generation, there is little excuse for having load times in games. Long load times are nearly unforgivable.

The only console that has any excuse for having longer load times is the Nintendo Switch. Multiplatform games have accommodated this, such as The Witcher 3 and Immortals Fenyx Rising. Next(current)-gen exclusives should strive to remove load times across the board.

In open-world games, the expectation of continuity between map sections is a non-negotiable. If players have to wait through loading between game sections, they might as well be playing a game on rails.

Lifeless NPCs

Red Dead Redemption 2's NPCs were meticulously designed to follow daily schedules and exhibit realistic behaviors. Every character in the game reacts to Arthur Morgan, remembers his actions, and responds in kind. This should be the goal in every open-world game. Again, immersion is the main advantage of this genre. NPCs that stand around a town doing and saying nothing take away from this.

It's probably too much to expect every game to mimic RDR2. Watch Dogs Legion had moving NPCs in a much more dense world, and they ended up feeling robotic. It was much better than having them all stand around waiting for the player to do something, though. We want our worlds to feel lived in, as if they will continue to do things even if we weren't there.

Useless side quests

Place yourself in the main character's shoes. You are hunting an evil beyond measure. The apocalypse is coming. Your love interest has been kidnapped. You just saw tons of people in a nearby village get slaughtered by the villain's armies. The world is at stake, but before you continue on your quest for justice, you need to fish for 3 hours just so you can craft a helmet.

There are some games that do these inane side quests really well. Ghost of Tsushima incorporates samurai culture into its hot springs and haikus in a way that makes you understand why those activities exist. Other games dispense with these side quests altogether. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice moves from scene to glorious scene without expecting you to stop to pick flowers even once. Lorestones are the sole collectible, and require just looking at a spot.

Collection activities that are out of context with the tone of the game should be a thing of the past. Let's stop playing Gwent while the Wild Hunt is after us. Let's leave that frog lady to find her own samples. Let's have our pirate crew learn their own shanties…

Mission announcements

Yet another splash screen that litters our vision during gameplays is mission announcements. These things usually pause the game and show an objective, usually repeating something that a character already told you. There's nothing wrong with having a tracker (preferably in a dynamic menu) that tells you how close you are to success. Pausing the game to tell you that you have started or completed a mission is redundant. The player should be able to tell if they just defeated a boss. For collection missions, a simple quick animation can serve as an acknowledgement.

These interruptions may provide a brief moment to breathe and celebrate a victory. So does the actual in-game moment of quiet after beating a boss. It appears these screens do nothing but provide a break in immersion from an otherwise riveting experience.

Combat grades

Completionists are outstanding. Speedrunners are even better. The skill it takes to annihilate a game systemically at a high level is a joy to watch. Pro gamers have a dedication to their craft that rivals any other profession. They deserve all the accolades they receive.

Non-professional gamers are a different story. Casual gameplay is marred by pop-ups that judge your gameplay, nudging you toward a particular play style. These features should be opt-in. Challenges are great, but they shouldn’t be the focus.

So, those are my thoughts. Do you agree? What are your favorite or least favorite open-world game mechanics? Let us know in the comments.