This is pretty disappointing to me. I know it’s kind of an unpopular opinion these days, but I really enjoyed Outlaws. It was just different enough from other Star Wars properties to be novel, but recognizable enough to be convincingly in the Star Wars universe. Sure some characters were a bit flat, missions were repetitive, and it didn’t invent a new revolutionary mechanic or anything, but does every game have to be groundbreaking? I got solid enjoyment out of it, and was looking forward to how they’d continue the story.
That’s totally fair (though I haven’t played any recent Zelda games, so I can’t speak to that). I actually think quite a few recent open world games didn’t need to be open world at all and would have been better if they were more of a single player guided narrative.
One game that did this perfectly IMO was Guardians of the Galaxy. It wasn’t open world, but you could explore each “chapter” or “level” or whatever as much as you wanted and could replay them individually. That made the whole story feel really tight, coherent, and well thought out. I find myself really wanting that format in some of these big beautiful (and yeah, often boring) open world games.
While it got a lot of flack, I thought the smaller contained worlds of Outer Worlds can be a better in between. Open spaces to explore and run into things accidentally, but constrained enough that the world and plot can still flourish.
This is pretty disappointing to me. I know it’s kind of an unpopular opinion these days, but I really enjoyed Outlaws. It was just different enough from other Star Wars properties to be novel, but recognizable enough to be convincingly in the Star Wars universe. Sure some characters were a bit flat, missions were repetitive, and it didn’t invent a new revolutionary mechanic or anything, but does every game have to be groundbreaking? I got solid enjoyment out of it, and was looking forward to how they’d continue the story.
I thought the world and travel mechanics were fun, and the leveling system was cool (basically get better skills by using other skills).
Overall though, it falls into the trap of most open world games. Big, beautiful, and boring.
But I also don’t care for BOTW and TOTK over more traditional Zeldas, so maybe I’m just anti open world games.
That’s totally fair (though I haven’t played any recent Zelda games, so I can’t speak to that). I actually think quite a few recent open world games didn’t need to be open world at all and would have been better if they were more of a single player guided narrative.
One game that did this perfectly IMO was Guardians of the Galaxy. It wasn’t open world, but you could explore each “chapter” or “level” or whatever as much as you wanted and could replay them individually. That made the whole story feel really tight, coherent, and well thought out. I find myself really wanting that format in some of these big beautiful (and yeah, often boring) open world games.
While it got a lot of flack, I thought the smaller contained worlds of Outer Worlds can be a better in between. Open spaces to explore and run into things accidentally, but constrained enough that the world and plot can still flourish.