May 17, 2023 • 17 mins
With the release of Tears of the Kingdom, Tyler discusses how the popularity of open-world games might be a bad thing, actually. Check out our socials: https://switchclicks.carrd.co/ The Switch Clicks Podcast Intro Track: Dreams Are Pretty — Seoul June [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/Y6sVyLLakhM Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/dreams-are-pretty #Amiibo #Nintendo #NintendoSwitch
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
With the release of Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, open world games are back in the spotlight.
(00:05):
They haven't really left.
But maybe you're feeling like there might be too many.
Let's discuss that.
Welcome to the Switch Clicks podcast episode 136 recorded on May 15th, 2023.
And I say like,
(00:26):
we'll discuss it as in like a group.
It's not, it's just me. My name is Tyler and I'm on my own today.
So,
ever since The Breath of the Wild hit store shelves,
people have been clamoring for everything, and everything to be open world.
(00:47):
It's probably been since before that.
I'd say games like Skyrim and GTA really revolutionized what open world could be.
But Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild made,
give it a new breath of fresh air,
funnily enough based on the name. And
with that came a lot of open world games.
(01:11):
And there's almost a problem to that.
Because you see when it comes to open world games, you have such a large open world.
That you lose focus.
Some games simply don't have to be open world or can limit it in different ways.
(01:34):
Old games, this is the closest I'm gonna get to old man yells at cloud for I hope quite a while.
But back in the, back in the good old days,
a lot of games would go on more level based systems where maybe you can explore around and like collect objects.
Say like a Banjo-Kazooie or an old Lego game or like Neversoft's PS1 Spider-Man.
(01:58):
Those are games that have individual levels that reward exploration.
But each level is
small. It's not all connected on a grand scale.
And I think that adds a nice
simplicity to a game.
Some games need the
(02:19):
limitations of individual levels so you can put your time and effort into those levels
rather than a big world with a million things to do.
This becomes really evident in Ubisoft games. Lots of games they've been pushing out
pretty much since
(02:42):
Skyrim popularized open worlds
have been open world video games. And with that comes a like
famously
cramped world of side quests and objectives that people kind of get bored of.
Say Koroks and Breath of the Wild, even though that's more of a joke on the amount of
(03:08):
useless like kind of redundant quests you have to do in things,
but it still kind of adds to the feeling of redundancy that you can get from a
world just filled with
things to do. I'm not saying that
individual levels need to be the reason, I need to be like a cost-cutting measure because they don't.
(03:29):
I really truly believe that some of the best recent games to come out don't really do a big open world.
Some of them put a little twist on it like the Hitman trilogy for example,
fantastic games. I have fallen in love with them and they kind of fall into the same thing as Deathloop,
another game that I've been playing recently and absolutely adore.
(03:53):
Those games take individual levels with a pretty good size,
quite a large world, but
you go in
kind of over and over again and
find out how things work and how to
abuse like
(04:14):
things that happen at certain points of the game to get what you need and that is really helped by
shrinking your area. If you were Agent 47 and you came in to like
the GTA open world, you're not gonna get the same amount of
fine-tuning that you get from
(04:37):
Mendoza or Paris where the levels are still quite large and open,
but the goal is more fine-tuned and
focused.
You don't need a
large grassland filled with nothing when a really
(04:59):
in-depth, perfectly crafted
Let's go back to Hitman for example, a perfectly crafted
building like a manor that's just so filled to the brim
with content and feels so alive that it
makes the game entertaining. You don't go into a level in Hitman where you have to
(05:27):
take out a target and
feel like you want to leave and you don't turn around at the beginning and see a tree that looks cool and try to walk towards it
and you don't get mad when the game says that
you can't go over there even if you want to because when you turn around there's so much
(05:49):
finely cared for detail in the rest of the level.
And that is an example of a
kind of group of open worlds
in one game. You can get even more fine-tuned. Say my second example, Lego games.
Lego games in the past were primarily
(06:12):
focused individual levels that you would explore to a degree and sometimes find secrets, but
it is more or less a direct path towards the ending.
And this direct path is good. This is a nice direct path that
(06:32):
events happen along the way. You'll be walking around a corridor and maybe in like Lego Batman
you can see areas that like Catwoman
has messed up and you have to like
navigate through whatever puzzle they throw at you. You don't really feel like, oh, I want to go to that building over there.
The art of making a
(06:55):
good level is kind of lost in modern gaming and that's a shame.
Not every game needs levels, just like not every game needs open worlds, but I feel like some games
push an open world when they don't need to.
And that's what you do.
(07:16):
Sometimes a game
simply would be best if there wasn't one.
As I was saying with the Lego games, a difference between a game like Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga
and Lego Star Wars the Skywalker Saga is one, is a group of levels fine-tuned to the
movies and are supposed to give you a similar experience to playing through the movies you watched, except
(07:42):
for the video.
Well, with the Skywalker Saga, they try to do the same thing, but you lose the levels.
You're running through an open world where the events are happening,
but without that focus that a level gives you,
you lose a lot of it.
I love Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga and
(08:04):
couldn't finish the Skywalker Saga
for that reason, among some other things, but the big focus on an open world in modern gaming sometimes
isn't the best.
Legend of Zelda just came out, Tears of the Kingdom, fantastic game I would imagine I have not played it.
(08:27):
I might buy it in the future,
but it is crafted to be an open world.
That is the thesis statement of the game.
You boot into the game,
sorry, when you're making the game,
you're the first thing on your whiteboard of ideas is open world and you're going to build the game around that.
(08:48):
That's where the best open world games come from.
The first idea in your head is that this game is an open world so we're going to build it around it.
Breath the Wild and what I'd have to assume Tears of the Kingdom also does is
they make this world
full, open for you to explore.
You want to explore a vast surrounding
(09:12):
so they put the shrines around
in order to focus your attention to going to them and therefore like you're
even if you're like
even if you're like be lining towards the game you're kind of forced to veer off in a direction and actually explore
(09:32):
unless you're a speedrunner who can beat the game in like 20 minutes or however the Breath of the Wild
world record is at this point.
But when you don't have that and say you want to throw it in because it would be cool,
you get worse games.
Take a game like
(09:53):
I don't know.
I don't want to beat on LEGO Star Wars the Skywalker saga
exclusively, but
take a game like
Pokemon Legends Arceus or a lot of the recent Pokemon games.
Their thesis statement still kind of was
(10:15):
open world first figure stuff out later, but Pokemon has a formula that kind of is
immediately on the whiteboard.
You're focusing on that
primarily.
So when you toss in an open world, especially in a game like Sword and Shield,
Sword and Shield
is has the wild area, which is a semi open world game.
(10:40):
However, the idea of exploration
isn't well isn't fully explored.
You see old Pokemon games have routes which are intricately designed to get you from one place to another
while keeping it engaging and maybe you're solving puzzles on the way or anything.
You in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl want to get to Mount Coronet from
(11:07):
wherever, say it's the first gym leaders town.
The path to Mount Coronet or let's say no.
Let's say you're at the bottom of Mount Coronet and you want to get to the top of Mount Coronet.
In a game like Pokemon Legends Arceus, you can go through the cave
and climb your way to the top using the powers you've had. However, that's going to take
(11:27):
not very long.
Most of the time what you're going to have is just a series of pathways up in a relatively empty mountain.
And that's because
Legends Arceus
put a lot of focus on Pokemon walking around and didn't really fill the world with anything other than Pokemon.
You're not going to have a strength puzzle that you need to figure out.
(11:51):
All you're going to have is a big
empty mountain with a bunch of Pokemon in it.
So unless you're avidly catching the Pokemon
it's really boring. You need to get to the Mount Coronet.
You need to get to the top of Mount Coronet for maybe some story related reason.
And you don't feel like catching Pokemon because you've already have a full team you like.
(12:15):
And it is going to be a very, very boring experience.
Whereas in the original games, getting to the top of Mount Coronet is more fun.
There's trainers in your way that you have to beat. There's puzzles you have to solve. And that focus
on
getting to the top
and like filling out
the mountain with stuff to do because you don't have to worry about
(12:40):
every individual part of the map only the stuff that the people are going to be walking on.
You're only going to focus on where the player is going to go and you know where they're going to go.
So you can put more time and effort into making those areas look good and nice.
Two things in a row.
(13:01):
And you can still make something interesting.
Going back to Breath of the Wild, you have things like that.
There's a lot of expanses in that game where there isn't really anything going on.
That's like a big complaint of the game. That's one of people's biggest gripes with it.
(13:24):
However, when you get to an area like the
Yiga Clan hideout, the devs know where you're going to be going.
So that small area of the game has so much more content.
And the fear that some people might have of people just dropping the game because
(13:46):
you don't have an open world
is why they get made.
The open world at this point has become a selling point that most games feel like they need to throw in.
And I guarantee Jim Bob's next creation about a dragon trying to get back his heart or something.
(14:09):
I don't know.
Doesn't need an open world.
It just needs nice good levels.
If you look at old games like Mario 64, the worlds are open.
However, they're much smaller, so they have fine focus.
Or if you go to Pokemon, as I mentioned before, also fairly open, but where you're supposed to go
(14:32):
is noted down.
So they can focus there.
And the lack of focus you get when you haphazardly throw an open world into your game,
just doesn't need to happen because a well made game with a with with levels is really all you need.
(14:56):
Or if you again want to go back to a more linear game that does the story that's primarily story and
each level is a tailored adventure from beginning to end, I would recommend some classic games,
(15:19):
like your half-life, so your old Uncharted, which I mentioned before, or like a BioShock or a Metroid Prime.
Those games that you go from beginning to end while having like some sort of a game that you can't play
while having like something happening every step of the way.
(15:43):
I threw in Metroid Prime, but to be honest, I don't know if... I don't remember if that one's the case.
It's been a very long time since I've played a... since I played that game.
But yeah, I don't know if this video is even remotely interesting or if it's just the ramblings of a madman,
but if you've made it this far, thank you for joining me in discussing the problems, I guess, I have with the modern open world games.
(16:16):
We would love it if you could follow us on Twitter and listen to future episodes on Spotify and iTunes.
Join our community Discord server to continue today's discussion and we'll see you next time on the SwitchClicks podcast.
Or I guess I will see you next time on the SwitchClicks podcast.
If I'm even in that episode, I probably will be.
And if you've clicked on this episode, you might like Legend of Zelda.
(16:39):
We do a lot of Zelda content, so there's at least a little bit of crossover there.
And I'd like to ask you, have you heard of Zelda CreatorCon?
It's a digital Zelda convention that's happening June 9th to 11th.
See link tober.com for more details.
But yeah, I hope you have a nice day.
With the release of Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, open world games are back in the spotlight.
(00:05):
They haven't really left.
But maybe you're feeling like there might be too many.
Let's discuss that.
Welcome to the Switch Clicks podcast episode 136 recorded on May 15th, 2023.
And I say like,
(00:26):
we'll discuss it as in like a group.
It's not, it's just me. My name is Tyler and I'm on my own today.
So,
ever since The Breath of the Wild hit store shelves,
people have been clamoring for everything, and everything to be open world.
(00:47):
It's probably been since before that.
I'd say games like Skyrim and GTA really revolutionized what open world could be.
But Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild made,
give it a new breath of fresh air,
funnily enough based on the name. And
with that came a lot of open world games.
(01:11):
And there's almost a problem to that.
Because you see when it comes to open world games, you have such a large open world.
That you lose focus.
Some games simply don't have to be open world or can limit it in different ways.
(01:34):
Old games, this is the closest I'm gonna get to old man yells at cloud for I hope quite a while.
But back in the, back in the good old days,
a lot of games would go on more level based systems where maybe you can explore around and like collect objects.
Say like a Banjo-Kazooie or an old Lego game or like Neversoft's PS1 Spider-Man.
(01:58):
Those are games that have individual levels that reward exploration.
But each level is
small. It's not all connected on a grand scale.
And I think that adds a nice
simplicity to a game.
Some games need the
(02:19):
limitations of individual levels so you can put your time and effort into those levels
rather than a big world with a million things to do.
This becomes really evident in Ubisoft games. Lots of games they've been pushing out
pretty much since
(02:42):
Skyrim popularized open worlds
have been open world video games. And with that comes a like
famously
cramped world of side quests and objectives that people kind of get bored of.
Say Koroks and Breath of the Wild, even though that's more of a joke on the amount of
(03:08):
useless like kind of redundant quests you have to do in things,
but it still kind of adds to the feeling of redundancy that you can get from a
world just filled with
things to do. I'm not saying that
individual levels need to be the reason, I need to be like a cost-cutting measure because they don't.
(03:29):
I really truly believe that some of the best recent games to come out don't really do a big open world.
Some of them put a little twist on it like the Hitman trilogy for example,
fantastic games. I have fallen in love with them and they kind of fall into the same thing as Deathloop,
another game that I've been playing recently and absolutely adore.
(03:53):
Those games take individual levels with a pretty good size,
quite a large world, but
you go in
kind of over and over again and
find out how things work and how to
abuse like
(04:14):
things that happen at certain points of the game to get what you need and that is really helped by
shrinking your area. If you were Agent 47 and you came in to like
the GTA open world, you're not gonna get the same amount of
fine-tuning that you get from
(04:37):
Mendoza or Paris where the levels are still quite large and open,
but the goal is more fine-tuned and
focused.
You don't need a
large grassland filled with nothing when a really
(04:59):
in-depth, perfectly crafted
Let's go back to Hitman for example, a perfectly crafted
building like a manor that's just so filled to the brim
with content and feels so alive that it
makes the game entertaining. You don't go into a level in Hitman where you have to
(05:27):
take out a target and
feel like you want to leave and you don't turn around at the beginning and see a tree that looks cool and try to walk towards it
and you don't get mad when the game says that
you can't go over there even if you want to because when you turn around there's so much
(05:49):
finely cared for detail in the rest of the level.
And that is an example of a
kind of group of open worlds
in one game. You can get even more fine-tuned. Say my second example, Lego games.
Lego games in the past were primarily
(06:12):
focused individual levels that you would explore to a degree and sometimes find secrets, but
it is more or less a direct path towards the ending.
And this direct path is good. This is a nice direct path that
(06:32):
events happen along the way. You'll be walking around a corridor and maybe in like Lego Batman
you can see areas that like Catwoman
has messed up and you have to like
navigate through whatever puzzle they throw at you. You don't really feel like, oh, I want to go to that building over there.
The art of making a
(06:55):
good level is kind of lost in modern gaming and that's a shame.
Not every game needs levels, just like not every game needs open worlds, but I feel like some games
push an open world when they don't need to.
And that's what you do.
(07:16):
Sometimes a game
simply would be best if there wasn't one.
As I was saying with the Lego games, a difference between a game like Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga
and Lego Star Wars the Skywalker Saga is one, is a group of levels fine-tuned to the
movies and are supposed to give you a similar experience to playing through the movies you watched, except
(07:42):
for the video.
Well, with the Skywalker Saga, they try to do the same thing, but you lose the levels.
You're running through an open world where the events are happening,
but without that focus that a level gives you,
you lose a lot of it.
I love Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga and
(08:04):
couldn't finish the Skywalker Saga
for that reason, among some other things, but the big focus on an open world in modern gaming sometimes
isn't the best.
Legend of Zelda just came out, Tears of the Kingdom, fantastic game I would imagine I have not played it.
(08:27):
I might buy it in the future,
but it is crafted to be an open world.
That is the thesis statement of the game.
You boot into the game,
sorry, when you're making the game,
you're the first thing on your whiteboard of ideas is open world and you're going to build the game around that.
(08:48):
That's where the best open world games come from.
The first idea in your head is that this game is an open world so we're going to build it around it.
Breath the Wild and what I'd have to assume Tears of the Kingdom also does is
they make this world
full, open for you to explore.
You want to explore a vast surrounding
(09:12):
so they put the shrines around
in order to focus your attention to going to them and therefore like you're
even if you're like
even if you're like be lining towards the game you're kind of forced to veer off in a direction and actually explore
(09:32):
unless you're a speedrunner who can beat the game in like 20 minutes or however the Breath of the Wild
world record is at this point.
But when you don't have that and say you want to throw it in because it would be cool,
you get worse games.
Take a game like
(09:53):
I don't know.
I don't want to beat on LEGO Star Wars the Skywalker saga
exclusively, but
take a game like
Pokemon Legends Arceus or a lot of the recent Pokemon games.
Their thesis statement still kind of was
(10:15):
open world first figure stuff out later, but Pokemon has a formula that kind of is
immediately on the whiteboard.
You're focusing on that
primarily.
So when you toss in an open world, especially in a game like Sword and Shield,
Sword and Shield
is has the wild area, which is a semi open world game.
(10:40):
However, the idea of exploration
isn't well isn't fully explored.
You see old Pokemon games have routes which are intricately designed to get you from one place to another
while keeping it engaging and maybe you're solving puzzles on the way or anything.
You in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl want to get to Mount Coronet from
(11:07):
wherever, say it's the first gym leaders town.
The path to Mount Coronet or let's say no.
Let's say you're at the bottom of Mount Coronet and you want to get to the top of Mount Coronet.
In a game like Pokemon Legends Arceus, you can go through the cave
and climb your way to the top using the powers you've had. However, that's going to take
(11:27):
not very long.
Most of the time what you're going to have is just a series of pathways up in a relatively empty mountain.
And that's because
Legends Arceus
put a lot of focus on Pokemon walking around and didn't really fill the world with anything other than Pokemon.
You're not going to have a strength puzzle that you need to figure out.
(11:51):
All you're going to have is a big
empty mountain with a bunch of Pokemon in it.
So unless you're avidly catching the Pokemon
it's really boring. You need to get to the Mount Coronet.
You need to get to the top of Mount Coronet for maybe some story related reason.
And you don't feel like catching Pokemon because you've already have a full team you like.
(12:15):
And it is going to be a very, very boring experience.
Whereas in the original games, getting to the top of Mount Coronet is more fun.
There's trainers in your way that you have to beat. There's puzzles you have to solve. And that focus
on
getting to the top
and like filling out
the mountain with stuff to do because you don't have to worry about
(12:40):
every individual part of the map only the stuff that the people are going to be walking on.
You're only going to focus on where the player is going to go and you know where they're going to go.
So you can put more time and effort into making those areas look good and nice.
Two things in a row.
(13:01):
And you can still make something interesting.
Going back to Breath of the Wild, you have things like that.
There's a lot of expanses in that game where there isn't really anything going on.
That's like a big complaint of the game. That's one of people's biggest gripes with it.
(13:24):
However, when you get to an area like the
Yiga Clan hideout, the devs know where you're going to be going.
So that small area of the game has so much more content.
And the fear that some people might have of people just dropping the game because
(13:46):
you don't have an open world
is why they get made.
The open world at this point has become a selling point that most games feel like they need to throw in.
And I guarantee Jim Bob's next creation about a dragon trying to get back his heart or something.
(14:09):
I don't know.
Doesn't need an open world.
It just needs nice good levels.
If you look at old games like Mario 64, the worlds are open.
However, they're much smaller, so they have fine focus.
Or if you go to Pokemon, as I mentioned before, also fairly open, but where you're supposed to go
(14:32):
is noted down.
So they can focus there.
And the lack of focus you get when you haphazardly throw an open world into your game,
just doesn't need to happen because a well made game with a with with levels is really all you need.
(14:56):
Or if you again want to go back to a more linear game that does the story that's primarily story and
each level is a tailored adventure from beginning to end, I would recommend some classic games,
(15:19):
like your half-life, so your old Uncharted, which I mentioned before, or like a BioShock or a Metroid Prime.
Those games that you go from beginning to end while having like some sort of a game that you can't play
while having like something happening every step of the way.
(15:43):
I threw in Metroid Prime, but to be honest, I don't know if... I don't remember if that one's the case.
It's been a very long time since I've played a... since I played that game.
But yeah, I don't know if this video is even remotely interesting or if it's just the ramblings of a madman,
but if you've made it this far, thank you for joining me in discussing the problems, I guess, I have with the modern open world games.
(16:16):
We would love it if you could follow us on Twitter and listen to future episodes on Spotify and iTunes.
Join our community Discord server to continue today's discussion and we'll see you next time on the SwitchClicks podcast.
Or I guess I will see you next time on the SwitchClicks podcast.
If I'm even in that episode, I probably will be.
And if you've clicked on this episode, you might like Legend of Zelda.
(16:39):
We do a lot of Zelda content, so there's at least a little bit of crossover there.
And I'd like to ask you, have you heard of Zelda CreatorCon?
It's a digital Zelda convention that's happening June 9th to 11th.
See link tober.com for more details.
But yeah, I hope you have a nice day.
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