GAMING FREEDOM CAN BE WEIRD

a game be too large? I ask myself this quite often now when I play. Most of the games I’ve played recently have huge maps where you can do whatever you want, often in whatever order you choose.

Recent games like Horizon: Zero Dawn and Ghost Recon: Wildlands are insanely massive games, but they all have the one thing in common that every big open- world game shares: repetition. Take away story elements and go right to the bare bones of the game and you have a simple mission formula, which is go there, take out enemy, pick this up, go back. Rinse and repeat.

Done poorly, the whole freedom thing can turn weird. Like when you’re supposed to find your infant son, but end up building postapocalyptic settlements for ghouls for 10 weeks. Uh remember your son, Fallout guy? The game starts to break immersion and runs the risk of becoming boring.

Games like Uncharted play out like a movie or book. It goes where it needs to for the story, giving you brief but vivid images of places before moving on to the next chapter.

achieved the best balance because no two missions were alike. There was always a healthy mix of story and difficulty that forced you to change your strategy, and that consistency made it enjoyable to see what’s over the next horizon. I think developers are overshooting what they can do.

Offer the big map, but fill it with stuff for me to do.