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Little open worlds (Patreon)

Published:
2016-09-05 16:20:11
Imported:
2021-01

Content

I'm playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and I realised that I really love the game's open world. If you can even call it that. Prague is, ultimately, tiny. And much of the game takes place in other, more linear areas. I guess we call it a hub world.

Whatever the case, it's a reminder of what can be achieved when developers think small - rather than big. In the same month when one game gave us 18 quintillion planets, another gave us like 18 streets but packed them with places to explore, unique assets, engrossing side quests, honest-to-god way finding (street signs! apartment listings!), environmental storytelling, and world building. 

I'm looking for other examples of games that have tiny open worlds, that are densely packed with people, places, things. Or at least hub worlds or cities that you can lose hours in, when you're not off doing dungeons or main quests. 

Some I've thought of: Yakuza and Shenmue, Majora's Mask, some Fallout locations, Animal Crossing. 

Got any I need to check out? Oh, I heard Way of the Samurai is good. I think I have that. 

Cheers!

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Comments

Anonymous

I have really good memory from the world of Beyond Good And Evil. The world expand as you gain new upgrade, and everytime you can visit more places, it seems to have more and more secrets. The town seems very alive at the time, even though most of the action was on the outside.

Anonymous

Maybe a weird recommendation, but I really liked the little hub worlds in Sonic Unleashed. The NPCs all have different personalities and designs and if you talk to them enough as the story goes on, the characters have small story arcs, travel around the world, and interact with other NPCs. It's an aspect of the game that was often ignored because it probably seems like yet more tedious stuff in an already tedious game (and really the side stuff can be tedious to get through), and I doubt anyone really cares about a Sonic game having this kind of stuff. But I thought that it made the game's world feel alive while also giving it a charming atmosphere. (And yes maybe this is a typical pick for someone with a Sonic avatar, but I feel like this aspect of the game often goes underappreciated)

Ossian Olausson

Off the top of my head: Payday 2's hideout stash test out your abilities thing, Hyper Light Drifter's main town where you can do challenges, buy upgrades and change outfits and your own house in WASTED where you can stash equipment for future runs. There are probably some more that i missed.

Anonymous

Funny you mention Sonic TimmiT, I actually thought of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle and its Chao Garden. I spent so much time in there, raising different chaos and competing them; it ended up being the only thing I played the main sonic levels for.

Anonymous

I haven't played it, but what you're describing reminds me of the Errant Signal video on Burnout Paradise.

Anonymous

I personally like the hub world in Beyond Good & Evil. It works so well because of the faster travel mechanic (hovercraft) so distances can be greater than when walking which gives a really good sense of space and scale

Megabyte01

I can think of two more recommendations, one I've seen and one blind. The first is Stardew Valley, a game where you explore the nearby town and wilderness and get to know the people who live there over the course of the game (admittedly, it overlaps with Animal Crossing). Another one, a blind recommendation, is a JRPG called Legend of Heroes:Trails in the Sky. I'm told that it has a massive cast of side characters who get almost as much development over the course of the game as the protagonist, but you wouldn't know it unless you seek it out Their plotlines will continue with or without your involvement as a player.

Anonymous

I'm a big fan of Dragon Age II. Keeps you constrained to a pretty small area - one city and a tiny bit of surrounding areas - but in doing so it tells a story of one place over a long time, rather than a shallower story about a lot of places.

Anonymous

I always think of Mario 64 like this... Every area (including the hub) is a small space you traverse repeatedly, learning all its pathways and secrets as you go. I generally think of these as 'playgrounds' rather than 'open worlds', but there's not really much difference. Perhaps there's differing expectations about the kinds of missions available in an 'open world', but that's a question of content, not environment.

Anonymous
>>2472315

I'm sure Banjo Kazooie and a number of other games from this era fit the same bill as well, but I'm less familiar with those.

Anonymous

Next to many of their modern open world counterparts, the maps of GTA3 and Vice City were comparatively small. They lacked the density and fidelity of something like Shenmue or Yakuza, but their size made them learnable in a way that I haven't experienced in more recent titles, and they're interesting to revisit in that context.

Anonymous

Curious what you're HUD settings are. I'm playing without the minimap in honor of your Fallout video, enjoying the added pathfinding challenge quite a bit. But I feel like I'm relying on my inventory map too much still. One thing that helps a TON is turning off the pickup outlines (can't remember the exact name in the options menu). Really accentuates the cluttered environments, nice added realism as you search for valuables in the mess. But then I always end up relying on the Magpie Aug :/

GameMakersToolkit
>>2473043

So I've turned off objective markers in DX. that strips them from the hud and the mini-map. if I need to find something (because the in-game clues aren't good enough) I pull up the full map. sadly, as games aren't really made to be played like this it's not going to be perfect :(

Anonymous

I've been playing the Skyrim "mod" (if you can call it that) Enderal and I've found that it's very possible to play the game without ever using the map markers. The roads are well-signposted and I've already come across a few quests where the journal just tells you riddles/clues and you have to find your objective through some clever orienteering, Funny how a tiny German mod team did this better than a multi-million dollar studio.

Anonymous

I'm always surprised by the tight design of the main grounds in Batman: Arkham Asylum. It feels small at first but as you get more and more gadgets, it really grows (without changing size o/c).

Anonymous
>>2472093

Beyond Good and Evil is a wonderful game. It gives you the impression that the world exists without you, which I remember Adrian Chmielarz telling is a characteristic of good design, and I totally agree. Batman: Arkham Asylum is another small world very well built.

SirDougRattmann

I would say any Bioware game from Mass effect To Dragon age has this down to a tea. But not only triple A do it. Indie game developers do it to like Campos Santos Firewatch and Fulbright's Gone Home

Anonymous

I immediately thought of The Darkness, and its tiny neighbourhoods that are full of life. (Especially the weird conversations)

Anonymous

That's what Shenmue I has over Shenmue II, I think. So dense with people and places who mean something to you by the time you leave it

Anonymous

Disney Infinity 3.0's hub has a lot to do and find.. and Bart's Nightmare has a lot built into a unique kind of hub area..

Andrey Kurenkov
>>2472270

Agreed, I think the game should be given more credit for going against the convention and going deep in one place rather than the typical epic route.

Anonymous

A friend of mine has many times said a similar thing about the original Gothic game - that its open world is much smaller than that of, say, Morrowind or Oblivion, but it is packed much more densely with things to do and with landmark locations. Unfortunately due to its clunky early 3D graphics and controls I find it rather difficult to enjoy the game, but maybe you will be able to look past those problems.

Anonymous

Oh, also, another game I always think of when speaking of open worlds is the Betrayal at Krondor. It is an old PC RPG, one of the earlier games to introduce the concept. Its open world is huge on paper (a whole kingdom), but by modern standards of open world games it is rather tiny and large parts of it are blocked most of the time. I have for many years admired the way in which the game world was peppered with tiny details about various locations, unique side quests and so on. Even such trivial things as a trainer or a road block were introduced with a tiny bit of story for flavor, which made exploring its tiny world a real pleasure and adventure. Maybe you will the game fitting your idea of a little open world.

Anonymous

Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 are perfect examples of this: a compact but very carefully crafted world that really feels like a believable space. <a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/07/gothic-retrospective/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/07/gothic-retrospective/</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVYrALStucs" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVYrALStucs</a> Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines' Santa Monica is possibly the best mini-hub world ever to grace an RPG, also the closest to the style of DXHR/MD. Human Revolution's Detroit and Hengsha actually reminded me of it a lot. (see pretty much anything Rock Paper Shotgun has written on the game if you're not convinced... this post has some links: <a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/04/25/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-gog-release/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/04/25/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-gog-release/</a> ) I also kind of like the smaller cities in Assassin's Creed like San Gimignano (the one with the tall towers) and Forli (the Sforza stronghold) and some of the smaller settlements in ACIV Black Flag. Grim Fandango's Rubacava is also a great hub-world in its own way... and another vote for Beyond Good &amp; Evil.

Anonymous
>>2474134

I loved the little touches, like a sidequest where you just pick up someone's dropped wedding ring. Or the ability to get random answering machine messages from a ton of different phone numbers.

Vesselin Jilov

Little Big Adventure did some very nice things, but it's too old school, hardcore and inaccessible if you haven't played it before. Still, you can check some screenshots I did. <a href="http://action-adventure-estranged.blogspot.bg/2009/12/little-big-adventure-1994.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://action-adventure-estranged.blogspot.bg/2009/12/little-big-adventure-1994.html</a>

Anonymous
>>2494216

LBA definitely has a delightful sense of place. I would argue it's still accessible enough if you can look past the outdated graphics and some old-fashioned design choices. If you run it with the semi-official LBAWin mod it also fixes some issues like bouncing off walls while running. LBA 2 might be the more accessible of the two, though the lack of a moving camera is somewhat archaic.