Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of open-world games, and I’ve started to notice that
there is a pretty massive distinction between a game being big and it feeling big.
The two obviously can coexist, but, at least with how I generally approach games, the bigger
the world, the smaller it feels.
For example, I played Ghost of Tsushima for around 25 hours, and in the early parts of
it, I did find myself getting lost in the wonders of the island, exploring the beautiful
landscapes and uncovering various secrets, however, as time went on, I strayed less and
less from the main quest, shrinking the vast island of Tsushima down to a nearly linear
path.
When I look back at it now, I categorize it in the same space games like Uncharted instead
of the explorative open-world title it set out to be.
Compare this to one of my favorite games from the past few years, A Short Hike.
There wasn’t a moment while playing where I didn’t feel that sense of wonder about
what was around the next bend or that drive to keep exploring Hawk Peak Provincial Park.
When I think about A Short Hike now, it still seems massive and undiscovered; it reminds
me of the few times in games where I’ve truly become immersed in the world; it feels
like a grand adventure I once went on.
And it only took me an hour to beat.
A Short Hike isn’t the only small open-world game that I’ve had this experience with.
Just in the past few months I felt it with The Pathless, Alba, and Bowser’s Fury.
These games all left a huge impression on me, and I felt far more absorbed in their
worlds than I did with titles that I played for dozens of more hours.
And this all has me wondering, how do small open-world games feel big?
And as counter-intuitive as it may seem, I think it actually starts with the fact that
they are small.
Looking again at my issues with Ghost of Tsushima, there were two main reasons I stopped exploring
and just focused on the main quest.
The first was that, like most games of its size and scope, it repeats a lot of the same
ideas over and over again.
I understand that a game of this size pretty much needs to do that sort of thing or else
it would just never come out, but there are still consequences for it.
While I found taking out Mongol camps or tracking a Fox to a shrine to be engaging the first
few times I did it, they got old somewhat quickly.
Also, the rewards for doing these things became less necessary once I had progressed my character
to a certain point, so doing these repetitive tasks just to be rewarded with something I
didn’t really care about stopped being worth it.
And that ties into the second reason I stopped exploring which was that there were so many
side quests, enemy camps, and little secret things to engage with that I got overwhelmed
by it all as I didn’t know what would be worth my time.
So due to the sheer volume of content, I opted to ignore most of it.
It being a relatively big game ironically made me want to engage with it less.
On the other hand, I knew A Short Hike wouldn’t take up a lot of time as, well, it literally
has “short” in the title.
Knowing that playing it wouldn’t be a massive commitment caused me to want to engage with
every aspect of it.
I knew my time with it was fleeting, so I wanted to savor the exploration as much as
possible.
Also, due to it being such a small game, the various things to discover and interact with
were all unique, so I found myself more interested in pursuing them.
It didn’t need to have the same kind of repeated ideas as bigger games do because
there wasn’t nearly as much space to fill.
With shorter titles, I find myself getting far more immersed in the world because every
bit of content feels important as there is so little of it.
Also I know I’ll have the time to do it all which is an incentive to actually do it.
Furthermore, smaller maps allow me to become more familiar with the areas I am exploring,
making it possible to navigate based on my own knowledge opposed to following a marker
in the distance.
I never hit that point of wanting to be done exploring because small open-world games typically
end before I get anywhere near being sick of them.
So when I look back at how they made me feel, I remember the excitement of discovery where
with longer games, when I finish them I am often tired of their core gameplay loop and
just ready to be done, and that, unfortunately, is what I remember most about them.
Where smaller games get me to want to keep exploring, bigger ones tend to funnel me down
one path, making it so I end up ignoring the vast world around me.
Of course, a game being small doesn’t ensure that it will feel big; it just provides a
solid frame to work within.
More work needs to be done to really pull it off.
There isn’t just one way to accomplish a sense of grandiosity in a small package, but
there certainly are things that come up a lot, one of the most notable being how movement
ties to the play space.
It seems like a lot of bigger open-world games aim to have some sense of realism to them,
so the main form of movement often ends up being the player character just walking around.
Sometimes they’ll have a horse or vehicle to add a little more speed and excitement
to the mix, but even then there is little more to the movement than just pressing forward
and sometimes mashing a button to go a bit faster.
Travel often feels pretty tedious as getting across massive maps takes a long time.
Smaller titles however, generally aren’t as tied to realism, so a lot of them experiment
with movement in really interesting ways.
A Short Hike focuses a lot on vertical movement and the player’s core moveset of gliding,
climbing, jumping, and flapping complement the design of the world really well.
Everything is compact and loops around on itself and as the player increases their abilities,
they are able to more easily traverse the difficult terrain and discover the little
secrets spread across the island.
Another approach to interesting movement can be seen with The Pathless which has a system
where the player can shoot talismans that are spread across the world to increase their
dash meter; it becomes a test in timing and paying attention to one's surroundings, and
when done successfully it leads to fluid movement that makes traversing the world feel good.
There’s also the ability to glide and fly up higher with the help of the eagle companion,
and all of this gives a lot of freedom in how the player moves around.
This system allowed the developers to add a lot of space between the various puzzle
areas spread across the map without padding out the game to be hours longer than it needs
to be.
It doesn’t take long to get from one place to the next because the player character is
so fast, but the world itself still feels massive because of how much space there is
in it.
Bowser’s Fury has a similar approach.
The various zones Mario can explore are on different islands, and he can jump on Plessie
to zoom between them.
Plessie’s movement is fast and loose and really fun to mess around with.
Also, there are always coins to collect and conflicts to overcome between the islands,
so it gives players something to engage with instead of just mindlessly moving from one
place to the next.
This adds a lot of space in the world, making it feel bigger without doing in a way that
wastes the player's time.
Both Bowser’s Fury and The Pathless have another system that makes their worlds feel
bigger that comes in the form of conflict.
In Bowser’s Fury it can be seen with, well, Bowser’s Fury.
Every so often he appears on the map to reign havoc down on Mario.
His attacks end either when enough time passes, the player gets a shine, or Mario turns into
a big cat and knocks him out.
This game is so weird.
The set up creates an added challenge for the player as they not only have to focus
on getting a shine, but they also need to avoid Bowser’s dangerous attacks.
It feels like traversing an entirely new area despite the same space being used.
With The Pathless, a massive red cloud constantly moves across the world, and if the player
gets sucked into it, they are separated from their eagle companion and need to sneak around
without being spotted by the boss.
Getting caught can take up a fair bit of time and even risk losing certain abilities if
the player is spotted too many times, so avoiding these clouds is really important.
Everytime one of them would get close, I’d be filled with nervous excitement as I bolted
away from it, looking for some sort of cover as to not put myself at risk.
The Red Cloud and Bowser’s Fury both recontextualize the worlds of each game, by giving players
a new way to briefly interact with it.
Both have them retreading the same old ground, but the new lens makes it feel unique, creating
a sense that there is more space in the world than there actually is.
It’s worth noting that I think that systems like these would almost certainly get annoying
in a longer game, but as both The Pathless and Bowser’s Fury are so short, they end
just before it starts feeling tedious.
In a similar yet wholly different vein, Alba also recontextualizes it’s world as the
player continues to explore it, but instead of it being from needing to avoid a threat,
it comes from the game taking place across multiple days, allowing for different events
to happen on the island for the player to engage with.
Each day a new mechanic is introduced, giving the player a fresh way to interact with the
world so that running across it doesn’t become entirely boring.
It let’s players become familiar with and connected to the island without getting sick
of it.
Ultimately, what matters most about a game world feeling big is more about how a space
is used than anything else.
The games I’ve talked about all feel big because I interacted with their worlds in
meaningful ways.
I actually explored instead of just moving from one waypoint to the next waypoint.
Nothing felt padded and nothing wasted my time.
I didn’t have to determine if a sidequest was worth my time because there wasn’t much
time to worry about.
When I finished A Short Hike, The Pathless, Bowser’s Fury, and Alba, while I did feel
like I got enough out of them, part of me also wished they had been longer.
And I used to think that leaving a game with that sort of feeling was a bad thing, but
now when I finish a game, I kind of want to feel that way.
I want to leave wanting more.
Obviously, there’s nuance to this; sometimes I wish titles had been longer because they
never live up to their potential as they end before actually building on their main mechanics,
which is always a bummer.
Also, when you bring the cost of games into things, I understand why people get frustrated
when they spend $60 on something that only lasts for a few hours.
With all that said, in general, I’d much rather finish a game wishing it was longer
than wanting it to have ended 10 hours sooner.
And look, I’m sure plenty of people don’t struggle with big open world games in the
same way I do.
I know for a fact tons of folks had no issue getting immersed in the worlds Red Dead Redemption,
The Witcher, and Ghost of Tsushima.
Everyone looks for different things in games and that’s what's cool about them; I just
think that the constant push primarily by AAA publishers to make bigger and bigger games
often ends up creating experiences that don’t really encourage the kind of exploration they
are hoping players will experience.
While I don’t think massive open-world games should stop being made, I do hope we see more
stuff like Bowser’s Fury from AAA developers; tight open-world experiences focused on maximizing
every mechanic instead of spreading themselves thin across the biggest digital space imaginable.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, at least with video games, size doesn’t
matter; it’s how you use it.
And on the topic of using things well, let’s talk about this video’s sponsor ExpressVPN
You probably couldn’t tell by just looking at me, but I am kind of a private person.
I don’t like the idea of my internet provider or anyone else tracking and selling my browsing
information, which is why I use ExpressVPN.
VPNs encrypt your data and reroute your internet connection through a secure server so that
your information stays private.
What’s really cool about them is that due to being able to connect to any server across
the world, you can get access to region-locked stuff.
For example, if you live in the US and want to watch the 2005 hit-show Prison Break on
Netflix, you can’t.
However, through ExpressVPN you can easily set your location to let’s say Canada, and
baboom Michael Scofield time let’s go.
Don’t watch past season 1 though.
It’s super easy and also the connection is really fast.
I never have any issues streaming in HD, even when I’m connected to a server halfway across
the world.
Having a VPN will get you a ton of extra value from pretty much every streaming service out
there, so if that’s how you watch shows, it’s a no-brainer.
So yeah protect your information and get the most out of your streaming services TODAY
at ExpressVPN.com/razbuten.
And if you use my link, you’ll get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free.
It’ll give you more stuff to watch, keep your data private, and give you the chance
to figure out whether or not they’ll ever break out of prison.
You got this Michael.
Anyway, thanks to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this video.
To all of you still here--thank you.
It means a lot to have your support.
A big big thanks to all of my patrons and a special shout out to Elfinrez for becoming
an honorary bagbuten.
With that, I hope you have a great day and/or night and I will see you in the next one.