For games with very static environments and non physics based games, I’d agree. But for games like RDR2 and physics-based or sandbox games I’d say that open worlds improve on them
@lordcaprisunthe2nd that's a good way of looking at it. I think static zones in open worlds would make the best experience. I really hope Zelda does it.
Human pattern recognition is partly to blame for this. We keep trying to make a universal product, despite the fact that it's unnecessary, if not adverse to product diversity. Every game needs an open world, morality systems, stealth, melee combat ranged combat, vehicles, side quests, item crafting, destructible environments...no, not every game needs all of these things. Remember Goldeneye? Banjo Kazooie? Resident Evil? This is why I think the future of Western video games is in indie and double AA publishing. Smaller scope, less corporate oversight, more unique, and affordable.
Agreed. Regardless of what you think about RE4 Remake compared to the original, it's still one of the best releases in the past 5 years. I've replayed it 4 times already while RDR2 and ER feels like a chore to play again.
Hogwarts legacy being shown in this is spot on. Biggest issue with the game imo is the scope. They wanted to tell a Hogwarts story, but they also felt the need to make this massive open world. They didn’t need to do that, if they cut the map in half and focused more on the story and the rpg elements that go along with being a student, the game would’ve been vastly better. The game just gets hurt a ton by having this amazingly made school, but then the game does everything within its power to make you leave constantly to go fight spiders in a generic cave or do a fetch quest for some random dude on the other side of the map. Not saying I dislike the game or anything, I like it quite a lot, but its faults are extremely frustrating because it tried too hard to fall into the model of the typical open world game and ended up whiffing on what a lot of people were hoping for with the game.
@@fearedjames nah you’re tripping about the gameplay, it’s not particularly hard, but it’s pretty fun and by far the best representation the series has ever had for a video game.
the worst part is definitely that these consoles cant handle it, they make games that are so graphically ahead of everything we have that the consoles can barely run them, which means that the graphics that they worked hard for arent even being looked at
I truly miss linear games, the likes of the old tomb raider games, Splinter cell and Prince of Persia games were focused experiences that - for the most part- didn't distract the player with million things to do and had about 10-15 hours of fun gameplay.
Open world and sandbox games can be a lot of fun. It's the oversaturation of the market that is a big issue. The vast majority of AAA games are made to be open world. With the popular belief that you need to spend $1 per hour of gameplay, games are stuffed with repetitive content to pad out the runtime. Not only is everything open world, it's structured the same, plays generally the same, and has the same checklist of busywork to keep you occupied. Development times also got so long that these companies don't want to take any risks. If it takes 6-10 years for your games to come out you don't want to take any risks with your IP. With less risks there is less innovation, and led to stagnation. Problem now is a lot of people are getting sick of the same formula we've gotten over and over for years now. With presumably many games already in development I doubt we'll see any change soon. I don't think a lot of companies can justify these costs and development times for the sales they are getting.
The thing I really miss from these old games are the cinematic set pieces that happen in the background, without the player's involvement. It makes the game feel larger than even the biggest games we have today. Imo, it does a better job at giving the player a sense of wonder.
11:52 jedi survivor has the exact same issue. In jedi fallen order I could complete everything before the credits now I'm chasing stupid bounties, random collectables and fishing and going to a planet more than I should and it takes away from urgency if the mission. I haven't even Completed my first playthrough with how monotonous it is.
since playing both Red Dead Redemption and RDR2, i would actually say i prefer the first game. I spend around 20 hours with RDR1, seeing the story and doing some side missions and outfit collecting. its story is consise, and so is its side content. I felt very pleased with it when i finished it. RDR2 on the other hand, while it has a beautiful world with so much life and things to do, the base runtime is about 50 hours, and if you want to do the side content, (which you do) expect to add another 20 or 30 hours to that. after playing for that long, I was just ready for it to be over. during the latter half of the game, I found myself just speeding to the next mission over and over just to see what would happen next, and i groaned when i found out that there was 5 to 10 more hours to play in the epilogue. a game shouldn't do that. I felt like i rushed through RDR2 and didn't experience it to its full potential, even though i spent almost 4 times as long on it.
This is a good well made video but as I replied to someone, gamers need to put their money where their mouth is. We’ll use Sony as an example since you featured them heavily in your video. Sony has released of the top of my head experimental, tight and focused games this gen like Returnal, Sackboy a big adventure, Rachet and Clank rift apart and now Astrobot and guess what, hardly anyone is buying these games. This now discourages Sony and makes them turn their focus and resources to churning out Last of Us clones cos that’s what sells. This is why they closed Japan studio. Y’all were not buying their games. So part of the onus is on us gamers. We need to put our money where our mouth is
Rift Apart didn't really do anything special though. Games did seamless portal travel years before it. Portal and Prey 2006 say hi. Returnal....loaded fast? Cool, I guess? I guess the DualSense functions were kind of cool but again what did it do that was special?
yes I agree, however also the titles you listed to me are still not even close to the quality of games from the past (even if they may be within personal interest of genre)
Very much agree with the elden ring analysis playing through I found myself saying "the tight areas are definitely the best I wish the whole game was like that" then 2 seconds later I remembered that's literally dark souls
Careful there, you might get a revelation in your head that will have the "community" stone you to death for even remotely suggesting anything as heretical as "honest criticism" towards Elden Ring. Elden Ring, for all the praise it gets from the normies (and yes, it's mostly normies doing the praising. Lacking critical thought is exactly the reason why somebody WOULD glorify the game.), is, when you boil it down to it's mechanics, an overly large, overly repetitive, overly bloated, mostly empty, mostly lackluster experience of copypasted "dungeons" randomly spread across a map too big to be fun to explore. It's combat is decidedly all over the place, unbalanced and too desperate to be bloodborne and sekiro in a game that has the protagonist move like a dark souls character. It's item placement, in comparison to older fromsoft titles, is decidedly more lazy, random and meaningless, unless you REALLY start justifying it with pitiful head-canon. If the ONLY good content in the game, really, is the type found in legacy dungeons, and only a couple of them for that matter, then what exactly does that tell us about where all the fun lies in this game? What does it tell us with regards to bloated empty open-worlds vs tightly created, semi-linear, interconnected level design? If the best part of the game lies in fair, balanced, challenging but careful boss-fight design, why make a game that is oversaturated with an absolute crapton of unbalanced, carelessly implemented, spectacle-focused spamlords and gank fights? If the second part of that statement is what made some fights in dark souls/demons souls/bloodborne/sekiro bad, why not criticize that aspect of Elden ring, when THOSE types of bosses in fact make up the majority? All in all, Elden ring was at it's best when it wasn't being elden ring, but was instead being Dark Souls or bloodborne. Which begs the question: why not just make another dark souls or bloodborne, or more precisely, a game that is limited in scope but focused on something that works wonders and creates a unique, powerful experience because of it? If you do, you get sekiro, but you'll never get elden ring. The latter lacking focus in most things unless you completely ignore everything OTHER than the main mandatory bosses and dungeons, of which there are, like, 8 or something (bosses, not LD's)
something that really supports this is the rocksteady conference where they show how when they were designing the mechanics in arkham asylum instead of building up the lackluster systems they simply dropped them and focused on perfecting a smaller scope that was most important to the games core
I like how elden rings story design is like a jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces scattered between the lands bewteen any you have to go hunt for the pieces and put them together on your own, and the final picture is up to your own interpretation it gives an incentive to actually explore the game rather than just speedrunning your way through the game,
Sonic Frontiers is pretty much why I realized I would not want an open-world Devil May Cry game (or at least the idea of it); the rewarding things like ranking and puzzles would be less special and more like chore work overtime. It's also why when I do play open world games nowadays, I enjoy challenge runs to limit the amount of options I can use, and next thing you know the replayability skyrockets.
Why would you want to fight enemies when they aren't locked with you? Probably that would make avoiding enemies the best strategy or it would be grindy.
Great job with the video! I feel like you made some very good points here. I feel like we each appreciate very different things when it comes to gaming. From a young kid, I’ve always valued freedom, exploration and immersion, hence, I was one of the people who became very fond of the direction that gaming went in. I do still enjoy linear titles and tight level design, especially the older Zelda games that had extremely satisfying puzzles BUT I just find the freedom approach much more satisfying. Whether it’s solving a puzzle in an extremely unconventional way in BOTW, or finding info about some guy and blackmailing him to give you the item instead of shooting everyone in the base in Cyberpunk 2077, or solving a murder mystery randomly in the open world through exploration in RDR2. Both types of games are awesome but open world games definitely need a purpose behind their design rather than being open for the sake of it
Sandbox games have always been entertaining to me. I love my linear games. The only problem is that I like to memorize the linear games I play. It's just out of habit from growing up and playing many types of games and understanding them as games as well as art. I can tell you first and foremost that the story doesn't always have to be spectacular or wow me. Like Days Gone. It's a simple apocalyptic game with a zombie like virus that has a pretty standard story with some great gameplay ang hog riding. Or GTA 5. None of the characters are likable or have redeeming qualities, but that also makes the story more interesting because if we were following another anti hero that tries just a little too hard to be likable I don't think I would enjoy the game as much. I know people love San Andreas and 4, but I was never really a fan of them. I love Vice City and 5. Criminals are criminals and do criminal things. That's why I love GTA. I don't want to play as another killer with a heart of gold. That shit's old and killing weighs on you. I know as I'm a combat veteran. I much prefer the criminals. Which is what made GTA special in the first place.
All your points valid as hell but preferences don’t make sense, if you like criminals to behave like criminals, wouldn’t you like gta 4 over 5? Also bad news, 6 is going the heart of gold route lol
I wonder if this is relevant. I really enjoyed the aesthetic of fallout 3 and nv. I wish they dedicated a studio to just keep making smaller games with the same engine. I'd play the shit out of them
I remember when journalists started talking about open world and realism in video games. I never wanted that, but all of a sudden everyone acted like they do. I had two favorite franchises from Ubisoft - Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia. They were both butchered in Assassin's Creed. I never liked any of the AC games, because I knew from the start this would be the creative dead end for Ubisoft. It was the same with Naughty Dog's switch from Uncharted to Last of Us, because the media gaslit players that they should care about "ludonarative dissonance" instead of a fun gameplay. It was the same with Crysis when people got all excited about stuff like photorealism and raytracing. A decade or two of video games can pretty much be summed up with the phrase "buyer's remorse". Investors, corporations, the media, everyone gaslighting the player, trying to sell us what they want to convince us we want and we kept buying and buying and buying and regretting it. And I hated every player for being baited into this. I hated everyone who thought a game is all about the cutscenes, or the visuals, or the cosmetics, or pretty much everything other than the gameplay. Then they said "indies are now great". But then follows now and now is when the players finally catch on and they start digging up older games to see what made them so great. And the corporations have noticed this too, so they started literally just removing them from stores, because if you won't buy their new shitty game - they don't want you to play anything at all. Whatever the future of video games is, right now there's a war on quality and good old-fashioned fun. And I don't blame the industry. I blame the people who keep playing these games, shilling for these games and feeding the industry. People who pre-order and buy the DLC and invest in Early Access and Season Pass and Deluxe Editions and empty promises of broken ports of 15 year old games, sold at full AAA price and called "remastered"... If you buy something before it releases, the end result is what you deserve.
There's definitely a balance. There have been some great projects with a large scope, they're just different types of playing experiences. Given the popularity of them, they're not going away, but consumers should support smaller more tight focused experiences as well. I hope more AA studios jump on to making more classical action titles and platformers.
This is so dumb, So people are just lying to themselves in liking games like the OG Assassins creed or The Last of Us or anytime he game with photorealistic graphics (Resident Evil, Red Dead 2? GTA, Cyberpunk, Ghost of Tsushima and so on). Don’t you see how silly that sounds. And what’s ironic is that Splinter Cell WAS a “grounded realistic game” for the standards of their time. Someone that played Mario back then would think it’s boring, just like how you call a game like TLoU boring despite having solid gameplay. What you don’t understand that “games being realistic and cinematic” have been going on since the 90’s, sacrificing gameplay fun for better presentation. But you are too young to understand that.
Jak & Daxter TPL is the best collectathon I’ve ever played. The first half of the game is better than the second in my view, but it’s crazy how well these old games hold up. Ratchet 1 PS2 is also fantastic to play today.
I never understood the need for such big videogames, really is a quantity of quality type of argument. I knew many people who back in ps2-ps3 era who had anywhere from 15 to 45 games and they can say they played them all, now you have people who have hundreds of digital games and can only say they only played about 10 of them 🤣, great video man 🔥
The witcher 3 had BOTH tight design and bloat. Luckily, all the side quests have more storytelling in them than most triple AAA games have within their actual, intended main storyline. It means that if ever there was something that felt repetitive, like the skellige treasure-hunting or encountering yet another drowner nest, there was at the very least an incentive to do these menial things for the eventual reward of getting geared up for the REAL meat of the game, which was all the unique stories being told in the unique way that only the witcher 3 could tell them in. The witcher 3 was stronger for NOT being an open world sandbox type game entirely. It was stronger for NOT allowing full player freedom. It was stronger for creating meaningful and planned out environments, rather than just open, borderless "go wherever you like" maps like bethesda continues to try and do in vain. To me, the best type of "open world" is one that isn't entirely open, for the player to go wherever they want to go. Maybe the lizardbrain of our species will inevitably resent that initially, but it will feel satisfied once we learn that this is how we get unique, tailored experiences. Fallout new vegas, a game I've poured literally over a thousand hours in, unmodded mind you, is the superior open world game to fallout 4. Why? Because it's openness is only ever open once you pass a number of challenges, once you pass the skill-check, literally and metaphorically. It's a game that doesn't FORCE you to follow a linear path, but HEAVILY suggests you probably should, both in terms of quality story-writing following a somewhat linear pattern of beats, AND the actual map design. And because of that, the game requires the player to learn about landmarks and how they relate to the rest of the surrounding areas. You learn to navigate the world without usage of a map, the latter being a secondary tool to your own mind's power of spatial awareness. A welcome help, but not a crutch. In fallout 4, because of todd's obsessive focus on "go anywhere you like", the game is weaker because of it. You can now go everywhere, no borders will hold you back. Meaning no area is more challenging than another, unless the challenge is entirely artificial. "this area happens to have enemies of level 40 when you're just level 2" is artificial design. It's not a challenge reflected in a barrier to overcome through learned skills, gathered armor and weaponry and observation of the map, it's just a block you happen to be able to jump over once you fired enough bullets in enough bullet sponges. It's lazy. It's meaningless. It's boring. It's an empty, flat, colourless mud-bath of nothingness. BECAUSE you can go anywhere you like, the player has no limits, and because the player has no limits, they can not experience a challenge, and because the player does not experience a challenge, they can't make meaningful choices, and because of that, they aren't playing a game anymore, they're just staring at a screen and pushing buttons that do meaningless things without true aim. The point is: it's not "open world" design that ruins games, per sé, it's bad implementation of limitations. "Open world" became a trendy term, with the industry not knowing or not caring what advantages that gives the developers. Like all advantages, they're at their best when you actually know HOW to use them and WHEN to use them. They are not a replacement for expert design, they are tools like all other design.
Red Dead 2> Red dead 1, one is a game and the other is an experience of a lifetime. Red dead 2 is not only a movie, but a book, a tv show and a game all in one, it kinda makes red dead 1 unremarkable in my opinion.
@@dutchritzIn the case of quality over quantity? Rdr2 takes the cake for both, kinda tired of people overrating older games just cause they didn't take so long to make. Anyone gonna pretend to enjoy their 100th unremarkable bounty?
I decidedly and wholeheartedly disagree. But my disagreement has everything to do with the actual writing quality, which I won't bore you with. As for what you were saying as a description: you could very easily make that same description about rdr1 too. Seeing as you still prefer the second one, that obviously can't be the essence of what makes a game better, even to you, regardless of whether or not you've convinced yourself of that.
Rockstar has literally so many different smaller companies who work for them imagine working at rockstar for like 20 years before youd make louds of games after gta 5 you made 1 game and an online mode for gta 5 in about the same time it took for tta 3 to gta 4 to be made there where like 6 games in-between thoes
Sandboxes have their place, but the best games are those with a clear narative, and I agree with your assessment, Horizon Zero Dawn for the reason that it had a perfect balance between the scope and the effort put into it as another example of a lovingly crafted game with a large scope
Horizon should've been in my wheelhouse to love. I just didn't like much of it. The hunts were just extremely tedious, and climbing one of the giants was just anticlimactic as I already did that in games like Far Cry and Assassin's Creed. Here, it just felt more tedious with less reward. I admire they went for a Shadow of the Colossus feel, but it just detracts from overall gameplay as I'm just climbing for a few minutes. Which isn't all that exciting because it's exactly why I hate TLOU and Tomb Raider. Then there's the choices that don't matter. Why are they in the game if they don't affect anything at all? You can have at it all you want, but all I see is mindnumbing busy work.
Man, i just wanna say, aside from the insane quality of your video, i can scroll through 100 comments and see, 90% are hearted. Its a really small thing but it shows how dedicated you are. Good luck.
the more i start to grow the more i realize how hard it is to get into recent games because of how big they are, my mind has grown to where it doesn’t want to constantly put time into games that are huge and just wants something simple, smaller, more linear and the more i realize how much i try to search for that game but find out that linear small scale games are becoming rare now these days. i have a whole library of games that are interesting but just can’t get into them as they’ve become a type of game to play once in a while.
You just gotta figure out for yourself which games are still good, there has been a lot of stinkers recently. But there's still phenomenal games that come out. In my opinion baldurs gate 3 is the best game I've played in recent memory.
I don’t think there’s any incentive created by game price or even in general, to create micro transactions in games besides just capitalist greed, or teams looking around and seeing the normalized greed of others, and thinking they need to do the same thing to keep up, and not seeing it as bad bc it’s so normalized. I don’t see why anyone would ever make “alternative monetization” unless their goal was to monetize BEFORE they had a goal to make a game. There’s really no excuse for this “alternative monetization”
Micro's should only exist in live service games to fund ongoing development, in my opinion. In one-off single player experiences... Totally ridiculous!
The fact that the cost of game devlopment has grown as high as it is is just insane. We now on days have more powerfull machines, more assecible and cheaper developer tools, and more aspiring developers than ever before as proven by the amazing high quality indie games released every month, and still the cost of developing new AAA and AA games grows ever larger, and at no noticible improvement. Game files have grown to gargantuan sizes in excess if 100 Gb and run worse in evem the top of the line gaming PCs than consol games did in 2016 and with very minimal visual improvement.
I have a feeling a lot of this is building off of old systems because nobody knows how to build their own anymore. So a lot of work goes into putting Band-Aids on things that should be developed from the ground up. Having massive development teams means that you have to pay more people to do less.
There's a time and a place for overly-broad scope, and that's if you're creating a make-your-own-fun sandbox game and fully developing every new feature-think Minecraft, or the logical conclusion of if they added deeper city/village resource management to player-owned fiefs in a Mount&Blade game. But there's a reason I had to paint with a pretty narrow brush in any example that _isn't_ Minecraft.
Another thing to consider is that shorter more refined games are more likely to be replayed. I cannot tell you how many times I've played through ocarina of time but it's definitely close to 10. But totk was such a slog that I can only maybe imagine myself doing one more play through.
I think Hogwarts Legacy is a great game. That said, there are a few things I didn't love about it. One of them was how you had some incredibly repetitive tasks to do like finding the Demiguise Statues to unlock better versions of alohomora or the Merlin trials (of which there are only a couple of variations). Another one is how they structured the story, forcing you to go on side missions to progress. That wasn't only on the main story, it applies to the secondary arcs with Sebastian and Natsai. You have to complete some side missions like helping some people or attending classes do you get the next part, it's not even that "it's too hard without doing the side quests" approach. It broke the pacing of each story and kind of got me out of it. For a long while I'd just go around taking on dark wizards and animals, exploring the world, I gave up on the story. Earlier this year I decided to complete it and "forced myself" to play the stories. The Cassandra side plot was fun because you can go through it on one go, which I did. It's not worth for the reward, but it's nice to olay through that little plot at once and it has some interesting stuff in it.
First I'd like to mention that the quality of this vid is on point. *edited to say sorry for the essay* Next I'd like to point out that my wife (who is a clissic gamer, shes been playing since she was 12, shes 30 now) has a really big issue with modern games. Because unless they're on the shorter side she has a hard time remembering story relevant stuff. Elden ring for her was a loathsome experience because it so long, its simply massive. She and I only have about 4hrs a day for gaming. I spent 200hrs getting everything I could in my first playthrough. She spent 100hrs in the game before she even got to morgot. (Yes that's mostly because of a skill issue, she died more times than me in that 100hr time period) So for her, she was always feeling out of place, and out of touch with the world and the story of it as a whole. That feeling was only there because of the scope of elden ring. She had a hard time finding any kind of payout from boss fights. Because she either steamrolled them or she died way too many times for her patience. By the time she killed most bosses she didn't have an elated response. Often times she was mad because she knew that rn-jesus was the only reason she won. In essence she felt like it was handed over, out of pitty or something. The main reason I believe she felt like this is because of the fact that she had no idea what the hell was going on. Which stems from the fact that by the time she reaches new lore she's forgotten what she learned 40hrs ago. (in game, like I stated before we only get like 4hrs to game most nights) Keep in mind elden ring is the only game in like a decade that I have even remotely considered to be a 10/10 experience. But that's me, not her, or others like her. Its got a scope issue for sure, I simply can't deny that. But for me it's the best gaming experience I've had since I was a kid with all the juice in my brain making everything better. 😂
I love final fantasy 16. I think that the side quests were the worst part of the game, not because of the content, but because of how they would drop them in large groups Aunt, you would kind of have to go through a long gauntlet of side quests before moving on it killed the pacing of the game and often separated major story beads by an hour or two of gameplay, and a lot of these story beads really felt urgent or were extremely engaging. So I spent a lot of time wishing that I didn't have side quests even though the side quests were awesome
@dutchritz Optional doesn't really mean it's a choice to not do it If you want to see all of the content, it's not really optional, and it's not clear which quests you can go back to after story events if any
Also it was placed right after HUGE story events. Just killed the Titan guy? Alright give this former slave some bread and wine so they know what it's like to be free. Its honestly jarring and strange pacing to me tbh
Despite being a huge fable fan my whole life I used to think fable 2 and 3s stories were lacking but now id give anything to go back to that time. They were so unique and original.
This is a awesome Video on a real problem with modern games, I've always been a Halo Fan since Combat Evolved and post Bungie never hits the mark for me. Bugie Era Halo was basically a art to art on games for me since it introduced me to it. And on the topic of Elden Ring i feel exactly that, WAY to big and feels like it need more life. I started TECHNICALLY start my journey with Fromsoft with Armored Core 4 and what got me into Dark Souls is DS3 and play DS1 after that but I feel Elden Ring was ok but not the greatest, Heck I love AC6 because it's story is amazing, (even though people that say they played it, didn't actually 100% play it) but the games balancing is a little off for pvp. ALSO from what I see you have some... Unwanted guests that are harassing you, from my experience as a TH-camr is to just delete the comment and promote positive ones or ones that use good criticism. Overall awesome video dude
I don't mind a little hate in the comment section. Gives me some fun back and forth at times, and allows people to see how I would respond to certain things. Not to mention letting people give their counter arguments. Thanks for all the love though. Appreciate it.
This is why I feel games pricing is important. Space Marine 2 is a fun game, but it is very short and its replayablity is okay, but not addicting. And sure, they are adding more over time, but I kind of regret buying the super expensive edition. It feels like a $40 and it was made to be a short and simple game like the old days. Meanwhile Alan Wake 2 was $50, but $70 if you bought the deluxe edition. I bought it on sale a month after, bundled with Alan Wake Remastered and it legit looks and feels like a $70 game. It pushes games as an artform forward. The market is all over the place when it comes to scope.
Ehh I’m indifferent on the issue some people want games to be massively big and others don’t. For example the crew 2 map is the biggest map car racing wise and all people love it because well vehicles. While others complain about rdr2 map being to big because you’re riding a horse even though cars didn’t exist back than and the slow pace vibe it gave off was because that’s how life was back than not as instant as it is today. All in all I say just enjoy the game for what it is and if you don’t like it just refund it or play a different game that’ll you’ll like more.
I think another reason why Rockstar doesn't bother making games left and right anymore is the change of the company as a whole, but also because of how much success they've gotten from GTA 5 online, so they don't see themselves finding any reason to put resources in making sequels to previous titles they probably think won't "sell" which is why the only other games we've gotten was Red dead redemption 2, and now GTA 6. I do also think Red dead redemption 2 is one of the few open world games worth playing compared to other modern open world games
@bravobird9435 just if your interested in incredibly detailed open worlds and the technical prowess. Not if you're looking for an actually well made game
This is why I will always prefer RDR over RDR2. 2 hours into RDR and you learn why John is there, become familiarized with a handful of characters, had some narrative drama, and shot a bunch of bad guys. 2 hours into RDR2 and you've been introduced to over a dozen characters without learning anything about them, Dutch reiterates the same thing 30 times, you take some ladies to the store, you still can't access most of the map, and you've literally played through 3 seperate intros. Give me more time shooting and less time cleaning my gun and shaving. Give me more short cutscenes of eccentric characters like Seth Briars robbing graves and less cutscenes of Dutch angrily ranting about family..
screaming wojak rdr2 “WE NEED MORE MONEY” “IM DYING DUTCH” “THERE AINT NO PLACE FOR OUTLAWS NO MORE” “WE CANT TRUST MICAH” “REVENGE IS A FOOL’S GAME” “YOURE A GOOD MAN ARTHUR MORGAN” *repeat 20000x until credits roll* chad rdr1 “our time has passed john” *compass plays while you’re allowed to think about the story in a quiet moment without it bombarding you by telling you the exact same shit over and over again*
@@demonwind5030 we can and do have all 3 and a half Red Deads, but whats wrong with not liking what you don't like? RDR2 diverged a bit from the pulpy elements of the first 2 games and opted for more of a realistic dramatic story, but we basically knew how the story ended before the game was released. The bounty system and lack of ability to do things like bar brawls or gun fights on moving trains was also disappointing to me. I also have a big thing with intros and wasting time. I'll never watch one of those tv series that "gets good after like the 3rd season". I have limited time for entertainment, and I refuse to wait for my entertainment to get good, and like I said, the game literally does have 3 seperate introductions that don't really teach you anything about the story, characters, setting, and gameplay. Its just feels like unnecessary bloat. Like what you like, but I will still not like what I don't like, ya know? And also you made a good point. The scope of RDR2 and its multiplayer was too great for them to make an Undead Nightmare. I'd personally rather have Undead Nightmare 2 over survival and hygeine mechanics, an extremely long story, multiplayer, a gigantic map, or dynamic horse balls.
i rarely even remember a game's plot after I finish it at best I get random flashbacks whenever I see footage from games I've played for tens of hours. and that feeling is like "ah, I know that place/character from x game but I have no idea who that or he is 😂 way way too long. but then again I played grim fandango for the first time recently I remember alot of places and characters
People take away different things from the gaming experience. I personally love a good story, and that tends to stick with me more. At the end of the day the games are about the gameplay and how fun of an experience that is.
@ the story and characters makes it, just like in movies. often the story is ass but if the actors are great than magic happens. same with games imo. sadly "we" replaced that with "nice graphics" and season passes
Even if it is a nice enhancement, I would go so far as to omit the storytelling requirement. I more so lament the level design of linear games going extinct for completely open worlds with no direction that have you run across flat ground for hours doing repetitive unengaging tasks. "Linear" is a bad word in gaming now, bigger and more open is how you get the automatic "greatest game in the series" 10/10. Even though I'd argue this open direction plaguing games now just dilutes the unique experience many games had before. Giving you less of what they provided before and just more shallow content designed to keep you busy for a hundred hours and waste your time as opposed to keep you having fun for a few hours and respecting your time.
Hi, great video, I think you should check out Baldur's Gate 3, imo its the perfect game that handles scope and non-linear experience work REALLY well. Instead of making you feel lost and overwhelmed with content you don't even enjoy, it feels liberating and invokes a childlike desire to explore and figure things out your own way... fits into the counter-argument of "times when scope is the main point/improves the game" as you talked about in the last section.
I'm making a manga series and I only intend it to be 10 volumes or 12 maximum. I don't need to make a 100-volume shonen series. I don't want to waste my reader's time. Wish game developers thought the same with their games. Quality over quantity please.
I agree with everything said here, but let's be honest, the gamers are at fault too, because they put their money in those bloated games, and those tight games are actually forgotten because of how short they are, or even if they are well received, they just don't sell as much as those games.
@@dutchritz Just gave it another watch. Such a great essay on my favorite superhero game ever definitely warrants a subscribe! Take care, and keep up the good work.
@ fair, the visual design is undoubtedly amazing. Tbh I really only get engrossed in a video game open world when it’s a first person experience like Oblivion or Cyberpunk 2077
@ oh most definitely, even it’s main story quests allow for a sandbox-y, almost immersive sim-like approach. That’s actually my biggest gripe with Rockstar games - they craft such massive and immersive worlds full of posibilities, but then give you one single way to approach the missions.
I grew up in the ps2/3 great console, greats games. No nostalgia bais tho, 90% of their libraries are garbage. Just because we're living through the present and have to actively shovel through new releases doesn't change the ratio of gold to crap. I just find it a bit unfair to take the best of the 6th and 7th gen and compare them to the average game released today. Especially when the average ps2 game is some forgotten title sitting in a stack of 25+ games. This video, unfortunately, was a bit of a waste of time. A lot of time spent explaining the symptoms of corporate interests without ever mentioning "corporate interest". That's the issue today's games face, what makes the average game today different than the one from '05. The issue of scope pertains to investments of real world money into media.
The point of this video was to compare the mainstream highest quality games of each era. This is not a video about shovelware. And I did mention the heavy budgets of games, and noted how those funds would be better allocated to smaller projects. That ultimately comes down to the people pitching the games to the investors and choosing whether they want to seek funding for large projects or not. This is just an opinion piece advocating for more smaller projects being funded, and it is a sentiment that is shared by a lot of the gaming community. If you felt like it wasted your time, I'm sorry, but apparently over 30,000 people do not share your sentiment.
@dutchritz Shovelware is a term for individual video games or software bundles known more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness. That's a quick definition I found from Wikipedia (terrible source, ik), which sounds a lot like the problem you described with modern video games, so maybe your video is about shovelware? I did not bring up shovelware, though. I used the verb "shovel" to refer to the act of going through the catalog of new releases. There are plenty of mainstream highest quality games that end up forgotten in a stack, such as farcry 3. Let me expound on my first point. I was just saying it's disingenuous to take 1% of ps2 games and compare them to all of the mainstream games that are being released now. Im just saying that was not what it was like playing on ps2 in the '00s. As you stated, the issue of scope creep has been a topic for 30 years now. And I'm saying the biggest difference from games released this decade compared to older games is corporate interest. Within the past decade, corpos have realized the profit to be made from games, and they've run with it. The reason we have so many highest quality mainstream games have a shallow open world is because the people in charge believe it will make money. In a point, I believe you'll agree older game's pushed the scope to break boundaries, newer games push the scope to break sales numbers. Now you can say these big studios should put their time into smaller budget games. Though I find the statement somewhat backwards as there are indie games that have tight level design, gameplay loops that add to the narrative, and they're usually made by people who have passion for the video game they're making. These games that "harkin back to the golden age of gaming" or w/e buzz words you want to use exist. I realized everything you said in this video years ago, so I stopped buying highest quality mainstream games. Because money is the only language lizard brained corpos understand. Thank you for your reply, sorry for my long winded response
@s0meb0dy1 I get what you're saying, and you are definitely correct about profit being the driving force behind the mainstream gaming industry, but honestly, video games have always been a for-profit business. I think there are a decent amount of examples of smaller scale games made by large companies that do well (Astro Bot, Ratchet & Clank) and it would be cool if those larger resources and amounts of polish go into those kinds of titles in the future on top of new innovative stuff coming from indie developers. With Astro winning the Game of the Year, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing more games like it coming out as AAA titles. At the end of the day, whose funding games matters less than who they're funding. Developers with passion for smaller scale projects can be funded by major studios and companies and still be profitable. A good example would be the guy that created It Takes Two, or Ghost Town Games.
Hey, Mr complainer guy, did buy the smaller, tight and focused games Sony released this gen? Returnal, Sackboy, a big adventure, Rachet and Clank: Rift apart, Astrobot? Did you buy them? If you didn’t then shut up cos people will complain that Sony doesn’t make these games anymore then when they do, hardly anyone buys them and it makes them instead focus on the Last of us clones instead
@@dammyoyesanya4656 Astrobot sold 1.5 million units in two months. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart has sold over 4 million units. But sure, "hardly anyone" bought those. Nice try, though. Sackboy: A Big Adventure was bound to do poorly since it isn't a proper Little Big Planet sequel with the ability to make your own content. Returnal is a roguelike, a genre more popular on PC than consoles, and you can find those types of games on PC for half the cost of Returnal.
what the hell you talking about boy. Strongly disagree with this, of course level design is important but open world/sandbox type games can have really intresting, cool bits, its just something you discover by yourself instead of being something everyone sees, no matter what. They're just different. Of course theres a lot of copy paste open world games, but there's also a ton that have super interesting stories, or really coom mechanics, or ones that have moments that you can share and feel like you had your own unique experience. I just think the script could have gone through a couple more drafts is all, there were still some interesting points
It's more of a preference when it comes to story flow more than anything I suppose. Some open world games have proven to me that you can really make the format work, but a lot of them use it as an excuse to be lazy with the flow of game pacing. I feel like I articulated the points I wanted to make pretty well, and given that it's my most viewed video so far, I would say that other people would agree.
I’m so tired of DS and Elden. Such a bs. Such a massive hype over nothing. The first DS was quite revolutionary in terms of world building and all em Han is combines with unusual storytelling. But it was over 10 years ago. Bruh. DS 2 (my first ds), was complete junk and trash, even a 15 yo kid understood that. DS3 without online and all that hype around it back in days is a hollow (ha) and boring experience, where all you need is pure dmg and buffs to increase it. That was such a disappointment when I discovered this for myself. Why spend 7 min fighting dancer, when you can equip bleed weapon even better if it’s heavy and just drop all your dmg while boss is passive walking around. Such a trash. But Elden even worse, they managed to screw up everything that was holding previous games in “balance” with liner location visiting. But Elden ruined it all, created a big EMPTY open world with colossal amount of unnecessary and repetitive enemy groups and dungeons n caves with such low reward, that you regret spending time visiting it. And you have to visit it, because you can’t know where could be an item for ur build. Why play the game, why spend the 5x hours on exploring everything when you can go watch YT guide for “op build” and became one in half an hour. Such a trash.
This is the reason why I will always hate Assassin's Creed 2 with all my heart: it dropped every bit of essence and originality from the first one and gave us a game that looks worse, where you are saturated with useless gadgets, extremely linear missions, a cheerful atmosphere and the worst of all: a protagonist with Tony Stark personality whose entire world revolves around him and his actions
i play ps2. modern games are lame and more like movies with gameplay. I don't like overly long games. I completed hitman 2 silent assassin and tom clancey ghost recon recently. Couple days each to finish them. perfect length. to me only mostly sports games should be repeatitive, longer or mmorpgs.
@@KrisVickers-wn6dd because of its combat variety as well as wanting to understand the world building deeper, I would say Elden Ring is the the most glaring example. I've played through the game three times at about 90 hours per playthrough and I'm still not extremely tired of the gameplay. Final Fantasy 16 had engaging storytelling in most of its side content, and I wasn't mad at the game for making me spend roughly 60 to 70 hours in order to finish all of it. As much as there is a lot of faffing about you can do in Red Dead redemption 2, it is a very interesting narrative to follow that does take a long time including side content. The quality just has to be there for me to find it interesting. It was the same thing with some older games too, like Bethesda's and Rockstar's older stuff. Ideally, I don't like spending more than 25 to 30 hours on a game, but there have been a few examples like these where the quality was maintained for long periods of gameplay. Most games can't live up to that kind of scope though.
@@dutchritz I think I'd just get bored of spending so much time in a game. I duno. but maybe cause I have quite a big backlogs of ps2 games to work through.
@KrisVickers-wn6dd I totally get it. My favorite type of games fit into that framework more often than not too. The Witcher 3 is another good example of a long game with high quality.
I wish resident did evil scope creep, they never did, the games either change the gameplay or maybe have longer campaigns, imagine an open world resident evil, evil within 2 got pretty close to that and it was pretty cool
I dont wanna get into arguing about ER, because such small details maybe irrelevant to the overall point of the video which I largely agree with, but I wouldn't say that "scope creep" is necessarily why Elden Ring doesn't have as good of a replayability as DS3 for example. I'd say its mostly because of exploration vs combat balance which is persistent in all souls games. Combat is more engaging, allows for improvisation and most importantly mastery. Whereas exploration is a sort-of a one and done deal. So, I find Souls games that lean towards combat to have better replayability (DS3, BB, Sekiro) and games that lean into exploration to be less replayable (ER, DS1). Funny enough, I actually think ER has better combat than DS3, but it doesn't resort to it as often. That's not to say that ER isn't the most daunting of these games to replay - but I wouldn't go as far as "monotonous".
Monotonous is a bit of a strong word. I have replayed it twice and enjoyed it, but there were definitely traversal parts that felt like they dragged on a bit the second and third time...
Not at all. I just want studios to have dedicated teams to make smaller projects in-between. RDR2 is a perfect example of years of effort paying off. Like I said in the video, if you take time to develop the scope, cool.
If you want live updates on projects, see collectibles I add to my library or to see bts analytics feel free to join my discord.
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As a kid I thought open world was the greatest thing a game could achieve. But as an adult I enjoy linear storytelling games more
It's just nice when a game is focused.
Open world with linear options (certain paths for different people, similar story)
For games with very static environments and non physics based games, I’d agree. But for games like RDR2 and physics-based or sandbox games I’d say that open worlds improve on them
@lordcaprisunthe2nd that's a good way of looking at it. I think static zones in open worlds would make the best experience. I really hope Zelda does it.
Stalker gamma has a ballance of both and it absolutely slaps… your PC’s nuts with a hammer at least.
Human pattern recognition is partly to blame for this. We keep trying to make a universal product, despite the fact that it's unnecessary, if not adverse to product diversity. Every game needs an open world, morality systems, stealth, melee combat ranged combat, vehicles, side quests, item crafting, destructible environments...no, not every game needs all of these things. Remember Goldeneye? Banjo Kazooie? Resident Evil?
This is why I think the future of Western video games is in indie and double AA publishing. Smaller scope, less corporate oversight, more unique, and affordable.
Well said sir!
Don't forget the obligatory skill tree!
Agreed. Regardless of what you think about RE4 Remake compared to the original, it's still one of the best releases in the past 5 years. I've replayed it 4 times already while RDR2 and ER feels like a chore to play again.
@@excalibro8365 RE2,3 and 4R are the most generic games in the series. The added nothing to the franchise
cant believe radiohead made a song about half of this mechanic
So did TLC.
and Stone Temple Pilots...
Hogwarts legacy being shown in this is spot on. Biggest issue with the game imo is the scope. They wanted to tell a Hogwarts story, but they also felt the need to make this massive open world.
They didn’t need to do that, if they cut the map in half and focused more on the story and the rpg elements that go along with being a student, the game would’ve been vastly better. The game just gets hurt a ton by having this amazingly made school, but then the game does everything within its power to make you leave constantly to go fight spiders in a generic cave or do a fetch quest for some random dude on the other side of the map.
Not saying I dislike the game or anything, I like it quite a lot, but its faults are extremely frustrating because it tried too hard to fall into the model of the typical open world game and ended up whiffing on what a lot of people were hoping for with the game.
I had to put it down after like 5-6 hours for this very reason. I didn't feel like grinding out another open world game at the time.
Also the horrible gameplay, writing and handholding
@@fearedjames nah you’re tripping about the gameplay, it’s not particularly hard, but it’s pretty fun and by far the best representation the series has ever had for a video game.
@@brendan9868 Its excessively easy and mindnumbingly boring
This video seems like it was made by a channel with 100x subs
@@deepthreedesign got to keep that quality alive for when it happens man!
I wouldn’t have even noticed it WASNT from a larger account if it wasn’t for this comment. Awesome video!
Fr
I subscribed based on quality alone. Couldn't believe it was only 1k
Subs don't equate to quality. Key example being the Paul bros
the worst part is definitely that these consoles cant handle it, they make games that are so graphically ahead of everything we have that the consoles can barely run them, which means that the graphics that they worked hard for arent even being looked at
It's true, that's why a lot of people just play on PC these days
😂😂😂😂
@@Snippyyy however, I do have to say that playing on console is a much more optimized experience sometimes.
I had to restart my PS5 when playing Black Myth Wukong, because the damn particle effects brought the FPS to a crawl.
They aren’t “graphically ahead” of anything. It’s just horrible optimization
I truly miss linear games, the likes of the old tomb raider games, Splinter cell and Prince of Persia games were focused experiences that - for the most part- didn't distract the player with million things to do and had about 10-15 hours of fun gameplay.
They are definitely less common these days (unless you really like searching for independent games on steam made by some guy in his basement).
@@dutchritzindie games made by dudes in basements are my favorite games to seek out and play now
@russellwestbrook462 oh yeah! The passion!
@sheyarjames4904 I don't mean to insult whatsoever but its just a little funny to me that you have the picture of the poster boy non-linear games 😭
@@Pixel007 I have it because it looks cool, and just because I miss linear games doesn't mean I hate open world games.
Open world and sandbox games can be a lot of fun. It's the oversaturation of the market that is a big issue. The vast majority of AAA games are made to be open world.
With the popular belief that you need to spend $1 per hour of gameplay, games are stuffed with repetitive content to pad out the runtime. Not only is everything open world, it's structured the same, plays generally the same, and has the same checklist of busywork to keep you occupied.
Development times also got so long that these companies don't want to take any risks. If it takes 6-10 years for your games to come out you don't want to take any risks with your IP. With less risks there is less innovation, and led to stagnation. Problem now is a lot of people are getting sick of the same formula we've gotten over and over for years now. With presumably many games already in development I doubt we'll see any change soon. I don't think a lot of companies can justify these costs and development times for the sales they are getting.
Well said
You sound like Chris Chan if he got his life together
Um... I don't know if I should say thank you or f**k you...
@@dutchritz in a good way lol
He doesn't even sound half like chris chan wtf u on about.
The thing I really miss from these old games are the cinematic set pieces that happen in the background, without the player's involvement. It makes the game feel larger than even the biggest games we have today. Imo, it does a better job at giving the player a sense of wonder.
It does add a theatrical cinematic aspect to the game that is lost a little bit in explorable environments.
11:52 jedi survivor has the exact same issue. In jedi fallen order I could complete everything before the credits now I'm chasing stupid bounties, random collectables and fishing and going to a planet more than I should and it takes away from urgency if the mission. I haven't even Completed my first playthrough with how monotonous it is.
It definitely takes on more open world elements... I just focused on the main story and called it a day. Made a video about it too.
since playing both Red Dead Redemption and RDR2, i would actually say i prefer the first game. I spend around 20 hours with RDR1, seeing the story and doing some side missions and outfit collecting. its story is consise, and so is its side content. I felt very pleased with it when i finished it. RDR2 on the other hand, while it has a beautiful world with so much life and things to do, the base runtime is about 50 hours, and if you want to do the side content, (which you do) expect to add another 20 or 30 hours to that. after playing for that long, I was just ready for it to be over. during the latter half of the game, I found myself just speeding to the next mission over and over just to see what would happen next, and i groaned when i found out that there was 5 to 10 more hours to play in the epilogue. a game shouldn't do that. I felt like i rushed through RDR2 and didn't experience it to its full potential, even though i spent almost 4 times as long on it.
RDR2 is a game that needs to be slowly digested. I recommend people taking breaks and coming back to it like a TV show.
This is a good well made video but as I replied to someone, gamers need to put their money where their mouth is. We’ll use Sony as an example since you featured them heavily in your video. Sony has released of the top of my head experimental, tight and focused games this gen like Returnal, Sackboy a big adventure, Rachet and Clank rift apart and now Astrobot and guess what, hardly anyone is buying these games. This now discourages Sony and makes them turn their focus and resources to churning out Last of Us clones cos that’s what sells. This is why they closed Japan studio. Y’all were not buying their games. So part of the onus is on us gamers. We need to put our money where our mouth is
You are absolutely right.
Yeah, that's never going to happen.
Couldn't agree more, but sadly gamers will still continue to buy the next FIFA or COD even if they have very little changes from their predecessors.
Rift Apart didn't really do anything special though. Games did seamless portal travel years before it. Portal and Prey 2006 say hi. Returnal....loaded fast? Cool, I guess? I guess the DualSense functions were kind of cool but again what did it do that was special?
yes I agree, however also the titles you listed to me are still not even close to the quality of games from the past (even if they may be within personal interest of genre)
Very much agree with the elden ring analysis playing through I found myself saying "the tight areas are definitely the best I wish the whole game was like that" then 2 seconds later I remembered that's literally dark souls
Right?! 🤣
Careful there, you might get a revelation in your head that will have the "community" stone you to death for even remotely suggesting anything as heretical as "honest criticism" towards Elden Ring.
Elden Ring, for all the praise it gets from the normies (and yes, it's mostly normies doing the praising. Lacking critical thought is exactly the reason why somebody WOULD glorify the game.), is, when you boil it down to it's mechanics, an overly large, overly repetitive, overly bloated, mostly empty, mostly lackluster experience of copypasted "dungeons" randomly spread across a map too big to be fun to explore.
It's combat is decidedly all over the place, unbalanced and too desperate to be bloodborne and sekiro in a game that has the protagonist move like a dark souls character. It's item placement, in comparison to older fromsoft titles, is decidedly more lazy, random and meaningless, unless you REALLY start justifying it with pitiful head-canon.
If the ONLY good content in the game, really, is the type found in legacy dungeons, and only a couple of them for that matter, then what exactly does that tell us about where all the fun lies in this game? What does it tell us with regards to bloated empty open-worlds vs tightly created, semi-linear, interconnected level design?
If the best part of the game lies in fair, balanced, challenging but careful boss-fight design, why make a game that is oversaturated with an absolute crapton of unbalanced, carelessly implemented, spectacle-focused spamlords and gank fights? If the second part of that statement is what made some fights in dark souls/demons souls/bloodborne/sekiro bad, why not criticize that aspect of Elden ring, when THOSE types of bosses in fact make up the majority?
All in all, Elden ring was at it's best when it wasn't being elden ring, but was instead being Dark Souls or bloodborne. Which begs the question: why not just make another dark souls or bloodborne, or more precisely, a game that is limited in scope but focused on something that works wonders and creates a unique, powerful experience because of it? If you do, you get sekiro, but you'll never get elden ring. The latter lacking focus in most things unless you completely ignore everything OTHER than the main mandatory bosses and dungeons, of which there are, like, 8 or something (bosses, not LD's)
I concur thanks for your response
something that really supports this is the rocksteady conference where they show how when they were designing the mechanics in arkham asylum instead of building up the lackluster systems they simply dropped them and focused on perfecting a smaller scope that was most important to the games core
And those games are masterpieces even over a decade later!
I like how elden rings story design is like a jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces scattered between the lands bewteen any you have to go hunt for the pieces and put them together on your own, and the final picture is up to your own interpretation it gives an incentive to actually explore the game rather than just speedrunning your way through the game,
And the fact that the lore is so dense and meaningful makes that process worth it.
no way this video only has 1k views, your production quality is insane for these numbers, you're gonna go far with this channel man, props!
I appreciate that! It takes time to grow that initial audience when you can't make videos all the time, but I'm slowly working on it 😁
@@dutchritz for sure, ive thought about getting out there and making videos but it seems like a lot of effort to insert yourself in the algorithm
Sonic Frontiers is pretty much why I realized I would not want an open-world Devil May Cry game (or at least the idea of it); the rewarding things like ranking and puzzles would be less special and more like chore work overtime. It's also why when I do play open world games nowadays, I enjoy challenge runs to limit the amount of options I can use, and next thing you know the replayability skyrockets.
I never played Sonic frontiers... It just didn't scream Sonic game to me.
Why would you want to fight enemies when they aren't locked with you? Probably that would make avoiding enemies the best strategy or it would be grindy.
Bro hit WELL above his weight and he didn’t miss
Tyson!
Great job with the video! I feel like you made some very good points here. I feel like we each appreciate very different things when it comes to gaming. From a young kid, I’ve always valued freedom, exploration and immersion, hence, I was one of the people who became very fond of the direction that gaming went in. I do still enjoy linear titles and tight level design, especially the older Zelda games that had extremely satisfying puzzles BUT I just find the freedom approach much more satisfying. Whether it’s solving a puzzle in an extremely unconventional way in BOTW, or finding info about some guy and blackmailing him to give you the item instead of shooting everyone in the base in Cyberpunk 2077, or solving a murder mystery randomly in the open world through exploration in RDR2. Both types of games are awesome but open world games definitely need a purpose behind their design rather than being open for the sake of it
Sandbox games have always been entertaining to me. I love my linear games. The only problem is that I like to memorize the linear games I play. It's just out of habit from growing up and playing many types of games and understanding them as games as well as art. I can tell you first and foremost that the story doesn't always have to be spectacular or wow me. Like Days Gone. It's a simple apocalyptic game with a zombie like virus that has a pretty standard story with some great gameplay ang hog riding. Or GTA 5. None of the characters are likable or have redeeming qualities, but that also makes the story more interesting because if we were following another anti hero that tries just a little too hard to be likable I don't think I would enjoy the game as much. I know people love San Andreas and 4, but I was never really a fan of them. I love Vice City and 5. Criminals are criminals and do criminal things. That's why I love GTA. I don't want to play as another killer with a heart of gold. That shit's old and killing weighs on you. I know as I'm a combat veteran. I much prefer the criminals. Which is what made GTA special in the first place.
I like your perspective. Thanks for sharing.
All your points valid as hell but preferences don’t make sense, if you like criminals to behave like criminals, wouldn’t you like gta 4 over 5? Also bad news, 6 is going the heart of gold route lol
@maxmok8242 No, you don't. If you did, you'd understand. You're just another Niko rider.
@@gamervet4760 ya got me I do like niko
I wonder if this is relevant. I really enjoyed the aesthetic of fallout 3 and nv. I wish they dedicated a studio to just keep making smaller games with the same engine. I'd play the shit out of them
IKR?
I remember when journalists started talking about open world and realism in video games. I never wanted that, but all of a sudden everyone acted like they do.
I had two favorite franchises from Ubisoft - Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia. They were both butchered in Assassin's Creed. I never liked any of the AC games, because I knew from the start this would be the creative dead end for Ubisoft. It was the same with Naughty Dog's switch from Uncharted to Last of Us, because the media gaslit players that they should care about "ludonarative dissonance" instead of a fun gameplay. It was the same with Crysis when people got all excited about stuff like photorealism and raytracing.
A decade or two of video games can pretty much be summed up with the phrase "buyer's remorse". Investors, corporations, the media, everyone gaslighting the player, trying to sell us what they want to convince us we want and we kept buying and buying and buying and regretting it. And I hated every player for being baited into this. I hated everyone who thought a game is all about the cutscenes, or the visuals, or the cosmetics, or pretty much everything other than the gameplay.
Then they said "indies are now great". But then follows now and now is when the players finally catch on and they start digging up older games to see what made them so great. And the corporations have noticed this too, so they started literally just removing them from stores, because if you won't buy their new shitty game - they don't want you to play anything at all. Whatever the future of video games is, right now there's a war on quality and good old-fashioned fun. And I don't blame the industry. I blame the people who keep playing these games, shilling for these games and feeding the industry. People who pre-order and buy the DLC and invest in Early Access and Season Pass and Deluxe Editions and empty promises of broken ports of 15 year old games, sold at full AAA price and called "remastered"... If you buy something before it releases, the end result is what you deserve.
There's definitely a balance. There have been some great projects with a large scope, they're just different types of playing experiences. Given the popularity of them, they're not going away, but consumers should support smaller more tight focused experiences as well. I hope more AA studios jump on to making more classical action titles and platformers.
This is so dumb,
So people are just lying to themselves in liking games like the OG Assassins creed or The Last of Us or anytime he game with photorealistic graphics (Resident Evil, Red Dead 2? GTA, Cyberpunk, Ghost of Tsushima and so on). Don’t you see how silly that sounds.
And what’s ironic is that Splinter Cell WAS a “grounded realistic game” for the standards of their time. Someone that played Mario back then would think it’s boring, just like how you call a game like TLoU boring despite having solid gameplay.
What you don’t understand that “games being realistic and cinematic” have been going on since the 90’s, sacrificing gameplay fun for better presentation. But you are too young to understand that.
Jak & Daxter TPL is the best collectathon I’ve ever played. The first half of the game is better than the second in my view, but it’s crazy how well these old games hold up. Ratchet 1 PS2 is also fantastic to play today.
I've been having so much fun replaying through them!
I never understood the need for such big videogames, really is a quantity of quality type of argument. I knew many people who back in ps2-ps3 era who had anywhere from 15 to 45 games and they can say they played them all, now you have people who have hundreds of digital games and can only say they only played about 10 of them 🤣, great video man 🔥
Thank you! Choice paralysis is definitely a thing that causes that these days... Convenience makes playing games less special.
10:38 what game is this????
Star Wars Bounty Hunter (2002)
witcher 3 for me was too big and overwhelming
That's fair, it is a huge game.
@@dutchritz nvm tried the game again and i love it
@@mahadevmnair3797 Way to be someone who can reassess and change their opinion.
The witcher 3 had BOTH tight design and bloat. Luckily, all the side quests have more storytelling in them than most triple AAA games have within their actual, intended main storyline.
It means that if ever there was something that felt repetitive, like the skellige treasure-hunting or encountering yet another drowner nest, there was at the very least an incentive to do these menial things for the eventual reward of getting geared up for the REAL meat of the game, which was all the unique stories being told in the unique way that only the witcher 3 could tell them in.
The witcher 3 was stronger for NOT being an open world sandbox type game entirely. It was stronger for NOT allowing full player freedom. It was stronger for creating meaningful and planned out environments, rather than just open, borderless "go wherever you like" maps like bethesda continues to try and do in vain.
To me, the best type of "open world" is one that isn't entirely open, for the player to go wherever they want to go. Maybe the lizardbrain of our species will inevitably resent that initially, but it will feel satisfied once we learn that this is how we get unique, tailored experiences.
Fallout new vegas, a game I've poured literally over a thousand hours in, unmodded mind you, is the superior open world game to fallout 4. Why? Because it's openness is only ever open once you pass a number of challenges, once you pass the skill-check, literally and metaphorically. It's a game that doesn't FORCE you to follow a linear path, but HEAVILY suggests you probably should, both in terms of quality story-writing following a somewhat linear pattern of beats, AND the actual map design.
And because of that, the game requires the player to learn about landmarks and how they relate to the rest of the surrounding areas. You learn to navigate the world without usage of a map, the latter being a secondary tool to your own mind's power of spatial awareness. A welcome help, but not a crutch.
In fallout 4, because of todd's obsessive focus on "go anywhere you like", the game is weaker because of it. You can now go everywhere, no borders will hold you back. Meaning no area is more challenging than another, unless the challenge is entirely artificial. "this area happens to have enemies of level 40 when you're just level 2" is artificial design. It's not a challenge reflected in a barrier to overcome through learned skills, gathered armor and weaponry and observation of the map, it's just a block you happen to be able to jump over once you fired enough bullets in enough bullet sponges. It's lazy. It's meaningless. It's boring. It's an empty, flat, colourless mud-bath of nothingness. BECAUSE you can go anywhere you like, the player has no limits, and because the player has no limits, they can not experience a challenge, and because the player does not experience a challenge, they can't make meaningful choices, and because of that, they aren't playing a game anymore, they're just staring at a screen and pushing buttons that do meaningless things without true aim.
The point is: it's not "open world" design that ruins games, per sé, it's bad implementation of limitations. "Open world" became a trendy term, with the industry not knowing or not caring what advantages that gives the developers. Like all advantages, they're at their best when you actually know HOW to use them and WHEN to use them. They are not a replacement for expert design, they are tools like all other design.
Red Dead 2> Red dead 1, one is a game and the other is an experience of a lifetime. Red dead 2 is not only a movie, but a book, a tv show and a game all in one, it kinda makes red dead 1 unremarkable in my opinion.
It does have some amazing production quality
@@dutchritzIn the case of quality over quantity? Rdr2 takes the cake for both, kinda tired of people overrating older games just cause they didn't take so long to make. Anyone gonna pretend to enjoy their 100th unremarkable bounty?
When every 100 million dollar game trys to be a lifetime experience, sometimes we just want a game.
@@youngnat talk about overrated when rdr2 is probably the most overrated game ever to exist lmao
I decidedly and wholeheartedly disagree. But my disagreement has everything to do with the actual writing quality, which I won't bore you with.
As for what you were saying as a description: you could very easily make that same description about rdr1 too. Seeing as you still prefer the second one, that obviously can't be the essence of what makes a game better, even to you, regardless of whether or not you've convinced yourself of that.
Rockstar has literally so many different smaller companies who work for them imagine working at rockstar for like 20 years before youd make louds of games after gta 5 you made 1 game and an online mode for gta 5 in about the same time it took for tta 3 to gta 4 to be made there where like 6 games in-between thoes
Sandboxes have their place, but the best games are those with a clear narative, and I agree with your assessment, Horizon Zero Dawn for the reason that it had a perfect balance between the scope and the effort put into it as another example of a lovingly crafted game with a large scope
@@zacharyboardwell7265 need to add it to the play station list
Horizon should've been in my wheelhouse to love. I just didn't like much of it. The hunts were just extremely tedious, and climbing one of the giants was just anticlimactic as I already did that in games like Far Cry and Assassin's Creed. Here, it just felt more tedious with less reward. I admire they went for a Shadow of the Colossus feel, but it just detracts from overall gameplay as I'm just climbing for a few minutes. Which isn't all that exciting because it's exactly why I hate TLOU and Tomb Raider. Then there's the choices that don't matter. Why are they in the game if they don't affect anything at all? You can have at it all you want, but all I see is mindnumbing busy work.
Man, i just wanna say, aside from the insane quality of your video, i can scroll through 100 comments and see, 90% are hearted. Its a really small thing but it shows how dedicated you are. Good luck.
I appreciate that you noticed that! Thanks!
the more i start to grow the more i realize how hard it is to get into recent games because of how big they are, my mind has grown to where it doesn’t want to constantly put time into games that are huge and just wants something simple, smaller, more linear and the more i realize how much i try to search for that game but find out that linear small scale games are becoming rare now these days. i have a whole library of games that are interesting but just can’t get into them as they’ve become a type of game to play once in a while.
It's hard to make a 60-90 hour commitment to anything...
You just gotta figure out for yourself which games are still good, there has been a lot of stinkers recently. But there's still phenomenal games that come out. In my opinion baldurs gate 3 is the best game I've played in recent memory.
That's fair, there have been a decent amount of new games that I've liked and I do want to dig into baldur's gate 3 at some point.
You give me big The Act Man vibes. Your inspiration? I thought first I clicked on an old Act Man Video hahah
Definitely one I watch from time to time, but there are dozens of inspirations.
I don’t think there’s any incentive created by game price or even in general, to create micro transactions in games besides just capitalist greed, or teams looking around and seeing the normalized greed of others, and thinking they need to do the same thing to keep up, and not seeing it as bad bc it’s so normalized. I don’t see why anyone would ever make “alternative monetization” unless their goal was to monetize BEFORE they had a goal to make a game. There’s really no excuse for this “alternative monetization”
Micro's should only exist in live service games to fund ongoing development, in my opinion. In one-off single player experiences... Totally ridiculous!
The fact that the cost of game devlopment has grown as high as it is is just insane. We now on days have more powerfull machines, more assecible and cheaper developer tools, and more aspiring developers than ever before as proven by the amazing high quality indie games released every month, and still the cost of developing new AAA and AA games grows ever larger, and at no noticible improvement. Game files have grown to gargantuan sizes in excess if 100 Gb and run worse in evem the top of the line gaming PCs than consol games did in 2016 and with very minimal visual improvement.
I have a feeling a lot of this is building off of old systems because nobody knows how to build their own anymore. So a lot of work goes into putting Band-Aids on things that should be developed from the ground up. Having massive development teams means that you have to pay more people to do less.
There's a time and a place for overly-broad scope, and that's if you're creating a make-your-own-fun sandbox game and fully developing every new feature-think Minecraft, or the logical conclusion of if they added deeper city/village resource management to player-owned fiefs in a Mount&Blade game.
But there's a reason I had to paint with a pretty narrow brush in any example that _isn't_ Minecraft.
True, but that narrow brush is what I'm talking about. Most games don't need a big scope.
Another thing to consider is that shorter more refined games are more likely to be replayed. I cannot tell you how many times I've played through ocarina of time but it's definitely close to 10. But totk was such a slog that I can only maybe imagine myself doing one more play through.
Yeah... Too much repetitive side content!
I think Hogwarts Legacy is a great game. That said, there are a few things I didn't love about it. One of them was how you had some incredibly repetitive tasks to do like finding the Demiguise Statues to unlock better versions of alohomora or the Merlin trials (of which there are only a couple of variations). Another one is how they structured the story, forcing you to go on side missions to progress. That wasn't only on the main story, it applies to the secondary arcs with Sebastian and Natsai. You have to complete some side missions like helping some people or attending classes do you get the next part, it's not even that "it's too hard without doing the side quests" approach. It broke the pacing of each story and kind of got me out of it. For a long while I'd just go around taking on dark wizards and animals, exploring the world, I gave up on the story. Earlier this year I decided to complete it and "forced myself" to play the stories. The Cassandra side plot was fun because you can go through it on one go, which I did. It's not worth for the reward, but it's nice to olay through that little plot at once and it has some interesting stuff in it.
First I'd like to mention that the quality of this vid is on point. *edited to say sorry for the essay*
Next I'd like to point out that my wife (who is a clissic gamer, shes been playing since she was 12, shes 30 now) has a really big issue with modern games. Because unless they're on the shorter side she has a hard time remembering story relevant stuff.
Elden ring for her was a loathsome experience because it so long, its simply massive. She and I only have about 4hrs a day for gaming. I spent 200hrs getting everything I could in my first playthrough. She spent 100hrs in the game before she even got to morgot. (Yes that's mostly because of a skill issue, she died more times than me in that 100hr time period) So for her, she was always feeling out of place, and out of touch with the world and the story of it as a whole. That feeling was only there because of the scope of elden ring.
She had a hard time finding any kind of payout from boss fights. Because she either steamrolled them or she died way too many times for her patience. By the time she killed most bosses she didn't have an elated response. Often times she was mad because she knew that rn-jesus was the only reason she won. In essence she felt like it was handed over, out of pitty or something.
The main reason I believe she felt like this is because of the fact that she had no idea what the hell was going on. Which stems from the fact that by the time she reaches new lore she's forgotten what she learned 40hrs ago. (in game, like I stated before we only get like 4hrs to game most nights)
Keep in mind elden ring is the only game in like a decade that I have even remotely considered to be a 10/10 experience. But that's me, not her, or others like her. Its got a scope issue for sure, I simply can't deny that. But for me it's the best gaming experience I've had since I was a kid with all the juice in my brain making everything better. 😂
It's not for everybody, but for the people it is for it is an amazing game.
You took my thoughts and articulated them in a way that I couldn’t. Fantastic video
Thanks for watching!
Loved the jak and daxter soundtrack
It's so good!!!
I love final fantasy 16. I think that the side quests were the worst part of the game, not because of the content, but because of how they would drop them in large groups Aunt, you would kind of have to go through a long gauntlet of side quests before moving on
it killed the pacing of the game and often separated major story beads by an hour or two of gameplay, and a lot of these story beads really felt urgent or were extremely engaging. So I spent a lot of time wishing that I didn't have side quests even though the side quests were awesome
There were a bit of mandatory ones, but I feel like a lot of them are optional.
@dutchritz Optional doesn't really mean it's a choice to not do it
If you want to see all of the content, it's not really optional, and it's not clear which quests you can go back to after story events if any
Also it was placed right after HUGE story events. Just killed the Titan guy? Alright give this former slave some bread and wine so they know what it's like to be free. Its honestly jarring and strange pacing to me tbh
Despite being a huge fable fan my whole life I used to think fable 2 and 3s stories were lacking but now id give anything to go back to that time. They were so unique and original.
Fable 2 was my first, love it to pieces!
I played Fable 2 a year or so ago and it quickly became one of my favourite games, I just wish it wasn't stuck as an Xbox exclusive :(
This is a awesome Video on a real problem with modern games, I've always been a Halo Fan since Combat Evolved and post Bungie never hits the mark for me.
Bugie Era Halo was basically a art to art on games for me since it introduced me to it.
And on the topic of Elden Ring i feel exactly that, WAY to big and feels like it need more life.
I started TECHNICALLY start my journey with Fromsoft with Armored Core 4 and what got me into Dark Souls is DS3 and play DS1 after that but I feel Elden Ring was ok but not the greatest, Heck I love AC6 because it's story is amazing, (even though people that say they played it, didn't actually 100% play it) but the games balancing is a little off for pvp.
ALSO from what I see you have some... Unwanted guests that are harassing you, from my experience as a TH-camr is to just delete the comment and promote positive ones or ones that use good criticism.
Overall awesome video dude
I don't mind a little hate in the comment section. Gives me some fun back and forth at times, and allows people to see how I would respond to certain things. Not to mention letting people give their counter arguments. Thanks for all the love though. Appreciate it.
@dutchritz a good counter argument is always nice but to have
This is why I feel games pricing is important. Space Marine 2 is a fun game, but it is very short and its replayablity is okay, but not addicting. And sure, they are adding more over time, but I kind of regret buying the super expensive edition. It feels like a $40 and it was made to be a short and simple game like the old days.
Meanwhile Alan Wake 2 was $50, but $70 if you bought the deluxe edition. I bought it on sale a month after, bundled with Alan Wake Remastered and it legit looks and feels like a $70 game. It pushes games as an artform forward. The market is all over the place when it comes to scope.
I feel like the art form is all over the place at the moment in general.
Sigh, i am roting in my bed and people my age are making super in depth video essays
Go make some videos dude!
Ehh I’m indifferent on the issue some people want games to be massively big and others don’t. For example the crew 2 map is the biggest map car racing wise and all people love it because well vehicles. While others complain about rdr2 map being to big because you’re riding a horse even though cars didn’t exist back than and the slow pace vibe it gave off was because that’s how life was back than not as instant as it is today. All in all I say just enjoy the game for what it is and if you don’t like it just refund it or play a different game that’ll you’ll like more.
True, but people should advocate for what they want to see more of.
I agree. I like smaller, more tightly designed games. I really hope the Zelda series goes back to that philosophy soon.
I think we'll get a hybrid of the two.
I think another reason why Rockstar doesn't bother making games left and right anymore is the change of the company as a whole, but also because of how much success they've gotten from GTA 5 online, so they don't see themselves finding any reason to put resources in making sequels to previous titles they probably think won't "sell" which is why the only other games we've gotten was Red dead redemption 2, and now GTA 6. I do also think Red dead redemption 2 is one of the few open world games worth playing compared to other modern open world games
You're right about GTA online for sure.
Rdr2 isn't worth playing if you've played rdr1, gta5, or gta4. Same old same old. Just stupid massive budget which is cool I guess
@@bocadog3 "same old same old" starting to think you didn't even play RDR2
@@bocadog3 Rdr2 is most certainly worth playing
@bravobird9435 just if your interested in incredibly detailed open worlds and the technical prowess. Not if you're looking for an actually well made game
Bruh. i accidentally put this video on and thought it was a video by some TH-camr with millions of subs 😭
Yes! My attention to quality is working!
Dude that's what am saying people are saying the opposite to avowed like cmon it might be good we don't need the skyrim again , just a good game
This is why I will always prefer RDR over RDR2. 2 hours into RDR and you learn why John is there, become familiarized with a handful of characters, had some narrative drama, and shot a bunch of bad guys. 2 hours into RDR2 and you've been introduced to over a dozen characters without learning anything about them, Dutch reiterates the same thing 30 times, you take some ladies to the store, you still can't access most of the map, and you've literally played through 3 seperate intros. Give me more time shooting and less time cleaning my gun and shaving. Give me more short cutscenes of eccentric characters like Seth Briars robbing graves and less cutscenes of Dutch angrily ranting about family..
RDR 1 is unironically one of the best open world time capsule simulators of all time! The story beats are so action packed!
screaming wojak rdr2 “WE NEED MORE MONEY” “IM DYING DUTCH” “THERE AINT NO PLACE FOR OUTLAWS NO MORE” “WE CANT TRUST MICAH” “REVENGE IS A FOOL’S GAME” “YOURE A GOOD MAN ARTHUR MORGAN” *repeat 20000x until credits roll*
chad rdr1 “our time has passed john” *compass plays while you’re allowed to think about the story in a quiet moment without it bombarding you by telling you the exact same shit over and over again*
Jesus Christ, the haters are out in force. Why can't we have both Red Deads? And Undead Nightmare? (still pissed we never got a sequel for it)
@@demonwind5030 we can and do have all 3 and a half Red Deads, but whats wrong with not liking what you don't like? RDR2 diverged a bit from the pulpy elements of the first 2 games and opted for more of a realistic dramatic story, but we basically knew how the story ended before the game was released. The bounty system and lack of ability to do things like bar brawls or gun fights on moving trains was also disappointing to me. I also have a big thing with intros and wasting time. I'll never watch one of those tv series that "gets good after like the 3rd season". I have limited time for entertainment, and I refuse to wait for my entertainment to get good, and like I said, the game literally does have 3 seperate introductions that don't really teach you anything about the story, characters, setting, and gameplay. Its just feels like unnecessary bloat.
Like what you like, but I will still not like what I don't like, ya know?
And also you made a good point. The scope of RDR2 and its multiplayer was too great for them to make an Undead Nightmare. I'd personally rather have Undead Nightmare 2 over survival and hygeine mechanics, an extremely long story, multiplayer, a gigantic map, or dynamic horse balls.
i rarely even remember a game's plot after I finish it at best I get random flashbacks whenever I see footage from games I've played for tens of hours. and that feeling is like "ah, I know that place/character from x game but I have no idea who that or he is 😂 way way too long. but then again I played grim fandango for the first time recently I remember alot of places and characters
People take away different things from the gaming experience. I personally love a good story, and that tends to stick with me more. At the end of the day the games are about the gameplay and how fun of an experience that is.
@ the story and characters makes it, just like in movies. often the story is ass but if the actors are great than magic happens. same with games imo. sadly "we" replaced that with "nice graphics" and season passes
For me it's gameplay first, story second & graphics third, that is what my structure would be when looking for a good video game.
Truth.
My priority
1. Gameplay
2. Graphics
3. Story (optional)
Racing games/fighting games (including beat em up) with barely any story can still be good
For me story, graphics and maybe then gameplay.
@miqseri it all depends on your taste
Even if it is a nice enhancement, I would go so far as to omit the storytelling requirement. I more so lament the level design of linear games going extinct for completely open worlds with no direction that have you run across flat ground for hours doing repetitive unengaging tasks. "Linear" is a bad word in gaming now, bigger and more open is how you get the automatic "greatest game in the series" 10/10. Even though I'd argue this open direction plaguing games now just dilutes the unique experience many games had before. Giving you less of what they provided before and just more shallow content designed to keep you busy for a hundred hours and waste your time as opposed to keep you having fun for a few hours and respecting your time.
Wonderfully stated!
ill wacht the vid later but in the thumbnail kratos looks like hes the one holding the gun
Lol
Hi, great video, I think you should check out Baldur's Gate 3, imo its the perfect game that handles scope and non-linear experience work REALLY well. Instead of making you feel lost and overwhelmed with content you don't even enjoy, it feels liberating and invokes a childlike desire to explore and figure things out your own way... fits into the counter-argument of "times when scope is the main point/improves the game" as you talked about in the last section.
I have it downloaded on my computer, but I feel like I need to dedicate specific time to it so I've been putting it off.
I agree 100% but leave my boy Arthur Morgan alone 😤
I see em in the thumbnail 😤
Lol I literally complemented RDR2 throughout the video 😁
I'm making a manga series and I only intend it to be 10 volumes or 12 maximum. I don't need to make a 100-volume shonen series. I don't want to waste my reader's time. Wish game developers thought the same with their games. Quality over quantity please.
Good luck with your manga! Name?
How do I ask for less MCU and more My Dinner with Andre?
Don't spend money on the MCU I guess.
Take a shot every time he says "scope-creep"
Lol
I agree with everything said here, but let's be honest, the gamers are at fault too, because they put their money in those bloated games, and those tight games are actually forgotten because of how short they are, or even if they are well received, they just don't sell as much as those games.
Definitely need to speak with our wallet.
I disagree but thats fine we just seem to have different taste in games. Though yes a lot of what you brought up made sense.
I respect that.
Yeah I really like red dead redemption 2, but sometimes its so big that I get burnt out playing it and take a break from it. lol
@ RDR2 is my favorite game. But as someone who loves 100 percenting games I hated it. But finally getting there was so satisfying.
0:01 BULLY MENTIONED
A Rockstar classic!
9:38 - a true MASTERPIECE right there!
It's like my favorite superhero game! I did a video about it if you want to check it out
@@dutchritz Finally found the time to check it out. Great video, my friend. Big like!
@raducoman6423 glad you enjoyed it! It's one of my favorite games, and deserves more attention.
@@dutchritz absolutely!
@@dutchritz Just gave it another watch. Such a great essay on my favorite superhero game ever definitely warrants a subscribe! Take care, and keep up the good work.
Thankfully we have indie games, simple and hard hitting
Amen
Excellent video Chief
Thanks Skipper!
Elden Ring was the biggest victim of this trend imo
Dark Souls 1 is still the best in their catalog, followed closely by bloodbourne obviously
It does suffer from bloat. I still love it though. Probably my favorite open world.
@ fair, the visual design is undoubtedly amazing. Tbh I really only get engrossed in a video game open world when it’s a first person experience like Oblivion or Cyberpunk 2077
@@__Jah__I put so many hours on Oblivion first time...
great video! keep it up
Thanks dude!
I think “sandbox” isn’t a good name for a lot of these open world games. “Theme park” is way more appropriate.
Not a bad way to put it. I think sandbox fits perfectly for BOTW though.
@ oh most definitely, even it’s main story quests allow for a sandbox-y, almost immersive sim-like approach. That’s actually my biggest gripe with Rockstar games - they craft such massive and immersive worlds full of posibilities, but then give you one single way to approach the missions.
I grew up in the ps2/3 great console, greats games. No nostalgia bais tho, 90% of their libraries are garbage. Just because we're living through the present and have to actively shovel through new releases doesn't change the ratio of gold to crap. I just find it a bit unfair to take the best of the 6th and 7th gen and compare them to the average game released today. Especially when the average ps2 game is some forgotten title sitting in a stack of 25+ games.
This video, unfortunately, was a bit of a waste of time. A lot of time spent explaining the symptoms of corporate interests without ever mentioning "corporate interest". That's the issue today's games face, what makes the average game today different than the one from '05. The issue of scope pertains to investments of real world money into media.
The point of this video was to compare the mainstream highest quality games of each era. This is not a video about shovelware. And I did mention the heavy budgets of games, and noted how those funds would be better allocated to smaller projects. That ultimately comes down to the people pitching the games to the investors and choosing whether they want to seek funding for large projects or not. This is just an opinion piece advocating for more smaller projects being funded, and it is a sentiment that is shared by a lot of the gaming community. If you felt like it wasted your time, I'm sorry, but apparently over 30,000 people do not share your sentiment.
@dutchritz Shovelware is a term for individual video games or software bundles known more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness. That's a quick definition I found from Wikipedia (terrible source, ik), which sounds a lot like the problem you described with modern video games, so maybe your video is about shovelware? I did not bring up shovelware, though. I used the verb "shovel" to refer to the act of going through the catalog of new releases. There are plenty of mainstream highest quality games that end up forgotten in a stack, such as farcry 3. Let me expound on my first point. I was just saying it's disingenuous to take 1% of ps2 games and compare them to all of the mainstream games that are being released now. Im just saying that was not what it was like playing on ps2 in the '00s.
As you stated, the issue of scope creep has been a topic for 30 years now. And I'm saying the biggest difference from games released this decade compared to older games is corporate interest. Within the past decade, corpos have realized the profit to be made from games, and they've run with it. The reason we have so many highest quality mainstream games have a shallow open world is because the people in charge believe it will make money. In a point, I believe you'll agree older game's pushed the scope to break boundaries, newer games push the scope to break sales numbers.
Now you can say these big studios should put their time into smaller budget games. Though I find the statement somewhat backwards as there are indie games that have tight level design, gameplay loops that add to the narrative, and they're usually made by people who have passion for the video game they're making. These games that "harkin back to the golden age of gaming" or w/e buzz words you want to use exist. I realized everything you said in this video years ago, so I stopped buying highest quality mainstream games. Because money is the only language lizard brained corpos understand.
Thank you for your reply, sorry for my long winded response
@s0meb0dy1 I get what you're saying, and you are definitely correct about profit being the driving force behind the mainstream gaming industry, but honestly, video games have always been a for-profit business. I think there are a decent amount of examples of smaller scale games made by large companies that do well (Astro Bot, Ratchet & Clank) and it would be cool if those larger resources and amounts of polish go into those kinds of titles in the future on top of new innovative stuff coming from indie developers. With Astro winning the Game of the Year, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing more games like it coming out as AAA titles.
At the end of the day, whose funding games matters less than who they're funding. Developers with passion for smaller scale projects can be funded by major studios and companies and still be profitable. A good example would be the guy that created It Takes Two, or Ghost Town Games.
Great stuff, you have just earned a sub my friend.
Many thanks!
yeah were remember when games were actually good
WHEN THEY AVOIDED WOKE SHIT
Definitely an aspect of quality control
remember when Playstation used to make good exclusive games like sly cooper, ratchet and clank , jak and daxter and the ps2 god of war games
Truer words there never were!
they should make a handheld again and make exclusives there
Hey, Mr complainer guy, did buy the smaller, tight and focused games Sony released this gen? Returnal, Sackboy, a big adventure, Rachet and Clank: Rift apart, Astrobot? Did you buy them? If you didn’t then shut up cos people will complain that Sony doesn’t make these games anymore then when they do, hardly anyone buys them and it makes them instead focus on the Last of us clones instead
@@dammyoyesanya4656 Astrobot sold 1.5 million units in two months. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart has sold over 4 million units. But sure, "hardly anyone" bought those. Nice try, though.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure was bound to do poorly since it isn't a proper Little Big Planet sequel with the ability to make your own content. Returnal is a roguelike, a genre more popular on PC than consoles, and you can find those types of games on PC for half the cost of Returnal.
nice video man, subscribed🤙
Thanks! I appreciate it!
what the hell you talking about boy. Strongly disagree with this, of course level design is important but open world/sandbox type games can have really intresting, cool bits, its just something you discover by yourself instead of being something everyone sees, no matter what. They're just different. Of course theres a lot of copy paste open world games, but there's also a ton that have super interesting stories, or really coom mechanics, or ones that have moments that you can share and feel like you had your own unique experience. I just think the script could have gone through a couple more drafts is all, there were still some interesting points
It's more of a preference when it comes to story flow more than anything I suppose. Some open world games have proven to me that you can really make the format work, but a lot of them use it as an excuse to be lazy with the flow of game pacing. I feel like I articulated the points I wanted to make pretty well, and given that it's my most viewed video so far, I would say that other people would agree.
there are still polished games may i say look at fromsoft some sony titles rockstar and capcom
Yeah, if it's not made by a western studio.
I’ve never seen so many L takes in one video… but I liked anyways
Lol ok 🤣
Love this. Gaming will be great again one day, I'm hopeful.
Hell yes
I’m so tired of DS and Elden. Such a bs. Such a massive hype over nothing. The first DS was quite revolutionary in terms of world building and all em Han is combines with unusual storytelling. But it was over 10 years ago. Bruh. DS 2 (my first ds), was complete junk and trash, even a 15 yo kid understood that. DS3 without online and all that hype around it back in days is a hollow (ha) and boring experience, where all you need is pure dmg and buffs to increase it. That was such a disappointment when I discovered this for myself. Why spend 7 min fighting dancer, when you can equip bleed weapon even better if it’s heavy and just drop all your dmg while boss is passive walking around. Such a trash. But Elden even worse, they managed to screw up everything that was holding previous games in “balance” with liner location visiting. But Elden ruined it all, created a big EMPTY open world with colossal amount of unnecessary and repetitive enemy groups and dungeons n caves with such low reward, that you regret spending time visiting it. And you have to visit it, because you can’t know where could be an item for ur build.
Why play the game, why spend the 5x hours on exploring everything when you can go watch YT guide for “op build” and became one in half an hour. Such a trash.
You're definitely in the minority with that opinion, but you have the right to feel however you want.
I will never understand the hate that DS2 gets. Skill issue, perhaps? I did two playthroughs myself.
You'll definitely blow up in a very short amount of time
Hope so
Based From Russia with Love reference
Those old Bond games are so much fun
This is the reason why I will always hate Assassin's Creed 2 with all my heart: it dropped every bit of essence and originality from the first one and gave us a game that looks worse, where you are saturated with useless gadgets, extremely linear missions, a cheerful atmosphere and the worst of all: a protagonist with Tony Stark personality whose entire world revolves around him and his actions
Valid opinion, but I love AC 2. I think the mechanics are way more polished and I like Ezio's personality and story.
@dutchritz
Of course it did some things better! It's just a matter of taste 👌🏻
They still make good games you know. There mostly on Nintendo consoles.
I know 😁
You sound like Ray Romano
rayman!
Does that mean everybody loves me?
I’m not even gonna watch the video I’m just gonna say you’re wrong because I don’t even care anymore
Very intelligent way to have a discourse...
Harry Potter on ps2
This.
i play ps2. modern games are lame and more like movies with gameplay.
I don't like overly long games.
I completed hitman 2 silent assassin and tom clancey ghost recon recently. Couple days each to finish them. perfect length.
to me only mostly sports games should be repeatitive, longer or mmorpgs.
That's generally my attitude, but there have been quite a few longer games in the last decade that have won me over to camp "it works sometimes"
@dutchritz such as?
@@KrisVickers-wn6dd because of its combat variety as well as wanting to understand the world building deeper, I would say Elden Ring is the the most glaring example. I've played through the game three times at about 90 hours per playthrough and I'm still not extremely tired of the gameplay. Final Fantasy 16 had engaging storytelling in most of its side content, and I wasn't mad at the game for making me spend roughly 60 to 70 hours in order to finish all of it. As much as there is a lot of faffing about you can do in Red Dead redemption 2, it is a very interesting narrative to follow that does take a long time including side content. The quality just has to be there for me to find it interesting. It was the same thing with some older games too, like Bethesda's and Rockstar's older stuff. Ideally, I don't like spending more than 25 to 30 hours on a game, but there have been a few examples like these where the quality was maintained for long periods of gameplay. Most games can't live up to that kind of scope though.
@@dutchritz I think I'd just get bored of spending so much time in a game. I duno. but maybe cause I have quite a big backlogs of ps2 games to work through.
@KrisVickers-wn6dd I totally get it. My favorite type of games fit into that framework more often than not too. The Witcher 3 is another good example of a long game with high quality.
wtf just over a 1000 subs ? ＼（〇_ｏ）／
This video quality feels like something from a million+ sub channel would put out.
Thanks!
This channel will be 500,000 subs within 6 months if your vids get sent out
If...
I wish resident did evil scope creep, they never did, the games either change the gameplay or maybe have longer campaigns, imagine an open world resident evil, evil within 2 got pretty close to that and it was pretty cool
Here before this channel becomes bug
I can't wait for my channel to become bug 😉
red dead 1 > red dead 2. one is a game the other a movie.
Haha so true! Couldn't have put it any better myself 😂 (although I must admit, Red Dead 2 has much better gameplay than most "movie" games)
@@dutchritz true not red dead 1 is way more replay able specially with the zombie mode.
Cool, but I still love RDR2.
@@dutchritzIt was very long, but I love slow-paced games. Though, Guarma was a really rushed chapter that should’ve been developed further, imo.
@@Hazbin_fan_edits like I said, if you can fit good material into a large scope... I'm here for it.
Man heeft eig gelijk
I'd like to think so
@ be jij eig een hollander ofn
9:12 its Daxter not Dexter
Inflection was off a bit, but I know.
Ads and it's consequences
Consequences you say?
I dont wanna get into arguing about ER, because such small details maybe irrelevant to the overall point of the video which I largely agree with, but I wouldn't say that "scope creep" is necessarily why Elden Ring doesn't have as good of a replayability as DS3 for example. I'd say its mostly because of exploration vs combat balance which is persistent in all souls games. Combat is more engaging, allows for improvisation and most importantly mastery. Whereas exploration is a sort-of a one and done deal. So, I find Souls games that lean towards combat to have better replayability (DS3, BB, Sekiro) and games that lean into exploration to be less replayable (ER, DS1). Funny enough, I actually think ER has better combat than DS3, but it doesn't resort to it as often. That's not to say that ER isn't the most daunting of these games to replay - but I wouldn't go as far as "monotonous".
Monotonous is a bit of a strong word. I have replayed it twice and enjoyed it, but there were definitely traversal parts that felt like they dragged on a bit the second and third time...
I do not want to live in a world without RDR2 and the new God of War games, and it feels like thats a world youre proposing
Not at all. I just want studios to have dedicated teams to make smaller projects in-between. RDR2 is a perfect example of years of effort paying off. Like I said in the video, if you take time to develop the scope, cool.