Abyssal Pixels: Are We Suffering From Open-World Fatigue?

Open-world games are probably my favourite genre of all time. Ever since I played Elder Scrolls Oblivion for the first time, I was in love with the freedom and the exploration that open-world games offer us. And I make it no secret. It’s a fantastic way to approach a game that I often cited as being superior to linear games since you have that degree of freedom to explore. I even proclaimed at the start of the generation that I’m excited for all the open-world games that were coming our way.

As you can see, I’m an open-world nut, but recently my love for the genre has started to show cracks and my love for it diminish quite rapidly. Why is that? How can I go from a die-hard fan to someone that is indifferent to it just like that? I have a few theories that I would like to share.

Ubisoft

Oh Ubi, you industry darlings. You guys really done fucked up a lot of things. It’s not an opinion column bemoaning something without these wonderful bastards showing up somewhere. Ubisoft have some iconic (they do like to use that word) open-world franchises in their roster. Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and Watch_Dogs all descended on us last year. Some were disastrous and some were a bit underwhelming even if they have merits. I’ll give you one chance to guess which one was disastrous.

Now, three huge open-world games is a lot to take in. When I first played Assassin’s Creed Unity, I got all of the synchronization points and upon seeing the absolute bukkake of activities on my map, my heart sank. There was so much to do that I didn’t know where to start. So I just wandered around doing whatever I can see. And then I discovered that most of the activities were boring. Collect chest, fucking yay. Missions that give you next to no rewards. Uninspired fetch quests. Pointless distractions that offered little of value. I simply did not care to do anything. Let it be known that in previous Assassin’s Creed games (yes, even number 3), I did everything and loved it. Black Flag was especially fun to do. They lost that essence that made an open-world game fun: enjoyment of the stuff you can do.

Far Cry 4 fared a bit better since the activities were fun to do. However, I did all of this before in Far Cry 3. Also, what the hell is Ubisoft’s fascination with climbing towers and revealing the map? Seriously, it gets old after the hundredth time. The only saving grace was that the gameplay was fun enough to warrant my attention for an extended period of time although I did become a bit bored with everything. I didn’t do most of the optional stuff when you liberated outposts because they were all basically the same and not worth my time.

Watch_Dogs was fun, and I hold by that opinion to this day, even if most gamers say it was a generic piece of crap. But even this game had its fair share of monotonous side-missions and map bukkake. Also radio towers for fuck sakes.

The Crew can also be included here, but I didn’t care enough for it to even warrant any attention. The point I’m getting at here is that Ubisoft flooded us with open-world games last year and sort of burned those out that chose to play most of them. After a while you didn’t want to climb towers or do the same side-mission for the twentieth time. It was all too much and I believe that’s why Ubisoft’s games got even more plastered than they already were.

Remasters 

2014 was probably the year of the remaster and 2015 will probably be a sequel to that. Some remasters were fine such as The Last of Us and GTA V did enough to make a remaster enjoyable. But most of the remasters  we got so far were of open-world games. Sleeping Dogs, Saint’s Row IV, GTA V and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag. Because of the low amount of games released at the start of the new generation, some of us went ahead and got these remasters just for the sake of playing something even if we completed it before.

This adds to the fatigue since we’re now playing massive open-world games again on top of everything else that’s open-world. That means more activities, side stuff and so on. You start getting tired of it.

Even The Good Ones Are Open-World

Most notably Dragon Age Inquisition and Shadow of Mordor. Inquisition was quite a bit more intense in scale than Mordor, admittedly, but the point still stands. Inquisition was so full of stuff to do that it was a bit overwhelming if I’m being honest. It was still fun and an excellent game, but damn it took a long time to finish, especially if you’re a completionist. Shadow of Mordor was a bit more balanced with the open-world being more organic in nature with increased focus. Though it still took a while to complete and experience everything.

Too Much, Too Fast

And here lies the crux of my point. If you were an avid gamer in 2014 and late 2013, and by that I mean you played almost all the games that released, open-world games flooded your disc drive way too frequently. You would just start getting into one and another would pop up in just a few weeks. When you saw the wealth of activities and huge world to explore, instead of feeling joy and excitement, you just sighed because you knew you won’t be able to do everything. Most of the games I mentioned here are massive in scale and would take you weeks to fully experience, but you can’t since there’s another game that you want to play that also has a massive world with a lot to do in it.

It all came too fast and without mercy. I started feeling burned out, dreading the sight of a huge map with activity bukkake. I was even relieved when I played something like Call of Duty Advanced Warfare because it was a nice linear experience that I could finish in a weekend and not feel like I missed out on half the game. I even want to get my hands on The Order 1886 just to enjoy a scripted, linear shooting game without having to worry about scaling a fucking radio tower for a change.

My unending love for open-world games took a sharp decline and even more so since I became as busy as a politician during tax season. I don’t have time to sit for 8 hours straight just to do a bunch of stuff in a big world. I’ve started loving linear games more than ever before because I knew I could play them for a little while, have a good time and be done with it.

It’s Not Stopping Soon Though

The open-world train is showing no signs of stopping whatsoever. Witcher 3 is upon us and you just know that game is going to be huge. Ubisoft is continuing their open-world splurg with The Division coming up as well as Assassin’s Creed Victory. Bethesda are going to announce something at E3 and it’s probably going to be open-world (please be Fallout 4, I will cry and love open-worlds again). Bloodborne will also BDSM us soon. All I’m hoping for is that we’ll get a little room this year between massive open-worlds and not be saturate us like last year.

What about you? Have you become tired of open-worlds or still like them? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

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