Excessive linearity is bad...but overly open is worse

Dont you think so? OK linearity is cool, until some point, for example FFXIII linearity is terrible, but plenty of games, most games actually, are also linear and they play good, other games go for being open, multiple paths and all that, well I dont find those games very attractive to be honest...Seriously what is the appeal in those games? they put you in the middle of a huge area, and tell you something like "LOOK FOR A FLOWER" and you are in the middle of a forest, they just tell you look for the flower they dont even tell you where, they dont mark it on your map, you have to go around all the forest peeking every corner until you find the damn flower, thats frustrating. or when they give you like 400 different paths to take, and you say "which one should I take?" the decision is completly yours, there is no right or wrong path, every path leads to the same way, so lets say I choosed path C, but it turns out than in path A there was an awesome reward. loot, encounter, anything, how was I supposed to know that there would be something in that path? thats why I dont like games like elder scrolls...seriously imo, if the world is so open, they should at least allow you to see it from a 3rd person perspective, not an extremely limited 1st person vision.

You need the structure of an linear game along with the freedom of a open world, I agree with you TC

This is the best way I've heard it put - Sessler's Soapbox (can't link)http://www.g4tv.com/videos/51937/crysis-2-linear-and-loving-it-sesslers-soapbox/?quality=hd

Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.millerlight89

Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.millerlight89

[QUOTE="millerlight89"]Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.mrmusicman247

You need the structure of an linear game along with the freedom of a open world, I agree with you TC

R3FURBISHED

RAGE is an example of that btw. 8)

Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.millerlight89

If someone dosen't know how to play minecraft, they are in a world of trouble.

[QUOTE="mrmusicman247"][QUOTE="millerlight89"]Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.millerlight89

Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.millerlight89

SaGa. You're given a general objective, then told to solve it without so much as a direction to begin in.

Exploring is one thing, but the lack of direction can really hamper the experience.

[QUOTE="lightleggy"]And I can also think of dragon age, again im not saying that the game is bad, im saying that being too open, even in plot, can be bad... for example in DA:O you can choose a different "plot" at the beginning of the game in character creation...well what if the plot I choose didnt appealed to me? and the one that I didnt choosed was awesome? it would complelty change my perception of the game.millerlight89

Its not another path though, its a different opening that leads you to the exact same path

Once again there is another video that link to -http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1096-Dragon-Age-Origins

[QUOTE="millerlight89"]Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.mmmwksil

SaGa. You're given a general objective, then told to solve it without so much as a direction to begin in.

Exploring is one thing, but the lack of direction can really hamper the experience.

Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.millerlight89

Off the top of my head, X3 Terran Conflict fits that bill :P. To be fair, it is considered a space sim.

If we were to have the extremes, give me overly open if the world was done well. Mafia 2 could have been one of the greatest games last year if they made it a sandbox game with more activities to do around the city. The city looked, artistically, nicer than GTA IV's Liberty City. It was a shame we never got to do more in it.

The thing I hate the most about games like Oblivion is travelling. Exploring is one thing, but there are times when just crossing an open field frustrates me. I want to get to places quicker but not feel like I might be missing out on content.

The witcher 2 also had some of these issues...although only at the beginning of chapter 1 really...when they throw you start making the sidequests, you got to learn about nekkers, ok I played TW1 so I know that means buy a book about them and get a glossary entry...but the guy who sells books is not marked on my map, so I have to look for him, I looked for like 1 hour and I gave up, then I went outside trying to kill nekkers, OK I do it, now it turns out I need a special bomb to destroy the nests, they dont give me the location of said nest and I have to look for them all over the forest. its not much, and the game doesnt suffer from that problem after that chapter, but still, I had a hard time going through taht part because of tahtlightleggy

The Witcher strikes the perfect balance, and to quote what Mr. Sessler said in the first link I provided, it provides an open world with structure were you have complete freedom within a confined space as a way to stop you from just growing super duper powerful and breaking the system

...alright, maybe the word "quote" is the wrong word, but the idea was conveyed

[QUOTE="mmmwksil"]

[QUOTE="millerlight89"]Give us an example of a game that suffers from being too open ended. I'm having a hard time thinking of one.millerlight89

SaGa. You're given a general objective, then told to solve it without so much as a direction to begin in.

Exploring is one thing, but the lack of direction can really hamper the experience.

Well, it is a very old series :P Though that wouldn't excuse the later installments. The only downside I see to being too open-ended is repetitve locales. And that certainly isn't a game breaker.

I would only think games with large, open areas are bad if there's nothing to do in them, like L.A. Noire.

I would only think games with large, open areas are bad if there's nothing to do in them, like L.A. Noire.

Drakebunny

Woah woah woah are you trashing the game Flower?Diviniuz

a game's "linearity" or "openness" is completely irrelevant to how good the game is. people need to stop incorporating this type of bias in reviews. it is asinine.

FF12 and FF13 share teh same negative for me. Which has to do with maps. FF13 was to linear while 12 maps were huge and felt huge for the sake of it and nothing els. It was a pain traveling all of that. especially when you find a chest in the deepest corner of the map and it was just crap in it. Both games were still great though. I just want something in the middle.

In don't care about how linear or how open-world a game is. Really, what I care about is the content present within the game itself.

I didn't care about the fact that FFXIII was linear at all, it was fine. The problem was it didn't offer much outside the cieth stone missions. FFX was linear as all hell too yet had a nice amount of optional stuff to do to keep me occupied.

Or look at Contra III. That game is excessively linear yet is also a damn good game and I love it.

Shadow of the Colossus, while I thought the game was good, disappointed me with it's insanely large world, because there was absolutely nothing to do in it outside of killing puny lizards and shooting arrows at fruit on trees. There couldn't have been more stuff to do? Had there been more CONTENT added to SotC's world I may have been able to like the game much much more.

i agree, i prefer a game with a narrative focused set path like uncharted, dead space, portal etc. over games like fallout, oblivion, gta, red dead redemption. the only open ended games i have truly got sucked into are the assassin's creed games, mostly because the over arching narrative is so good and im a sucker for history.