So, Criterion just announced their new project: a next generation open-world racer, and I can't understnad why. Nothing is gained from adding an open world to a racing game. You don't really explore the world outside of driving around it, which is what you already do in racing games.

Look at what you get from other open-world games. You break the pace of the main game with mini-games, side-objectives, hidden items and driving around the world. Everything in the world is used to break the pace of the main game. What did we get in the first Burnout Paradise? We got a place to get repaired, a place to get gas and a place to buy cars. Two of these aren't even good ideas in racing games outside of Nascar and the third isn't any reason to create an open-world. All these are, are glorified hub-worlds. Everything extra that they accomplish could be easily done in a menu.

The problem with open-world racers is that by creating an open-world, the racing experience is diminished. Like in Paradise, you're left to check out a mini-map and road signs to see if you're going in the right direction, which is fine in any other open-world game, but not when you're driving over a hundred miles an hour making desperatey sure to not to crash while other cars are driving the same speed against you and know exactly where they're going. It makes it much too easy to take a turn too early and find yourself lost and behind. And the tracks created in these games will never be as well put together as ones that were handcrafted for a linear racing game, because they have to conform to the rest of the world's maping. It's no more interesting to mold your own path in an open-world racer, because it's no different than discovering a short-cut in a linear racer. At the end of the day, there's always going to be one path that's the fastest. The only difference in an open-world racer is that you have so many more wrong paths you can take, which never makes for much fun.

I'm glad that not too many racers are going this route. There's just no need for it. Well, that's my opinion at least :)