What Devs STILL Misunderstand About Open World Design | Design Delve
Added 2025-08-04 15:03:31 +0000 UTCThis week's episode of Design Delve is now available!
Comments
Elden Ring's open world is in my eyes actually a quite linear experience. Taking optional content aside, there is a desired order of areas to travers through (with Caelid being the exception), going off the path feels like sequence breaking. Especially the late game nullifies the idea of freedom where to go next with the fixed sequence of Leyndell, Mountain Tops, Crumbling Azula, Leyndell again (if I remember that all correctly). Traversing itself has some indicators of open-world-as-a-bad-choice: Torrent is basically just sprint mode, there is hardly meaningful interaction with obstacles/cliffs (either you can scale them immediately or you can't). Reading the landscape from afar didn't really let me map out my route mentally, because the geometry lacked clarity. Oh my, actually, I like Elden Ring a lot, but I think its open world shines rather as a narrative device and with its atmosphere, not so much as a gameplay experience. A really good open world, where every part of it was important to my motivation, expectation and planning, is Subnautica. Sure, the simplicity of the narrative helped, also something Breath of the Wild is benefiting from.
Mirko
2025-08-05 08:54:07 +0000 UTCBest: Skyrim. Micro storytelling accomplished just by object placement and framing everywhere, large contiguous space with visual lures almost always in sight, extensibility (large spaces that aren’t locked to mid-quest line status are a modder’s dream), major side quests that aren’t required for or even directly linked to the main stories. Worst: anything linear disguising itself in an open world. Parallel tracks are still railroading. Looking at you, Biomutant.
Caerdwyn
2025-08-05 02:31:11 +0000 UTC
