I said this many times before, and by before I mean since decades ago, but allow me to do what I think is a necessary memory dump once again: there are different kinds of games which are defined by a genre, and those genres can be either "singular" (e.g., racing) or "blended" (e.g., racing+puzzle). A genre is a category based on certain criteria: for example, 2D + side-scroller + platformer + action = metroidvania; or difficult boss fights + dark fantasy + lore-driven (usually somewhat abstract) = souls-like. But, similarly, there is also this type of game where a similar combination of design elements results in a unique genre blend, which is a mix of: open-world + empty world + shallow story + overhyped + stolen IP. That results in, what I personally call, "oblivion-like".

Now, I am one of the few people who hate Bethesda with a passion, and as such I also hate Todd's smug face and his garbage creations: games built on the worst and buggiest game engine ever made, composed by a sexual predator, programmed by people who seemingly never cared to optimize it, based on the series of someone who left the company after the second game in the series, and someone who was ousted from his own company. That Todd guy is known as the one who was leading the development of one of the worst video games ever created that plays like a walking simulator, like a Unity demo project, like a well crafted purposefully buggy application designed to infiltrate the gaming market like stuxnet to prevent gamers from playing actual video games. It lacks any joyful gameplay mechanics, it lacks any depth, there is no reasonable dialogue with NPCs who only know the word "citizen", there are no mobs to fight, and the "dungeons" are the same empty locations copy-pasted across the world, which itself lacks any life and dynamics. The experience of buying and playing Oblivion back in 2006 was the worst gaming experience I had in my entire life since the MS-DOS era. Playing that game after having played something like Fable: The Lost Chapters, among other RPG masterpieces was straight insulting. The "game" was so bad, it was the first time in my life that I went back to the store to return it. But.

But it opened my eyes. Such "games", turns out, they exist. They can exist. And, more so, they started existing en masse especially after Steam decided to get rid of Greenlight and popularization of mobile games. Those two things are the reason why almost every major company changed their gamedev strategy, since Flappy Bird proved that you can generate massive profits without your product being a well made AAA title--no, it can be a ten-sprite single tap low effort garbage that plays on people's feelings. Right after 2013 you can witness AAA games slowly losing quality, indie game enthusiasts spamming digital storefronts with unfinished and undercooked garbage, and on top of that the gacha plague, Valve dominance, further monopolization of the market, chip shortage, consumer market depression, and wget ignoring my regex rules for some god-unknown-damn reason. And that's fine, because now, after certain game designers have produced masterpieces that were a driving force behind graphics cards development, and thanks to whom the world has seen and experienced the vast possibilities of how a game can entertain your brain cells, we now have a standard to which we can hold new AAA creations, which is based purely on experience. Such were games like original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. With every MW game I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth, it was so atmospheric and real, that wasn't just me playing the game. I was experiencing it. That was an immersive experience. Now? Now you have the sequels being infected with microtransactions and cringe like this. They simply killed the title.

We already know that AAA titles are those not only with big budget, but also with a team of professionals, each of whom knows what they are doing and is a master of their field: UI designers, programmers, sound designers, artists, composers, etc. Things they create aren't random--they are consistent. One of the issues I have with modern RTS games is that they aren't immersive, mostly because there is some inconsistency in their design: for example, the world is supposed to be medieval, but the UI suggests it's a sci-fi based long-long time in the future in the galaxy far-far away. That might look like a small detail, an unnecessary nitpicking, or being overly judgy over a passionate project of small and poor indie devs. But... nehh. Such a "small" thing is the reason why I wouldn't consider playing their game. And this is to the same effect with big companies attempting to create an "immersive experience" using Bethesda's signature method: market your game as open-world with vast possibilities. What they end up shipping? An overhyped abomination. A buggy dumpster fire. A No Man's Sky. For some reason, there is this tendency of thinking that the game having a bigger world makes it vastly more interesting and enjoyable and immersive. But, my experience of playing thousands of video games shows that this is not the case.

Gamers also come in different shapes and forms: there is this certain breed of players that only played games that are known to be oblivion-like. Or gacha trash. Or they've been growing up on Fortnite, and their all-time favorite is Red Dead Redemption 2. Or they've only played Animal Crossing, the diet version of The Sims--no, not on the N64--on the Nintendo Switch. Those are casuals. And don't get me wrong, I like Animal Crossing, it has its own unique atmosphere; and they play for fun, and that's OK. The problem is the people who are so casual and so far away from gaming politics, they lack any kind of awareness of what is considered a good game. Take Cyberpunk 2077 as an example: I heard about that game since this teaser trailer was uploaded on YouTube (or maybe even before that), it was pretty hyped, and it was delayed several times, and once it was finally released it was a total disaster. There were few reasons for me to think it was going to be a disaster: first, I didn't like The Witcher series, and it would take a whole another rant to explain why; secondly, the first gameplay reveal video they released was awful. But I didn't expect it to be so bad it was probably the first AAA game to be pulled from Xbox and PlayStation Store platforms. And such clueless gamers keep buying these overhyped games, and even more so--pre-ordering. People are ready to throw money at companies who actively abuse them, and in return those gamers get not even a 1% of the experience gamers like me got by playing those good old games.

Because of that, companies lack any incentive to "try hard" to make an actually good video game anymore. They went from making a game that you play to a game that is playing for you. Examples include God of War going from an action-driven masterpiece to a woke nintendovized disneyslop. That is also any mobile gacha hell with hundreds of buttons. You could call it a button clicking simulator that sucks your time and money, examples of which include Age of Empires going from cult classic to a miserable button clicking simulator that sucks your time and money. Same with Diablo series. There are just too many examples for me to bother to list them all. This is a shift in industry's priorities. And the priorities have changed because of the shareholders within those companies--those aren't passionate gamers or developers. That's why the easiest thing one can do is render a massive terrain, plant few trees here and there, insert mobs at random distant places, and let the player explore. Let them take a deep breath in the vastness of the wild. Should this really be the core reason of excitement? The open world. Or the fact that it's part of an old popular franchise? Take Risen as an example: you start on an island, and it has a relatively small world, but it's rich in quests and gameplay; and there are monsters everywhere, chilling in their natural habitat, minding their own business. The size of the world is not enormous, but it doesn't even matter--the gameplay is so good that you can actually experience the RP part of the RPG genre. There are games that are simply linear, like Enclave or Bulletstorm; there are also games with linear storyline and open world, like Dark Souls or Borderlands; there are similarly non-linear games. So, the issue is not the game being open-world. It's how does the game being open-world contribute to the consistency of its design and gameplay mechanics.

Why is it open-world in the first place? How do you interact with the environment? What does "exploring" mean to you? Is it running around an empty terrain, and once you found something interesting the game takes away controls to show an unnecessary cutscene while also showing sci-fi stylized dialogues with obvious messages describing what is going on? Is this what you call revolutionary? As you already realized these are all rhetorical questions, as the only reason why someone would call an oblivion-like experience a "paradigm shift for open-world design" is if their previously played game was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Let's all collectively ignore the existence of ArcheAge released back in 2013. And if you're genuinely curious what else do I expect from an open-world game, what else would make a game with an open world much more enjoying, then here are three letters you should keep in mind: CDP. Content. Dynamics. Purpose. Does your game have character progression? Are NPCs dumb things you interact with in order to accept a tedious quest, or are they relatable (take an example from Tales of Eternia)? Does the quest require some mental work and a fun adventure or is it something primitive like "go bring me this item"? Is traveling from point A to point B a boring trip across an empty map, or is it rich in flora and fauna and you meet new monsters and NPCs and locations that are designed to provide a unique experience? You need to enrich your game with content (NPCs, monsters, locations, items), make it dynamic (activities, relationships, action, change), and give it purpose (rewards, character progression, world-building, moral decisions).

There are quite a few games that are "CDP-compliant", and one such game is Gothic. It was released in 2001 by Piranha Bytes and is an open-world dark fantasy action-RPG where you play as a nameless guy trapped in a colony. There are fractions you can be part of, each of which is unique; there is a weather system; there are houses with beds where you can take a nap, and if you enter someone's house they will be mad about it; there are annoying NPCs, there are cool NPCs, there are friends and foes; each quest has a meaning; there are no hints on the screen and no GUI elements other than HP/MP bars; cooking raw meat on the fire or asking a chef to make you a stew after bringing him some meat; opening some chests or doors requires lock picking; you can make your own sword, and for that you have to literally do it from scratch. There is so much more about that game it would take a whole another post of appreciation. Today, a new studio is trying their best to ruin the original experience of the game without realizing that. The most impressive part about it is that it's a 2001 game. 2 years before The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. 5 years before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. 14 years before The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. 16 years before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And with every new RPG game released I am thinking to myself: "they could've done so much more, and I am not even asking for too much". After all, a game is an art, being a game designer is a skill, and running a gamedev company requires a passionate developer who cares about their craft and can direct a team to create an amazing experience.