Modern open-world games and the illusion of content

[Oliver]

There's a difference between a game being long because it's genuinely rich and a game being long because the designers needed to hit a certain playtime metric. Most modern open-world releases fall firmly into the second category.

I was playing Gothic II again recently -- shorter than most things that ship today, but every area feels purposeful, every quest has actual weight. Compare that to something like Assassin's Creed Valhalla where I genuinely lost track of whether anything I was doing mattered. I don't think it's entirely the developers' fault, the structure is driven by what publishers think players want, but the result is games that feel designed to occupy time rather than use it well.

I appreciate that some people enjoy the completionist loop and I'm not saying they're wrong to. But I'd take twenty hours of something that has genuine things to say over a hundred hours of map markers any day.

 

[Jake]

Fallout 4 is probably the first one where I really noticed it. Spent 80 hours on it and looking back, at least a third of that was the same four-room raider settlement with a different map label. Witcher 3 has filler too but when it's good it earns the padding. Most modern stuff doesn't bother trying.

 

[Ryan]

Elden Ring is the exception I keep coming back to. Every area feels like it was designed for a reason, even the stuff that's clearly optional. Most open world games could lose a third of their map and be better for it, honestly.

 

[Lukas]

Worth noting that the problem Oliver describes isn't specific to open world games -- it's a content volume issue that affects most genres now. Studios learned that players respond to hour counts in reviews and on storefronts, so density took a back seat to quantity. The games that avoid this are usually the ones with a smaller team and a clearer design mandate. Every mechanic has to earn its place when you don't have the budget to pad. Satisfactory is an obvious personal example -- it respects your time because every system exists for a reason.

 

[Lukas]

Worth noting that the problem Oliver describes isn't specific to open world games -- it's a content volume issue that affects most genres now. Studios learned that players respond to hour counts in reviews and on storefronts, so density took a back seat to quantity. The games that avoid this are usually the ones with a smaller team and a clearer design mandate. Every mechanic has to earn its place when you don't have the budget to pad. Satisfactory is an obvious personal example -- every system in it exists for a reason.

 

[Tyler]

Elden Ring aside, most of them are guilty of this. Cyberpunk 2077 had a genuinely interesting city and then buried it in a thousand side missions that all played the same. Bigger map, worse game. Jordan asked me why I didn't finish it and I said I ran out of reasons to care.