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PaperclipPerfector
1d ago
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One of the fantasies I have for a game is some kind of big budget story-game that is set in a truly huge open world.
A problem I find in things like GTA, Skyrim, Red Dead, WoW, Breath of the Wild is that to provide a certain ‘content density’ to the easily distracted player they all have these toy worlds, where towns have ten houses and cities have fifty, where travelling from the capital of one region to the capital of the other takes five minutes by horse but the characters talk about the huge distances in the world. It’s not that I can’t suspend my disbelief, it’s that I imagine sometimes what it would be not to (in this specific way).
I imagine a huge world, maybe fifty or a hundred times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2. The vast majority of it would be empty, the amount of content would probably similar. The major settlements would be mostly the same size, but the smaller ones would be more realistic than a thriving town that has like six buildings. There would be no instantaneous fast travel. You might be able to sail along rivers or the coast, ride a horse, whatever, but these things would all happen without ‘skips’.
Large amounts of the player’s time would be spent travelling, although there would be a lot of dialogue, camaraderie, interesting conversation choices on the road, while sailing, in a caravan, some random events. The game would take the player on a journey around the map, such that you would really feel, when looking at it, the distance traversed. If you wanted to backtrack to a city you were in at the start of the game, it might take several hours of real time to get there, which would require a difficult trade off.
There would be a lot of downtime to get to know companions, or maybe other players if it was multiplayer. You would feel, at times, truly far from civilization, have to prepare for excursions. In remote corners of the world there would be secrets to find that would feel off the beaten track, not like those RPGs where the secret dungeon entrance is spookily signposted fifty feet outside the entrance of the capital city.
IMO the key to good art isn't only choosing what to include, but what to exclude. Too much will overwhelm the player and take away focus from the best parts. Some of the best art is very simple, e.g. Balatro (one of the GOAT), or has a simple core, e.g. Minecraft or Roblox.
What you're describing sounds like a "life replacement" game, it would probably work better in VR, like Second Life or VRChat. You know Mark Zuckerberg spent billions trying to make VR popular and failed, but he was doing it with a big company and boring mindset, and now we have LLMs...maybe, I'm still not sure how much they increase development potential or if they only reduce busy work.
Except I'm very skeptical about no fast travel.
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The challenging part of this is making the game fun enough for a broad enough audience that you can justify the big budget that you want. Most people want to play the game, not walk for multiple days on end. You would likely have to cut corners somewhere.
Like, maybe you make it a survival/crafting game like Minecraft instead. Different biomes, interesting creatures, maybe some settlements consisting of simple NPC's. Multiplayer functionality to let people play with friends. You could have fun exploring and building, at the cost of leaving behind the more complex RPG mechanics present in games like Skyrim.
Or you lower the budget. Make it an indie game specifically for the kind of people like you who find downtime immersive. Dramatically reduce the amount of available content, but make sure what is left is highly polished. With a great artstyle, banger soundtrack, and few but interesting companions. Maybe change the focus from combat mechanics to storytelling, leaning into a more atmospheric and immersive experience. You could have an entire game where you simply travel from one city to another, occasionally running into people along the way who you ca choose to help, hurt, or bring with you.
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How do you reconcile:
and
That would make it painfully boring. It's an idea that sounds good on paper though.
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