“Open World”

The term gets thrown around a lot in modern games. Grand Theft Auto is probably the culprit, and truth be told, even in the 2D era I didn’t much care for the GTA games. But I did enjoy the “sandbox” (to throw out another marketing word) gameplay of driving over and shooting at people. Uninterested in the setting and characters, I simply used cheat codes to gain access to the content I would have had to do missions to unlock. The 3D games didn’t wow me much either, and I have probably played, since the release of GTA 3, a total of ten hours between all of the games.

The other franchise that made “Open World” hot shit was The Elder Scrolls. Another series that I was never particularly “in to”. I purchased Morrwind when it came out, of course, but I didn’t play it that much until about a year later when I discovered the unopened CD. I would find myself enjoying it but never got fully immersed into the world before loaning the game to a friend. By the time I got it back, Oblivion was coming out. Morrowind, enjoyable, but it’s hotter, younger (and sluttier, oooohh console release burn) sister was strutting her stuff all around town.

Oh, Oblivion. It may seem like these last two paragraphs were a Simpsons-style segue into me ranting about Oblivion, but it isn’t. It is in fact a Simpsons-style segue on me comparing Oblivion with Fallout 3. Oblivion and Fallout 3 are pretty similar, being made by the same developer, with the same engine, within a fairly close period of time, but Fallout 3, at least so far in my playing it, is the better game. Oblivion, aside from blowing half its voice acting budget on two big names who do a laughably small portion of the dialogue, made the mistake of starting this massive, expansive world-exploring game with Jean-Luc Picard himself breaking you out of prison, handing you the most important artifact in the game world, and telling you to go find some monk named Jeff, conveniently dotting his location on your map (I think my character was jailed for stealing the map from Kings Quest 6).

The rest of the game the player will feel guilty for exploring, or helping someone with their gardening when existence itself is crumbling around them. Or maybe they’ll complete the story first, that sounds like a good idea. It is pretty important. Yeah, then you get to hear every NPC in the game suck your dick (or clit, or whatever sexual organs reptiles have) for saving the world. And yet, even if you do save the world, the Mages Guild still needs you to take the SATs first and the Fighters Guild still gives you all their bitch work. Morrowind, at the least, simply started with you having a vague suggestion of finding some guy in some city without a sense of world-dooming urgency. It gave you time to stop and say “wow, a whole open world to explore”, and it let you do so.

In Fallout 3, the games (novel) introduction culminates in your characters guiding quest. But this “main quest” so to speak is one that not only allows for, but encourages exploration of its world. You are essentially thrown out in the wild the the idea of what to do, but not how to do it. The original Fallout used a similar convention, and coming out of the vault in the beginning of the game pretty much defines “open world”, since you have no idea what you’re doing or where you’re going, only that you need to find this part for your vault. (Though, it was still an older game where the focus was still on the plot more so than the exploration, not necessarily a bad thing)

Like all games, Fallout 3 isn’t without it’s flaws, but I am not far enough in to the game to notice them. (Actually, I did notice some. Yeah the SPECIAL system is cool and all. But can I get some more starting stats and skills? Maybe a freakin’ perk to start with? Jeez. Stingy bastards. I have to wonder how it would have turned out if the original actually used GURPS)