Far too often, OWG devs put so much emphasis on putting вЂњstuff to doвЂќ into the world that it becomes almost impossible to ensure the continuity of their main storyline. I think that they have simply found themselves grappling with so many of the same problems faced by anyone who attempts to build an OWG with a central storyline. This is not to knock the efforts put forth by Bioware and other devs. The only dev that I have seen actually achieve this close to fully on any sort of consistent basis is Bethesda. My beef is with the second style, which attempts to blend the OWG style with a good story that gets the people going. The more widely successful titles, however, have aimed for an involved storyline that interacts constantly with the Open World mechanic, such as Bethesda titles or AssassinвЂ™s Creed, the latter of which will be subject to my rage sometime in the future. Some games, such as Rust, Life is Feudal, and others have attempted to keep the story a premise and have essentially gone to a sandbox style of game with an emphasis on player driven roleplay and survival. Bethesda has proven to be by far the most successful in this genre, but there are other notable installments such as Dragon Age: Inquisition, DragonвЂ™s Dogma, or The Witcher 3, to name some recent examples and reboots. OWGвЂ™s have blown up the video game RPG market with this kind of thinking. The best part of pen and paper style games is that, within the bounds of the world your Game Master has given you, you can essentially act in whatever manner you please and do whatsoever you should find appealing to you (or your character), typically within the framework of a story that the GM has put time into building. We are, of course, using the term вЂњroleplaying gameвЂќ in the video game sense here, rather than the tabletop or pen and paper sense, but that pen and paper style is actually highly influential to the foundations of OWGвЂ™s (IвЂ™m tired of typing that out over and over). I believe that Open World games suffer from a problem that is fundamentally tied to the core of its nature: it is a roleplaying game.

For a rapid clarification of my stance that will hopefully douse the prodigious amount of flame thatвЂ™s coming from Bethesda fans, please refer to the next paragraph. As only a frustrated grad student can do, I shall rant about a phenomenon in video games that I see as a tragedy for the industry: the Open World Game. In honor of this tradition, I will be posting game-related stuff on Sundays for your reading pleasure! IвЂ™m hoping for a good mix of esports, video games, sports, and roleplaying games on these Sundays, but if youвЂ™re not as down with this sickness as you are with the anime posts, donвЂ™t worry because those will still be there, waiting for you with open arms! YвЂ™know, so they get fewer concussions in the process. HOLY SHIT, ITвЂ™S SUNDAY! In the hallowed lore of pushy Americans like myself, today is a sacred day on whichВ grown men beat the shit out of each other.

Rust video game down with a sickness