Top 10 Open World Cliches We're All Sick Of
10 Open World Clichés We’re All Sick Of
Why Open World Games Will Never Go Away
Welcome to MojoPlays and today we’ll be going over 10 open world clichés we’re all sick of.
Fetch Quests
“Gee, I’d really like to get X item, from Y location, but I’m just so busy! Can you get it for me, open world game protagonist? You’ll be handsomely rewarded with a pitiful amount of the local currency or a useless item.” Fetch quests may be a time-honored tradition in open world games, especially those with RPG elements, but they’re a major annoyance for gamers. At best, they can feel like virtual errands with not much of a reward, and even when the prize is something good, we can’t help but roll our eyes that we, the hero, seem to be the only person able to complete this task.
One Line Villagers
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Open world games are often touted for the size and depth of their geography, but that same attention to detail is not always applied to their characters. Although major NPCs often have personalities, backstories, and dialogue trees, one off characters in villages are rarely so lucky. Talking to a random townsperson repeatedly will frequently result in them spouting the same rote line over and over again. This is how the “arrow in the knee” guards became a meme! We’re not asking for every random villager to be a fully fleshed out person, but even a little variety would be nice!
Timed Missions
With how fast-paced the modern world is, gamers frequently turn to games to relax and escape from the time crunch. However, timed missions are pretty much the opposite of relaxing. The general idea is that you need to complete a certain objective, like a race, killing enemies, or protecting something or someone within a certain duration. Despite their frequently short lengths however, timed missions often prove some of the most time-consuming missions to complete in open world games. Whether it’s a need for absolute precision necessitating many retries, or just the game being cheap and failing to register that you’ve completed the objective, timed missions try our patience more than our skill.
Escort Missions
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Speaking of trying our patience, escort missions are another blight on open world games. Nothing says “unlimited potential” or “freedom of gameplay” like being shackled to an NPC or vehicle and trying to keep them alive. It certainly doesn’t help that those involved in these scenarios seem to have a death wish, running into enemies or their projectiles with alarming frequency. For as much as some games can be about cooperation, gamers still like to succeed or fail based on their own merits, and not on whether a computer-controlled character is able to stay alive or not.
Glitches & Bugs
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Look, we get it: there’s a lot that goes into open world games. As such, there’s bound to be a few kinks to work out in the massive virtual worlds they feature. But even so, a remarkable number of them suffer from bugs and other glitches that break the game’s physics or the game entirely. We’re pretty sure it’d be impossible to find every bug in an open world game before release, but even so, it’s a little troubling that one of the hallmarks of an entire genre of games is that they’re all so buggy.
Heavily Restricted Mission Paths
One of the things that draws players to open world games is the ability to play them however you want. Variety is the spice of life, after all. But some missions deprive us of the ability to choose how to accomplish a task. Unless you use this specific vehicle or take the path the game wants you to, you fail. It doesn’t matter that the one we want to use is more efficient or faster, the game knows what’s best for you in this very specific circumstance. Not only is this restrictive, it also clashes with the over sensibilities of the genre.
Locations Are Placed Far Away
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In case their name didn’t clue you in – open world games are big. Freaking huge, in some cases. And that can mean a lot of walking, driving, or riding from one place to another. While there are usually some kind of fast travel systems in place, these usually aren’t available right away or they aren’t always practical for getting where you want to go. This can mean a lot of time spent playing these games is on travel, when what a lot of us want is just to get to the good part!
Lots of Collectibles
Given how massive they are, open world games have a ton of content, and a lot of what they contain can be picked up and put in your magically large pockets. Everything from weapons and armor, to food and healing items, to crafting materials, to random junk, to special trophies, and…you get the idea. It’s a lot of stuff to keep track of, which can lead to minutes if not hours of playtime spent managing your inventory. We’re all for being able to do whatever we want, but maybe we don’t need to be able to take every knife and fork we come across.
Repetitive Tasks
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Open world games are all about potential and discovery. Unfortunately, many of them, particularly those made by Ubisoft, tend to feature repetitive missions and tasks that the player has to perform again and again. Oh, a tailing mission? Great, we can’t wait to do a hundred more of those. And how about another tower to climb? It sure is easy to pad out the runtime of a game if you copy and paste the same 5 missions types ad infinitum! This becomes especially notable in long running franchises, as seeing the same thing game after game gets so boring! Try something new developers! Give us some chocolate or strawberry instead of all this vanilla!
Empty Worlds
The scope of some open worlds truly boggles the mind but that donest matter if theres nothing to do in them! While smaller maps may not be as technically impressive, at least there’s always something to find in those. Too many open worlds have us walking for minutes on end with no new things to see or do. Quantity’s great, but we’ll take quality any day. For all their emphasis on their worlds, these games are still, you know – games! Without more to do we might as well go for a walk in the real world. And who wants that?