The oversaturation of Open World

In the early 2000s gaming media collectively decided to take the word « linear » and decided that it, and anything associated with it was bad with absolutely no room for nuance. You can’t walk over a fence? Bad. You can’t go to the end game town right away? Bad. And yet, those decisions were made with a purpose. Linearity is by design.

Now, a lot of people will look to a game like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Pokémon Sun & Moon, or Final Fantasy XIII as prime examples of linearity. Yet those are extreme cases in which the game holds your hand nearly the whole way throughout. In truth, most games employ a different kind of linearity. A classic Zelda game will gate areas cleverly by requiring you to posess an item to proceed forward. A Metroid game will let you get to the same area in multiple ways, let you explore, but will expect you to hit some checkpoints to proceed. Your average Xenoblade game will have story gates but slowly open up over time.

The fact is, linearity does not equal the absence of freedom. Linearity is structure. This structure is the vehicle through which a story can be told more effectively. It can ensure that the player sees the story told in a comprehensible order. It also allows one to make sure that the setpieces are in place to better tell the story; whether it is a location, character growth and development, the player achieving specific exploits, etc… A fully open world game with no linearity whatsoever will need to rely on environmental storytelling which the player may or may not stumble upon, telling its story in a disparate order, or severely limit the complexity of said story and the ability to develop a character arc.

Linearity is also the vehicle through which a level, area, town, or dungeon can designed with intention. In a sandbox setting, intentional puzzle solutions are more difficult to design. In fact, the Wilds era Zelda games exemplify this perfectly. In most cases, dungeons can be trivialized with creative exploitation of the physics engine. While it may appeal to some, it is possible to almost entirely skip dungeons. It is difficult to design a puzzle when the player is not limited in any way. In fact, you will even notice that shrines will in fact remove many of your tools and abilities because even Nintendo understands the limitations cause by having no limitations.

Linearily also allows for proper game balance. In fact, if you look at Pokémon, the games were actually balanced far better when they were route-based. It would allow players to slowly build level-appropriate teams with a smaller roster of Pokémon that would eventually expand as the adventure continued. It was a more gradual progression as opposed to the likes of Scarlet and Violet where exploring even a little can put you many levels above where you actually need to be. Structure allows for tailored encounters. Now, of course, one could propose dynamic leveling, but this will hardly solve the issue unless each gym and area is rebalanced at multiple levels. Some will bring up the forced tutorials as an argument, but that could just be fixed by letting us choose « no » and carrying on.

Many also assume that linearity means a straight line to the end, but that is hardly the case. Golden Sun is known as a very linear experience, and yet, it does let you complete Kolima forest before the Mercury Lighthouse and vice versa. It lets you visit towns out of order to a degree. Xenoblade is often seen as open world, but even X, the most open game in the series gates areas to tell its story. More mainline Xenoblade games will gate you off then slowly open up the world to you. Those games provide freedom, while also providing a structure to its players. It also provides tools to prevent players from wasting their time. You can get guidance for sidequests, you will be told specifically where you need to go. No need for a guide to find obtuse side objectives. For someone with limited time in their day, this is great. For those who do not want it, you can turn it off.

Some also make the claim that a hub world is somehow open world. That is far from the truth. Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule field is a small connecting hub that lets you travel between areas. Termina is also a hub that lets you get to every temple and area. In fact, the same is true about games as far as A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening. There is an order to the tasks you can accomplish. There may be some freedom in the order to which you can complete objectives, but there are gates through story, items and dungeons. The original Zelda game may have been relatively open, but all games after it until Breath of the Wild have been linear to some degree.

Linearity in end of itself is not some cardinal design sin to avoid. It is a design tool that needs to be used properly. Too much restriction leads to players feeling tugged along for the ride. Too little restriction leads to a sandbox experience that leads to endless exploration but lack of design depth. With the obsession of games media with promoting open world as the only acceptable way to make games, we have found ourselves discrediting intentional game design, and killing multiple genres in favour of a standardized lack of variety. And all of ot started with a lack of muance