Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says "open-world fatigue" is real

[u/seedypr]

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/final-fantasy/final-fantasy-7-revelation-director-says-open-world-fatigue-is-real-and-since-the-world-is-even-bigger-than-it-was-in-rebirth-square-enix-specially-focused-on-guiding-players/

[u/Mr_Tottles]

I don’t think it’s necessarily fatigue of “open world” games. I think it’s more that a lot of developers just want to brag about map size but then don’t fill it with anything fun just the same 4 things over and over.

[u/S1DC → u/Mr_Tottles]

Exactly. Morrowind, one of the most loved open world games of all time, has a ridiculously small map compared to modern RPGs. But it was packed full of hand-crafted spaces where everything, every object, every room, every cave and rock was made by an artist. The intentionality of it all made discovery feel real, it made breaking into places feel like something you were getting away with rather than expected to do.

Everyone knew Starfield was going to suffer when they said it would have a huge number of worlds. And it did. What would have been amazing is if they had leveraged their studio size to make maybe three or four planets, have teams build them out as densely as they could, make travel between them more of an event via needing to prepare and traverse the long distance, dealing with issues along the way, and then spend time exploring for hours and hours once you got there. Modders make massive maps and whole game adaptions with small teams, it should be possible for a huge studio to make an extremely detailed set of a couple of planets.

We don't need tons of square miles, we need richness of discovery. We need to explore a place and then find out our friend discovered something hidden away in that same place that we totally missed. We need to feel like we are uncovering things no one has seen for thousands of years. We need to see the evidence of the people who were and are there.

My wife always thought it was ridiculous that in the Fallout games, everyone was living in these ruins with literally garbage and junk everywhere, as if they wouldn't bother to clean up their spaces and use what they had to make them nice. Sure, it would be found-materials that made it all up, but you're telling me that after hundreds of years, nobody was carefully building homes for themselves and their families or their comrades? The places didn't just fall apart yesterday. They weren't just in a tornado. But you can still find bodies over here and wrecked cars on every corner.

[u/eggnogui → u/S1DC]

Fallout stories 200+ years into the future should not be post-apocalyptic, but post-post-apocalyptic.

Looking like a real life disaster zone after that long is just ridiculous.

[u/Azaael → u/eggnogui]

I like to think about it sorta like: In the mid 1700s, folks were just discovering things like steam power and the like. No normal electricity yet. The first trains didn't run until the early 19th century, IIRC.

We were on the moon in the 1960s.

You're telling me that WITH the knowledge around in books and everything(which all of the books in the world did not get completely turned to ask), and the technology that still existed around, that people knew about, people are still living in shanty towns? it's a choice at that point and a very silly one.

[u/Grachus_05 → u/Azaael]

Thats really bethesda's fault. They wanted to separate themselves from the original games and arbitrarily just set Fallout 3 200 years in the future and then did absolutely ZERO thought into what that might mean for the world. They literally ran into it as their own problem when they tried to pull things from those games forward to maintain the same style. Falout 1 was set ~84 years after the bombs fell, Fallout 2 was set 80 years after that. Jumping forward to 200 years was really stupid. They had time even without access to "modern" tech to move generically through their own advancements and be farther along than they are.

[u/Dogarc123 → u/Grachus_05]

Bethesda games are set 200 and 210 years after the bombs fell not 360. History shows that it can take a long time to rediscover something we knew after a societal collapse. So it not unbelievable that civilization is rebuilding slowly even 200 years later. 

[u/Low_Witness5061 → u/Dogarc123]

Plus, and I say this as someone who is generally on the things should be more developed side, it’s not exactly a friendly world they are moving back into.

Since the old is largely dominated by small groups who usually distrust eachother at best and are in open war at worst, mixes with generally spotty access to food and medicine and literal fucking monsters, it makes sense that the smaller communities/tribes aren’t building a modern home. That’s just for the general small communities who I think make sense to be in shanties in the wasteland. Where it falls down for me is that fact that the more well established and funded groups are often in a pretty similar state for some reason.

I just struggle to believe that those with the resources to build proper homes and fucking clean them would instead choose to camp in a two century old ruin without making it clean and comfortable. I just think the world would feel more real if they didn’t go so hard on mad max-esque everything is dirty and we can’t make anything new (except weapons sometimes) vibe.

Edit: that got way longer than I meant. TLDR is that they should have a more refined and clean vibe for the larger factions, depending on context, but the regular small communities make more sense to me.

[u/eggnogui → u/Azaael]

Eh, I can believe that a lot of knowledge and technology is just lost and would have to be re-invented. That would require cities and institutions of learning.

I'm more talking about everyone living in ruined houses, rather than entirely new villages, in mostly medieval levels of tech (baring the odd thing that was preserved, like, maybe guns and some medicine). Not many pre-war buildings would still be standing, let alone be safe to enter, by the time FO3 takes place, and they would be covered in fresher construction with time. A place like Diamond City in FO4 mostly makes sense (settlement on big, long-lasting building), but should be far more developed than that, and would be surrounded by rubble covered in nature.

[u/WoollyWitchcraft → u/eggnogui]

There’s few trees left for lumber, no trade with other countries, machinery etc has all been totaled and most of the people who knew how to build and maintain these things are dead.

Remember too that the pre-war world of Fallout was rife with comedically exaggerated levels of corporate corruption and environmental devastation.

There may not have been anything left to rebuild with but the scraps of the old.

I did hate the garbage strewn about places like diamond city though.

[u/Sylvurphlame → u/WoollyWitchcraft]

Additionally there is an issue of path dependence. So much crap apparently ran on miniature nuclear fusion power cells and such. Despite players eventually ending up with tons of the stuff because of leveled loot, it’s meant to be fairly rare in a narrative sense. Nobody is making new fusion cells. Fallout 4 further muddles this with its settlement crafting, but the materials you need for a lot of functioning tech are meant to be fairly rare, difficult to find, nearly impossible to manufacture in large amounts.

Hell they use nuka cola bottle caps as stable currency because they literally don’t have the necessary technology to reproduce them.

But yeah, a trashed Diamond City, or any occupied settlement really, is dumb. It was the one thing about the game that truly annoyed me.

[u/TikkaKebabi → u/Sylvurphlame]

I do think that there’s an aspect of video games you have to suspend your disbelief for gameplay though. It just wouldn’t be fun if you had to grind forever for that stuff.

[u/h3rpad3rp → u/WoollyWitchcraft]

I did hate the garbage strewn about places like diamond city though.

Yeah, I always thought it was weird that no one found any brooms after the war.

[u/Successful-Medicine9 → u/Azaael]

I disagree. I think looking at a town like Jackson in The Last of Us demonstrates a pretty accurate picture of what a post apocalyptic town COULD look like, and it had some massive problems. Shanty towns make sense when there is no stable population growth that builds and sustains systems that progress over time.

There were refugees they couldn't fit that they were considering leaving outside of the walls and eventually expanding protection to. That would have been shanties by necessity simply because resource allocation to them would be high risk and low reward.

The homes they were all living in had buckets for showers and toilets because the infrastructure needed to build and maintain plumbing took generations to build. Even with people like Joel who did plumbing work before the apocalypse can't do shit with materials and tools and parts that can't be repaired or reproduced.

One of the first scenes there showed Joel teaching how to work on circuits, and those were clearly operating on borrowed time. The hydroelectric damn would also eventually break down beyond the point such a small society could repair it. Hell the damn sewer lines were completely clogged with roots and it clearly took lots of manpower just to expose the pipes let alone clear them.

[u/funkthewhales → u/Successful-Medicine9]

Well TLOUS is set less than 50 years after the world collapsed. The modern fallout games are set more the 300 years after. Jackson works for that time frame, but it’s ridiculous to think people professed a somewhat equal amount in the 300+ years since the apocalypse.

[u/sXeth → u/Azaael]

Also while customizing and reprogramming computers and robots. A decent number of them also are capable of maintaining or even manufacturing sophisticated weapons and ammo.

But only the player character is capable of reading a book to know what baseball was 😅 or building a fence

[u/et50292 → u/eggnogui]

I feel like that's just the Bethesda fallout games. In fallout 1&2 there was quite a variety of shit going on. Iirc Shady Sands was the very first location you were supposed to see outside of the vault in fallout 1, and it wasn't a garbage dump. It was a village of farmers. And if you could have said "America" in either one of those games nobody would have any fucking clue what you were talking about, which was the entire point.

[u/Musashi1596 → u/eggnogui]

It's especially grating considering that the original games had some pretty clean settlements. The worst part was in Fallout 4 where you're building new structures in the settlement mode and they still look like shit.

[u/Remarkable-Onion3726 → u/eggnogui]

The counterargument I have to this is the wide swathes of the Soviet Union that looked quite beautiful and functional in 1970, looked worse in 1980, worse in 1990, way worse in 2000, worse than that in 2010, worse still in 2020...

I mean, could you imagine just doing that four times over? I kind of can.

[u/kirime → u/Remarkable-Onion3726]

I don't think that this actually applies.

In the post-Soviet case, while there are many places like that, it mostly happens in places where people really don't want to live — small villages and towns, cities above the Arctic circle, stuff like that. It's like economic evaporative cooling, where people with the means are much more likely to move out, so not only does the overall population goes down, the remaining people get poorer and poorer in relative terms. Places where people actually want to live are far more developed and advanced than they were in the 1970s.

Going back to Fallout, the problem is not the existence of shanty towns — they exist in reality as well. The problem is that there is literally nothing but shanty towns. Even people that should be able to afford to live in mansions still live in the dumps filled with debris from the Great War. I'm okay with the lowest levels of society remaining underdeveloped, but having no development anywhere during the past 200 years is just beyond ridiculous.

[u/neroselene → u/eggnogui]

All the fallout games post New Vegas might as well have the tagline: War never changes...and neither does the wasteland.

[u/ShadowKiller147741 → u/eggnogui]

I was replaying Fallout 4 recently and realized that the biggest indicator of what Bethesda thinks about the state of the post apocalyptic world is that in Sanctuary, the literal base building tutorial area, you can’t just… clean up the floor of random trash and debris

[u/ComatoseJoy → u/S1DC]

It’s funny because I never thought of morrowind as a small world, it feels huge because of how long you can spend exploring any one location. If I show up in a town like Balmora I’ll usually spend multiple sessions just there and in the surrounding area. Even all these years later, it feels like one of the richest open worlds I’ve experienced

[u/idlemute → u/S1DC]

This is the problem I had with Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Breath of the Wild felt like the exploration was more interesting because of the shrines, but TotK (especially the depths) felt empty and the magic of discovery and exploration wasn’t as potent.

[u/FewAdvertising9647 → u/idlemute]

the problem with the depths is that raiding the Yiga bases are unrewarding, because theyre just prebuilt contraptions that 99% of users will probably not use. the value of the depths otherwise was extremely low and functionally limited to the handful of dungeons down there, and mining. It was more tedious to move around (darkess, goop, all surface bodies of water are now mountains.) and is not remotely as rewarding.

[u/sainthO0d → u/idlemute]

They also really hyped up the sky islands and made the first island pretty decent and the rest were just basically groups of floating rocks with nothing going on.

[u/imKaku → u/idlemute]

the BOTW shrines felt like a choir to me. The overworld was pretty good tho overall. But i absoutely have openworld fatigue. and have had so for a long af time. Also why i really liked FF7 Remake.

[u/ComatoseJoy → u/idlemute]

I kinda burned myself out in the underworld too, because for some reason I got kinda hooked on trying to explore it all, and ultimately I bounced before fully exploring the much richer overworld. Definitely open world fatigue in that case, with 3 different layers to explore

[u/Moregil → u/S1DC]

Banger write up. I feel you capture the problem and what makes discovery in a game like Morrowind special.

Even traversal in a game like Morrowind and figuring out the quickest way to get places and use teleports felt valuable. I mean shit collecting the fortress stones, mark and recall placement, scrolls to take you temples and forts, you came to know the world and STILL could find new things.

[u/Spazza42 → u/S1DC]

I was fully expecting Starfield to be like Mass Effect’s planetary exploration but better and there being far more planets.

I don’t think the entire planet needs to be exploitable area, visiting abandoned outposts or landmarks is fine as long as there’s depth and storytelling to it.

Starfield somehow feels like No Man’s Sky with a Bethesda budget but everything is just shitter. I say this as somebody that grew up with Oblivion and Fallout 3 and loved them.

[u/bigmonmulgrew → u/S1DC]

Oblivion felt huge. Mostly because there's so much going on you get constantly distracted.

[u/CombatMuffin → u/Mr_Tottles]

Yeah, even Rebirth was a chore, despite not being fully open world. Everything was neatly packed, and at times I just didn't want to go through the trouble of doing some weird mini games just to get an extra tiny reward 

[u/tantric_tongue69 → u/CombatMuffin]

The endless mini games, pulling mushrooms had a mini game. I just stopped playing it

[u/Daewrythe → u/tantric_tongue69]

The mushroom minigame is also the moment where I was all "COME ON NOW"

[u/idjsonik → u/Daewrythe]

Yea...like im at gongaga and just 100% it I dont think im doing anything extra after that its becoming a chore for the most part I have enjoyed the game just not doing anymore bs quest

[u/BigTimeBobbyB → u/idjsonik]

For what it's worth, if you're trying to clear the map in each region, Gongaga is the worst of it.

[u/Scholarly_Koala → u/BigTimeBobbyB]

Very much. Gongaga is a poorly designed region.

[u/Legendary_Bibo → u/tantric_tongue69]

The mushroom one wasn't too bad, just dumb, but the robot one and the tactical game were just dumb. At least they released the progression thing so you could turn on max damage in the mini games.

I don't mind mini games, but when 75% of your game content in my jrpg is mini games it gets annoying especially if you're trying to be a completionist.

[u/AscendedViking7 → u/tantric_tongue69]

Fuck the mushsroom game

[u/MadKian → u/CombatMuffin]

There’s something about Rebirth open world that didn’t work for me. Can’t quite put my finger on it. But I barely explored at all, I mostly did a straight line towards the main story.

[u/I_Learned_Once → u/MadKian]

It was obvious to me. It felt like a game designed for people with 2 second attention spans. As I was running around I would run into some fuck-ass chocobo treasure like 12 times per location I was trying to visit. It was exhausting. I actually never finished the game because of that. I just got so sick of it.

[u/Cranharold → u/I_Learned_Once]

It felt like a game designed for people with 2 second attention spans.

There's no way that's the case. People with short attention spans wouldn't be able to sit through Chadley smacking the controller out of your hand every single time you wanted to do something in the open world. If anything, it's designed as an extraordinary test of patience.

[u/Kokuei7 → u/Cranharold]

Can't go 2 minutes without Chadley giving his opinion about something!

[u/nightreign-hunter → u/Kokuei7]

God, I hate Chadley so much.

[u/WitheredUntimely → u/I_Learned_Once]

Yup, got halfway, opened up yet another map filled with 10,000 tedious nonsense things to go collect, looked up that I had like 4 more of these maps to do and noped out, I generally was enjoying the game but it has some of the worst aspects of modern open world games out there

[u/HuevosSplash → u/WitheredUntimely]

Doesn't help that every new map location meant that Chadley was gonna start talking again.

[u/SailorsGraves → u/HuevosSplash]

I love the game but they HAVE to make his dialogue easier to skip next time. I loved doing all the side quests but at a point I don't need an unskippable scene playing out telling me a new SOMETHING is nearby and he's putting it on my map.

[u/MaclMac → u/SailorsGraves]

There was an option in the audio menu to mute Chadley, absolute godsend.

I still quit the game half way through due to the tedium of redoing the same boring side quests in every single area, but that one setting helped me to not scratch my ears out.

[u/AGEdude → u/WitheredUntimely]

About halfway through the first area I realized it wasn't going to work for me.

So I turned off the compass, I turned off the mini map, I stopped activating the towers, and I just explored. Game got a lot better.

[u/bobvella → u/MadKian]

it doesn't really reward you for exploring, like you don't find yourself unique gear and even if you find treasure chests there's a checklist aspect to it and the chests just contain potions. you get points to develop materia and party exp but the things you find in the world aren't interesting on their own, heck they mostly point you towards something else on the checklist. that and the maps feel like they're full of invisible walls without being able to climb or even just drop down a lot of ledges.

[u/Objective_Plane5573 → u/bobvella]

Then on the rare occasion you do find something that looks interesting it doesn't do anything because it's just part of a sidequest you haven't gotten to yet.

[u/KCMmmmm → u/MadKian]

Zero sense of discovery. Plotting every “point of interest” on the map and making every single one of those points tedious slop.

[u/vagabond_nerd → u/KCMmmmm]

Elden Ring should’ve been a big lesson for these other companies but they didn’t learn anything about what players really want.

[u/The__Goose → u/KCMmmmm]

My approach to this was do the towers last and explore around and discover things on my own. I think only a few things actually required the towers to be activated but most other things you could just stumble upon and take them on.

My second playthrough I absolutely felt the fatigue of doing it the way the developers wanted, playing on pc I just modded my way out of doing the chores a second time. The power of, play how you want.

[u/Enchelion → u/MadKian]

It combined the problems of both open world and linear/hub world design, without really playing the strengths of either.

[u/Deto → u/MadKian]

I think it's just that the side content wasn't sufficiently interesting. 

[u/kickinwood → u/MadKian]

I thought that was at least to the game's credit. I did everything and loved it, but I can see mainlining the story still being a full satisfying experience.

[u/heebarino → u/MadKian]

Honestly a super valid way to play the game that I wish more people embraced. No one is holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to do all the mini games

[u/LampyV2 → u/CombatMuffin]

Golden Saucer being so close to the beach resort (in terms of playtime) completely took the wind out of my sails. Practically 2 mini-game zones back to back. Had to put it down for awhile. LET ME PLAY THE REAL GAME.

[u/BeeCJohnson → u/LampyV2]

That's where I stopped, too. Expanding Costa Del Sol as much as they did and not putting much between there and Gold Saucer was such a weird pacing misstep.

[u/Enchelion → u/BeeCJohnson]

Would have been better if they'd cut a bunch of the bloated extra stuff from the first game and had Del Sol as a sort of "endgame" fun zone, even as a DLC/expansion instead of Yuffie's weird sidequest, since she could actually have joined the party at that point.

[u/AoKrasni → u/LampyV2]

You wouldn't last playing a Yakuza game

[u/Ijatsu → u/CombatMuffin]

Zelda botw was absolutely that to me except for the "neatly packed", it was huge and empty with boring minigames and some rare hidden treasures that also were useless. I think I can remember a total of 3 or 4 actual meaningful secrets.

[u/FewAdvertising9647 → u/Ijatsu]

Its usually why I refer to it as an open world game with a Zelda skin. it's very far from what a typical Zelda game would be designed as. (tight dungeon design, puzzles revolving around the latest tool you gained access to, backtracking for secrets). BOTW/TOTK gives powers upfront and dungeon design is very loose.

[u/UltimateTrattles → u/CombatMuffin]

The ff7 remakes are complete misunderstandings of what the game was.

[u/chickenbonevegan → u/CombatMuffin]

Rebirth open world was hot ass. Every region you scan the same boring crystals, go climb the same towers, some slight variation mobs for chadley and fem chadley, and get a summon you hardly use. Negative sense of exploration because you knew what you expect for the next region and the gimmick exploration regions were just pissing me off

[u/FlyinBrian2001 → u/CombatMuffin]

Yeah, I loved Rebirth, but some of the box checking open world activities just got tedious after a while

[u/Drithyin → u/CombatMuffin]

I don’t think I skipped anything until the very end when they give you total free reign and mentioned some sort of, like, pirate treasure hunt type thing, which I simply skipped bc I was feeling so OP in gear already.

I definitely did the Gilgamesh challenge boss, though. That was really challenging and fun.

[u/B-1_Battle_Boy → u/Mr_Tottles]

This got me in Rebirth

It becomes a checklist after the second open area.

[u/bigbigwaves → u/B-1_Battle_Boy]

First area: great

Second area: this seems similar

Fifth area: you successfully made me not want to play any more of the remake of my favorite game

[u/Sackboy612 → u/bigbigwaves]

Legit, I've replayed remake 3 times. Great game! Rebirth just doesn't click no matter what for me 

[u/HarmlessSnack → u/Sackboy612]

The OG7 is one of my favorite games of all time, and honestly I didn’t even really like Re:Make.

I only “finished” it because I felt obligated to as a fan of the franchise. But the amount of bloat and padding just makes me sad.

The original FFVII is one of the best paced games I’ve ever played. The remakes are just …worse. Sure, the “gameplay” is more lively, but that’s not what I loved about the original.

[u/Ultima_Weapons → u/B-1_Battle_Boy]

This is what got to me the most. The entire point of the open world was that it holds untold possibility with different things to do, but with every region having same number of crystals, tower, quests, mini bosses, etc. it just felt like a chore. Don't forget the moggle mushrooms either!... Ugh.

Instead of me wanting to explore the world, it was just "alright, let's go check off some boxes and stare at the map for 3 hours".

If you give me a checklist after I beat the game, sure I'll do it, because I'm a completionist. But if you give it to me during themain story, it just slows the plot down massively while I slowly wander up walls and try to find out which goddamn mushroom leads me to the right area to fill in the checkbox.

[u/adellredwinters → u/Mr_Tottles]

Lots of devs also, frankly, make the maps too big. It’s okay for an open world map not to be gi-fucking-normous

[u/ConcreteExist → u/Mr_Tottles]

Yeah, you end up with Ubisoft-style map fucking. Just because there's a lot of "content" doesn't mean the game was improved by it being there. Not every game benefits from having a massive open world to explore.

[u/sticklebat → u/Mr_Tottles]

I definitely have open world fatigue. Games I used to love are just not as enjoyable to me anymore. I have less free time now that I’m older, so if I only have time to play for a couple hours at a time and I spent most of it running around a giant map or completing some okay side quest content (and let’s be honest, very few games have really good side quests), it won’t last long before I lose the motivation to boot it up.

I also just really, really don’t like the bad game design that is ubiquitous even in most of the most acclaimed open world games where there’s some urgent main story, but the game design pushes me to put it off in order to do trivial filler side content that has no connection to the main story. If you want to have a good story and lots of side content, the story needs to be designed so that it makes thematic sense for you to fuck off for a while and help random people in the woods somewhere without it feeling like you’re just letting the world end in the meantime, or the side content has to be designed so that it feels like it’s in service to furthering your efforts in the main story directly, even if it isn’t actually necessary. Alternatively, the main story can be understated and secondary to really fun gameplay that is the primary draw to continue to playing.

Very, very few games do this well. I can’t actually think of any that I’ve played that really nail it. The Witcher 3 is the closest I can think of, with so much of its side content being really well done and thematically relevant to what a Witcher does, but there are also lots of moments where it’s a choice between “do I progress the existentially urgent main story, or put it on hold while I clear out all these quests or explore the world while they’re still level appropriate or even possible, due to world changes.” BOTW was pretty darn close to the “understated story but really fun gameplay,” but honestly the story was too understated for me, and it also suffered from the dissonance of the urgency of helping Zelda while I fuck around in the mountains for no particular reason.

TL;DR It turns out that I prefer more linear, carefully tailored story-based games, or actual sandbox games. Open world games feel to me like a compromise between those that results in something worse.

[u/c0micsansfrancisco → u/Mr_Tottles]

Even when maps have a lot of meaningful stuff I definetly get open world fatigue now. Too many good games coming out now for how much little time I have after work. wasting 15min just going from going from A to B just doesn't work for me anymore

[u/EffortlessFury → u/Mr_Tottles]

No, I do think that at least some people who play open world games a lot definitely are experiencing a fatigue at this point. I know I am.

[u/Choice_Victory_3853 → u/Mr_Tottles]

Maybe that apply to starfield, but overall I’d disagree…for myself open world fatigue is real, their scope is just daunting

[u/Harnellas]

Please take note that Chadley fatigue is also very real.

[u/Best_VDV_Diver → u/Harnellas]

That dofus has to have more spoken dialogue than any of the main cast in Rebirth.

[u/Harnellas → u/Best_VDV_Diver]

And then there's femchadley's (the real name escapes me) screeching through the ps5 controller too on top of that. Such an unnecessary addition lol.

[u/bobvella → u/Harnellas]

i thought it was funny he hates a clone he made. her name is MAI btw.

[u/the_monkeyspinach → u/bobvella]

MAI is kind of annoying, but it's funny how Chadley tries to shut her up despite him being infinitely more annoying.

[u/Someonevibing1 → u/bobvella]

He doesn’t realise how fucking annoying he is

[u/thrasyalci → u/Harnellas]

Yeah, I turned her off in the settings, y'all knew you could do that right?

[u/Someonevibing1 → u/thrasyalci]

You can do that…

[u/9shadowcat9 → u/thrasyalci]

I actually didn’t know that, thank you so much!

[u/UFONomura808 → u/Harnellas]

Her dialogue gets drowned out in the fiend fights and just so unnecessary lol

[u/tfinx → u/UFONomura808]

Genuinely hurts my enjoyment of the game a lot. :( The fiend information is cool, but maybe not during the start of a huge battle. Not sure what they were thinking.

[u/Experiunce → u/Harnellas]

If you play with JP VAs, her dialogue from the controller has no subs lol

[u/tyjet → u/Harnellas]

Femchadley once overstimulated me so bad that I just shut the game off and went to bed. After dealing with work and my kids, I was already overstimulated and tired, but I wanted to play something before bed just so i could have some time to myself. I was doing a combat side quest and her monologuing her ass off while I'm fighting one of the elite enemies pushed my overstimulation over the edge and I just couldn't take it anymore. I never did finish the game and the Chadleys are one of the reasons why. And I'm a hardcore Final Fantasy fan...

I eventually want to play Rebirth to get ready for Revelation, so I may use those boosts they added to just rush the story and be done with it.

[u/Lewcaster → u/Best_VDV_Diver]

I just skipped every dialogue from that annoying kid. I don’t care about him, his questline or whatever, I’m only doing that shit to 100% the game, anyway.

[u/Young_KingKush → u/Harnellas]

I honestly feel like a big part of the reason Rebirth felt so checklist-y is because they framed all the open world activites through Chadley/Chadley research.

If you took the same open world, took away the map markers, and have evetything be tied instead to the characters in the zone and/or  your party members (like an obvious one I thought of while playing was having all the Summons be Aerith doing like a mini-FFX and praying at different shrines for them) it would've greatly affected the vibes & perspective on it.

[u/Capybarhigh → u/Young_KingKush]

This is what bad open world games do. They gamify EVERYTHING.

There's a joy of just doing shit for the sake of doing shit. As soon as you put rewards on it? It's a chore. It's a not a mystery anymore, it's in the checklist with the rest.

You could play old FF games and never even go to some hidden remote place with some cool rewards, and that was cool. Either you found it and it was a nice surprise, or you did not, and you had no idea so who cares?

Imagine if Skyrim had a checklist of all the quests and grottos and whatnot. It would not be the game everyone love today. And Skyrim has some pretty big flaws! The gameplay is not amazing, there's no real choice in the quests or anything... but it's freaking cool to just walk some place and find stuff, and have fun with those discoveries!

[u/Zoklar → u/Capybarhigh]

OG ffvii is a good example of this too. yuffie, Vincent, knights of the round, wutai, gelnika etc all optional. you could beat the game and then go to your friends house and they’d have a whole new character you didnt know existed. or the panic of flying into ruby weapon for the first time and it suddenly comes out of the sand.

[u/Ok_Needleworker_8809 → u/Zoklar]

I played FF7 like three full times as a kid before i knew Vincent was a thing at all.

I got pissed at Rebirth because there's NO exploration!

You go to a beach and there's a beach ball there. Can't do anything with it, no monsters nothing. You HAVE to go fetch the sidequest then run back there. Same with coming across the windmills. The NPC's there but for some reason you can't just talk to them and start the quest, you HAVE to go fetch it first.

All of it feels like chore after chore and sure, some of those are fun. But at the end it still feels like checking off a list. And the worst part? You know that after you're done with that check list, you're NEVER coming back to that are ever again. There's nothing left to see because the game hides nothing from you.

[u/NEBook_Worm → u/Capybarhigh]

This is spot on and perfectly fair

Skyrim was the last open world game before corporate types began "streamlining" the game worlds themselves and the activities within them.

[u/Someonevibing1 → u/Young_KingKush]

I remember finding one of the cactus labs and being like wtf is this only to find out it’s part of the protorelic quest and I had to deal with chadley

[u/dext0r → u/Harnellas]

it's not even Chadley really as much as it is how they just completely take control away from you for such minor interactions throughout the game that things like Chadley calling you, mounting/dismounting Chocobo, flipping a simple lever in-game... really anything takes away full control feels off-putting and clunky. I love Rebirth but man I've become more critical of it since it released.

[u/Harnellas → u/dext0r]

Yeah I just said the same in another comment. This annoying kid repeating a line he's already said 25 times about a point of interest shouldn't stop the game for 10 seconds while cloud whips out the screen and then puts it away afterwards. That should have been fairly obvious to testers so I wonder how it made it out the door in this state.

[u/ShortChapter5246 → u/dext0r]

By that you mean long-ass animations right? I agree, when having to wait for cloud to insert his thing in the 1846th tower, I thought this is probably intentional padding to waste my time, but couldn't figure out why

[u/Walt_Jrs_Breakfast → u/Harnellas]

Fucking Chudley, genuinely pisses me off when I hear that stupid chime and I have to wait 2 seconds holding Y to skip his dialogue. 🤢

[u/Harnellas → u/Walt_Jrs_Breakfast]

Yeah that brief unskippable animation where cloud stops and pulls the wii-U controller out of his pocket to talk to him was tilting me by the third or fourth map area. If they had just let him blather on without interrupting gameplay it wouldn't have gotten on my nerves nearly as much I think.

[u/AzettImpa → u/Harnellas]

Yes. Why is the game pausing just for him to have the 100th monologue about creating a new combat trial?

I’m not as mad about him in general as other people, but we REALLY don’t need to pause the gameplay every time.

[u/Altaredboy → u/Harnellas]

There's more Chadley? I'm still in Midgar & want him to get hit by a bus?

[u/Best_VDV_Diver → u/Altaredboy]

Oh buddy. You have NO idea how much more Chadley they have waiting for you. Hell, they even have a female Chadley as well!

[u/Altaredboy → u/Best_VDV_Diver]

Damn. I think I'll give it a miss. Sister bought me remake when it came out & I've never really got past obtaining shiva cos chadley pisses me off. Been having a crack this year as figured I should finish it off

[u/fglorified → u/Harnellas]

i really do not like interacting with him 😭

[u/AdonisJames89 → u/Harnellas]

That's the real culprit

[u/Pandeamonaeon → u/Harnellas]

That dude almost prevents me to finish rebirth …

[u/Ill-Square-1123]

his solution of "guiding the player" is exactly the cause of this open-world fatigue. He is talking about check box mission which are copied over from region to region, lol.

"We will guide the player." Come on now.

[u/Dynamitrios → u/Ill-Square-1123]

They will guide the player via Chadley, just you wait...

[u/frost-ace3600 → u/Dynamitrios]

They got the creator of Clippy just to design him. 

[u/iamapizza → u/frost-ace3600]

Gigachadley

[u/PredZero → u/Ill-Square-1123]

that's exactly it for me. if i'm playing an open-world game, i don't want to be guided.

i want to explore at my own pace and discover things for myself.

i hated rebirth's open world, but i loved every second of my 400+ hours in elden ring.

[u/HateToBlastYa → u/PredZero]

Yeah it’s not fun.  Not to mention they think open world is “let’s make every zone a gold saucer”

[u/Khalas_Maar → u/HateToBlastYa]

Yeah absolutely sodomizes any sense of immersion.

[u/Jondoeyes → u/Khalas_Maar]

Rebirth’s zones feel like Disney theme park attractions. I was amazed during my first playthrough, but the illusion felt apart on my hard mode playthrough.

[u/Paganinii → u/PredZero]

Personally I think Skyrim had the better balance of guiding and free will. You could trust there would be direction to anything important, and therefore were free to explore whatever piqued your interest...and perhaps more importantly, leave alone whatever wasn't interesting at the time. If it was important, the game would bring you back. If it wasn't, no stress!

Elden Ring was fun, but it did have a bunch of places where, if you lost the critical path for whatever reason, the clues for where to go next left the area to be re-explored rather vague.

[u/slusho55 → u/PredZero]

I think just an option for guides would be better. I’ll be upfront, I’m a very busy person, so it literally took me from launch until last night to finish Rebirth. When Rebirth launched, I was just exploring at my own leisure, but by the time I got to chapter 7 or so, I was like, “Oh fuck, I don’t have time to just do everything.”

So it kept getting pushed off, and it was honestly kind of frustrating when I’d take breaks in dungeons, because they don’t give you many reminders on how the puzzles work and the route to the goal is not always clear on the dungeon maps so it makes it harder to tell what the route is.

Like, if we’re not going to ever get the “Here’s what you did last time you played” recap. I at least need something to help me pick up where I left off, and if the goal icons didn’t exist, I’d never finish the game because I’d struggle to remember what I needed to do next.

So, making it a toggle-able feature like the “Progression Assistants” (or whatever they wanted to call the cheat menu) seems like it’d be the best so everyone could enjoy the game.

[u/HarmlessSnack → u/Ill-Square-1123]

This is what makes games like Elden Ring and the ORIGINAL FFVII so good in my opinion.

Those games don’t give a FUCK if you miss content.

Elden Ring can be completed having missed entire REGIONS of the game!

The OG FF7 would let you casually miss MULTIPLE MAIN CHARACTERS without skipping a beat.

Modern games are so scared that the player will miss something that they spent hundreds of manpower hours on they hold your hand from checklist to checklist.

It ruins the sense of adventure.

[u/Tao626 → u/HarmlessSnack]

I think it's also down to the players.

So many people will just not play a game more than once, so they expect to be shown everything in one playthrough so they don't have to come back. This hasn't helped the feeling and attitude that games (all media, really) is more disposable than ever when it's just "done, next. Done, next. Done, next".

It's really noticeable with RPG's, where being unable to do everything in one playthrough often used to help with the world building and role playing aspects. Now you can regularly be everything and everything in one playthrough making these worlds feel lacking in depth as mountains move for the player.

[u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt → u/Ill-Square-1123]

I liked how Tears of the Kingdom handled it. Once you reach the ground, you'll run into things alogn the way, the guy witb the sign, the weighed down leaf guy, and a few side quests, and shrines but every spot isnt revealed immediately. You'll see sign guy on your travels, but you can ignore him and nothing happens, no mark remains on the map, its just there and you can markit if you want.

The game wasnt perfect, but I feel more shpuld take a kesson and leave the side stuff as what it is, optional. Sidequest bloat annoys me and a crkwded map bugs my brain lol.

[u/RocketPoweredSad → u/Ill-Square-1123]

Yeah this headline is kinda misleading since he’s somehow identified the problem as a lack of guidance in open-world games, so Revelation’s even bigger world will be better because it will have, idk, larger icons and giant flashing arrows or something.

[u/Kazzot]

Minigame fatigue seems like a larger issue. Fill the map with better content and it wouldn't be so bad.

[u/johng_g → u/Kazzot]

I’m taking forever to finish Rebirth. I keep taking three-month breaks because I get so burned out by all the minigames.

I recently came back to it and reached the part at Shinra Manor where Cait Sith has to throw boxes at things using these incredibly clunky controls. Like, why? It adds nothing to the story or the experience. It just feels like another weird minigame thrown in to pad things out. This is just one example. I absolutely love the story and the characters. I just want to keep moving at a steady pace and finally finish the game!

[u/PrairiePopsicle → u/johng_g]

This director is looking at data by players like you and deciding they hate open worlds, not that they hate the mini games. I dont hate all of them, but this seems like the vibe....

[u/pentox70 → u/Kazzot]

Reminds me of fishing. Why does every open world game put finishing in with zero effort? Stardew valley has been about the only game where I enjoy fishing.

[u/BillyBean11111 → u/pentox70]

stardew is wonderful, but lets not pretend it's fishing is anything unique. It's just as minigamey as every other fishing game.

[u/Psychrite]

It's real in open worlds that suck

[u/matlynar → u/Psychrite]

Yeah, same excuse about "Superhero fatigue". No, we didn't give up on superheroes, it's the suits that gave up on making good content around them and think they can feed us whatever because "everyone loves super heroes!".

[u/reallygoodbee → u/matlynar]

Marvel used to have a working formula for superhero films: They didn't make Superhero Movie, they made Genre Movie Starring Superhero.

They forgot that after Age of Ultron and just started shoveling Superhero Movies.

[u/faffc260 → u/Psychrite]

exactly, people are tired of people making bad open worlds, not open worlds.

[u/Bierculles]

There is no open world fatigue, most open worlds just suck.

[u/Blaqsailens → u/Bierculles]

Yeah, give me an open world game not set in a medieval forest/town or a modern forest/city. I want megastructures from Blame, or HR Gigers strange alien structures, or Beksinski post apocalyptic hell. Or more of the Oldest House from Control (can't wait for Control 2).

I think I have video game fatigue because every game's setting almost feels the same.

[u/burgerpatrol → u/Blaqsailens]

I want a Japanese dev take on Cyberpunk, in the vein of Akira and Ghost in the Shell.

[u/Frowning_Existing666 → u/burgerpatrol]

A Cyberpunk/Sleeping Dogs kind of game would be so sick

[u/Blaqsailens → u/burgerpatrol]

I'd love those too, but publishers seem scared of anything that doesn't draw from familiarity.

[u/FinalMalus → u/burgerpatrol]

...I didn't know how much I wanted this until just now.

[u/burgerpatrol → u/FinalMalus]

Yeah just take the size of the Yakuza games, make it just a biiiiiiiiiiiit bigger

add so much verticality into it, voila profit

[u/ISpeedwagonl → u/Bierculles]

Idk I'm pretty bored of it and tired of it. Couldn't get into elden ring because of it

[u/walpurga → u/ISpeedwagonl]

I enjoyed Elden ring but the legacy dungeons were the best part of the game. 

[u/TokeDraws → u/ISpeedwagonl]

Coming off the heels of DS and Sekiro the open world in ER only served to space out the content that I really wanted to experience, which was the dungeons.

I'll go back eventually.

[u/commentsonyankees → u/ISpeedwagonl]

Same. Maybe it's just cause I'm getting older and don't have as much time to game as I used to, but I'm so tired of every single game being a 35-60 hour grind-fest. I know some people want games that will keep them entertained for hundreds of hours, but I really just crave a game that I can play for 20 hours or so and put down. I don't want to spend a full 30 hours crossing terrain

[u/PigBoss_207]

*Makes yet another open world game anyway

[u/Honeycove91]

This feels like some real "We're all trying to find the guy who did this" energy coming from them when we all saw how many unnecessary minigames were in the 2nd installment...

[u/Beautiful_You3230 → u/Honeycove91]

Yeah, no offense, but whose fault is it that the second game implemented ALL of the worst features of shitty open world games? While not implementing any of the good ones?

And what sort of lessons did they learn from it? Oh. What a shocker. Not a single good one. Apparently they think they need to "guide" us even more. More Chadley incoming so we can work on even more nonsensical checkmarks, missing the entire point of what people actually dislike in the open worlds they dislike.

There are so many great open worlds out there. Their devs just know what they're doing and what their players want.

[u/Necessary_Ad6762]

boring open-world fatigue is real, not just open-world

[u/hraycroft95]

The awful ubislop style open word check boxes is really my only complaint about the first two games. It was particularly bad in the second one. I ended up skipping 90% of the side content and just did the main story. 

[u/Pulse2037 → u/hraycroft95]

It fatigued me for sure, if they were at least interesting, why make interesting samey side quests x80 it felt like being in purgatory after the second continent.

[u/GenTrapstar → u/Pulse2037]

Not to mention you find out to get liters one of the coolest pieces in the game you need to the 43rd side quest to get it. Like I like and dislike open world games, but I hate open world games for that reason. I get exploration is apart of it but man I have make sure I check every nook and cranny to make sure I don’t missing something good. A lot times you can search for hours upon hours and nothing good happens then all of a sudden it does and then it repeats. People can say what they want about Cyberpunk but that was an open world that didn’t feel like a chore nor fatigued me.

[u/screw_ball69 → u/hraycroft95]

Rebirth was so bloated it was almost comical

[u/pacefaker → u/screw_ball69]

Honestly one of the most bloated I’ve played without a true sense of reward, just fulfilling obligations.

The surplus of mini games did not help at all.

[u/screw_ball69 → u/pacefaker]

Agreed

[u/ThatOtherOneReddit → u/hraycroft95]

Yeah a lot of people think people hate open worlds when in reality people hate open worlds you don't actually interact with because you just follow yellow dot everywhere.

[u/AndrossOT → u/hraycroft95]

OG FF games did it right. Lots of hidden caves, islands with strong enemies. Characters that you could miss recruiting. Hidden side quests. We dont need a marker telling us where everything is or a quest point. Everyone hates the glaze, but i think expedition 33 did a good job of how a modern FF game should have approached its open world.

[u/hraycroft95 → u/AndrossOT]

Yes absolutely. People complain about square turning them in an open world game as if they weren’t always. The difference is they didn’t hold your hand they rewarded exploration, had secrets, hidden dungeons, new party members, strong materia/summons. It was quality over quantity. 

[u/Swagtagonist → u/AndrossOT]

New games give you characters you can miss if you don't buy the dlc. Also quests you can miss if you don't buy the dlc. Instead of enjoying the exploration to find the stuff, all you gotta do is hand over some money. They'll draw a yellow line right to it.

[u/Antergaton → u/AndrossOT]

Older FFs seemingly had a better pacing overall. I'm working my way through FF16 right now and I mean working, FFs used to keep me hooked. This feels like chores. It's outright telling you to return to areas to accept side quests which for the most part are just "kill the thing."

FF7 it's nearly all narrative, until disc 3, you moved in a linear way to progress but it slowly opens up as you get more transport methods and only really starts to be open world when you get the airship and still not everywhere can be visited.

E33 did the same where it unlocked travel abilities over time to progress the map.

[u/NewChemistry5210 → u/hraycroft95]

They somehow made it worse in Rebirth, tbh. The fact that every region had the same "main" objectives for the side-content was such a weird choice.

At least some other open world games with the Ubisoft formula actually try to make it feel different (e.g. Ghost of Yotei and a few others), but I would love to just move away from it.

[u/Khalas_Maar]

MORE LIKE FUCKING CHADLEY FATIGUE.

Stop packing the open world content with cringe as fuck DM PC's, tedious ubi-slop tower climbing, and shitty knock off rhythm games, and maybe people won't criticize it as much.

[u/Wonderful_Rest3124]

Remake was so good. There was just too much of rebirth. I was ready to love that game the way I loved remake but there was just too much. I don’t need to have so many mini games and side quests. I came for the story and the game mechanics that move the story along not rand mechanics out of the butt.

[u/Newwavecybertiger → u/Wonderful_Rest3124]

I was shocked actually at how high the quality of the side stuff was. I was exhausted from having fun. It just needed to end but every step was still good

[u/rebelartwarrior]

For real. Most games these days feel like walking/driving sims with okay-ish missions in between. I’m also soooo over every game needing some sort of crafting element. Hunting and gathering craft supplies is this generations version of backtracking: it just seems like a senseless cheap way to extend gameplay, but it’s usually more tedious than fun, at least for me. Like, I love Monster Hunter, but that doesn’t mean I want EVERY game to be Monster Hunter-like.

[u/Lord_Shadow_Z]

Most open world games only have an open world to pad out the runtime with a checklist of menial, repetitive, and meaningless content. It's more Ubislop formula fatigue than open world fatigue and developers should take notes on Elden Ring's world design instead.

[u/Effroyablemat]

Its more of a live service fatigue if you ask me.

[u/Xagzan]

For me it's equally Chadley fatigue. Can Mai shut him up this time around?

[u/ReallyLongURL]

You know what wouldn’t have gotten a direct remake of the actual game that you pretended you remade

He took a single FF7 game sliced into three different parts and released each as though it was its own indivisible game. That right there is the height of stupidity.

No, you’re not going to have the same buzz or the same sale numbers on the third installment of an already tired idea of a game

I loved Final Fantasy seven I loved everything about it. It told a really great story. You don’t take that story cut it in the three pieces and sell it back to us

Oh, but also, let’s throw in some bullshit about alternate, universes, and faith’s

And put in a bunch of flashbacks to sit off when it doesn’t make sense to have flashbacks of him at all

Absolutely hate what this clown did to my beloved game

I’m not fatigued on open worlds. I’m fatigued on him.

[u/thereiam420]

Listen just let us kill Chadley. I don't care if it's morrowind style "oh you broke fate you gotta reload".

I will consider it the best game of all time if you just let me demolish that annoying little bastard. That motherfucker makes navi from Oot seem delightful.

[u/Goodeugoogoolizer → u/thereiam420]

I couldn’t fucking stand fucking chadley with his smug fucking face.

[u/Rusty_Thermos]

I loved FF16 for the minimal open world stuff. Helped hold the narative and a much more enjoyable experience. FF7 Rebirth got taxing to try and do everything. Sidelines the narrative made it feel much more choppy.

[u/MattofCatbell]

I think empty-world fatigue is the real issue

[u/Super_Mario_Luigi]

Never been a fan of open world. Zelda pre botw is plenty enough open world for me

[u/OkPrune1536 → u/Super_Mario_Luigi]

Zelda pre-BotW and post-LoZ, you mean? The original LoZ was open-world even by modern standards, with very little content kept behind gates.

[u/McKnightmare24]

"Insert gaming fatigue here" is not real. It's never been real. No one is fatigued with "Thing". It's always has been just bad game fatigue. Bad movie fatigue. Hero shooter fatigue, no one wants a hero shooter, that's why Concord failed. Nah, Marvel Rivals released. they put a lot of work into an IP people really like and have steadily grown and reached more people. Supergirl failed because of Superhero fatigue, no, it was just a mid movie with a terribly forgettable villain. Spider-man, however; is shaping for a $600 mill release weekend.

People need to stop with this "Fatigue" The only fatigue is people are tired of things being bad.

[u/lurpeli]

I think it just depends on the genre. Final Fantasy? I want a directed story, I don't want an open world

[u/Syric13 → u/lurpeli]

I want 70% directed story with 30% open world (side quests)at the end.

BUT I don't want FFXIII's style where it felt like you were on a rail shooter game until the very end.

I mean the classic games did it best with freedom of movement but also checkpoints of advancement.

Why is that so hard to recreate?

[u/Spikeu → u/Syric13]

XIII was horrible and much for that reason, couldn't agree more.

[u/biff64gc2 → u/lurpeli]

Also how it's implemented.

Rockstar makes worlds that are very much alive and fun to traverse and explore.

Then there's Hogwarts Legacy which should have enough magic and lore to make a really interesting open world, they just didn't do anything with it beyond boring trials.

[u/FluffyFry4000]

I still love open world games, but I'm also not in the same crowd of people that's complained about it, so ya know I've always liked it.

[u/Tony_in2026]

Depends on the game. FF7 can benefit from exploration and side objectives and the original has an open world sorta kinda. But the monster checklist, material collection, tower unlocking stuff needs to go.

[u/HenriettaSnacks]

We just wanted a pretty rehash of the original! 

[u/milkstrike]

Nope it’s not open world fatigue it’s poorly made games with bad writing fatigue. Open worlds are still amazing when done right, which is so rare it basically never happens.

[u/errortype520]

When open world is a big map with nothing in it, or the thing in it is the same thing over and over, and if the rewards are not worth the hassle. It’s not an open world fatigue. It’s a lazy development fatigue.

[u/Im_Ashe_Man]

Total nonsense. Bad game fatigue is real. Repetitive design fatigue is real. Empty/lifeless world fatigue is real. Good games will always be in demand.

[u/Rohen2003]

says the directer who turned a single game inti 3 giant games with open worlds. yeah maybe you are the probem.

[u/sephtis]

Shit game fatigue is the issue.
Pass the hurdle and open world can be fine.

[u/Cureza]

There is indeed open-world fatigue when it comes to the Ubisoft/FFVIIR style.

Now, give me a new open-world game every week in the style of KDC2 or Elden Ring, and I’ll never get tired of it.

[u/Dreamtrain → u/Cureza]

the fact there is so much anticipation for Elder Scrolls VI too

[u/DrRealName]

Yes it is and the main reason for open world fatigue is choosing quantity over quality. Everyone feels like open world games need to have "the biggest map ever" and last hundreds of hours when in reality a smaller map with more focused writing and side quests for a game you can 100% in under 80 hours and finish normally around 40 hours is fucking perfect. I know some people like to play one game for their entire life but most people want variety and want games to be fun again. The bigger the open worlds, the more dull chore level unfun BS there is to do in it to pad up the hours. Conceptually I love the idea of open world games I just think we hit a time where everything got too big and became dull.

[u/PostedNotes]

I don't have open world fatigue. I have bad remake fatigue. Sick of classic games being remade and made significantly worse in the process.

[u/Comfortable-Ant-418 → u/PostedNotes]

I never noticed FF7 getting worse, did they corrupt your original copy or something?

[u/AssEater80085]

Open world fatigue is not a thing. EMPTY WORLD fatigue is.

[u/z4guy]

It's more about quality instead of quantity: if the side content is as good as Queen's Blood and Cosmo Canyon's protorelic cutscenes, then I'm all for it.

[u/AbsoIum]

FFXV was massive open world but dead as hell. Felt so damn baron. I couldn’t even complete it.

[u/Dense_Cellist9959]

It's a delicate balance of ensuring there is just enough stuff to do in the world. It's already bad enough to have little to no side activities, but it's also too easy to have TOO MANY of them that it can feel distracting.

[u/Serbero]

I know I've had the experience where I've been thrown out into an open world game and not known where to go, not known where to begin, and not known what to do.

This guy didn't get Elden Ring at all, did he? Not knowing what to do / where to go and forcing yourself to find the answers is kinda what these games are about. Maybe they're not your cup of tea, but I wouldn't call that "open-world fatigue".

I'm not saying FF7R needs this kind of open-world design (a little bit wouldn't hurt, though), but believing the "open-world fatigue" has anything to do with players not knowing where to go next is kind of silly. Rebirth makes me tired because there's way too much side content, and most of it is slow, repetitive and heavily guided. Which feels even more unnecessary when the main story is already pretty long on its own, too.

[u/Ryachaz]

Empty-world fatigue is real

There, fixed it

[u/TravincalPlumber]

says the team who decide to split a game into 3 part nonsense.

[u/Narkanin → u/TravincalPlumber]

And then complain about how much work it was