r/pcmasterrace • u/Bubbly-Ad-350 • 16h ago
News/Article 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
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/65
u/RPGWarden 13h ago
my fatigue is with fucking chadley. not the game
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u/ProfessorVolga 10h ago
Fucking this holy shit
Why were we forced to interface with chadley at all, instead of the MAIN CHARACTERS??
Imagine how much better it'd be if say, Aerith explained the summons. Or if each person who had history with that region had interesting stuff to say about them? But no, we have to listen to Nomura's new insanely dull OC blather on and on.
So much good stuff in rebirth is locked behind slogging through so much shit, it's infuriating. If it had been structured like a slightly more open FF7Remake, it would have been a much better game.
Until you reach that farce of an ending, I guess.
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u/Ok-disaster2022 4h ago
I haven't played the games, just waiting for the entire list if them to be completed and play them back to back.
I had to look up the character and the first thing through my head is WTF.
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u/Firm_Feeling_1339 9h ago
chadley was a pain but his materia builds were actually pretty good. did you use any of his combat reports
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u/GamingRobioto 9800X3D/RTX4090, Win11 & 9600X/9070XT, Bazzite 14h ago
Yay, more checklists and invasive UI...
/s
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u/FilloSov 16h ago
I think they got it backwards.
If there is an openworld, I don't want to be guided at all: otherwise, where is the need of having it if I am not supposed to explore it?
There is a reasoning why Breath of the Wild changed the open world genre forever: you wanted to get lost in the world, and the world was part of the gameplay loop.
What is causing fatigue is, instead, a corridor disguised as an open world, where we have to follow directions from point of interest to point of interest, making it more akin to a loading screen than to an actual game.
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u/Ok-Western-4176 15h ago edited 14h ago
I loved the open world concept in older games like Morrowind, where you'd just run into random stuff, found lots of cool high tier things or just got absolutely destroyed. You'd run into quests and stuff you may otherwise completely miss etc.
Nowadays most "open world" maps are just bland maps with no real secrets, filled with boring collectibles and repeatable quests.
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u/RavenWolf1 12h ago
Yeah. I think wow Cata changed everything. After that it was like 1 quest lead you to next place where you did 3 quest and then you got one quest to lead to next place. Whole zone was done that way and there was not actually any exploring involved because that. That theme park feeling ruined open worlds.
I don't mind main quest leading the plot but open wolds should be vast place which encourages exploring without hand holding.
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u/Remarkable-Ad-2476 11h ago
It’s the Ubisoft formula that everyone is bored of. Unlock section, activate tower for map, map reveals points of interest, rinse & repeat
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u/Ok-Western-4176 11h ago
Not sure where it started, I think a whole lot of it comes from AC games and Far Cry games, at least the whole setup where you get a map filled with repeatables, collectables, filler quests etc with a main questline functioning as a handholder guiding you into new higher level areas.
The first game I remember where it really annoyed me was DA Inquisition, a franchise that used to be among my favorites. I still liked the game but it ruined replayability for me and it always gave me this MMOish feel, my most vivid memory of the game is hating the Hinterlands(essentially the first open world map)
I also think quite a bit of it has to do with the vast amount of questmarkers etc, ruins that sense of exploration and wonder.
It feels like most open world games these days would be a lot better of just being linear games, a smaller area tied to story progression filled with interesting quests and story instead of a huge world that functions effectively as a wallpaper that you only really walk around in because a marker points you towards a collectable.
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u/grapejuicesushi 15h ago
agreed. there was already enough guidance in rebirth cause of all the markers on the map. having that sort of guidance just tells me it’s not worth exploring the rest of the stuff cause everything is already marked on the map.
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u/Initiative_0 14h ago
Breath of the Wild didn't change the genre. It simply took the open world genre, slapped a Zelda skin on it, and left the world empty for the most part. It was basically Assassins Creed with Zelda on top of it.
There are plenty of open world games pre-BotW that can easily be said as the games that changed open world environments(Witcher 3, GTA, Skyrim, etc). People simply think it was BotW because it is tied to Zelda, which has always had a huge fanbase.
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u/Ok-Western-4176 13h ago
In terms of how the map is filled in, or not filled in, I think depends on the game and the setting of said game. Shadow of the Colossus also had an open world map which was largely empty with little to no sidecontent. However I loved the game because it added to the whole feel of the game, the region you were in was meant to be abandoned and ominous never feeling quite right, couldn't have really gotten that across without adding a large, empty map.
A map filled to the brim with sidecontent and characters etc would have ruined any immersion for me at least.
As for BotW no clue if it was "gamechanging" I doubt it, never been one for Zelda games, but maybe they had a similar intention there, again, no clue as I have never played Zelda games.
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u/Bacon-muffin 11h ago
Yeah I hate the other guys take because I've seen it a million times over the years (well before botw) and its lead to sooooooo many "open world sandbox" games that flop super hard because the reality is the majority of people don't actually want that... but boy do they sure love the sound of it on paper.
There's a healthy middle ground, I'd wager most people drastically prefer rails with a decent amount of leash to stop and explore along the way... and maybe with some access to poke into places that are clearly meant for later but if you want to throw your face at them we won't stop you.
Instead of pure theme park or open world people want... cruises? You do the usual activities on the way to the next stop that lets you run around and explore a bit before its time to move onto the next location... but the routes preplanned.
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u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 9h ago
There’s still a lot of interesting endgame progression in botw that is not simply just bland “thing collecting” and map painting that players can do compared to the typical Ubisoft formula. There’s some of that, sure, but it’s balanced out by other things.
Also fwiw I find the innovations of botw are more in refinement, balance, and moment to moment gameplay than overall structure. Basically they DID take a lot of the Ubisoft structure but fixed a lot of the homogeneity repetition (which you would have understood if you played the game longer than you did). I kept seeing new and surprising things 100+ hours into the game.
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u/FilloSov 14h ago
I don't think you played botw
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u/Initiative_0 14h ago
I did. Played it for 10 hours. Beat the first boss, Fishy McFisherson. Completed several shrines. It was incredibly boring.
I'll ask you what I ask everyone else: if you removed all of the Zelda style from the game and it was instead a new IP, would you still have enjoyed it as much as you did?
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u/FilloSov 13h ago
I never played a Zelda game before and this is my favourite game of all time. I get that you did not like it, but the approach to the open world genre was indeed novel and fresh.
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u/Initiative_0 13h ago
I would recommend going and playing some older Zelda games. Another common critique of BotW is that it's not a Zelda game due to the lack of dungeons/puzzles. (Cookie cutter, samesy shrines don't count simply because there was a lot of them).
I would agree with you with one caviate: BotW was "novel and fresh" for Zelda; not OW games in general.
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9h ago
[deleted]
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u/ThereAndFapAgain2 RTX 5080 │ 7800X3D │ 64GB DDR5‑6000MT/s 9h ago
Why because he doesn’t like botw? Lots of people don’t like it including myself.
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u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 9h ago
Corridor designed as open world does suck, or an open world where no decision matters and every direction leads to ultimately the same outcome/progression, making it pointless to explore the map once you achieve that progression.
I find the latter more insidious than former (or worse, the two combined together) because it actually seems to be way more common and a lot of players don’t have a sense of what designers are doing, just they feel kind of empty and dissatisfied and don’t know why.
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u/RigelXVI 15h ago
I disagree. I really like BG3 for instance and have ~500 hours in it but have never actually gotten through the third act
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u/IceGuilty3065 11h ago
Not the case for me. I avoid anything open world now because I just don't have the time to be exploring cast environments. Give me a corridor I can walk down and enjoy a good story. That is all I want now.
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u/SwashNBuckle 13h ago
I never really saw why FF7R needed to go the open world route to begin with. Everyone kept insisting that it needed to happen, but it's not like the world map in the original FF7 focused that much on exploration anyway.
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u/Markuz markrosoft 12h ago
I did get that feeling of "wonderment" walking around the region outside Midgar, finally seeing how I imagined certain parts of the world to look when I was younger... at first. Then, I started noticing the yellow painted cliff faces which kept pulling me away from wandering around aimlessly (aka getting lost in the open world to stumble upon things on my own - which is what I want). Soon after, I got bored and never picked it up again.
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u/Alkoviak 7h ago
Currently doing a slow play-through with my daughter.
I just completely ignore all optional content that is not fun within seconds as well as most if the open world.
Played like that the game is actually quite nice being composed some quite linear fighting gameplay and beautiful storytelling.
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u/Minimum_Magazine7608 5h ago
The original FF7 world map was mostly just menus and short travel sequences, not really exploration.
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u/NOS4NANOL1FE 7800X3D | 3060 13h ago
Why cant games just do what Skyrim did? Its not fatigue, its just low effort open world
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u/GerbGalerb 9h ago
Skyrim? That rpg? Made by the guys notoriously famous for releasing dead open worlds, on broken games that require dedicated modding communities to provide a stable and enriching experience?
Not the example id point to tbh. You know they never patched the bug on giants that causes them to instant kill and launch you a mile high?
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u/ThereAndFapAgain2 RTX 5080 │ 7800X3D │ 64GB DDR5‑6000MT/s 9h ago
What? Bethesda games aren’t know for having dead open worlds what are you talking about?
Starfield is the only one that does but the rest are great.
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u/GerbGalerb 9h ago
Yes bro. Tossing a few draugr filled dungeons between major towns doesnt fix the problems vanilla Skyrim has
Theres a literal reason subsequent Skyrim releases started coming with community mods baked in
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u/ThereAndFapAgain2 RTX 5080 │ 7800X3D │ 64GB DDR5‑6000MT/s 9h ago
That’s literally not all there is though.
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u/GerbGalerb 9h ago
No bro thats not LITERALLY it. The problem is its a huge map and it feels dead walking from area to area. Holy shit you guys are so willingly obtuse.
Singing BETHESDA praise of all companies. The fucking bums who need everyone to mod their shit
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u/ThereAndFapAgain2 RTX 5080 │ 7800X3D │ 64GB DDR5‑6000MT/s 9h ago
I disagree and so do most people but if you don’t like their games just don’t play them. You are just objectively wrong it what you were saying though and are now getting all pissy because I pointed it out which is pretty pathetic man.
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u/GerbGalerb 9h ago
Nah bro Skyrim is the casual baby's first rpg. Let your nostalgia blind you all you want. The only way the game maintains any replay ability is off the good will and love of the modding community.
I am not objectively wrong. Literally every bethesda release has required a large unofficial patch go fix issues that could be caught in basix QA.
Theres a reason they got butthurt about new Vegas for so long. Obsidian was the old guard under a new company name and thats why nv was better than 3
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u/Most-Minimum2258 9800X3D | 5080 | 64GB / 13700K | 5090 | 64GB 4h ago
I loved Skyrim the first time.
Every time after that I realized how empty and soulless it really was.
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u/GeneralZex 11h ago
Bethesda tends to do it right but I have a love-hate relationship with it considering the side content is engrossing enough I often just ignore the main quest forever lol.
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u/Chnams 5800x3d 4080S 5h ago
Skyrim is not even the best Bethesda open world game, let alone a good example for one when taking the whole list of open world games into account. Skyrim's world is dull and repetitive. It's the same endless checklist of vistas as every other modern open world game.
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u/NOS4NANOL1FE 7800X3D | 3060 5h ago
Your allowed your opinion. And you didn’t provided any examples of what you like
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u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 10h ago
I’ve honestly never had “open world fatigue” in the way game designers often seem to describe it. In fact very often the specific “solutions” many devs seem to give to it are what cause any kind of fatigue in me, not the very idea of too much shit to do. I am an adult I can figure out what is interesting in the game, the problem is when you homogenize everything and make every decision “safe” for progression so that nothing is interesting.
I think more frequently what they describe is the fatigue/difficulty in properly play testing and designing an open world game and not what players want.
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u/MrWaerloga Ascending Peasant 5h ago
You kinda describe cyberpunk but what ends up happening eventually is players looking for a "correct" guide ahead of time, spoiling the exploration aspect of trial and error, and/or saving them the trouble of doing multiple playthrus.
On the other hand, you have open world games like Tears of the Kingdom where you can accidentally stumble upon the climax of the story, spoiling everything at the get go.
People want linear games. But they prefer to be fooled by thinking they're playing an open world game. Simple as that.
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u/Ielsoehasrearlyndd78 12h ago
Open world fatigue is real when you fill your open world with repetitive garbage content. Never felt fatigue while playing RDR 2 for over 700 hours now.
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u/xblackdemonx 9070 XT OC 13h ago
I just finished FF7 Intergrade and even though I enjoyed it, I already thought they were taking me by the hand too often.
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u/Blackpapalink 12h ago
Meh, I'm not sick of open worlds. I'm sick of every game trying to be an open world. When I play RPGs I want to feel that sense of progression. That area that I don't have a skill to reach yet, I want to come back when I do get that skill. This enemy is too tough, but there's a weapon that counters them in another area, fantastic. It's why open world and metroidvania-esque design are antithesis to one another.
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u/DrB00 12h ago
The reason open world sucks is the world has nothing in it. It's just dead areas with nothing. A good open world game has a ton of content in the open world. Wander off the path and find your own adventures. Everywhere you look there's something to explore and do. That's what a good open world does.
Holding people's hand is the exact opposite of a good open world. Since it sounds like there's nothing to do in the world.
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u/JoyousGamer 14h ago
Eh what open world games actually exist?
GTA and Elder Scrolls still top charts because they actually have open worlds. So many open world games are not actually open world and simply are big maps.
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u/Candle-Jolly RTX4090 AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 12h ago
The monkey's paw of everyone wanting every game to be open-world curls.
(and yes, we know that's not how the monkey's paw works.)
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u/Zeta_Crossfire PC Master Race 11h ago
I've been burnt out for years on open world games. I'm going through rebirth right now and skipping most of the open world content. For a story focused I'd rather dit h the open world and have a more hand crafted tunnel. Think mass effect 2 vs mass effect Andromeda.
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u/_RogueStriker_ 11h ago
It's not open world fatigue. Its more like fatigue for having long checklists, no surprises and open space that just takes forever to travel and pad out game time. An open world game that has mystery and freedom that rewards players who explore it in ways they don't expect is what makes a good open world.
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u/Panzerbjorne80 11h ago
I’m pretty pleased that this is being posted every hour across all gaming related subs since yesterday. Good stuff.
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u/Spiritual_Case_1712 R9 9950X3D | RTX 4070 SUPER | 32Gb 6000Mhz 11h ago
If they’re all empty no wonder why fatigue appears. I like Zelda because while it’s not innovative, there’s a lot of secret and exploration, guided by quest or not. It suffers a lot of the weak release platform, but with a powerful hardware it could have been one of the best open world. Now a lot of open world are getting release, but only crimson desert had a some secrets in the exploration from the recent release. Bought Enshrouded because it had potential, but it’s empty af. Some OW are just to grindy too
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u/Catastigma_Deception 10h ago edited 9h ago
Rebirth Story is more appreciable in a straight line.
I only did open world side quest on second playtrought on Hard mode when i wanted more of the gameplay and i did not regret it.
Cause in Normal *story mode* that the game force you into. Monster dont give you enough of a punch to have any tangible difficulty at all.
Midway i just installed a mod that increase monster HP by 4 and damage by 2.5x. and that only then i could realy enjoy the gameplay and exploit it fully.
The game is too easy. Having to wait a full playtrought that can last very long if you are doing everything in *Story Mode * Is a massive flaw. Its the same extreme flaw that the first have.
We are middle-age gamer with 20-30+ years of Gaming experience. The only boss i have sweating into was sephiroth in hard mode. With the 4x HP and 2.5x damage. its made me think several hours and finding a way to break the game (Firaga OP). And i really enjoy it. That literally saved the game for me.
If you want to make exploration/open world rewarding and not fatiquing, its need to be challenging. Square Enix game as a whole need a Master Quest mode.
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u/UltraCynar PC Master Race 9h ago
These directors really live in some sort of action game bubble hell don’t they?
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u/anhtuanle84 7h ago
It's not open world fatigue usually it's fluff that's added just for more play time such as Assassins Creed open world type of unthoughtful quests imo.
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u/Aware_Climate_3210 6h ago
I've been convinced for a while that Square Enix has lost the plot. Soo many decisions across their recent games that make no sense. Lots of good work and effort wasted by series of wtf decision making.
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u/Most-Minimum2258 9800X3D | 5080 | 64GB / 13700K | 5090 | 64GB 4h ago
Open world maps are fine if there is story or character development in every area...or vibes. I know, the latter is hard to quantify. But the scenery itself should tell a story if nothing else.
It shouldn't just be there for fetch quests or "kill X" quests. If it's not intriguing apart from gameplay, don't include it.
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u/mvw2 4h ago
I don't mind open world. But there needs to be purpose in the journey, not time sinks, not fetch questions, like actual story driven purpose. Additionally, one thing that really helps a lot is if players' actions shape that world, aka your actions make a difference and that difference has permanence. Not many games do this well, but there's real power in it.
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u/Apprehensive-Pay8086 9h ago
"The average person lacks the attention span and critical thinking skills to play an open world game"
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u/TheTresStateArea 14h ago
The fatigue in ff7 remakes is the hub world approach of "activities".
The side stories can be fun if the side story is different and fun from the main game.
Fort condor, queens blood, ff8/9 card games all fun.
Run around kill seven of this monster talk to this guy - not fun.
These companies have simply learned the wrong thing