Examples of good open world level design/field design

[Jencks]

I've been thinking a lot about Xenoblade Chronicles X lately (still waiting on the Switch port, Nintendo) and I think the most remarkable achievement of the game is the absolutely masterful level design of the open world. Monolithsoft have garnered a reputation for excelling in this area, and for me this is key in making an open world feel engaging to explore. Xenoblade X offers terrain with many winding paths, extreme levels of verticality, and areas that are not accessible until way later in the game which offers an enticing hook to keep playing.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Xenoblade X's design is the skell, which is unlocked about 30 hours into the game. This completely recontextualizes the level design by allowing you to reach completely new areas with an enhanced jump and transformation abilities. What's more, the flight module (unlocked around the 60 hour mark) changes the level design again by allowing you to reach vertical terrain inaccessible to you earlier. X's feeling of slowly peeling back an onion as it's level design opens is unrivaled in my opinion.

The world of Xenoblade X has extreme variance in it's terrain, often subconsciously pointing you to interesting locations

On foot, your ability to traverse the world is relatively limited

Unlocking the skell and it's flight module provides a new outlook on the world's level design

I now post the question to you ERA: What are your favorite examples of level design / field design in an open world?

 

[mrmickfran]

It's Xenoblade X, I agree

I love Breath of the Wild, but X still hasn't been topped for me

Gawd, just seeing that Skell image in the OP makes me want to play it again SOOOO badly. Bring it to Switch Nintendo 😭

 

[Matzpxl]

Dunno if it's a unpopular opinion, but imo early AC games (specially the Ezio trilogy) had a very good level design to roam/parkour around. Genuinely miss those times

 

[astro]

Xenoblade 3 is also pretty great. It doesn't have flight, but it does have a metroidvania style approach where areas of maps are unlocked as you get new abilities, and unlike X it actually has a tonne of fun stuff to actually find.

If they ever make X2, I hope they blend what they did with X and 3.

 

[AuthenticM]

I really hope that they remaster Chronicles X. I'd love to play it.

 

[AshenOne]

Skyrim is the ultimate peak of open world level design for me.

 

[WildArms]

It's Xenoblade X, I agree

I love Breath of the Wild, but X still hasn't been topped for me

Gawd, just seeing that Skell image in the OP makes me want to play it again SOOOO badly. Bring it to Switch Nintendo 😭

Click to shrink...

Couldn't have said it better myself!

I'll never forget finding the secret cave in Noctilum, all lit up with pretty purple fauna yet dangerous with poison puddles and a hidden superboss at the end of it.

For my pick I'll go with Sleeping Dogs. Lots of hidden nooks and crannies with cool things there. Specifics can be found in this video.

Sleeping Dogs All Easter Eggs, Secrets and Hidden Safehouse Upgrades (+ Guide)

Collection of all Easter Eggs, secrets and hidden safehouse upgrades with guide on where to find each upgrade.The list:* Costumes / Outfits references* Speci...

youtu.be

The obvious elephant in the room as well, Elden Ring. Pretty sure I don't even need to talk about how well its open world is handled! 🤣

 

[laxu]

Red Dead Redemption 2's open world is great because you can navigate really well without the map because there's a lot of uniquely constructed areas so just seeing a particular tree formation can help orient you. It also has enough "biomes" that it doesn't feel like you are in the same region all the time as it changes from snow to arid to swamp to forest naturally.

 

[Nere]

Elden ring obviously, finally an open world without level scaling and interesting loot. The world design is also amazing, with how the world flows, also the multiple underground caves. By far the best designed open world I have played since Morrowind probably.

 

[Kuro]

Good design would make use of all that open space in a fun and natural way rather than just drop slightly closed off battle arenas in them like so many games tend to do.

Xenoblade X had really cool design although it did struggle a bit with filling it up with interesting things. 3 was a pretty big step back in world design and placing spongey enemies bunched up every 2 meters was a bit aggravating although it did have more interesting sidequests at least.

BoTW really made exploring a ton of fun and games like Elden Ring have only expanded even further on hiding traditional level design in a more modern open format using clever enemy placement or environmental hazards.

Fallout/Elder Scrolls worlds are pretty boring to me which is why the games with better quest design in those series stand out more for me like New Vegas.

I also have to give a shout out to Genshin Impact for its clever use of landscapes, puzzles, and traversal mechanics to make a really fun (and pretty) game to explore.

I think a combination of traversal, aesthetics, game-y level design, and mechanics that are conducive to make exploration as interactive as possible are the most important things.


edit: Death Stranding is another really interesting take on open world design that really gets down to the micro level of exploration mechanics in a really fun way where there's strategy involved.

 

[Cudpug]

X is remarkable. But I do think ironically it loses something when you get the Skell, in the sense that no longer do you feel like a tiny ant gazing upwards - once everything is accessible, the world feels smaller.

But it's still probably the best designed open world I've seen. Gorgeous and the other games in the series haven't matched it.

Skyrim also, despite its jank, is still probably the best interactive open world. A true role playing game, in every sense.

 

[WildArms]

Elden ring obviously, finally an open world without level scaling and interesting loot. The world design is also amazing, with how the world flows, also the multiple underground caves. By far the best designed open world I have played since Morrowind probably.

Click to shrink...

Aye. You know... that's what hoping we get from some upcoming games like Wayfinder, Throne and Liberty (these 2 especially since they seem to heavily market this same idea) and even Blue Protocol.

Sure, I know Blue Protocol is more big open fields instead of open world but still. I get VERY strong Xenoblade Chronicles X vibes from it. Aesthetically and musically (no surprise since Sawano did the main theme).

 

[Jencks]

Elden ring obviously, finally an open world without level scaling and interesting loot. The world design is also amazing, with how the world flows, also the multiple underground caves. By far the best designed open world I have played since Morrowind probably.

Click to shrink...

Ironically, this is one area I thought Elden Ring wasn't as strong. I was looking forward to see how FROM would apply their level design expertise to more wide open fields, but the end result felt relatively...safe? Although still better than the majority of open worlds. Perhaps it was because the traversal options were so limited. Comparing the outdoor areas to the legacy dungeons, I think they excel more in designing confined spaces.

X is remarkable. But I do think ironically it loses something when you get the Skell, in the sense that no longer do you feel like a tiny ant gazing upwards - once everything is accessible, the world feels smaller.

But it's still probably the best designed open world I've seen. Gorgeous and the other games in the series haven't matched it.

Skyrim also, despite its jank, is still probably the best interactive open world. A true role playing game, in every sense.

Click to shrink...

I agree, although this is something I feel with every open world. Once you discover everything, the world feels much smaller.

 

[NotLiquid]

Monolith Soft is definitely top tier in designing open worlds that always create points of interest and the Xenoblade games (X in particular) are definitely exemplars in that field. I think their work on Breath of the Wild also had a huge impact in why that game's open world still stands out to this day. So many pathways still linger on like fixtures in my memory. The way every point of interest has something of note on the way and builds new points of interest that are fun to just plotting traversal toward is still the most "I feel like a kid all over again" moment I've had in terms of wanderlust. I've said it a lot before but the best feeling about the open world is that you frequently segue between peaks and valleys; once you reach a peak you get a sense of empowerment as making your way down to the new point of interest becomes swift and acts as a sort of cathartic release. They aren't just pretty horizon shots but clear pathways to progress. I'm extremely fascinated to see how Tears of the Kingdom will construct an open world that consists of multiple "surfaces".

Shout out to "anti-open world" games like Shadow of the Colossus and No More Heroes where the map is basically a buffer to get to the boss battle but you build a sort of memorization of the greater area that creates anticipation. They're definitely not "good" open worlds in the conventional terms but I find them charming either way.

 

[barbarash22]

Currently playing through Risen 1 (it was stealth-realeased on PS5) and I am pretty far into the game.
This is how open world design is done properly.
It has exactly the right size for what it's doing, everything is interconnected which leads to surprising shortcuts, you have to explore because the map is vague at first, you are rewarded with useful stuff/nice viewpoints of the island if you go off the beaten path, point of interests come in the right interval, etc.

Visually it still looks surprisingly beautiful and all the parts come together in a way, that this island feels like a real place.

It's like a breath of fresh air after all the tedious open worlds I've seen in the last 10plus years.
Might do a LTTP after I am finished.

 

[Mindfreak191]

Surprised no one mentioned The Witcher 3, you could play the whole game without a hud and still manage to find your way around.

 

[Jencks]

Monolith Soft is definitely top tier in designing open worlds that always create points of interest and the Xenoblade games (X in particular) are definitely exemplars in that field. I think their work on Breath of the Wild also had a huge impact in why that game's open world still stands out to this day. So many pathways still linger on like fixtures in my memory. The way every point of interest has something of note on the way and builds new points of interest that are fun to just plotting traversal toward is still the most "I feel like a kid all over again" moment I've had in terms of wanderlust. I've said it a lot before but the best feeling about the open world is that you frequently segue between peaks and valleys; once you reach a peak you get a sense of empowerment as making your way down to the new point of interest becomes swift and acts as a sort of cathartic release. They aren't just pretty horizon shots but clear pathways to progress. I'm extremely fascinated to see how Tears of the Kingdom will construct an open world that consists of multiple "surfaces".

Shout out to "anti-open world" games like Shadow of the Colossus and No More Heroes where the map is basically a buffer to get to the boss battle but you build a sort of memorization of the greater area that creates anticipation. They're definitely not "good" open worlds in the conventional terms but I find them charming either way.

Click to shrink...

This is a beautiful way of putting it. Peaks and valleys.

 

[Thisisme]

Elden Ring is my fave in this area, but Xenoblade X would be a close second for me. It disappointments me that X struggles in other areas. I would love to see their environment designers work with better writers and character designers.

 

[astro]

Ironically, this is one area I thought Elden Ring wasn't as strong. I was looking forward to see how FROM would apply their level design expertise to more wide open fields, but the end result felt relatively...safe? Although still better than the majority of open worlds. Perhaps it was because the traversal options were so limited. Comparing the outdoor areas to the legacy dungeons, I think they excel more in designing confined spaces.

Click to shrink...

I think the double jumping horse makes the traversal far from being limited, and that the open world itself is expertly crafted. They use the same design ideas as Xenoblade X, having the routes of the open world being like a puzzle to solve, and expertly using vistas to give an overview so you can plan out your route in advance.

I honestly don't think they only excel in designing confined spaces, I think they excel in both and with everything they learned from Elden Ring their next shot at an open world is going to be even more incredible.

 

[Vex]

damn... do I need to play Xenoblade X????

 

[-Tetsuo-]

Elden Ring and Genshin Impact are about as good as it gets.

 

[Tambini]

Currently playing through Risen 1 (it was stealth-realeased on PS5) and I am pretty far into the game.
This is how open world design is done properly.
It has exactly the right size for what it's doing, everything is interconnected which leads to surprising shortcuts, you have to explore because the map is vague at first, you are rewarded with useful stuff/nice viewpoints of the island if you go off the beaten path, point of interests come in the right interval, etc.

Visually it still looks surprisingly beautiful and all the parts come together in a way, that this island feels like a real place.

It's like a breath of fresh air after all the tedious open worlds I've seen in the last 10plus years.
Might do a LTTP after I am finished.

Click to shrink...

You got me interested in playing Risen now

 

[Hellstruck]

I came in here to post Xenoblade X and you already beat me.
The game is pure genius. Primordia is mostly open fields and starts as an amazing first starting area. There's still plenty of caves to navigate and such, but it's easy to navigate.
Then most players will either go to Oblivia or Noctilum next, with each providing a sudden new challenge -- Noctilum being dense and a complete change in structure from Primordia, and Oblivia having a MASSIVE crater in the middle that cuts up the map and makes navigation difficult.
This is all with the fact that these zones open up AGAIN when you get mechs, and AGAIN when you get the flying module.

Xenoblade X has a lot of problems. It's my 4th favorite Xenoblade (love 'em all). However, it easily has the best open world of any game I've ever played, and I've gone through Elden Ring and picked up a bit of Genshin and slogged through Witcher 3 and RDR2. It trumps them all easily.

Edit: I wanted to add a note about movement. Xenoblade X's characters move different than any other Xenoblade -- they run like a cheetah and jump like they're on the moon. Monolith had movement specifically in mind when it came to the game and it shows. XCX isn't only the best open world, it's the best open world to simply MOVE in. There was even a meme when the game was in its early days that the characters were mountain goats because scaling up cliffsides was just so damn fun.

 

[Yeona]

Xenoblade X puts Xenoblade 2 and 3 to absolute shame. It is brilliant.

Also, honourable mention to Dragon's Dogma at launch (i.e. without all the Portcrystals). The world was small enough that it still made sense to ask the player to move about. The world is dangerous enough, especially at the highest difficulty (which the game was primarily designed around) that you don't want to travel without being properly prepared -- do you have all the curatives you need? Will you have to take breaks? How long is your journey going to be?

Because far more dangerous creatures show up during the night, it even emphasizes that feeling, and it rewards players to know where the safe spots are. There are three Healing Springs throughout the game world, strategically placed in zones that the player will be visiting often. They also don't allow enemies to go near, and nothing's as terrifying as camping out in a spring for the night as a rabid pack of goblins and hobgoblins circle the spring, ocasionally throwing rocks at you in anger, until the sun begins to rise and they scurry away. Additionally, the feeling of running into a Lich in the middle of nowhere and just barely escaping with your life into a Spring is unmatched.

Healing Springs not only restores your whole party, but you can also actually take some curative water from it if you have bottles with you. But considering the weight limit that your characters have, the faster and easier to travel they are, the lighter they will be, and the less items you'll be able to safely carry. Plus, what if you need to bring back some loot? Also, you need to take bottles with you to begin with, because you can't see shit at night, and lanterns use oil that is a consumable. Yeah try running out of lantern oil at midnight as you're being stalked by a Lich in a fucking dark forest in the middle of nowhere!, with several hours to go until sunrise saves your ass.

Add to this the artificial intelligence of your pawns which learn new strategies as they fight monsters and memorize weakspots and also memorize landmarks, and very quickly it becomes a really fun journeying experiences with party members in a single-player game.

The better point here though is that fast travelling wasn't free. You had very limited Portcrystals, which are essentially fast travel points that you set up yourself literally anywhere in the open world and that therefore, you have to be careful where you set them, and they're also one way. You had to spend Ferrystones to travel to them, items that had to be farmed and were relatively difficult to get in version 1.0 at launch. For the majority of the game, you had to walk mostly everywhere, but journeying was always a joy because it felt like actually going on a perilous trek throughout the wilderness, where anything can happen. You may be ambushed by raiders, hunted by a pack of wolves which behave intelligently, attacked by a swooping griffon, cross paths with a drake, have to survive a Lich and its infinitely spawning zombies, who knows?

This is all much before Dark Arisen edition came out, which ruined all of that balance in favour of convenience, by offering a whole bunch of Portcrystals, and giving the player an infinite Ferrystone and providing a bigger number of Portcrystals to players, much earlier on in the story.

 

[Jencks]

I think the double jumping horse makes the traversal far from being limited, and that the open world itself is expertly crafted. They use the same design ideas as Xenoblade X, having the routes of the open world being like a puzzle to solve, and expertly using vistas to give an overview so you can plan out your route in advance.

I honestly don't think they only excel in designing confined spaces, I think they excel in both and with everything they learned from Elden Ring their next shot at an open world is going to be even more incredible.

Click to shrink...

Agree to disagree I suppose. I never felt like there were enough instances of the level design being built around Torrent or using him in an interesting way. I will agree the game does an exceptional job of creating vistas, but in general the route is pretty clearly laid out for you and does not require much planning. I think it was also the fact that all the caves, catacombs, and mines, have their entrances located in the side of cliffs instead of being free standing structures, which leads you to sort of trace the edges of the areas to find them. As a result sometimes I felt the inner field portions weren't as fleshed out, Liurnia is probably the biggest example.

Regardless it's still one of my favorite open world games so I won't argue the point that much.

 

[barbarash22]

You got me interested in playing Risen now

Click to shrink...

Beware:
At least on PS5 it crashes quite often.
Sometimes it runs perfectly for an hour, then you have 3 crashes in ten minutes.
Doesn't bother me much because it launches/loads very fast.
It autosaves in short intervals, still often manual saving is recommended.

And Piranha Bytes are famous for their bad combat systems.
But as weird as it is here I even like the combat system, because especially in the first few hours you need to use tricks and strategise around the combat systems shortcomings (lure enemies to npcs, use the environment to block movement, trick the stupid AI, etc).

 

[Robo]

I've been playing through Xenoblade X for the first time recently and yep it immediately was the first thing to come to mind when I read the title. I think it's masterful how the level design can feel so natural yet still feel like a playground to jump around and get to places. Almost in a Super Mario 64 type of way and the fact that they managed to load every area so seamlessly with very few stutters is so amazing. I was stunned just how often the developers are just like "yeah you can jump up this cliff dude, its kinda janky looking but it's easy!"

Once you unlock the Skell for the first time, you can really zoom around and I feel like that just wouldn't have been possible without overcoming whatever technical challenges they had to reach that point. It felt like they knew they wanted to bring the mechs in eventually but HAD to figure out how to design the world in such a way that feels fun to traverse on foot but then dynamically changes in scope once you get the Skell.

And my god, the scale of these landmasses, I feel like Primordia is such a good beginning area and Noctilum is nice and dense and littered with death everywhere, a literal jungle maze the first time. But I only recently got the scope of the world once I made way to Sylvalum for the first time and it's just a literal journey on its own to get there, passing by several islands that aren't even on the map until FINALLY you reach that white continent in the distance. I remember an NPC on the way even remarked that the scale of Sylvalum is so much larger and it's so mindblowingly surreal and alien.

 

[astro]

I will agree the game does an exceptional job of creating vistas, but in general the route is pretty clearly laid out for you and does not require much planning.

Regardless it's still one of my favorite open world games so I won't argue the point that much.

Click to shrink...

The rest I can agree to disagree, but this part... the game is full of routes you need to figure out, the game's open world uses its layout to lead you by the hand and create natrual exploration in place of the usual waypoint designs and thiswas one of the more common ways people praised the open world. I genuinely don't see how someone could appreciate that in X and miss how often it happens in Elden Ring unless they didn't do much free roam exploring.

 

[SunBroDave]

As far as level design in an open world game goes, Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, AC Odyssey, and The Witcher 3 are the peak right now. Sure, Witcher 3's combat and enclosed levels are nothing remarkable, but the way it guides you through its world via its quests is incredibly well done.

 

[Atom]

Most of my go-to examples are already here, so

I know nobody's really played it but Forspoken. The topography of the world is genuinely superb, and the way in which subsequent traversal powers unlock more and higher level routes for you is very impressive. There's a dearth of like...stuff, but the map itself frequently reminded me of Elden Ring or BotW or Xenoblade X, but without the legacy dungeons or unique points of interest that those games had. A sequel that iterates on the concept of an open air parkour dungeon that you see in glimpses in the main castles or some of the platforming challenges, and makes that a more common occurrence throughout the world and its side content would be great.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

I always felt like traversal is key to open world game design, if traversing a large map isn't fun it's going to be very difficult to keep the playing engaged and pacing intact. Infamous is really good at designing the levels to work with the games mechanics.

Obviously Spider-Man is as well

 

[Hellstruck]

One of my biggest problems with Elden Ring is convenience actually. It's almost childish at times.
"Oh, to get to Liurnia you must cross the dangerous Stormveil Castle!!"
Meanwhile it's almost impossible to miss the secret side path that skips Stormveil.
"Oh, to get to Leyndell you must join the two halves at the great lift!"
Again, a side path right next to the lift. I've never known anyone who actually got to the plateau using the lift.
There's also an excessive amount of waypoint usage that is outright just lazy world design.

It's still a great open world and one of my favorites, but it lacks a lot of finesse and come come off as amateur at times.

 

[astro]

One of my biggest problems with Elden Ring is convenience actually. It's almost childish at times.
"Oh, to get to Liurnia you must cross the dangerous Stormveil Castle!!"
Meanwhile it's almost impossible to miss the secret side path that skips Stormveil.
"Oh, to get to Leyndell you must join the two halves at the great lift!"
Again, a side path right next to the lift. I've never known anyone who actually got to the plateau using the lift.
There's also an excessive amount of waypoint usage that is outright just lazy world design.

It's still a great open world and one of my favorites, but it lacks a lot of finesse and come come off as amateur at times.

Click to shrink...

It's pretty easy to miss the side path that skips Stormveil, in the OT at the time there were tonnes of people who had their minds blown by it lol. And being in the OT at the time of release... most people definitely used the lifts and were equally amazed when they heard they could be bypassed.

The good thing about these two examples if that they reward you /if/ you're someone who likes to really explore every nook, and little things like this are a big part of what makes the open world so rewarding to explore.

Excessive way point usage is pretty hyperbolic I feel, too.

 

[SmittyWerbenManJensen]

Breath of the Wild was the most fun and engaging open world for me, mainly due to ease of traversing the different areas, as well as the amount of discoveries that you could find in any direction. Other games may have more beautiful worlds, but BOTW's was the one that I enjoyed exploring the most.

XCX's world was fantastic too. I did enjoy RDR 2's gorgeous world, but that game was extremely clunky and not as fun to explore.

The first half of Elden Ring was probably up there with BOTW in terms of exploration and enjoyment, but I was burned out by the 75% mark of that game. I think it was too big.

 

[Yeona]

One of my biggest problems with Elden Ring is convenience actually. It's almost childish at times.
"Oh, to get to Liurnia you must cross the dangerous Stormveil Castle!!"
Meanwhile it's almost impossible to miss the secret side path that skips Stormveil.
"Oh, to get to Leyndell you must join the two halves at the great lift!"
Again, a side path right next to the lift. I've never known anyone who actually got to the plateau using the lift.
There's also an excessive amount of waypoint usage that is outright just lazy world design.

It's still a great open world and one of my favorites, but it lacks a lot of finesse and come come off as amateur at times.

Click to shrink...

Elden Ring is greatly elevated by the art direction. That's about it.

Nobody in their right fucking mind would defend an open world where a city exists five meters away from a raging snowy mountain and yet doesn't seem affected by that whatsoever -- similar shit happens elsewhere, with castles surrounded in lava and topped by raging flame tempests covering the whole skies, which weren't visible whatsoever just a few yards away. It is lazy world design, and From has always done stuff like this.

But having a green scale screen filter when you enter Blighttown was blatant enough, but at the very least it was somewhat masked by level design funneling.

 

[astro]

Elden Ring is greatly elevated by the art direction. That's about it.

Nobody in their right fucking mind would defend an open world where a city exists five meters away from a raging snowy mountain and yet doesn't seem affected by that whatsoever -- similar shit happens elsewhere, with castles surrounded in lava and topped by raging flame tempests covering the whole skies, which weren't visible whatsoever just a few yards away. It is lazy world design, and From has always done stuff like this.

But having a green scale screen filter when you enter Blighttown was blatant enough, but at the very least it was somewhat masked by level design funneling.

Click to shrink...

It's not lazy world design, lol, it's a fantasy setting and the entire world has bizzare phsyics and strange topography that looks like a world torn asunder and glued back together with all kinds of magic.

 

[penguindrum]

Xenoblade X is insane. Moving in any and every direction is satisfying. The running, the jumping, the lack of fall damage, world design, flora/fauna, and the monster design and how they can camouflage themselves against the environment leading to genuine jumpscare, dread-filled, otherworldly, breathtaking moments. Mira is the GOAT. It's one of those games that plays on my imagination the same way games did as a kid. Where a skybox in a game made you think there was something out there. Something you could swim or fly out to. Everything in Xenoblade X is reachable so the child in me is delighted, but the game still manages to leave you feeling like there's more out there on the horizon. That maybe it's possible to keep swimming or flying and that there are more undiscovered alien creatures out there.

 

[Aleh]

Xenoblade 2 blends intricate dungeons and complex towns into its open areas masterfully and it doesn't get enough praise in terms of level design, too

 

[Art_3]

Any open world Rockstar ever made but shoutout to PS2's San Andreas for cramming so many vistas in a PS2 map that felt big even though it really isn't

 

[TaySan]

Saints Row 2

 

[Jimnymebob]

Xenoblade X puts Xenoblade 2 and 3 to absolute shame. It is brilliant.

Also, honourable mention to Dragon's Dogma at launch (i.e. without all the Portcrystals). The world was small enough that it still made sense to ask the player to move about. The world is dangerous enough, especially at the highest difficulty (which the game was primarily designed around) that you don't want to travel without being properly prepared -- do you have all the curatives you need? Will you have to take breaks? How long is your journey going to be?

Because far more dangerous creatures show up during the night, it even emphasizes that feeling, and it rewards players to know where the safe spots are. There are three Healing Springs throughout the game world, strategically placed in zones that the player will be visiting often. They also don't allow enemies to go near, and nothing's as terrifying as camping out in a spring for the night as a rabid pack of goblins and hobgoblins circle the spring, ocasionally throwing rocks at you in anger, until the sun begins to rise and they scurry away. Additionally, the feeling of running into a Lich in the middle of nowhere and just barely escaping with your life into a Spring is unmatched.

Healing Springs not only restores your whole party, but you can also actually take some curative water from it if you have bottles with you. But considering the weight limit that your characters have, the faster and easier to travel they are, the lighter they will be, and the less items you'll be able to safely carry. Plus, what if you need to bring back some loot? Also, you need to take bottles with you to begin with, because you can't see shit at night, and lanterns use oil that is a consumable. Yeah try running out of lantern oil at midnight as you're being stalked by a Lich in a fucking dark forest in the middle of nowhere!, with several hours to go until sunrise saves your ass.

Add to this the artificial intelligence of your pawns which learn new strategies as they fight monsters and memorize weakspots and also memorize landmarks, and very quickly it becomes a really fun journeying experiences with party members in a single-player game.

The better point here though is that fast travelling wasn't free. You had very limited Portcrystals, which are essentially fast travel points that you set up yourself literally anywhere in the open world and that therefore, you have to be careful where you set them, and they're also one way. You had to spend Ferrystones to travel to them, items that had to be farmed and were relatively difficult to get in version 1.0 at launch. For the majority of the game, you had to walk mostly everywhere, but journeying was always a joy because it felt like actually going on a perilous trek throughout the wilderness, where anything can happen. You may be ambushed by raiders, hunted by a pack of wolves which behave intelligently, attacked by a swooping griffon, cross paths with a drake, have to survive a Lich and its infinitely spawning zombies, who knows?

This is all much before Dark Arisen edition came out, which ruined all of that balance in favour of convenience, by offering a whole bunch of Portcrystals, and giving the player an infinite Ferrystone and providing a bigger number of Portcrystals to players, much earlier on in the story.

Click to shrink...

100% this. Dark Arisen PS3 still functioned like that if you didn't own the original, which is how I played, but Dark Arisen PS4 included it by default.

 

[misho8723]

I absolutely love the design of the maps in Witcher 3 and its expansions
Another great open-world designed game is the European legend Gothic II
The realistic design of the STALKER games is insane
Cyberpunk 2077 is pretty much the first open-world game with Deus Ex/Vampire Bloodlines/Prey designed levels, missions and world

 

[Jeff Albertson]

No game has ever immersed me like Red Dead 2, I get it's not for everyone but the world is just awesome to head off exploring with enough little details and surprises to keep you looking

 

[DPB]

Beware:
At least on PS5 it crashes quite often.
Sometimes it runs perfectly for an hour, then you have 3 crashes in ten minutes.
Doesn't bother me much because it launches/loads very fast.
It autosaves in short intervals, still often manual saving is recommended.

And Piranha Bytes are famous for their bad combat systems.
But as weird as it is here I even like the combat system, because especially in the first few hours you need to use tricks and strategise around the combat systems shortcomings (lure enemies to npcs, use the environment to block movement, trick the stupid AI, etc).

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Risen probably has the best melee combat of all their games. I never understood why they didn't build upon it and seemingly threw everything out for their subsequent games.

 

[Dlanor A. Knox]

X, BOTW, Elden Ring and Genshin Impact are kings when it comes to open world design, imo. With Genshin Impact getting more and more impressive with every new area they add when it comes to level design and visual variety. In 2-3 years that game's world will be fucking insane. It's so varied and exploration is always rewarded and fun.

 

[Yeona]

it's a fantasy setting

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I know fantasy and magic are often used interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. A fantasy setting is not shorthand for "there's no basic universal rules of logic anymore". That's not how fantasy has ever worked. Snow is still affected by the wind and it's still cold, so there's no reason for Leyndell to be completely snow-free. Doesn't matter if it's fantasy. Hell, Leyndell looks arid, if anything.

Usually, good fantasy tends to set its own rules instead. From did this really well with the prior games, maybe with the exception of some parts of DS3 and almost all of DS2. A lot of Bloodborne breaks the boundaries of logic but that comes with the territory for eldritch horror.

I wouldn't call it lazy, had I not known they were perfectly capable of doing this before. But they are. They made it look effortless, even.

 

[Moara]

Genshin Impact is about as good as it gets in that department

 

[astro]

I know fantasy and magic are often used interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. A fantasy setting is not shorthand for "there's no basic universal rules of logic anymore". That's not how fantasy has ever worked. Snow is still affected by the wind and it's still cold, so there's no reason for Leyndell to be completely snow-free. Doesn't matter if it's fantasy.

Usually, good fantasy tends to set its own rules instead.

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That is how the fantasy in Elden Ring works, though. The world has literally been torn asunder and is hanging together on the threads of various types of magic. The fact that the "zones" dont' affect each other is perfectly believeable within the lore of this completely unbelieveable setting where things regularly don't follow any kind of real world physics.

It's supposed to not make sense, it's supposed to be completely broken and fragmented and utterly fantastical. There's nothing that says a world like this needs to do the things you say it does to not be lazy or believable.

 

[ket]

I liked elden ring's world design a lot

 

[Inquisitive_Ghost]

XCX has wonderful world design, yes.

Something specific I'd like to point out about what helps make BotW work is that the game has very deliberately placed sight lines. From a huge percentage of the map, climbing up even a little will allow you to triangulate where you are by referencing Hyrule Castle, Death Mountain, or other big landmarks out around the edges like the Dueling Peaks. It makes exploration easier and more fun when you can keep a better idea of where you are without having to open the map constantly.