Where did the linear games go?

Where did the linear games go?

straight into the trash

More like where did the in between go

Witcher 3 is best of two worlds.

Valve is going to deliver

Is that Shaq?

my ass

>muh open world
I think philosophically speaking, the linear game is contained within the open world game. Like you can have a linear experience within the open world game, but you can't have freedom/exploration in a linear game. So people think open world is better.

In practice, this never happens. Or at least very very rarely. You either get a game that has little sense of direction and thus meanders around. Or you get a game which is "open world" but really just a bunch of half assessed linear games smushed together. Or you get an "open world game" which has stuff in it that makes it basically just a linear game with a bunch of huge open spaces to walk around it that are empty.

When you make a linear game, it needs to actually be good.

When you make an open world game, it can have shallow mechanics and weak mission design and people will still fellate it as 10/10 because the ability to roam around adds a lot of filler, which spreads out the content so that you can absorb it in enough density to appreciate how thoroughly mediocre it is.

An example would be Red Dead Redemption. If you stripped out the open world and made it a linear mission based shooter it would be panned heavily, even though nothing has actually changed when it comes to the most important content.

So if you're a shit developer making a shit game, it only makes sense to make it open world.

remember how many people hated ff13

what happened

I thought two worlds 2 was the best of two worlds

>which spreads out the content so that you can absorb it in enough density to appreciate how thoroughly mediocre it is.
*can't absorb it

It's really fucking not. It's cookie cutter drowner fights in between being led by the nose with your batman vision.

Story and atmosphere is what makes TW good. The gameplay has always been mediocre, no matter what direction you approach it from.

>linear games are bad by default
>open world games are good by default
When will this meme end?

Square-Enix took linearity to its absolute extreme, that's what happened.

Yep, the combat is meh.

Linear games are absolute trash

Rockstar and Ubisoft selling many copies of their usual open world formula.

Backlash on linear games getting vocal around when Uncharted 2 came out. Around this time stuff like how linear the CoD/Battlefield campaigns are also got put into question.

Things went next level when Skyrim came out though. While not very deep in mechanics, the game had a lot of them, and was able to get casuals get entrenched in all of them. There's a reason that thing about Japanese game devs showed that among Japanese game devs the most influential video game has been Skyrim.

Oh shit, yeah I forgot about this one as well. Except unlike Uncharted or CoD single player campaigns, this one actually kinda deserved getting shit on...until 35 hours in when it gets good.

into the trash where they're belong to

linear 3rd and 1st person games from the late 90s to mid 2000s are my favorite. open world is for autists.

...

>what is middleground

deus ex is a good example. no minimap retardation, no waypoints, just find your way there through a level that is big enough to feel intricate but small enough too actually have some semblance of interesting level design

Japan.

>tonally consistent

Remember how deeply immersed and interested you were in the story of all those bland cardboard anime archetypes?

Yeah, me neither. FFXIII's problem was that it was so linear that you're literally being told what the world is without being able to actually SEE what the world is. You're stuffed down a corridor with nothing to cling to but a bunch of whiny children and a half-baked vague setting that never takes the time to actually establish itself.

People shit on FFXII a lot for being clunky, but at least that has a setting and characters that can be fucking understood and enjoyed, instead of just vomited into our collective laps and shoved in our faces.

>arcade games have always been consistently good one way or another
>there's no "open world" arcade game

Checkmate atheists

Open worlds can be good if they treat the player like dogshit but still reward skillful gameplay. Too often these games treat the player as the chosen one and the difficulty/depth of gameplay does not change from the first 20 minutes.

Midcore gameplay. Over rated cause its a Sony exclusive

I'll tell you where they went.

Once upon a time, video game developers loved single player games. But then money came and they saw that multiplayer made more money. Then when people cried for single player, they made up the perfect excuse to make single player as cheap as possible: open world.

>bigger world
>more quests
>do what you want!

They sound like the perfect video game. But then you see it in action, and you get mediocrity out the ass. Copy pasted quests, spammed empty points, boring terrain, same and a shallow experience. Assassin Creed, Arkham City, Breath of the Wild.

They all fell to the open world meme and all your favorite series will fall to it too. You can thank Minecraft most of all for all this. Selling games to kids with ADD.

>arcade games have always been consistently good one way or another
Arcade games are shit if played outside arcade, literally flashgame tier gameplay.

It's linear and polished, but it's missing that X-factor that separates a good game from a great game.

the only open world game that felt like it had a good story experience to me was sleeping dogs

Well, it's still tonally consistent

it's consistently flavorless grey paste.

If there's one thing I fucking hate about open world is that it absolutely destroys level design.

IMO, linear story games are fine if the level design is non-linear. Thief 1 and 2 are excellent examples of this.

>metal slug
>flash-tier

take that back, faggot.

there's a reason ocarina of time's temple designs are praised even today

That factor is known as "soul".

Linear has become a dirty word because NEET faggots need a 200 hour long game to justify their purchase.

yeah, linear games rock, there's nothing wrong with short games
what, no, why would I buy the last guardian? or inside? those games are faggot shiit bruh hahahh

Learn from Gothic 2 if you want to get the best of both.

An open world which lets you go anywhere
BUT
You will most likely die if you just walk into the next dark forest because lack of level scaling and hand by hand enemy placement

Shitload of quests and missions to do AND they are all unique with people looking at your social standing before letting you do things - Not just ''Hey this guy is the chosen one this means we can ask him to do literally anything and he will do it''

Crafting System exists BUT ressources are limited so you can't wait 1-2 days for your overpowered plants to regrow. And you also need to learn basic crafting skills before you can do any crafting at all which requires you to spend learnpoints which are also limited.

And Online has no reason to exist in such a setting.

>Where did the linear games go?
Into the 'not nearly as much ROI as multiplayer + loot crates' pile.
The wealth distribution in the world right now does not cater to the one shot game.

It's kind of funny that linear has somehow become synonymous with short, considering Persona 5 is like a 60+ hour game and is linear as it can get without going FF13.

Naughty Dog makes some of the highest selling games period and they're all mostly linear single player experiences.

The older I get the less patience I have for games like Witcher 3 or the one with the bow bitch I don't even remember. Everything just feels like filler.

>nier did this kind of story first
>nier also did undertale first

it's kind of bizarre when you think about it.
oh wait no it's not.

>considering Persona 5 is like a 60+ hour game
That's if you play on easy mode and rush like a maniac. People who take their time and do side content will get 100+ hours easily.

Publishers hear that people don't want linear games so they make open world garbage

Why not compromise between both and have STALKER style levels?

I know, but you know there would be people that would immediately say otherwise if I said it was a 100+ hour game, mine took over that long and it was great.

>60+ hour

How the hell does anyone speed through the game that fast first time? I played on Easy and clocked in 140 hours.

The problem with FF13 wasn't that it was linear. The problem was that it was horseshit that was even more apparent due to its linearity

I agree with the spirit of this post but fail to see how linearity has anything to do with shitty world building and character development. FFXV is arguably worse and it's open as fuck.

Pic related

Not really. I love W3, but it's pretty undeniably it would have been much better with smaller and more dense hubs and a smaller quantity yet a higher quality of quests.

It turns out linear story progression is alright, it's when you spend most of it literally running in a straight line when it gets irritating.

How the fuck do you make higher quality of quests compared to what w3 offers you?

Such vague contrarian bullshit

I hope you're proud user. Now I have to clean my monitor.

dude that made one of those long fallout 4 reviews talked about how modern devs are desperate to make games that have "endless" content, like they're scared that someone is gonna stop playing their game. modern devs are beyond retarded.
what i hate is how open world shit is like an industry standard now, like first thing you decide about your game is that it's gonna be open world and have some crafting system in it, everything else is an afterthought. good thing i have a gigantic backlog of old games that i'm probably not gonna finish in a couple of decades, so, as far as i'm concern, the modern gaming industry can go to hell.

It's not contrarian at all. The Last of Us was forgotten within a month of release.

concerned*

I like to think the game industry crashed a long time ago and we're just riding the waves of normie-only games right now. Nintendo is the only video game company left, but they make products for mostly kids and people who can't stop buying Nintendo products.

The genuine nature of the golden age of video games is gone. Not unless something dramatic happens.

Bitch, your eyes are awful. I'm staring at those tits until they pop out by willpower alone.

No one can ever answer because you can boil down any quest regardless of how great it is to a "fetch quest" or "go kill this"

>not thinking TLoU is the greatest game ever automatically makes you a contrarian

Give me a fucking break.

The shooting is alright but nothing amazing, the AI isn't very good and the stealth kinda sucks. All this culminates in an experience that, while decent, doesn't make any kind of lasting impact. At least not for me.

you find mario irritating?

...

>neon colored bugle boy shirts
>frosted jeans
>tucked tshirt into pants

most 1988-1991 picture ever.

Got made and twisted into shit I. Which overly elaborate borderline dumb set pieces are what is now considered linear. Which sucks not because it exist but because often times the set prices in which linear games are build around now a days severely limit or out right take control away from the player. Meaning that he cool and tightly designed shit is more so designed to be watched I steadbof played which for an interactive medium is hella stupid and lame to do

I agree that that's good quest design but I don't agree that it's solely because of the fact that it's challenging. It's a good quest because it gives you multiple way to complete, but doesn't explicitly tell the player that.

Haha what

>really fucking hate quest markers
>turning them off isn't an improvement because the braindead game design doesn't give any context otherwise

Completely open world games are too chaotic and lack direction that gives you a reason for playing. The best open world games give you the option to go off the path the game is laying out for you, but you have to be careful you don't get your shit pushed in by enemies that are too powerful for you.

Fallout 1, 2, New Vegas, and Breath of the Wild are great examples of how open world design should be done.

Well you gotta define linear. Walk straight forward through a single corridor for the entire game, that shit is outdated and shouldn't exist these days except maybe in indie nostalgia games.

Regardless of your opinion on the game, this claim is total bullshit. Just look at all the Part 2 Trailer views across youtube. People still talk about it after 4 years.

That's a better critique than saying vague bullshit like "it doesn't have a soul."

Prey just released

>Breath of the Wild
stopped you there. breath of the wild had the blueprint of a good open world game, but never managed to go through with it. The content was lacking and very lazy, and the game had other problems that was caused by the bad hardware in general. Zelda should just return to the linear dungeon design. It was working and no one asked for this.

There's nothing to talk about. It's a standard third person shooter with nothing particularly interesting about it.

>That's a better critique than saying vague bullshit like "it doesn't have a soul."

Thanks, but I'm not the one that said that.

I couldn't agree more, but that doesn't change the fact that people is still talking about it, for better or for worse.

>X-factor
WEW FUCKIN LAD LET THE MEME TIMES ROLL

They aren't still talking about it. They're talking about the sequel, because it isn't out yet. And then a month after the sequel is out, people will stop talking about it.

People bitched about shitty linear level design and devs found out it's easier to make empty open world games that actually construct well-thought-out and detailed levels that aren't just corridors. A linear game can have a straight-forward story or single path with which you progress through the game, but the individual levels can be complicated or open in design with branching paths or even involve hubs into the mix; where as a linear level is just that, a straight-forward level with a single path. It's like comparing the more complicated, open, or diverse maps of classic FPS games to the more straight-forward, narrow, or washed-out same-y maps of modern FPS games; I think that people don't want linear levels, they just want linear games with complex levels and for devs to finally make an actual effort at level design again.

The economy has been in the toilet for years and open world games last longer, so budget-conscious consumers want to buy the games with the largest amount of potential playtime.

>People shit on FFXII a lot for being clunky, but at least that has a setting and characters that can be fucking understood and enjoyed
No it doesn't. FFXII was vomited out.

We already fucking recovered to pre-2008 levels.

>linearity

Go watch a movie or read a book. Clearly this medium is not for you.

no

It's not the economy. It's strictly the fault of ROI practices for the business. I worked with Sony as a programmer before. I know how their business sense is for most of the big developers.

protip: all these AAA companies could make hot risky games if they cut off a lot of the fat by firing the people who are wasting space and money, get rid of the feminists, and downright remove anyone who isn't actually working on a game. That will kill 50% of the staff overnight, which is exactly what needs to happen.

>its standard
Yeah it doesn't have that GAME FEEL amiright?

>Breathe of the Wild
Really good mechanics and a fun game, but a really shallow open word. It's on par with a Ubisoft game.

What New Vegas did right was not expect the player to aimlessly wander around the wasteland like a retard. It has a really good balance between questing and exploring. Every location felt unique and had something tied to it. Quests were open ended too. On the other hand, Fallout 4 and Skyrim both had linear quests padded out with an open world filled with dungeons giving you generic loot.

Do I need to play Gothic 1 to get Gothic 2 or can I just jump right in?

Breath of the Wild still follows good open world design philosophies. Whether or not the content is any good is beside the point.

The remaster that came out a year later was one of the best selling games for the ps4. This isn't even a discussion about the merits of the game. The fact is, people talked about it and continue to, the game wasn't just a fad for a month like so many triple A titles. That claim is completely and utterly false. The game even had huge success in Japan. I don't know why you refuse to believe it.

The worst most normie argument in history

I think breath of the wild was close to getting it right. Just needed a lot less Shrines, and a lot more proper Dungeons. Maybe drop the puzzles, too, and focus more on combat.

Nier did neither of them as well as the other two did theirs. I'm not saying that either of them are better games, but Nier was a middle ground and TLOU and UT are extremes.

I didn't say it sold poorly. I said that everyone forgot it after release.

Not to mention, the online community still exists. I played a few matches last month and didn't have any issue finding players.

The very first rule of open world design that most open world games have failed completely in, including botw is:

if you are having the player explore, actually have them find something to be rewarded from that exploration. In botw, everything is only a korok seed or a heart. The shrines offer no amount of exploration reward due to how unconnected they are from the world and the seeds are literally there just force you to pick up rocks or do some other ADHD exercise. The game was literally made for Minecraft players.

If you were able to walk through Lake Hylia, and find an entrance into the ancient Water Temple, it would have been a hella lot more interesting than what we got.