this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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My feelings exactly.
I played for 60 hours or so, and I enjoyed it a lot. But they put a fatal design flaw into the game by forcing to you be V, and by putting a ticking time bomb in your head. That means that if you play logically, you'll follow the storyline quests in order to fix the big issue rather than spending the time slowly exploring the world they made. It also means that once you beat it, there's no fun in going back and doing it again, because you have to follow the same railroad tracks and go through the same story beats again. It cheapens the experience greatly.
Like you, the world holds no interest for me now that I have found a satisfying ending for V. The least they could have done was put in a "story mode," and a separate "open mode" where you can build any character (who isn't V) and live any life you choose, free from the main quest railroad.
I'll never understand why game designers would make an open world, and then slap on a "YOU HAVE TO SAVE YOUR LIFE HURRY UP!!! railroad quest as the main story. It's a lazy and utterly stupid design choice.
Counter point: Fallout 4 has you searching for your kidnapped son. I'm a father, in actuality. So to me that's an imperative too, but it didn't stop me from building skyscrapers in the interim. There was no real death clock, so I really don't get your criticism there.
Shit, final fantasy 7 is one of the greatest games of all time and that asteroid will sit there in the sky as long as you let it. You're reaching hard. The more I think on it, nearly every open world game has some imperative story point and they'll happily wait for you to get there. You get tuberculosis in RDR2 and you will live forever as long as you avoid the last mission. This isn't uncommon at all.
Whether there's a mechanical clock or not is irrelevant, this is about roleplaying and immersion. The player should be able to play in a way that makes sense in-world without being punished for it.
A good open world game should have lower tension moments sprinkled along the main story so it gives the player time to chill and explore the world.
I liked how this was handled in Spiderman 2018 - after major plot points, the main character would say 'looks like it'll take a while before the lab results (or whatever) come back, now's probably a good time to patrol the city', and the main quest wouldn't progress until you'd done at least one side activity - so if you wanted to just plow through the main quest it was just a small diversion, but it was also a great indicator that now was a nice time to spend some time playing around in the open world if you wanted to.