OpenWorld Games Are Broken, And Nintendo Spent 2017 Trying To Fix Them
Earlier this year, AVClub threw a temper tantrum. AVClub was mid-way through Horizon Zero Dawn, a game of dazzling polish and exciting potential, and after a few hours of streamlined, mildly inspired introduction, AVClub viewed with horror what the remainder of my time with the game would be: It was to be, yet again, a map game. AVClub would find new regions, climb some sort of tower, unlock a bunch of icons representing various activities on a map, and then go do them. AVClub would gather endlessly generating materials that would let me craft bags that would let me hold larger quantities of those materials. There would be a detailed screen, somewhere in the byzantine menu, that listed exactly how few of these many activities AVClub had accomplished, designed to make me flush with gratitude for the surplus of content this game had afforded me. Only six of 14 errands accomplished! What a brave new world we live in!
