Summary
Open-world video games have become hugely popular in recent years, but there is a lot that goes into them. A big part of it is just making an engaging world. After all, if there is nothing interesting about the world, players will not have much incentive to explore it. Building an exciting open world requires a lot of detail. A lot of work has to go into designing terrain, natural features, different types of environments, characters who may be encountered in specific areas, and of course buildings. Unless the game is aboutsurviving in an extremely remote location, there is likely to be a human presence in the world and, with it, buildings. Many great open worlds will include buildings of all shapes and sizes. They may be houses, castles, lighthouses, skyscrapers, towers, temples, shops, restaurants, and lots of other things. They may be brand new or very old. But buildings of some sort can usually be found.
However, whether those buildings can be entered is another question. In many games, buildings exist for decoration and are inaccessible to the player. This was common in a lot of older video games where adding them would take up a lot of storage space, but it still happens today. Sometimes the world is so big, or there are so many buildings, it just isn’t feasible for the developers to give each one a unique interior. But some games like to go the extra step of making the open world as open as possible, up to and including trying to make most, if not all, of its buildings accessible in some way.
Assassin’s Creedhas a history of producing really detailed open worlds. The player can’t necessarily entereverybuilding (though they are all fair game for climbing) but generally, a large portion of the buildings included in each map have an interior. This isespecially true when it comes to historical landmarks.
Assassin’s Creed: Miragegives players access to Medieval Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate, which comes with a lot of interesting buildings. Of particular note is the opportunity to enter historical landmarks, some of which no longer exist, like the House of Wisdom and the Palace of the Green Dome.
Gameloft’s Disney-themed life simulator is a somewhat unusual example. Technically,everybuilding is accessible. The only caveatis that houses can’t be entered while their owners are sleeping. What makes this one stand out is the player also gets to build most of them.
As the titular village grows and more characters arrive, they all need specific buildings constructed, requiring the player to accumulate money and resources to get them made. Once built, the player can not only enter them but also, at least in some cases, perform renovations. Creating buildings can also open up opportunities for specific activities and questlines.
For all its faults, one can’t deny that Projekt CDRed put a lot of detail into the world ofCyberpunk 2077. They created an intricate multi-leveled city full of unique locations, and V’s story takes her all over the place. So naturally a game like this would have to have a lot of interesting buildings.
Most of them are accessible in some form one way or another, or at least accessed during specific plot points or missions. Many of these buildings offer strange cyberpunk-themed services and contain very interesting characters or encounters.
Bethesda’s iconic fantasy RPG boasts a pretty large open world with a lot of detail. Considering the map islarge enough to hold several towns, it’s impressive that nearly every building is in some way explorable. “Buildings” inSkyrimare also quite varied, and include things like towers, houses, inns, temples, fortresses, ancient ruins, and even an entire wizarding school in Winterhold.
Now granted, not all buildings areeasilyentered. They may require the player to pick locks, evade detection, find a hidden entrance, or risk prison time if caught; but one way or another they can be explored. Most buildings also include items a more theft-inclined player can steal and some of them have hidden secrets that make the effort worthwhile.
Bethesda has a pretty good track record for giving the player buildings to explore. Similar toSkyrimabove, theFalloutseries (especially after3) allows players to explore just about every building the map has to offer. Sure, some of them may be difficult to enter, and many present further challenges once inside, but nearly everyone has an interior players can explore.
This can be seen throughoutFallout 3andNew Vegas, butFallout 4has arguably the largest map andstillmanages to make most of its buildings accessibleto some degree. There are a few interesting buildings that might catch players' attention, some of them very strange.
Unsurprisingly, for a game paying heavy homage to spaghetti westerns, the player will encounter a lot of small frontier towns full of buildings, and even a more urbanized city in St. Denis. Saloons, of course, come up a lot. Some buildings provide services like barbershops and general stores. Some don’t even play into the main game but can be entered anyway, like movie theaters.
Seeing as this a game about outlaws, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that there are banks the player gets to rob. The St. Denis section includessome fancy plantation housesthat inevitably become stages for gunfights. The developers eventhrew in some very strange out-of-the-way buildings as Easter eggs.
As a tactical shooter,Ghost Recon Wildlandsis designed with the expectation that the player will make use of the environment as much as possible. That includes any buildings they happen to find. Buildings serve a wide variety of roles throughout the game. Sometimes the player is on the defensive and can use a building to provide cover while fighting off their attackers.
Sometimes the objective is located inside a heavily guarded building, requiring the player to strategically find a way to reach it. Either way, just about every building is accessible on some level, though there might be a risk of them already being occupied.
