In many ways, contemporary open-world games have taken a step back by relying too heavily on guiding players to the next area of interest, butRed Dead Redemption 2andAssassin’s Creed Odysseymanage to make matters right.
Too often, open world games have actually become linear in gameplay, as some players find themselves traversing in a straight line across the map in the direction of the quest marker on the compass or mini-map. This is one of the reasonsFar Cry 5removed the mini-map, for example, but still kept the compass.
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Red Dead Redemption 2andAssassin’s Creed Odysseyboth offer players the optional feature of turning off the compass and mini-map, forcing players to use clues given to them by the quest’s offering and visualizing their surroundings to navigate towards the next destination, including manyhidden areas ofRed Dead Redemption 2.
More games should offer players these options to make the environments more immersive and realistic in their navigation by using their visuals as clues for where to go next. In older games, quest-markers on the mini map and compasses were actually non-existent, and the feature came along later on.
For example,many players praiseElder Scrolls 3: MorrowindoverSkyrimin regards to its exploration. It was released in 2002 and essentially established vast and epic open-world exploration on both PC and console. Furthermore,Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowinddid not include the compass nor quest-markers on the map, and each quest given was rich with information to provide players the necessary clues for where to search for the quest’s next landmark or location.
WhenWorld of Warcraftfirst came out, it too did not include quest-markers on the map nor navigation to guide the player to the next location. Similar toElder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, each quest provided plenty of information to investigate the surroundings in search of the quest’s starting point or next location. For many players, there was a great level of satisfaction in finding the location of where the next quest begins, and in itself it was a sense of accomplishment.
Only after most players took advantage of mods which added in the quest-markers on the map and compass, did Blizzard officially add in the feature themselves toWorld of Warcraft. Thankfully, there is still an option to remove the quest guidance system. This could be one of the reasonsWorld of Warcraft Vanillais making a comeback.
Asopen-world games become the new standardfor level-design in many of today’s action-adventure and RPG games, developers should rethink the ways in which players navigate the map system and open world environment.
Perhaps developers should draw inspiration from older games, as well as newer games such asRed Dead Redemption 2andAssassins Cred Odysseyin allowing players to navigate the maps using more realistic methodologies, which often lead tosecret side quests inAssassin’s Creed Odyssey, for example.
Furthermore, going bigger in size is not always the solution as well.Metro: Exodusdemonstrated that smaller sized maps which are incredibly dense in ensuring that each location looks unique and hand-crafted can also go a long ways in ensuring players are immersed in their environment.Metro: Exodus’brilliant open-world designsalso allow players to have a sense of where they are on the map based on the visualization of their surroundings, without constantly eyeing the mini-map.
There is no excuse to not ensure that every quest given provides enough information for the player to clue themselves in towards the next key location on the maps. After all, this is generally how real-life worked before we had GPS, and many players would like a realistic experience in open-world games.
Future open-world games need to provide players the option to turn off map-markers in the way thatRed Dead Redemption 2andAssassins Creed Odysseyhave done, as well as others. But perhaps the solution for some games is to get rid of the map-markers altogether, or include other forms of visual cues on a map, as developers should be looking for new ways to innovate exploration in open-world environments to maximize immersion into the environments.
