FFXVI quick review: a beautiful 30-hour movie with occasional breaks to beat things up.
This isn’t a complaint; I played the game all weekend and I’d be playing it now if I didn’t have work to do. But it is definitely cutscene-heavy and focused on story over everything else, followed by some extremely fun combat that lets you leap and dodge all over the screen while casting elemental spells that appeal to my ‘ooh shiny’ nature.
This post isn’t about FFXVI, however, especially since I haven’t even finished the game yet.
This post is about bear buttholes.
I see a lot of complaints about open world games lately. The maps are too big, the sidequests are boring, there’s too much stuff to collect. They’re empty and lifeless, repetitive, and too focused on chasing down icons instead of enjoying the story. Who are these giant open worlds even for?
I’m here to tell you: me. They’re for me specifically.
I’m the player who wants a map so big it takes 5 real days to cross it. I’m the one who ignores steeds and fast travel to jog across the map getting distracted by whatever shiny crosses my path. I’m the hero of the world who doesn’t really care that the moon is about to crash into the planet or my brother’s been kidnapped, because I am busy collecting bear buttholes for Generic NPC 84649.
I’m not going to say that open world complaints don’t have merit, because there have definitely been times where even I’ve gotten frustrated and wandered back to the main objective just for something new, or for interaction that doesn’t involve fetching random junk for random people. But I always return to criss-crossing the world to open new areas, find loot, and murder anything in my path.
I think that’s part of what frustrates some people about open world games. They just want to have an objective, get to the objective immediately, complete the objective, and move on. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that, personally, given the choice, I would rather have a game where I can do whatever I want rather than be hemmed in by invisible walls and unsurmountable geography to railroad me towards what the developers want me to do.
Call it my inherent contrariness.
For me, the journey towards the objective is half the fun. Or three-quarters of the fun. I love to roam, and I think to make open world games continue to be successful, developers should understand that the travel should be just as lively and interesting as the mission itself. Not that they aren’t trying, but as much as I love murder, bandits popping up out of nowhere and promptly dying to my way overleveled character does get a little… bland after the 75th time.
Yesterday, my friends and I discussed a bit about AI creating video games (hi Kirren). As anti-AI as I am about robots and writing, the idea of using an AI to help generate video games is interesting. I don’t mean the plot, but the actual mechanics of the game. Maybe it might come up with some interesting ideas that humans haven’t, or at least present things in a way that triggers human creativity so developers think a little more outside the box.
Just please don’t take away my collectibles and side quests. I’m a collecting fiend, and the imminent destruction of the universe can wait. I still need one more bear butthole.
Bonus Round
Some favourite open world games in no particular order:
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Forbidden West
FF15 (screw you, I like the chocobros)
Red Dead Redemption
Red Dead Redemption 2
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
Witcher 3