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Thomas Mahler expressed reservations on Crimson Desert's level designs and open world interactivity

At least in Pearl Abyss's case they've been working on the game for 7-8 years, enough time to truly flesh out a large world, and are actually releasing it. I'm aware I'm seeing this all through hype-tinted glasses currently, but this game was certainly not built under normal AAA circumstances, unlike that aforementioned 90% you bring up.
Yup, with enough time, you could pull it off. I hope they did!
 
I think Rockstar has tons of experience with how to make Open World stuff work and I don't think it's true that RDR2 has nothing to interact with. And... they also have 1000+ devs working on their games and if you talk to folks from Rockstar, they'll happily confirm that filling up those open worlds is a massive load of incredible labor.

Ok maybe I shouldn't have picked the best as an example.

I used to play Black Desert a lot back in the day, because of the nature of the game there were the typical zones with mobs bunched up but overall they crafted a convicing world filled, with towns, outposts, dungeons. You could even ride an hot air balloon to go from one town to the other.
If they apply the same love to Crimson Desert, that is enough for me.

And yeah I'm sure it's hard work designing an open world but apparently they've been going at it for quite a while, and knowing korean culture I'm sure they were in crunch mode.

I want to take over villages and leave them as ghost towns.

- I want to kill every challenger and let them know of my immortality.

- I want to steal loot.

- I want to use magic to burn down everything the village left behind.

- I want to ride a horse and trample the crowd.

- I want the NPCs to provoke them and make them fight amongst themselves.

Sometimes it's the little things : I remember a section in RDR 2, I think it was a father building a house with his sons and as you progressed through the game you could see the house being built.
 
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He didn't even dunked on the game. He's just saying complex level design is tough and the amount of resources, talent and time it would take to make an A+ tier map on a scale of Crimson Desert map pretty much ensures big big land is not something to be automatically happy about.

Can you imagine Crimson Desert level design to be as complex as From Software's, the easiest example.
 
Give the guy some credit - he's made great games and tends to have very well-grounded opinions on other titles and the state of the industry. It's not like people are in here posting Angry Joe or some shit.

To be fair, people here post Vara Dark and Grummz.

But yes, Thomas Mahler has made some really great games. Interested to see his point of view after he plays it.
 
I agree and I already bought the game. We'll see how long it's fun for. I personally prefer smaller more focused games. I'll take any Dark Souls over Elden Ring for replayability. But I did love Elden Ring and Dogma 1 and 2, so I'm pretty sure I will love this, even if it's a one and done. No character creator also kills replay.
 
Open world games are not the same as movies, due to the degree of control the player has to tailor the experience to suit themselves. Content being spaced out is not the same thing as having no content.
 

I've been playing Tears of the Kingdom and it's rough at points. The world is so needlessly large and the mountains are needlessly high. Everything could have been half the size and it would have been a much better experience and I wouldn't feel like I wasted my time. I feel like they started with a massive world to feel modern and compete with Ubisoft games, but it doesn't translate well to Zelda games.
 
I remember getting so much shit here on GAF for saying the same exact thing when No Man's Sky first released, that even though it's a cool gimmick to throw out 'We made 17 quintillion planets!', it's not all that fun to run around empty, procedurally generated stuff. And it really wasn't. We see this same shitty movie play out in the same exact way again and again and again and every single time another developer pulls the 'Our world is 526.000 square kilometers big!' bullshit move, gamers fall for it again and again.

I can open Unity right now and create the biggest open world terrain the world has ever seen. Wanna play it?
Fun fact....I played NMS for hundreds of hours. Even when everybody was crying on release about broken promises, I was playing the shit out of this game, as it had so many other cool new stuff to offer rather than a sheer endless open world (the illusion was well done btw). So there is that. 🤷‍♂️ But i am a sucker for open worlds. I love to have the freedom to do whatever I want and not being pushed on a line through a game. Other people prefer more densed down and directed experiences like Resident Evil (or yr games) for example. And thats fine. Different people, different tastes! :messenger_peace:
 
Seems like an obvious concern that many have had over the last 10-15 years in big maps with little to do or busy work. I'm sure Assassins Creed Odyssey devs can create even more terrain and objectives, goes without saying.

Some gamers have not liked the big maps with generic content and have criticised even GTA. Witcher 3 was probably a game to add more quality to a big map.

I can appreciate big maps even if there's not much to do. I love AC Odyssey and Origins big maps but totally understand some might want a concentrated experience.

At this point I wouldn't be going into Crimson Desert thinking yes they're going to add all this meaningful rich content to each section or peerless level design, it might even fall short of Odyssey Origins in terms of environment interest. It's we have a big map to explore and get lost in, roam around and see different environments, take screenshots along with a game by the Black Desert devs. I don't want forest mountain simulator 3000 10x times bigger than RDR2 with just a walk button either, I'm again knowing this can be done easily. It's a big new game that I'd be potentially excited about even if it might only be a 7/10 in terms of how the world is.

It does sound Phil Fishy but maybe it still deserves a warning if you don't know the history.
 
Agreed. "big" does not = "good".

It can. But historically its been used as a marketing point. "it takes X hours to get across the entire map!"

I usually stay in a wait-and-see mode for almost all open world games these days for exactly this reason.
 
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Honestly? I don't think so. There's a reason why so many level designers at some point become game directors, etc. - Level Design is so extremely underrated. The people who decide what you're actually doing moment to moment are the ones that are in charge of how much fun the game is. So if your game is full of bad level design, I'd argue that the game itself can't be all that fun.

This is always the problem with open world games. Players are usually free to go wherever they want, so you might just get unlucky and run into a super boring stretch right from the get-go.

I remember getting so much shit here on GAF for saying the same exact thing when No Man's Sky first released, that even though it's a cool gimmick to throw out 'We made 17 quintillion planets!', it's not all that fun to run around empty, procedurally generated stuff. And it really wasn't. We see this same shitty movie play out in the same exact way again and again and again and every single time another developer pulls the 'Our world is 526.000 square kilometers big!' bullshit move, gamers fall for it again and again.

I can open Unity right now and create the biggest open world terrain the world has ever seen. Wanna play it?
I see what you mean and I do see your words reflected in my experience playing open world.

When there is a shallowness and triviality to the open world it can create this sense of like, meaninglessness to the whole ordeal. An in game depression that can take hold and make the game unfun.
 
Thomas right now:
Happy Cat GIF
 
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