Yea you and I are pretty much in complete disagreement. I despise AC games and resent Ubisoft for setting the general formula and framework that all open-world games have leaned on for so many years now.
The way you frame it sounds as if you're approaching the game as a chore, that you want everything revealed so you can get down to business. A checklist....which is exactly what Ubi's games are. I won't argue that GoT is different in this respect, but the wind is a large step in the right direction in making an open-world actually feel like a world and not a grocery list. I don't want to obligatorily run from A to B to C, I want to soak in and gradually discover and appreciate these crafted environments and have those elements organically infused into its structure and revealed as a natural consequence of inhabiting the world. Because as it is now, all open-world games feel like a large map, nothing but shallow window dressing with surprise boxes around that you go and open. That became far past tiresome ten+ years ago, and while the wind really does nothing more than veil that same tired formula under an organic pretense, it's a start.
To be perfectly frank, I'd be very interested to see an open-world such as this with no map except one that Jin would sketch as he exposed it (like Ellie did in TLoU II in Seattle) and take notes on quests. To not have a system menu you could go into (aside for inventory and system functions) but completely integrated organically that would give the players nothing until they came upon it themselves. Open-world games are capable of being much more than they are, the AC curse unfortunately remains prevalent in every game in this genre, and it's time to evolve. I think Sucker Punch should be commended for what they've done in striving towards doing so.
I like everything revealed after synchronizing a viewpoint simply because im going to spend 100+ hours in the game and would much rather be doing the content in the game and completing it all as opposed to wasting my time looking for it.
Ubisoft is my #1 publisher and developer and have been since 2010 which is not going to change. My only issue with them is that they try to implement every formula into every game. For example AC now is what it should be. Ghost Recon should be like Wildlands. Far Cry should be like FC 3/4. Division should be like Division 2. Watch Dogs should be more like the first one.
All different enough but with different gameplay elements and loops. In general, every game is a checklist just like every game is repetitive. It simply comes down to are you enjoying it enough to keep doing it over and over until you complete the game.
I soak in the entire game. 150+ hours for Odyssey. 300+ hours for TW3 twice. Yeah, I soak all of it in. But I do while actually accomplishing what I want which is completing the content in the game.
The fox in Tsushima is fine. It's the same thing over and over (coughUBIcough) and the reward is okay. The bird is UGH. I don't care about a cosmetic headband. Waste of my time. And don't get me started on all these documents. AC has documents but holy crap, I think there's like 200 or some such shit in Tsushima. I have already stopped reading them. Want to give me lore? Do it with side quests and that's it. I don't get anything out of reading a document.
Any open world game that is like how you describe it in your second paragraph would be a complete skip for me. LMAO. I'm not traversing a massive open world looking for all that shit. Way past that point. My time is valuable and would never waste it looking for content in a game when I could actually be doing that exact same content.
I love bandit camps, forts, etc. and if the combat is great, even better. Give me a good story and characters and im completely fine.
I guess you're NOT interested in Valhalla huh? Hehe. Seriously, I get your point and what you want but for me, honestly, that would just bore the fucking shit out of me. But that's what's great about gaming - you play what you want and skip the shit that you don't.
