It always worrys me but Amazon doesn't ship preorders til the day before. They have done this for the last two pre orders I got (and they always claim they will ship earlier). In fact the tracking has listed the package not even in my city yet by early morning and it still gets to me not even late in the day. I suspect after having some issues with the games getting in too early (and maybe the companys who sell the games to Amazon get upset) they went with shopping it one day to make sure it didn't get in early.
That being said I'm still nervous this time and I could swear by at this point they would know what carrier and it would be in waiting to be picked up status by now and mine is still in preparing with no carrier info.
And I would be a lot less interested in this game if it wasn't open world. In fact I don't in general pay full price for linear games cause I feel they last way too short to be worth that price, tend not to be replayable cause they rely a lot on story, and despite being short games I still get bored of them by about 75% done, and that is if I like the game. Where as a good open world can last me 100 hours if there is enough content (and if not enough content will have me sad I finished everything).
I will agree shadowfall was mediocre though. And the writing was awful.
The way I feel about what your saying is that they stretch gameplay out in open games and that the world design is less interesting in many parts because of that.
I guess that may sound confusing but I'll explain that a bit.
In Farcry they have a large mass of an area that doesn't really change for a very large area, yes you have roads, mountains and things that change a bit but it isn't that much. After five minutes I have seen what there is to see and do so after this point they place ai, buildings and an objective here, there and all over this large mass. So, then I go to A and get a mission, go to mission, shoot kill pick up intel and return, repeat over and over. Now, I get what you are saying that you want 100 hours, but what is 100 hours of that? it feels like drain, a life drain.
Thus on the flip side, when the world is more linear (but with paths and objectives) it keeps things a bit more interesting and intriguing to me, I get to see and feel like I am making progress to see what the next area holds, looks like or what mission I may be venturing in. With an open world game, I just don't have that same feel or feeling of progression.
I get that the open world games level you up, give you more weapons more things but I'd rather just start off with good gameplay and design and continue on with it.
I have not played Horizon so I won't say if it is this or not but knowing how the way game design is copied from one studio to another so much (I sort of assume it will have some of the things I don't like already) but, I will still play it, I'll likely even beat it but I hope it isn't as much like what I fear.
I think an open world can work, sly cooper did it pretty well but it isn't that open and has very set objectives actually.
If they are going to create big worlds, I really prefer the way FF12 handles it. Big worlds with a lot of areas and sections, sections is where open world is gone wrong imo
With sections, you have a very set area to go to and never return to again. Yakuza also has a semi open, structure world that doesn't get quite as tedious either.
But, when you just make one large map and start planting stuff all over it in order for me to just go get it or do it.. well I feel this is bad game design. It's nothing more than a time waster of nothing fun nor interesting for me personally.
There are very few open world games that I feel are made well from creed, gta, mercs and very few feel good to me. All in all, I refuse to play gta and it' s fetching as well.
The ones I found enjoyable were
Infamous
mercs 2
Some of Just Cause
Most the others were just simply bad for me though... but I hope to find something worth while in Horizon and not just a time waster for me.
In my opinion the way to solve the open world drain is smaller size, better missions and missions that have more depth not only in what you see but how you play them. If they want to create a big world and add secrets fine, but don't make that A to B to B to A the main point of the game.
Instead, op for a large area for people to look for extra things and missions while giving depth to your main missions. So, when I travel to a canyon, have some gameplay mechanic that forces me to trave down and into said canyon that is not only a sort of path, but make it where the gameplay is integrated with that area.
So, in Infamous they had the climbing and running ability that created more focused paths to traverse. I enjoyed that and some areas had to be explored in that set path while being in the open world, now the issue is the game didn't have a lot of these areas but atleast it had them. So, in Horizon I'd like to visit KZ2 like levels within that open world, atleast that gives me something of detail in the game world design. I don't even know if this game has that issue, so guess I'll find out in the near future.