Summary
One of the best ways for any open-world game to keep the interest of players over a prolonged time is to keep changing things up. While releasing new content and DLC packs to generate renewed interest is a good strategy for any major game, there are other ways to keep players around, one of which is to have a world that keeps changing over time throughout the game.
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If players find that the world around them is continuously evolving, it really helps to keep them engaged on a high level for a much longer runtime than a game could normally keep them engaged for, at least in a single playthrough.
7Death Stranding
Considered by Hideo Kojima to be the first “strand game” as he calls it, a term deemed for a new genre of gaming due to the mixture of open-world action, and social elements, and having such a major effect on the world around the players through their own actions.
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This makes for a fascinating set of ideas, andDeath Strandingcarries all of them through in a wonderful fashion. While players can choose to leave much of the desolate landscape surrounding them as it is, they can also bring it back to life and get the joy of watching growth return to the world as it turns green again through positive actions,a truly unique progression system.
6Vampyr
Another game where player choices, albeit somewhat stranger ones, affect the world around them,Vampyrsets the player as a newly turned vampire in early 20th Century London. The unfortunate part about the player character being a vampire is that he is also a doctor and remains continually torn between his Hippocratic Oath not to harm and his bloodlust.
This makes for an interesting series of changes that come over the world depending on whether the player chooses to feed their hunger or not, and the more that the player goes on rampages or chooses not to, the more the world around them shifts and events unfold differently throughout, though some feel likethe game could have been even better.
5Nier: Automata
A game that changes things significantly in some strange ways, as players can traverse the campaignand the post-apocalyptic worldmultiple times from different perspectives as they head towards one of 26 possible endings,Nier: Automatais fascinating and has become beloved by much of the gaming community.
But early in the game, Engels crashes into the city where the player was confined, destroying much of the map and opening up new areas for the player to explore, drastically shifting the face of the map early in the game for quite an enormous and permanent change.
A game that played with fascinating open-world mechanics fairly early in the context of video games with massive worlds like this,Dead Risingmanaged to also change things up to keep the world around players interesting throughout the elongated runtime, which could be reduced a littlein the potentially upcoming remake.
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Frank West remains trapped in the mall with hordes of the undead the entire game, however, the way that the zombies change and their numbers expand or shift between areas over time is fascinating. Different areas become inaccessible or ruined due to zombie attacks, and players will commonly face off against new bosses and enemies introduced throughout the game after they have been initially added.
3Infamous
Deemed somewhat ahead of its time, the original entry in theInfamousfranchise allowed players to make morality choices that would affect how the world around them reacted to the player’s presence. After gaining superpowers in an explosion, players get to control Cole MacGrath and his electricity powers as they romp around Empire City.
However, there are a number of choices made throughout the game that allow players to up or down their karma system meter, changing how people out in the world react to Cole’s presence as either a hero or a villain, making for constant changes in the world.Infamoushas surprisingly dropped off as a franchiseafter being wildly popular upon release.
2The Saboteur
Despite having some problems with this 2009 release, gamers still loveThe Saboteurand one of the reasons behind that is that it has some of the best conquering mechanics in an open-world game. Conquer mechanics are a great example of how a game can change an open world over time in simple ways, by allowing players to retake areas as the game progresses.
For example, games like someAssassin’s Creedentries andSpider-Manallow players to kick gangs or other factions out of parts of the map entirely. InThe Saboteur, to retake the map from the Nazis, players have to individually retake areas, changing the map entirely, even changing the view in those areas from black-and-white to full color, making for a very satisfying change to the game as it continues, one of the reasonsfans still hope today for a remake of this forgotten game.
1Fable 2
One of the best examples of how much an open world can be explored and changed away from the main plot of the game is inFable 2. While there are fascinating decisions and gameplay within the main campaign, outside of it by exploring the world, players can change a great deal about what occurs there and how it looks,turning off the brain and enjoying the variety of content.
Through decisions made in other missions, entire areas of the map can be changed and even destroyed, and the way that NPCs interact with the player can also greatly shift one way or the other. Fable has always been a series obsessed with moral decisions, and it changes the whole world inFable 2just to make players feel the consequences of their actions.
