Soapbox: How Yakuza Proves Bigger Open Worlds Aren't Always Better

I developed a MASSIVE backlog after January and for the first time, I get it when reviewers complain about massive open worlds. I feel like that plus having to work has made me extremely impatient with the massive worlds but I've grown to appreciate smaller experiences with more substance. I completely agree with this article.

I definitely prefer Yakuza’s approach. Horizon is one of the most insanely empty open worlds out there for example, even if I don’t like checklisty approaches they at least give you something to do. If you’re not going to fill the map, don’t bother with the empty space. GTA V only has about 20% of the map with anything to do. Breath of the Wild at least has shrines across the entire map so justifies the large scale world. I may not have liked Days Gone at all but it did a relatively OK job at crafting a decent world without it being too large plus the hordes were a good idea. I just want more worlds that feel like you actually live in them, like Yakuza does. Kamurocho is a character just as much as Kiryu, growing and changing across the games.

There is a point to having larger worlds in certain sorts of games, but there does need to be a good balance to it all.

I've been saying this for years, the likes of Assassin's Creed feel so empty and with little to do in much of it and even GTAIV and 5 had little interaction with most of the city but at least have purpose for their size with the vehicles. Yakuza 0 has a very small world by comparison but there is so much to see and do everywhere that it actually feels much bigger than many open worlds, when playing Odyssey I could sail continents and feel I hadn't seen anything

Resident Evil is another example of how memorable and interesting one well designed area is, with the Mansion or Police Station living long in the memory long after all of Ubisofts giant open worlds have long been forgotten

There'd be no use for your newly purchased Truffade Adder (Bugatti) if there's no large country side to travel in GTAV. I think it's fine as is, I don't know if I want to keep getting out my car and entering every building.

@get2sammyb It's interesting you like Yakuza but not Persona, they're pretty similar in terms of many things to do in a small open world. I easily got into Persona 5 but not Kiwami, I think it'd fit if the latter was more cartoony like the former with all that running around. Maybe someday I'd get into Yakuza.

Kamurocho is definitely one of my favorite "open world" spaces, so I agree with favoring density over sheer size, for sure.

@TheArt with GTA the size does make sense but it feels like the interaction has been dialled back since San Andreas or at least not really grown that much. I just wish there were a few more buildings that you could go into and it teases you sometimes such as buying the cinema you can't enter

Absolutely agree!
I haven't played any Yakuza (yet) but I do love smaller, tightly constructed and more interactive spaces, like in Deus Ex, Dishonored or Hitman, for example.

I've grown increasingly lukewarm towards open world games because, other than the usual checklist-ness that leaves little to discover for yourself, they usually have boring traversal despite the huge size, and thus resort to fast travel as a crutch.

I prefer linear games if I'm being honest. But as far as open worlders go, I don't have a preference: The world has to be designed in service of the game. As the article states not all open worlders are Yakuza - you can't have Aloy hunting mechanical T-Rexs in a 20 block radius.

What I will say is for massive open world games, I would like these to scale back, be sure they are all too big and too long. Odyssey is TOO big. Yes it's an Odyssey, but you can achieve that feeling without 100 hours of sailing. Ghost of Tsushima is also too big. I had my epic 20+ samurai journey and I've only finished the first region.

Ironically I think the bigger open world games work better when they give you less to do. The lack of a rote checklist reduces the pressure to explore everywhere. Red Dead II was a good example. I felt no need to do anything in particular, except explore the frontier.

I prefer a good vast open worlder myself cos I'm a bum and have got the time to appreciate them.

I think one of the things the Yakuza series (and Judgement) really gets right is the density of a city. It feels like every bit of space is being used for something - even if it’s just a storefront that’s only there to partner with my up and coming cabaret club.

Real cities are full of messy, cramped, often wonderful spaces where a ramen shop might be sandwiched between a sketchy video store and luxury import shop. It’s my kind of open world.

I actually like both.

Big open worlds are fun if you give me several different ways to go about exploring them.

Small open worlds are fun if they're made to feel like a living ecosystem.

I haven’t played any of the Yakuza games yet, but totally agree games are getting too big with too little to do. Shenmue is a perfect example of a smaller world filled with huge amounts of detail and is a type of game I’d much prefer to play.

Smaller but a higher density of stuff to interact with is my preference. GTA handles the large worlds quite well though, since driving about through it is rather fun.

Both work, I think it depends on the game. You could argue that a large open world with "nothing to do" brings you more into the world through pure exploration, and personally I have always enjoyed the sense of isolation in games where you are encouraged to explore. A smaller open world works great for something like Spiderman. I think for both instances it depends on the quality of the the world design, side quests and overall world building

Im burnt out on open worlds quite frankly. They are an exercise in unecessary padding to artificially draw out the length of a game. I would much rather the Yakuza approach - i know every inch of Kamurocho now, and its not just down to the years of revisiting the same location, but because of the life that is built into every corner of the city. So much space in open worlds doesnt really serve a purpose, other than to be a bullet point on the back of the box.

After playing from 0 to 4 since February, I've come to love the small worlds of Kamurocho, Sotenbori and Ryukyu.

Going back to empty open worlds is gonna be difficult.

I like the Yakuza approach. Little space but so much to do.

I don't know if this pertains, but I enjoyed the older ghost recon games. They dropped you off somewhere immense, and you're tasked with taking out the hidden terrorists. You'd have to guess if they were in "those thickets" or in the village on the other side of the map. But them the older rainbow six games, scratched that itch of more detailed and denser locales.

I prefer the smaller open world and always felt the yakuza games are the right size. I know where most of the landmarks are without looking at the map. Does beg the question why wasn’t yakuza on the best ps5 open world games article earlier this week

@carlos82 Well you could say interactions in GTAV have been dialled back but I'd say they keep changing them to make it fresh and not repetitive. Yea there's no entering burger shot, playing pool, Tw@ café etc but there's watching TV, Yoga, tennis, golf, ATV/MotoX, Jetski, Submersible deep sea exploration, Cinema, a strip club with a lot of "interactions" etc so yeah I see they intentionally take out some and add new ones to keep it fresh.

Some games work with huge worlds, and some don't. Breath of the Wild and by extension Immortals: Fenyx rising use the open landscape as the actual gameplay mechanic. Traversal is its own sort of puzzle, and the primary goal of the play, with rewards scattered about.

Other games like Horizon or most Assassin's Creed games are vast expanses of emptiness with nothing meaningful to do beyond random encounters. I think the litmus test ought to be: If there's travel time involved in going between destinations, and that travel time isn't a road trip filled with interesting discoveries, but is simply a simulated commute: The world is bigger than the game content can facilitate.

FFXV is a game that literally has commutes for the purpose of commutes. However the area you are bypassing is actually relatively compact and serves as arenas to host sidequest/hunt battles that tend to sprawl out once the phase attacks get underway. The commutes are literally waiting for car rides to get you where you're going, but I can also understand the purpose of the wasteland since it's actual play zones for actual fights you'll have to do. Having to go back and forth however, is not fun. Other games, say, GTA, you literally have traveral time for the sake of traversal, with no actual major purpose to the area your passing through. It's a car ride to simulate the nightmare of the commute in your recreation time.

Kudos to shenmue, the true granddaddy of open world games! I sure wonder where the genre would be if open world games after would have followed the blueprint of shenmue rather than GTA 3.

False dichotomy. You can have both.
Witcher 3.

My problem with most open world games is that you just run from point A to point B on some kind of fetch quest following some tracks in the mud, fight a couple bad guys, watch a cute scene, and then rinse and repeat. It's not so much the size that's inherently bothersome, but the repetitive banality of the formula. What's missing for me is quality platforming that requires skill within the open world environment, aside from target practice. Instead we get rock climbing that only requires pushing the joystick and jumping across gaps. But there's little risk involved and too much reward when finding a special item at the top of a mountain peak that was already marked on your map. The reward hardly feels earned. You don't have to listen to some obscure character in town and remember what they said to get a secret in the game later down the line. The game just marks it on the map. The sense of accomplishment for remembering clues like in old Final Fantasy games just isn't present in today's games. You're just going through the motions and checking boxes on an errands list. There's also very little platforming while in combat or platforming that simultaneously requires dodging elements in the environment. If they could merge elements of what make classics like Mario Brothers great into open world games they would be so much more engaging. Heck, games don't even have to be open world or 3D all the time. They can go side scrolling or top-down at times to vary the game play, like Neir Automata. I think restricting the game players perspective at times can lead to more laser-like focus on fun gameplay while simultaneously maintaining gameplay mechanics that are consistent across perspectives. And the world can always open up, again, with seamless transitions as the camera zooms back into a 3D perspective. Locking a player into progressing the story can also be a good thing for story pacing purposes. Final Fantasy 15 got a lot of flack for putting the player on rails at the end, but I think putting the player on rails at times can be a good thing so as to preserve the narrative drive. Story progression in current open world games are just so damn segmented that everything feels watered down. Ghost Of Tsushima is especially bad at this because the awesome side quests with the central characters get broken into so many chunks. Segmented main quests and segmented large side quests end up being hardly more important feeling then finding a villagers frying pan because they lack the narrative drive of say The Last Of Us. I think that larger on rails portions would be beneficial, at least in some games. And then open the world back up from time to time to let players explore. Open world environments should be drip fed so as to preserve the sense of wonder when you have access to the openness. Instead the openers becomes dull when you're halfway through a game, and can often be a chore. Restricting access to the open world can make open world special, again. Think Final Fantasy 7 and how it started with Midgar before opening up. Also more legit puzzles would be appreciated, as well, and less cosmetic loot that has me running off in the complete opposite direction of the main story for a different colored hat. New cosmetic loot is fun from time to time, but when it's marked as a question mark on the map, and I have no idea whether it's actually stat boosting loot or not, it's just such a let down when it just changes the color of my characters clothing for the hundredth time.

@RudeAnimat0r Nah Ghost's size is fine. There's stuff scattered around and it doesn't take a year to get from one side to the other

I also think Yakuza is leagues ahead of other games in writing & characters too. They feel like games written for adults, not trying to be all edgy & cool. Which I appreciate.

@BrettAwesome Soooo not liking Breath of the Wild means that you have ADHD? That's an incredibly ignorant attitude.

WOO SAMMY B IS A FIVE GUYS FAN

The size of Yakuza 7 is great, not too big and doesn't take long to run somewhere, but i also like the size of GTAV, its a good size playground for the toys you get.
Its the likes of Ubisofts open world's that can be such a chore, they seem to think big is better but there worlds are quite empty and repetitive, like in AC Odyssey, you saw one island in that game you've seen them all.

@TechaNinja Just because there is stuff scattered throughout the world doesn't make it worthwhile. Like Inari Shrines are cute for the first dozen or so and then groan inducing the rest if the way.

Maybe my issues with the game's size are really pacing issues and quest design, which just makes the game draaaag.

I just kind of have a love/hate relationship with Ghost overall.

play daggerfall, now there's an empty open world.

If it's story driven, smaller, denser is preferable. If it's something that loosely relies on the story but more on it's world, then definitely bigger is what is better.
E.g. Horizon, Yakuza, Assasins Creed, denser
Fallout, GTA, bigger

@Ambassador_Kong
Have you remembered to feel offended today?
I'm diagnosed with ADHD myself. So what?

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I am playing AC:Valhalla and that game is just too large and content spread out too think. I find most of my time just travelling between objectives. I don't get a chance to learn about the area or recognise landmarks because I get through missions then move on to the next huge area.

Which is a shame because the worlds are so so beautiful and I see no reason why the same amount of story couldn't have been packed into a smaller world.

I think a way a lot of open worlds deal with story progression is to move the story into new areas of the map since it can be difficult to forge big story moments into areas you have already existed but that is more to do with creativity than anything else.

Yep, complete agree with this. Too many open worlders seem to make themselves huge just because they think it equals value for money, the same as stuffing them with pointless collectathons.

What’s interesting about Death Stranding, which I’m playing at the moment (or was until I broke my finger and scuppered my gaming for a few weeks 🙄), is that it doesn’t feel like an open world game to me, even though I know it is, and what’s worse, that it’s essentially just a bunch of fetch quests. Instead it feels oddly linear, with the deliveries pit stops en route. Maybe it’s knowing your end destination from the outset, or seeing the network line extend across the map as you go. Curious for sure, though.

Oh. And personally I’d have gone with a Subway analogy @get2sammyb A burger patty, let alone two, suggests a visit to the doctor’s on the cards 😉

I loved exploring new york as both Spider-Men but having a huge world like Horizon's or Breath of the Wild's and discovering new things was a blast.

For me it all depends on the game. The likes of Rdr2's world was huge but it gave me the sense of being in a wild, frontier land kind of place which I feel a small map wouldn't have been able to do it justice but then you get some games which just feel empty. I think on balance I'd prefer a small detailed world to a large empty one but I love huge open worlds as long as they are done well.

I'm fine with either but that said giving the choice i most likely pick a giant game world. I get why people don't like them but for me i love exploring and wondering about, i do it a lot in the real world by having long walks and seeing what the world looks like within my town and place and because there's a lot of countryside in my area i can spend hours alone walking around the hills and woods. Naturally i love that sort of thing in games so a game like Valhalla what has areas like where i live really appeals to me, also with a game like Red Dead 2 or AC Odyssey its a just a great way to explore a time and place i can never explore or visit in real life.

I’m of two minds on this subject.

Some games have the open world set up as almost a character within the game. The world is beautiful, or colorful, or so atmospheric that if it were shrunk it would detract from what the developer is trying to do and the story they are trying to tell. Examples: Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Spider-Man.

Whereas sometimes the open world is simply a backdrop without much character to add to the overall story or experience. In that case it can become a burden or an obstacle to get in the way of making it to the next checkpoint, especially the more expansive the world is. Examples: Assassin’s Creeds, Borderlands, Gravity Rush 2, No Man’s Sky, Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age Inquisition, Skyrim.

There are a lot of games that are probably a little too big but balanced out decently where I only felt occasional tedium with travel. Examples: Horizon Zero Dawn, MGS V, Infamous SS, Tomb Raider games, Nier Automata.

Just a few examples and purely subjective. But the point is that I feel there can be times when the world is too big. And there can be times is can be enormous and still work.

It's not as simple as one is better than the other. Yakuza and GTA are very different games in what they are trying to achieve.

Yes!! Been saying this for ages. Depth not breadth!

This is what I've been saying since 2017! Games like Breath of the Wild may be pretty but have nothing going on. You can walk for 1 hour and nothing pops up. GTA V for comparison, walk for 1 hour and you'll see cops chasing NPCs, Security Vans, people trying to rob you, people robbing others and more — that gives the world depth and character.

Shadow of the Colossus had open world with an empty design, but it was made at a time where memory was expensive. Nowadays, Devs make games in "post-apocalyptic" worlds so they don't have to give depth to it. If that's what we're supporting then our standards in general has gone lower than low.

GTAV and Wild breath are the 2 open world I enjoyed the most. GTAV couldve had more stuff to do but I still had fun with what I was given. I like how random robberies occured, or how I'm on my way to a mission and someone claims they need help only to lead me to some alleyway and try to rob me, and escaping the police will always be a blast.

Wild breath has so many little details and stuff packed into it, its just ridiculous. Like how rain can make it harder to climb or easier to shield surf on the ground, or how I can just be strolling thru the forest and a giant rock monster boss spawns. Also the tools you have and the many combat possibilities are very fun to discover.

Both have merits but I feel big open world is easier to get wrong... or perhaps harder to get right.

Majora's Mask I feel is a similar example to Yakuza as a smaller but more densely packed world, also benefiting from a re-use of assets.

It's a smaller town and its environs over the same span of three days.
Each character has their own schedules, their own lives, that they attend to.
It gives an intimate sense of a time as well as a place.

72 hours until the moon falls.
How each person reacts to that or finds themselves incapable of reacting to that.
Fragments of the everyday in the face of an increasingly undeniable doom.

Shadow of the Colossus is an emptier open world that worked well.
It didn't try to scatter small rewards everywhere to incentivise exploration - it understood that exploration can be its own reward. The places you find, the vistas you discover.
I think they consciously avoided distracting the player from that with arbitrary gameplay loops.
And, at least for me, it worked.

First off, I'd like to say that Yakuza 7 (Like a Dragon) is an absolutely stellar game and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes JRPGs even a little bit.

But... I'm kind of shocked no one has pointed out the obvious here. Yakuza 7 ISN'T an open world game. Not in any sense. Open world games are defined by their non-linear approach to gameplay and the ability to freely explore the world on your terms, when you want. Sometimes people seemingly confuse LARGE games with LOTS of side content for open world games, like Xenoblade/Xenoblade 2 or Yakuza 7, but they aren't. They're HIGHLY gated by story progress. You don't even have access to most of one of the locations Yakuza 7 takes place in until chapter 4 or 5 (of 15), literally 15-20 hours into it. And then, countless systems, minigames, locations, sidequests, etc are locked until varying stages all the way up to the final chapter. You can't just pick a direction, go and do whatever you want. You can do a small, limited selection of activities in a very limited space until you progress the main plot.

That isn't open world. It's not an exaggeration that 99% of the game's content is locked tightly behind progress in the 100% linear main scenario in Yakuza 7. It's just a series that has a larger than average amount of side content. It's no different than Tales of Vesperia, Final Fantasy VII, Dragon Quest XI other than simply having more overall side stuff and a smaller overall world.

A much larger world (like a Ubisoft game or Breath of the Wild) wouldn't make sense for this kind of tightly plotted, linear experience. But it does for games like Breath of the Wild or Ghost Recon Wildlands where you can go anywhere in the world virtually from the very start and do even the story content in almost any order you want.

Really it just sounds like you like games with lots of exploration and side content but without the completely massive and rudderless approach seen in open world.