2014 is set to see the release of several games that are considered “open world” types. Open world is a term used to describe a game with an environment that allows for exploration and freedoms, much like the freedoms you’d experience with Skyrim, Fallout, or typical MMORPGs. The element of open world allows for a lot of fun and gives you the option to follow a linear storyline and path or be outside of the box, seeing all the creative effort developers put into their title. It’s quickly becoming a coveted approach to gaming and is one of the promises that the new Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles bring to the table. PC gaming has had more experience with open world style games in the past, but the PC platform doesn’t always drive trends like consoles do these days. After all, it was Halo on Xbox that set the tone for the modern FPS genre. For gamers, there are several titles you should have on your radar if you consider yourself a moderate or core player that invests multiple hours per week into your games library.
Games like Watch Dogs, Elder Scrolls Online, Destiny, and The Division are all aimed to launch before the end of 2014. All of these games are poised to be heavy hitters. All of these games are rocking the open world concept in one way or another, and there’s some serious talent behind most of them that could easily take the mantle for game of the year. If you ask us, Destiny is the favorite since it adopts a lot of MMORPG elements into a shooter, where cooperative play as well as competitive opportunities are littered throughout the game. An MMOFPS is what we will call it, then, and it will likely have much greater impact than something like Planetside, which stayed in beta for a long time before finally coming to a gradual official launch. Unlike Planetside, Destiny will be much more friendly for cooperative play and won’t be so aimless or eye-of-the-storm dependent to feel like you’re part of any action. Just like World of Warcraft, this game will be enjoyed by yourself or with friends and, also like WoW, there will be incredible depth.
That’s really what open world boils down to – depth. The more immersive and custom the experience, the greater the returns. Fallout is a great example of single player story-driven shooters in an open world setting that could easily net you 50-150 hours of playthrough as long as you weren’t content on just going through the main story without any side questing. These types of games are the ones that truly earn your $60 investment and will find ways to keep you around for longer periods of time than the likes of any Call of Duty title with DLC if for no other reason than the DLC being expansion pack caliber, offering entire new pockets of the world you’re playing in with what is called “end game content” – that is, content that you play the entire game to get to and then must master in order to overcome it and receive its benefits (typically weapon or gear rewards). A properly balanced MMORPG easily steals away hours upon hours of your life and it’s these games that you should look to invest in, even if you only invest in one or two for the whole year.
Titanfall is excellent, but the game is strictly online and competitive based within smaller-type levels that keep you near enemy combatants to drive action at all times. These new open world games won’t necessarily opt for that direct approach as much, but games like Elder Scrolls Online tend to keep the action within reach should you really want to get crazy, though no game will likely offer the kind of blitzkrieg pacing that Titanfall has offered us so far. Enjoy all the games you can, but the best values in the biz are about to crash our next-gen platforms and make us realize that, even though the graphics aren’t going to always compare well with the PC offerings, the sheer scale and content availability of these new titles are the reasons why the developers putting these games together are excited to have new hardware like the Xbox One around to make games on.
Xbox One Game Source 