Side-note time: I love formulaic Ubisoft games. Assassin\u2019s Creed is great fun (I\u2019ve literally hundred-percented four games in the series for some reason). But we\u2019ve been playing similar enough variations on their formula since at least 2011, if not earlier. Brain wallpaper is good sometimes! Sometimes you just need to chill out and do some virtual murder and y\u2019know what? That\u2019s okay.<\/span> <\/p>\n Red Dead Redemption 2 goes about open worlds in an incredibly luxurious, almost romantic way, while Breath of the Wild goes about it in a mathematical way, like an abacus-laden desk-haver, like it pushes its glasses up with the bottom of its pen while writing out formulas to do with triangles. <\/p>\n <\/span> The romance of RDR2 comes from its beauty and simplicity. This space has to feel very real, so there are two main things Rockstar has to do. First up is the obvious bit: graphics. The graphics in RDR2 will still be impressive in a decade, because there\u2019s wonderful attention to detail in everything, making this space feel ripe to homestead in. (There\u2019s also a side-thought about how characters\u2019 feet interact with surfaces that I could get into, but probably best I don\u2019t). <\/p>\n Second is making living things feel real. Animals may not have to talk, but animating them and making them interact with the player and the world properly probably takes unholy amounts of time. Then humans have the issue of facial expressions and dialogue lines that properly match up to the player\u2019s actions in the world. How do you make an NPC react properly when the player blows themself up with dynamite, falls off a train bridge, and loses their hat in a waterfall? I\u2019d probably make them say \u201coh lordy\u201d, but that\u2019s just me. <\/p>\n <\/span> Well whatever, making a world like RDR2\u2019s takes a long time. Same for Breath of the Wild. When I was talking about triangles earlier I wasn\u2019t just being annoying. As summarised by Robert Yang<\/a>, when people first played BotW they weren\u2019t enjoying it, either feeling over-guided to their destination or too lost when exploring. Crafting this open-world took trial and error on Nintendo\u2019s part. <\/p>\n They started implementing triangles. If you see a triangle it blocks your view. You can either go around it or get on top of it to see what\u2019s next. What if when you went around it there were enemies to fight, or when you got to the top there was a little collectable? Oh, and by the time you get a better look at what\u2019s behind it, what if there were seven new things to look at, whether it\u2019s a glowing shrine, a strangely-shaped mountain, or just a cool-looking patch of snow? Read that summary above as it\u2019s better than I can do, but either way, doing that stuff takes time. <\/p>\n <\/span> But you know what clearly takes less time? Making Xenoblade games. We have had two new Xenoblade games since BotW came out and zero new Zelda games. Xenoblade has also offered two chunky bits of DLC that feel like standalone games and suck up around 30 hours each. So, is Monolith Soft\u2019s dev cycle just as slick and formulaic as Ubisoft\u2019s? <\/p>\n Well, by the looks of it, yeah. These spaces don\u2019t really do much in terms of interacting with the player or convincing them that they\u2019re real spaces. They have icons and destinations. They have objects littered on the ground to collect. They don\u2019t go for the luxuriousness of a Red Dead or the fine-tuned magic of a Breath of the Wild. They\u2019re kinda just big spaces to hang out in. <\/p>\n <\/span> So, why am I not tired of them? Well, I do like their bonkers stories, but that can\u2019t be all there is, right? Otherwise, I\u2019d prefer 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim for letting me just experience a bonkers story (or I\u2019d just watch the tele). Well, the combat\u2019s pretty good too, but that\u2019s true of a lot of games that suffer from dull open worlds. I know a lot of people don\u2019t like it, but shooting a gun in Cyberpunk 2077 feels good. <\/p>\n Nope, I think the true magic trick of Xenoblade is that everything is just bloody massive. You look one way and there\u2019s a big gorilla, another way and there\u2019s a giant grassy plain that takes a decade to cross, another and there\u2019s some tall thing that you want to be on top of. This isn\u2019t the same as BotW\u2013most treats are telegraphed rather than suggested. Instead, it\u2019s just pretty darn cool. <\/p>\n <\/span> I wasn\u2019t cool enough to boot up the original Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii. I only played it after I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2. But I imagine the main hook for people getting into that game was the scale of it all (as well as the excellent music but let\u2019s ignore that for now because it doesn\u2019t help me make my point). <\/p>\n Just the feeling of insignificance that a giant creature a million levels higher than you gives to the player is something uniquely old-fashioned. When Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came out, people complained that you could get ruined by a level 81 Territorial Rotbart in the opening area, which I understand, but the fact that the game did it at all is weird and exciting. <\/p>\n <\/span> This sense of scale has been utilised elsewhere, most notably by Team Ico. Shadow of the Colossus is an excellent example of scale offering a feeling of insignificance, making the player feel like they\u2019re fighting against unbelievable odds. I think Monster Hunter does this really well too; when you first get trampled by a Rathalos and the big beast just stumbles to the ground, that\u2019s pretty terrifying, hilarious, and magical. <\/p>\n Xenoblade\u2019s art direction, particularly in the second mainline game, helps the loud bigness of everything come across. Colours are big and bright, monsters are uniquely shaped, and everything has a general sense of wonder. Just the conceits of these spaces\u2013the backs of giant titans, the body of a massive mech\u2013are enough to spark the imagination. <\/p>\n <\/span> Side-note round two: I think this is why some Assassin\u2019s Creed games can get their hooks in me more than others. Renaissance Italy is objectively cooler than the American Revolution. Assassin\u2019s Creed Odyssey is cool because I want to go to Greece. Digital historical tourism is the key here, but it only works if you\u2019re actually interested in the place. <\/p>\n One thing this helps with is making Xenoblade\u2019s interiors feel even more special than they already are. The spaces they construct for these games are just so excellently big and detailed, offering winding paths up and down and in and out. Everything leads back to where it ought to. Everything is as big as it should be when looked at from the outside. It\u2019s beautiful. <\/p>\n <\/span> The beauty of the music helps too, of course, but it also lines up with the series\u2019 philosophy of bigness. How often does Assassin\u2019s Creed just have a spiky guitar solo come in the middle of grand choral chants or driving strings? They should do it. It just makes everything more fun, especially when you\u2019re going to be stuck there for dozens of hours. <\/p>\n Yasunori Mitsuda\u2019s work on the Chrono series is legendary, and it brings a similarly hefty stamp to mark all the Xeno games, too. There isn\u2019t any shyness in the loudness that Xenoblade brings, whether it\u2019s aural or visual, which helps everything feel special. It may be some sort of style-over-substance mind trick, but it works on me. <\/p>\n <\/span> So, how does Xenoblade sidestep open-world fatigue? By being big, loud, and confident to create a world that makes the player feel insignificant and special at the same time. It doesn\u2019t have the beauty of a Red Dead, nor the mathematical mind of a Breath of the Wild, but it has my heart in spite of that. <\/p>\n To see our thoughts on the latest entry, check out our Xenoblade Chronicles 3 review<\/a>. For more, take a look at our Xenoblade Chronicles 3 characters<\/a>, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 heroes<\/a>, and Xenoblade Chronicles timeline<\/a> guide for more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When a new Assassin\u2019s Creed comes out, a lot of people use the phrase \u2018open-world fatigue\u2019 to express their exhaustion at what they feel is an endless stream of dull and massive spaces with very little to do other than the same old chores they\u2019ve been doing for years. I get this. The special open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[990,1162,1326,1373],"class_list":["post-127569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile-game-releases","tag-rpg","tag-switch","tag-xenoblade-chronicles-3","tag-xenoblade-chronicles-definitive-edition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.pockettactics.com\/wp-content\/sites\/pockettactics\/2022\/08\/xenoblade-chronicles-open-world-new-3.jpg\" "\\"xenoblade-chronicles-open-world\\"")
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