Today (bear with me, I know it’s pretty much the dark and stormy nights of essays), I felt like writing. As I begin writing this article, my very own country once again stands on the edge of the abyss. As a result, I decided to come back to the familiarity of my video game rants.

I do not hope to convince, only to express yet another yearning within me. As I have been experimenting with many formats, and touched a bit about this on my Why I write article, I open a window into myself, and wish that this piece is a seed from which more may grow.

What I crave, what I desire, what I long for is better scoped games.

Structure is a lie. Linearity is for weaklings. So I will say the big bad phrase and then immediately proceed to ignore it: I have never once in my life played an open world game that was good because it was an open world game, only in spite of it.

A foray into JRPG land

Now, let’s talk about some of my favorite games. And we’ll start with Ar Tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica. The second entry in the series being an improvement on all points from the first game, Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia, most of the ideas I will develop are applicable to both games. Ar Tonelico 2 is basically my favorite JRPG. It is unfortunately heavy on the anime bullshit and has many questionable elements. I won’t talk about those in detail so look up what the games are about before playing them.

Ar Tonelico does a very interesting thing, that was actually prototyped by Gust when they were working on a previous game: Atelier Iris. Ar Tonelico has a similar blend of crafting elements, much less intense than the mainline Atelier Series, along with a more laid back focus on story and battle. The feeling of all of those games almost feel intimate. No matter the stakes, the games feel close and personal, almost cozy. Whether you walk on to Iris’ footsteps in Atelier Iris, or you help your close ones on their inner battlefields in Ar Tonelico, these games work on tightly woven worlds. Everything is sort of small, but meaningful. Even on a shoestring budget where they had to reuse so much, you get a feeling of travel and discovery, as every place is important, part of the story and part of you.

How small these games feel is very much part of the appeal. I care about each and every single one of those characters. All those little places and all those little conversations that you have in small cloistered tents, contribute to that intimate feeling of the games. They couldn’t be bigger.

If someone had given a trilion yens to Gust, and freed them from any time constraint, those games being bigger would deeply destroy them.

Biting is fun

A turn-based JRPG is diametrically opposed to an open world game. Let’s go for something bigger, more open: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines by Troika Games.

Two sidenotes here:

Based on the eponymous tabletop role playing game, which has way too many issues but that I love dearly, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines has a simple structure where you go

  • through 4 hubs/cities throughout the story
  • pick up missions/quests
  • and sometimes delve into what are functionally dungeons

The hubs are small and navigable. You remember landmarks and buildings. You know where to go and who to see as you progress through the game. Even I was able to navigate them without any maps. Except for those evil labyrinthian sewers, but hey – that’s an element of gameplay that you don’t have to interact with if you don’t want to

That game, is potentially my favorite game ever, and not just because I’m edgy. The turn of the millennium mood does contribute a bit, I admit. Those “definitely not a metaphor” creatures of the night also. However, the writing of this game is absolutely stellar. Characters are coherent yet flawed, and so colorful. Every single line of dialog is a trip onto itself.

The mechanics are weak: the game developed on Source before Half Life 2 got even released and is a buggy mess that really benefits from fan patches. But despite that, I play it yearly.because the writing just carries the game and because it’s incredibly small. Speedrunning it is probably trivial. The game is exactly the length is needs to be. Despite being rushed in production, it doesn’t feel too short – even if the last hub could have been fleshed out a bit more.

It’s an absolute blast. You should play it, it’s frequently discounted so wait for a good opportunity. Just don’t play Malkavian on your first run, keep that for your second one, please.

I didn’t ask for this

Still not convinced? Let’s go bigger. Deus Ex, the OG, the true and only, Deus Ex. It’s not my favorite game, but it’s probably the best one I’ve ever played. I even recently started streaming it. If you’ve never played this game, let me tell you: you are not ready. You start the game and are greeted by that concentrate of pure awesomeness of a title music and then, you start a new game, pick stats you know nothing about (don’t pick swimming, it’s useless), and head into the opening cutscene.

The game sledgehammers the main story points, quickly and incomprehensibly though a grandiloquent Machiavellian conversation before throwing you, JC Denton, into the game.

Keep your eyes open. Look and listen. So much of the game is told through its environment. It’s a masterclass at exposition. You are not only taught about the games themes, you see and experience them. Each character, each line of dialog, each decor choice, each newspaper, each email on the computers or abandoned tablets throughout the levels, is expertly distilling context and meaning to you. The game also blurs the lines between storytelling, character viewpoints, and actual still-pertinent-today political commentary on our very own society. It even criticized the War on Terror before it happened! Nothing is clear, nothing is certain. What is truth and was is a lie? What is a statement, and what is conspiracy theory bullshit is up to you to understand and decide.

Structurally speaking, the game is a succession of maps, serving sometimes as a dungeon or as cities, or both at once. Very open, those let you explore and solve them in as many way as possible. That game manages to reconcile immersion and fun, a seldom seen achievement. Those are, however, carefully constructed maps with buildings, corridors, interactive elements. The scope is very much under control, and is just as big as necessary to convey what is needed.

I could go on for so much longer, tell you about the inventory system again, or the quality of the writing. But all I really need to mention today is level design excellence and scope. Did I mention, you also don’t need an interactive map and big markers everywhere to navigate the game? In fact, this is literally the map the game gives you in the first level.

In game map of Deus Ex's Liberty Island

I believe, this is my first inline illustration picture in this blag🎉. I also spent 5min looking through modern search engines for any of the provided maps of any level but couldn’t find anything in a sea of Human Revolution results. I’ll complain about search engines in another article, maybe.

The point I wanted to make is that you can fully navigate the game with oral instructions, emails, and overheard conversations.

The “World” is now Open

I will now talk about the two latest open-world games that I’ve played. And contrast their design choices with the previous games I mentioned. Those three games are:

  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a good, but unfortunately, flawed game
  • Elden Ring, a structurally strange open-world game.

That game that does not feature Sheik

Breath of the wild is a textbook example of good despite being an open world game, as it takes every opportunity it can to counteract its very fundamental structure:

  • Teleportation is somewhat frequent
  • You have the ability to glide from high vantage points to skip as much of the navigation as you can
  • You get a summonable horse extremely quickly to dash trough content.

As a result, world navigation becomes a glide-and-ride as quickly from enemy packs with weapons you seek, to towns, and dungeons. What makes the world engaging is being able to run through the filler, as quickly as possible to collect interest points and go into engaging gameplay. Like cooking, for example.

The meat of the game, its dungeons, be it the story-necessary gigantic mazes, or the little puzzles, are great, although I personally believe that the major dungeons are blown out of scale and lose a lot of their fun as a result. That is also a criticism of their lack of scoping. Maybe they could have actually worked that disgraceful durability feature mechanic into something engaging if they’d spent less time on making big dungeons.

What made this game bearable was the game making it browsable quickly. And that is exactly why there’s a stamina feature accompanied by this dreaded rain to keep you from climbing too much and forcing you again, painfully, to interact with that land, that is way too big and way too overblown. At least Ocarina of Time’s big empty field was short, and its levels were enchanting. I sometimes listen to its soundtrack and am transported back to my discovery of the Zora Domain, the Lon Lon Ranch and so many more places.

And that’s sad because I loved the towns, the characters, the music, the little dungeons, even Hyrule Castle. I also loved the flashbacks and the story that was unfolding. I had magical moments and this game touched me emotionally but I really wish I could like it as a whole and not in spite of its main design choices.

How I arrived to Elden Ring

The other recent open world game I played is Elden Ring. The quality of the game is undeniable, it is amazing and one of the best games From Software has ever made. But before I tell you about it, I will talk a bit about my relationship with the previous games from the publisher I played, their level design, and Elden Ring’s.

Where we come from

Earlier, I was saying that Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines might be my favorite game, but there’s another one that might very well be – and that’s Dark Souls. I delved into the game and swallowed it whole, unless it was I that was swallowed whole. And over time, strangely, it became my comfort game, I play it when I don’t know what to do and this is mostly due to scope. I can fit the whole game into my mind. I can simultaneously be aware of everything I need for a whole playthrough.

And let’s talk about the brilliance of its world design. It is a giant interconnected set of levels and it is glorious. I have never seen any world design that could even approach that beauty.

And what to say about level design (or at least those that they had the time to finish coughs Lost Izalith coughs): it is delectable. From enemy and item placement, to each little bit of broken railing that you might fall from, it is very meticulous and controlled. As much as a pain it is, even Tomb of the Giants is carefully designed, has shortcuts, and is actually on the short side. The Swamp has no verticality once you reach it, and you can rush from the bonfire to the boss. Blighttown has optional paths and treasure but even then, is rather short too. Your painful first few attempts will feel like an eternity but in reality, it’s not that long and has a rather early bonfire from which it is not that hard to find your way down.

Now comes Dark Souls 2 and I’m lost. It’s a much bigger game. Levels are a bit bigger but actually made of clear(ish) subsections that you can explore. I just always need some sort of reference to know where I should go. Although, I think it is mechanically the superior one of all three, combining the careful slow combat of Dark Souls 1, with a much needed polish, adaptability-aside (a much much hated stat within the community). The game also has a special place in my heart, it tried so much, and is full of both successes and failure.

From Software’s level design is one of their strengths. Sometimes, they’re not up to their best and it’s normal: video games aren’t hobby projects that can take the time that they need. They have deadlines, and don’t necessarily have a consistent quality. Sometimes, they also feel spicy and decide to throw in a real mean level like the Black Gulch or the Shaded Woods from Dark Souls 2. Those levels are evil and only exist to make us suffer, to punish us for [insert here any main reader failing]. They are however extremely short and that suddenly makes them much more manageable.

What applies to levels also apply to enemies and bosses. This is a tendency that you can notice increasing game after game, turning enemies into damage sponges, and culminating in Dark souls 3.

Everything is so big in Dark Souls 3. The maps are enormous mazes and enemies are damage sponges. And on an easy fight, or an interesting map, it’s not much of a problem. But when it’s not that great, it just drags the suffering on for so long. Not only do I personally prefer the slow fighting style from the previous games, I just find this overscoping of everything in Dark souls 3 tiring. That’s my main gripe with the game. They had cool characters, the game is pretty, mechanics are fun, some levels also have interesting ideas but then, everything takes so long that it’s exhausting. I very rarely do playthroughs of Dark Souls 3 and it’s why.

Where we are going

Now comes Elden Ring, and it is the strangest thing to me. It’s like any issue that I had with Dark Souls 3 just disappeared. Mostly. Fuck Malenia, Blade of Miquella. Yes, that was an open world game but it’s as if From Software’s gargantuan appetites for excess were funneled into this open world. Every single dungeon/level of the game became manageable again. Their level design was stellar. I was impressed from the first one I tried all the way to the mega castle dungeon: Stormveil Castle. I didn’t get lost at all, just exploring little paths, understanding which ones lead to new sections to explore. And it was marvelous. Please note that your mileage may vary, as a good friend of mine, much more adept than me at SoulsBorneRoRing-likes that aren’t Dark Souls 1, didn’t share the exact same experience with Stormveil castle and found it too big.

But then comes the open world, and overall my thought was the following: they mitigated the flaws intrinsic to the open world format as much as they could:

  • Travel fast with your seamless horse summon
  • Have a gazillion teleportation points
  • Have your radio towers first thing into a new zone.
  • Have the zones color coded!
  • Put enemies that are clearly too strong for you to progress and almost give your game a metroidvania-like progression as you’re funneled into areas
  • Put as many interesting encounters as you can into that world to pick the interest of the player

But all those elements are just compensating for that open world. It’s just keeping me entertained and challenged enough to not be bored while going to the next actually interesting part of the game.

Take the level design of Elden Ring with the world design of Dark Souls 1 and you’d probably get the best video games of all time. But that’s not what we got. And for all the immense quantity of content that we get in the game, it’s overwhelming. There’s a sort of fatigue that’s built from it. I played the game with the meager free time that work allowed me for weeks, maybe months. And that was just one run. There is no doubt about who swallowed who whole this time.

As a result, I haven’t been able to play the game a second time. There are many builds I’d love to try, especially with the newly released DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, but I get this sense of dread as there is so much game to go through: I’m afraid that I’ll only have this to play for months upon months. I just wished it was smaller.

So this is my plea. I want manageable games. I want little concentrates of excellence, of weird and awesome. I want fun, not chores. I want understanding, not senseless roaming.