Over-world vs. Open-world?

[Critoniuum]

One thing I'm finding myself missing more and more these days is a good overworld map. Nearly all rpg games these days (even the Tales games sadly) go for open world.

One thing I like about overworlds that open worlds don't quite achieve, is that it actually feels like a world or continent your traveling through. Open world maps often end up feeling like a very congested country side. The latest 2 Zelda games nearly got the open world to feel like a continent, but it still has too much going on terrain wise and it feels squished because of it.

Part of it is by design of course, so that traveling on foot doesn't become boring. But the reality is a real world has expansive plains and sprawling forests. Over worlds emulate that perfectly due to the fact that they can scale it down and have us travel hours in seconds.

What do you all think? Which do you prefer between the overworld or openworld?

[Devsman]

There are two problems with open worlds, and both of them boil down to the publisher wanted to do it because it's trendy instead of because it was a good fit for the game:

1. Your above observation. The game world doesn't feel like a world, because it's actually smaller in size than some people's back yard. What they should have done is reserved open world design for a game that didn't suppose its game world was a whole world. Games like the Yakuza series, Arkham City/Origins/Knight and MGSV Ground Zeroes do not have this problem, because they take place in a small district of a city or a small military base. The world is super dense with areas of interest, and you can travel across them on foot in like a minute or two. And they're wonderful.

2. There's no design. They built the world as a world and not a level and then they vomited actual gameplay elements (if at all) at random so that every encounter is the same. Like maybe there are three different enemy types, I guess. Ground Zeroes and the Arkham games actually did this right by designing their worlds as levels instead of worlds. Which was important because they were, you know, STEALTH GAMES.

[Critoniuum]

Originally posted by Devsman:

2. There's no design. They built the world as a world and not a level and then they vomited actual gameplay elements (if at all) at random so that every encounter is the same. Like maybe there are three different enemy types, I guess. Ground Zeroes and the Arkham games actually did this right by designing their worlds as levels instead of worlds. Which was important because they were, you know, STEALTH GAMES.

This is a great point. And I think its another reason why over worlds work better. Since overworlds tend to serve as the hub for the levels rather than trying to seamlessly integrate levels into it.

[Unseen]

One problem with world globe games is, most civilizations don’t look like, one town dotted between each other in small spaces. The geography on google earth for example most civilized areas don’t look like one odd town slapped down like a play set. I mean I like the old overworld globe map in older rpgs. But I can go either way, if an rpg has a good battle system hell they could have menu navigation and I wouldn’t care much.

[Critoniuum]

Originally posted by Unseen:

One problem with world globe games is, most civilizations don’t look like, one town dotted between each other in small spaces. The geography on google earth for example most civilized areas don’t look like one odd town slapped down like a play set.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Can you elaborate?