Open world

A game world offering player freedom and nonlinear exploration.

An open world is a virtual game environment where players can approach objectives freely rather than following a linear path. Notable examples include Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Minecraft. The appeal lies in providing autonomy, allowing players to choose how to engage with challenges while still operating within gameplay rules.

Quick Facts

Field: Video game design

Facts from the source article.

Gameplay and design

An open world is a level or game designed as nonlinear, open areas with many ways to reach an objective. Some games combine traditional and open-world levels. Open worlds facilitate greater exploration than smaller levels or linear challenges. Reviewers judge an open world's quality by whether interesting interactions exist when players ignore the main objective.

Some games model real settings, such as New York City. A major design challenge is balancing freedom with a dramatic storyline. Since players may perform unexpected actions, writers must impose a storyline without interfering with freedom. Games sometimes break the story into missions, use simpler storylines, or offer side-missions that do not disrupt the main plot.

Most open-world games make the character a blank slate for players to project onto, though some like Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole offer more character development. In 2005, David Braben described current video game narratives as similar to Harold Lloyd films of the 1920s and considered open-ended stories the Holy Grail for the fifth generation. Gameplay designer Manveer Heir noted difficulties in predicting how players approach challenges in open-world design, contrasting with linear progression, and stated that this must be considered from development onset. Heir attributed some critical failings of Mass Effect: Andromeda to the open world being added late in development.

History

Exactly what counts as the first open-world game is still debated, because people disagree on how big or free a world has to be. Some early titles helped define the idea. In 1970, Sega's electro-mechanical arcade game Jet Rocket let players roam freely, even though it wasn't a video game. The 1975 text adventure dnd offered non-linear play.

The free-roaming exploration of 1976's Colossal Cave Adventure inspired 1980's Adventure, but the open world as we know it today took a definite shape in 1984 with the space sim Elite. Others point to flight simulators like SubLOGIC's Flight Simulator (1979/80), which had a free flight mode for just flying around and exploring. Another root is 1981's Ultima, whose free-roaming overworld map came from Dungeons & Dragons. The first five Ultima games (through 1988) used icons for towns instead of a single scale, a style the first three Dragon Quest games (1986–1988) copied.

Early open-world adventure games include The Portopia Serial Murder Case (1983) and The Lords of Midnight (1984), with open-world elements in The Hobbit (1982) and Valhalla (1983). The strategy game The Seven Cities of Gold (1984) influenced Sid Meier's Pirates! (1987). British computer games like Ant Attack (1983) and Sabre Wulf (1984) are also cited as early examples.