Forspoken devs looked at two PlayStation exclusives to learn what open-world mistakes to avoid Leave a comment
Are you sick of open world games? Are you tired of chasing down collectibles, clearing icons on maps, and completing filler content for no other reason than ‘the game told you to’? Are you sick of the Ubisoft-ification of world maps; the icon clusters, the roaming NPCs, the go-here-do-this quest line repeated ad nauseam? Then maybe, just maybe, Forspoken is for you.
Earlier this year, I spoke to Forspoken co-director Takefumi Terada via a Square Enix interpreter, and he told me that Luminous Productions’ latest RPG experiment could be just what the doctor ordered when it comes to open world fatigue. “Obviously, from our side, we’re keeping an eye on what people are saying about open worlds and what the general feelings are in the industry right now,” he explained back in September. “And so we are aware of the sentiment people feel towards [the genre].”
Now, in a follow-up interview organised by publisher Square Enix, I had the chance to ask Terada how exactly the studio plans to offset the boredom many players are feeling with open world games, and if there was anything specific the studio has learned from other titles in the world right now that taught Luminous how it should – or indeed, shouldn’t – approach open world titles.
