Whats with all these open world games that are pretty much empty...

Whats with all these open world games that are pretty much empty? How come no one has made an open world game with a small and detailed world?

Morrowind

It's easy to fill a game world with nothing.
Just Cause 2 is a good example; while there's lots of things there, it's all the same shit in large quantities, making a 100% tedious instead of fun (not to mention impossible without patching).
GTA IV was a smaller game with more content and detail

Gone Home

Because they'll get shitposted to death for having a smaller map than other open world games, as though it were some autistic dick measuring contest. News flash, bigger isn't always better but people have been programmed to think that way so that's where the focus goes.

Fuck off

Because that would take effort OP and no one in the gaming Industry wants to put effort in a project because that costs money and would require to make it so that all the content doesn't make your gaming system move like molasses while the game is running.
Making a game empty on the other hand is cheap and it sells even better if you call it a sandbox because then can you forget all these glitches and bugs and the people will say it's fun to have them in and use them to create said fun and you didn't even have to pay some lowly programmer peon to patch that out.
tl;dr: it's all about saving as much money as you can and not about creating a good game.

I remember San Andreas kept me busy for ages, and the map is small to todays standards

Because developers confuse open world for a specific genre when it's really just a feature. It's like thinking First Person is a genre rather than First Person Shooters, First Person brawlers etc.

Subnautica, and every TES after Daggerfail.

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Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance is set entirely inside a single city

Fallout 4

I guess you could try a couple of older GTA likes, like Bully or The Simpsons: Hit & Run

there hasn't been a good game for years, what are you expecting here

We need more openworld games that are set inside one area. Give me an elder scrolls game where the entire map is just the imperial city or orsinium, with a bit of surrounding farmland/caves/mines/whatever for flavor. As close to scale as possible. Every building is able to be entered, every NPC can be talked to even if its just one line.
Enough of this bullshit where you go into a country/province/state/region's capital city and it's only three shacks and an inn

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Witcher 3 is the only open world game i've see that does cities well.

I've yet to play Witcher 3, actually. How big are the towns? Are they at least the size of a small town?

Novigrad, the biggest city in the game is fucking gigantic, feels like an actual city. You cant go into all the buildings but a good percentage of them you can.

Because the objective is to make a product not a game. They aren't looking or willing to make the best thing, just what sells the most

bump

This expansion was fucking amazing. Completely different from Ego Draconis but so tight and with about the most creative quests I've ever seen.

I don't know, but they better take your advice or drop the meme soon considering it's now leaking into Japanese shit as well. Please stop throwing away any chance of interesting story or character interaction by hamfisting an "open world' into your game.

Just Cause 2 bugged me more due to it being so difficult to get out of alert status (short of slap-on-the-wrist deaths) than that it was tons of the same stuff.

Are there any games in that overall big open world crime and chaos genre where you can actually fight off the cops/army/whatever well enough that they finally go away until the next crime? Just Cause 2 almost solved the problem in that you could very rarely kill all the dudes currently present and the alert would just end, but it seems like if a single army guy was alive anywhere in the currently active game world, no dice. At least, that was my best guess for why it rarely actually worked that way. Since the game REQUIRED you to cause alerts in the process of making the Chaos goals, (as opposed to only causing alerts by being sloppy or looking for trouble,) you'd think being able to win the ensuing fights would make sense.


This. I get that budgets only allow for so much content. In that case, pick a setting and concept where the amount of content you can actually produce makes sense. I'd rather have a realistically filled smaller area than an empty huge area.

Though as far as towns way smaller than they should be go, if it must have way less stuff than it should plot-wise, a bunch of buildings you can't enter and/or even reach is better than being able to enter all the buildings but only having three. At least make it look like a big city. Like, remember Lindblum in Final Fantasy IX? There really wasn't much you could explore, but the backgrounds at least implied there was sooooooo much more. If you ask me, that does help.

because they fell for the kotaku meme that open world procedurally generated minecraft babby shit is the only way to go

The problem in that approach is that it would be hard to make striking different looking areas for marketing purposes.