The 3 Principles of Open World Design
(ft. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey)
What aspect makes video games unique to other mediums? Many would answer ‘interactivity’ and leave it at that, for indeed, they allow us to participate in the events unfolding on our screens. We could say that a linear adventure such as Tomb Raider (2013) and an open-world epic along the lines of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey both provide us with a character to move around and interact with the game world.
Yet someone who has played these could point out that in Tomb Raider there’s only a single path of scripted events to follow: the player isn’t doing the exploring, the script is. In contrast, the world of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey allows the player to move around freely and participate in events whenever they wish. This freedom is called ‘player agency’, and here are three key ways in which open-world games are specifically designed to create it.
1. An Open World
Most open worlds are very large play spaces, and I mean very large. As a game designer myself, I can only imagine having the budget to say: “Let’s make all of ancient Greece, players will love that!” The team behind Assassin’s Creed Odyssey delivers to us the most expansive and detailed recreation of Ancient Greece ever put to screen. Freely traveling through these beautiful virtual environments and discovering historically-reconstructed cities (such as Athens and Sparta), is an experience rivaled by no other genre or medium.
So how is the player incentivized to visit the locations most worth seeing or required to progress in the story? On a macro-level, the player is sent through various regions in a particular order (a side effect of telling a linear story), while being able to visit other regions in between and pick up the main plot again at any time. On a micro-level, each region consists of a collection of Points Of Interest (POIs) to uncover, which the player strings together at will while exploring and performing quests. The greatest criticism of open worlds is their overreliance on such map markers to guide the player, a trend that may start fading as alternative designs like in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild start gaining more traction.
2. Systemic Interaction
Once arrived at such a location, the game’s systems kick into action. A challenge is presented, which the player must complete by performing certain actions, for example: clearing a bandit camp and bringing a stolen object back to its owner. In certain games, these locations may be designed in such a way that the obstacles can be tackled in various ways (by melee fighting, sneaking, or ranged shooting), so that the player may freely choose their approach and plan accordingly. A skill tree might be accessed, where special abilities are unlocked throughout the game to enhance these playstyles.
And that is where most games would call things done, but not for a systemic game such as Far Cry 4 or Hitman: Absolution, that allows entities in the world to interact -not only with the player- but also other entities. For example, when attempting to assassinate a character in a fort, I was spotted by a guard who promptly ran to light a smoke signal, upon which reinforcements hastily made their way to the fort! It felt nearly as thrilling as watching a heist movie, except nothing here was scripted! Such systems transform the world of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey from a virtual museum into a sandbox to play around in.
3. Interactive Narrative
In more linear games, challenges require the player to overcome them if they are to progress in the game. In an open world, the player can simply go the other way. So the task of providing the player with a goal and geographical direction is taken up by the quest. They also form a bridge between gameplay and narrative: while usually merely a task to kill, fetch, collect, deliver or escort something/someone, it’s the narrative context or gameplay twist that makes this engaging. During The Blind King quest in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the player is tasked by a blind fugitive to go visit and describe 5 famous monuments for him. Players don’t perform this quest for the act of traveling to said locations and back, but rather to fulfill a (virtual) blind man’s dream of seeing the Ancient Greek world.
While most open-world games are no stranger to traveling, killing, and stealing, one mechanic we primarily find in Role Playing Game (RPG) quests is interactive dialogue. Choosing between various options in dialogue, allows the player to steer certain plot elements in a particular direction. Depending on how you handle interactions with your family members in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the game might end as a sweeping epic or a Greek tragedy.
Conclusion
Open-world games possess great ability to achieve player agency on various levels. We can inspire both new and established designers to think about these principles and how they can be used to suit their own visions. I also believe that educating passionate players on the building blocks of video games will allow them to go into more intelligent conversations with designers. So that we may make better games!
If you’re interested to go into further detail, you may enjoy watching my video essay about this topic:
