The role-playing game “The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim” was released in 2011 and is still considered by many to be an example of a mystical open world in which there is so much to discover: an underground Dwemer city in particular thrilled many. But open worlds have lost much of their former appeal in recent years and are now seen as an excuse to rush players through lifeless areas full of side quests. A Skyrim developer explains the problem and what distinguishes the world of Skyrim from the world of Starfield.
This is the thesis of the open world: The website “Rock, Paper, Shotgun” has published an article in which they look at the changes in the open world and the increasing criticism of it. The thesis is:
We reported on MeinMMO on Sunday, July 7th, how the head of The Elder Scrolls Online sees this using the example of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
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There is nothing left to explore in today’s open worlds
This is what a Skyrim developer says: The developer Nate Purkeyepile worked on Fallout and The Elder Scrolls Skyrim. He designed the underground city of Blackreach in Skyrim.
He says about open worlds: The worlds today act as if players go in as “explorers”, but the open worlds today don’t feel like there is anything to explore:
[Es fehlt] the feeling of not really knowing what’s over there and being surprised – you don’t really feel like you’re exploring the world unless you’re really surprised.
With larger teams, the chance to do your own favorite thing was lost
Why is that? The developer says it’s because of how big development teams are today. If 1,000 people are working on a game, you have to introduce controls everywhere, you need more planning, tighter organization, and you have to pay attention to balance everywhere.
In Skyrim, it was even more intimate and it was easier to get through with peculiarities and ideas:
We were about 100 people back then, and there was a lot of trust in the team where you could just take something and make it your own. Like Blackreach – that wasn’t on the plan at all. We did it as a skunkwork project on the side, and people saw it and said, oh, that’s really great – I think we should keep it. And to this day people tell me it’s one of their favorite projects because they go into this deep, dark dungeon to find something that we never tell anyone about. It’s only vaguely hinted at, but it’s a surprise.
How is it today? About 500 people work in four studios on a modern game like Starfield, explains Purkeypile. There is still individual storytelling and cool locations, but it is much more difficult to bring in your own ideas when the game is that big.
This seems to fit a trend we are currently observing on Steam. Because it is not the huge games that are currently successful, but often it is hyper-specific games that are aimed at a narrow target group. Often these are games that are only developed by a very small team or even a single person: Steam: 2 brothers worked for over 20 years on a game that made them millionaires – one bought his dream car