Should World Size Matter? Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Hey Guys, I just go through finals week and feel like a mess. Now, I have to put in long hours at work and get that overtime pay for the holidays. Seriously, I am way too busy even though I'm done with school for the next three weeks. However, I will do my best to write and play some games when I can.

Anyways, not much has happened since I made my last post other than The Last of Us 2 teaser, Death Stranding, Capcom bringing back old franchises, and the debut of the Nintendo Switch. Okay, I missed quite a lot and don't have a lot of time to cover them, so I guess I get to just have a little discussion about open-world games specifically with Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

Image Provided by Polygon

The last time I've played a Ghost Recon game was back with Advanced Warfighter. I have yet to play Ghost Recon: Future Solider. Maybe I'll pick that up on PlayStation 3 or on Xbox 360 if it becomes backwards-compatible.

The last Tom Clancy video game I bought was The Division. While I am having fun playing the game with a friend, I can admit that the game has problems. Believe me, it's far from a great game. Other than Destiny-like gameplay and a relatively "dead" world, the game is okay. Hell, I don't even call the game "The Division". I like to call it, "Tom Clancy's Pedestrian Simulator".

There is a reason why I call it Pedestrian Simulator is because you spend a large majority of the game just walking and running to places. Yeah, you can fast travel, but it's limited and is not available in all locations especially The Dark Zone, which I hardly touch due to scaling issues. Seriously, if I have to travel on foot to places at a slow pace then my experience isn't going to go great.

Even though Pedestrian Simulator is pretty large, there hardly is anything to do other than random events and missions, which get boring after a while. I think I spent so much time doing the same shit in the game that I forgot 90% of the "story".

This brings up the question of does world size matter?

To make a long answer short, no. Linear campaign video games have shown that either gameplay and/or story are the core elements of making a good game.

If a game does have a large open-world and pretty much treat it as a main element in the game, then there better be life in the game. The Witcher 3, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid V, Red Dead Redemption, and most likely Breath of the Wild are prime examples on how to treat an open-world. All of them(well besides Breath of the Wild since it hasn't came out) have a good balance of gameplay and/or story.

There is no guarantee that Ghost Recon: Wildlands will be a good game or just end up like Pedestrian Simulator. Just by seeing the map, it would be cool to see different ecosystems, but will they effect gameplay to force people to play differently based on location? We won't know until the beta.

If Wildlands is going to have a large world, then there better be a strong narrative, transportation system that includes vehicles rather than just fast travel, and just avoid the mistakes made by Pedestrian Simulator. Maybe make Wildlands similar to Pedestrian Simulator's Survival update or Day Z or at least give a game mode like it.

I'm done for today, guys. Just as an update, I'm thinking about getting a PS4, but I need to get holiday shopping done as well as paying my tuition for the next semester at school. Additionally, I'm still working on my PS3 game collection and just ordered a 500GB hard drive for the PS3.
Till Next Time!!