Splinter Cell: Blacklist makes me hate open worlds even more because I now realize how limiting they are in terms of story, location, and content.
Blacklist is not an open world. Instead you are in a hub area (like Black Ops Cold War) and you can choose missions available on the world map or take missions with your subordinates. Missions take place in the Middle East, America, India, and several other places. Each mission is also designed to be linear (stealth of course), and you earn money after each outing to buy weapons, gear, and upgrades. You could never do something like that with an open world.
It kinda makes me wonder how Halo Infinite would have been if it took this route instead of just staying on one single ring planet. If Halo took a formula like Blacklist, you could have linear missions that take place on different planets and do them in the order you want as well as unlocking more missions as you progress.
Far Cry 3 would also have benefited from this because the only good part of that game is the linear story being told. The open world absolutely takes the experience down because of all the repetitive content. If they trimmed it down and only kept the missions that you could do in any order you want, while unlocking more as you process, it would fix so many problems with that game.
You ever notice that most open world games have the same basic story? You’re dropped on a large world you’ve never been to before, there’s a single big baddie you need to take down, he has henchmen who you fight throughout the story, and you’re continuously working towards taking that baddie down. The end. Besides Yakuza, this is pretty much every open world out there. It’s such a limit to what kind of stories you can tell because it’s locked to one location.
That’s why I say open worlds are the illusion of freedom. Ironic that it was a Ubisoft non-open-world game that helped me understand that.
