If you had asked me between 2015 and 2020 why I loved it The Wizard 3, Jo they have probably made a very long list of things. In 2021, however, after the release of both Ciberpunk 2077 i Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, this list is much shorter. Basically now they are just “the wind” and “the sun”.
I thought of earlier, more casual times The Wizard 3 it was exceptional for several reasons, most probably the same as you would have indicated. Things like his clever writing, memorable missions, consistent choices and charming main character. So when the same team responsible for doing The Wizard 3 Last year I prepared for the release of a new game, this is the kind of thing I found exciting. More sad barons, more baked babies.
Ciberpunk 2077, as he is certainly aware, did not yield results on these fronts, or many others, to the point that playing seemed to play something from a completely different studio. I shot the game hoping to feel the same reckless magic and uninstalled it without finding a drop of it.
Keep on going Cyberpunk, then literally the next game I played was Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, i whaddya sap. Turns out I would feel it Witcher 3 magic after all, just in someone else’s game. And that’s mine Witcher 3 worship (or at least the heart) had not had so much to do with the consequences and the stories; I was just in love with a beautiful forest and a quick sunrise.
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I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be an open world game designer. That shit has to be hard. But I have a lot of experience with them, and if all my life playing them has taught me anything, it is that my gratitude for their worlds, not for the games themselves, but for the places where they are established, often has little to do with how. busy ”are.
If big single-player games are anything to go by, they’re a form of escapism, and so my favorites are usually the ones that really let me escape. Using Cyberpunk as an example, though so recent, it is in a huge, bustling city, full of cars and pedestrians, advertisements and shops. This is not an escape! This is the life most of us lead every day.
No, if most of us live an urban life, it is a natural environment that is a real getaway. I The Witcher 3 it was such a beautiful world, where you could almost smell the wet grass and feel the wind in your face, and it’s one of the few open world games where I’ve wanted to get to every corner of your map, not to satisfy goals, but just to see how it was and absorb it all.
A living and vibrant world like this is much more appealing than a concrete jungle. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s something more paramount in all of us, a call to nature that only becomes more pronounced as many of us come out of it. I have previously written about virtual tourism in Yakuza, but this is a specific site. This is more of a mood, a love of nature wherever it is, be it a fantasy world or a historical cartoon.
Other games I have loved for this reason are Oblit and the Far Cry series, while Assassin’s Creed Odyssey approached a couple of years ago, even if its Mediterranean coasts and clear blue waters came close to my love Wind Waker what The Wizard.
Valhalla, however, oh boy. Is it like that exactly the one I’m looking for. His idyllic caricature of ninth-century England is like a weekend getaway in a nature reserve, albeit heavily murdered and climbing in the middle. They are not my ideal vacation, but they are part of the package.
While De Valhalla opening the Norwegian sequence is awesome in its alpine way, once I got to England, it took me about three seconds to start tingling that feeling. That ol Witcher 3 tanned. He Oblit fever. Long grass. Large trees. Falling leaves. Spicy birds. Tap water. A gentle breeze. Sunlight between the branches, bathing a campsite with an amber morning glow.
Oh, that sucks. This is escapism. Not in facts, but in setting.
Valhalla shows that some of the most memorable open worlds are not defined by their density and that employment does not equate to credibility. In England, there are some points on the map where things happen, for sure, but for large expanses there is nothing to do, so like all the best road trips, there is nothing to do but enjoy an impressive landscape, which is a resounding pleasure. with me, much more than tedious open work in the open world.
While it can be tempting to pack a world of video games with as much sound, fury and stuff as possible Cyberpunk it seemed so intentional, sometimes it’s better to leave an open world open and enjoy the views. In these cases, as with Valhalla, nothingness is not a problem. It’s the best of the game.
