Tall order for an open world game, let’s see how they deliver on this, if at all.
Probably just biomes and fetch quests with extra steps to add some diversity.
if it turns out to be another big dreamer AI thing…
The world design is very gamey in Tsushima. A bunch of platforming jungle gyms with landscape filler in-between. Such a beautiful game, I would wish it looked more realistic. More Red Dead, less Far Cry.
I think that’s why the Tsushima map had such an impact on me. It’s one of those games where if you just look around for a few seconds you can quickly tell which part of the world you’re in. It’s all breathtakingly gorgeous, but the details in the vegetation, landscape, and atmosphere are aesthetically varied and blatantly unique. You’re right it’s not particularly realistic, but I think that’s how they managed to make it all feel so big and beautiful. Freaking love that game.
That’s fair, I loved that side of things, too. I’m more talking about the conspicuous and samey cliffs that look and feel a little too contrived, strictly made for gameplay purposes like creating paths, blocking off areas, providing platforming challenges and assassination opportunities. They were overused and unnatural looking sometimes.
Larger than life beauty for beauty’s sake is done so well, in that game, it’s an amazing experience, the overuse of little cliffs everywhere is really my only gripe. I spend more time walking on my horse along paths than I do galloping straight to my destination. I like just soaking it all in. I’m playing it right now for the first time; I did the first act and the DLC, I’m about a quarter of the way tbrough the second act now. Loving it.
Edit: Oh I do have a second gripe, but with the DLC, and it’s the same gripe I have with all DLC. It was obviously written by the B team, the writing is less subtle and everything is a bit more extreme. Still a good time, but just a wee notch lower in writing quality than the main story.
Yeah, I agree about the DLC. It was fun, but had a very different vibe from the main story, and yeah it all felt like overkill. As much as it added to the story, I didn’t need the horse armor backstory and the new horse skill-tree. The horse skills could have been useful in the main game, but it felt wasted in the DLC, I barely got to use them. Loved the new map though, it felt so different from the other regions.
I thought of a third gripe! I would have preferred to play this game in Japanese, but only the main story lines are translated. Being loving to your horse or overhearing villagers talking about your deeds is totally lost in playing with just subtitles. You really need the dialogue to be in your native tongue to get the full story and atmosphere. Every spoken word should have been subtitled and translated. This is an accessibility issue, too. Deaf people just don’t get to experience that part of the game.
