The Anti Open World Game
Nothing here!
5 Games
Often called the progenitor to the open world genre, but it feels completely at odds with what the genre later became. Shenmue revels in that sense of idleness, alienation and lack of purpose that other open world games attempt to remedy.
The open world here is just a lonely no man's land with nothing to do. People going back to it now are often disappointed by the lack of side activities and instinctively reject that this was a deliberate choice.
After you finish the game and either achieve revenge or sell out to the criminal underworld, you're left with the gray and depressing Liberty City, infinite money, and absolutely fucking nothing interesting to do. Really drives home the total meaninglessness of the life Niko has built there.
Similar to GTA IV but better: after John's death, you play as his son Jack, who wants to be a wild outlaw and avenge his father. Except it's fucking 1914, that's not a thing anymore. You're just a loser LARPing as an outlaw in a world where that identity has no meaning. Like GTA IV, you're dropped into an empty and uncaring world with nothing to do.
Wrote a whole review on MGSV, but to sum it up, it's the best critique of the open world live-service game ever made. Listening to podcasts as you perform the dull, repetitive work of maintaining this machine of global mass murder.
Snegurochka
10 months ago