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Shower thought, traversal in open world games have turned from game mechanics to loading screens (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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3 big ones recently, this year was God of War Ragnarok, FF7 Rebirth and Jedi Survivor

Back when 3d games were new, tomb raider, prince of persia etc the traversal was the challenge, the gameplay.

Eventually they got watered down and simplified, now they are cleverly disguised choke points while the open world or boss ahead loads.

You'll notice the squeezing between narrow walls to separate 2 areas or a simple climb against a flat wall just before a boss. I think Uncharted was the first to do this as they moved away from climbing and focused more on combat and puzzles.

There is no reason to actually have the characters climb anything if it's not fun or there are better ways of traversal, GoW being the biggest offender here

Jedi Survivor embraces traversal more but still locks you out with invisible walls and floors that kill you

I think I might prefer the elevator loading screens from Elden Ring, at least you get to stretch out your fingers when waiting

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

The annoying thing is they don't really need to. PS5 SSD loading is near instant. They're still using techniques that I first noticed in Soul Reaver.

Still we're a long way from San Andreas and it's miles of open country between cities to hide the loading.