Piranhas Bite Hard: How ELEX Challenges (and Rewards) Role Players

[Mitchformer]

Another piece I wrote some months earlier. Tackled one of Piranha Bytes' more recent efforts.

Piranhas Bite Hard: How ELEX Challenges (and Rewards) Role Players

Open-world games come in many shapes and sizes, but their varying incarnations belie the fact that there are two brands of sandboxes. On the one hand, titles cut from the same cloth as Grand Theft Auto III (2001) and Ubisoft releases emphasize the plethora of diversions dotting a map that may be tra

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Constructive feedback and alternate takes are welcome as always!

 

[Antimatter]

That's a really great article. I've read (so far) only the first part of it, and there is a lot to digest. When you mention "Ubisoft releases" and separate them from games that don't do strict handholding, what do you think about settings in Ubisoft games such as Assassin's Creed that disable map markers and other indicators?

Also, what would you say about Skyrim (or Fallout 4)--isn't that game often overlooked when players say that Zelda and Elden Ring allow for natural exploration?

 

[Cahir]

Another great article. Thanks, Mitch! Interestingly enough, I've been thinking lately a lot about Gothic series. I never played it, and for some reason it has a kind of iconic status here in Poland. I thought many times about trying it, but I was always taken aback by out of date graphics and archaic gameplay. With Gothic Remake, this may be a good opportunity to jump into the world of Gothic games. As for Risen, I realized that I have still an old physical copy of the first game, but I didn't finish it, probably was not impressed back then for some reason.

When you mention "Ubisoft releases" and separate them from games that don't do strict handholding, what do you think about settings in Ubisoft games such as Assassin's Creed that disable map markers and other indicators?

Funny fact, I'm playing Assassin's Creed games for the last couple of months and I never noticed there is an option to disable map markers, but on the other hand I haven't actively searched for it. I figured the exploration in AC games is not as immersive as in other open world games I played (that doesn't mean it's worse!), so I wouldn't mind handholding. Also, the older I am, the more I appreciate handholding. I guess, I'm not as patient player as 20 years ago. I noticed that there is significantly less map markers in Valhalla than in Odyssey (which was the most "bloated" in that regard), but surprisingly I wasn't overwhelmed by it, something I had experienced when I played The Witcher 3 for the first time. In terms of exploration, I would singe The Ghost of Tsushima. It has a unique and discrete way of informing you about interesting places that makes using a map almost obsolete. I haven't experienced anything quite similar in other games I played.

Also, what would you say about Skyrim (or Fallout 4)--isn't that game often overlooked when players say that Zelda and Elden Ring allow for natural exploration?

I agree with this part. I can list a few things I don't quite like in Skyrim or Fallout 4, but none of those things concern exploration. It's very immersive and natural and plays a great role in my gaming experience in both titles. In Skyrim I liked the vast world, with totally different climate regions and some memorable places. The only part that bothered me a bit was a large asset reuse, especially in dungeons. Many of them look the same. In Fallout 4 I liked that you could find something interesting around every corner. Hidden stash here, some corpses there (and those could often tell a story). I had a slightly different exploration experience playing Skyrim and Fallout 4, bot both were great.

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

I'm still only partially through the very detailed and packed article (not a native speaker, and I haven't played those games... so I can't casually read it and pick up all important information just in passing) and will write more on it when I've had the chance to digest it all.

For now, I have the impression that the headline doesn't quite catch the main content of the article, as the topic seems to be more about the question of natural exploration vs guided quests, no handholding etc. That's an interesting debate of course, one we have had here too IIRC, but I wouldn't necessarily agree that the less markers or aimed quests you have, the more challenging it becomes and leads to more realistic roleplaying, because buying a map somewhere, assuming that roads might have roadsigns, and that people have information what you find where, that you can see some landmarks from afar and that everybody knows Castle so-and-so is right behind that mountain pass, doesn't seem out of place for roleplaying in my opinion. Also, being a working mother with limited leasure time, I do like exploration and coming across surprise discoveries, but I prefer to find my roleplaying options, and my game challenges, in other areas than spending 3 days worth of gaming time to find my way to the cave where someone said an alchemy trainer lives, only to find out it was the wrong cave.
I also know a lot of so-called old school players prefer the realistic brutality of running into enemies you can't possibly handle in your current state of training or gear level and loathe level scaling or maps that indicate where to go when. That's also a point I disagree with, because it doesn't seem unrealistic to me that in an open world, you can see from a bit afar how people are equipped, what kind of creatures live there, you gather rumours about vampire lords, or guards see you gawking like someone who just left their home farm and equipped like a peasant more than a knight and say "Hey, I wouldn't go that way if I were you!".
Of course no game can please everyone, it's important to study different approaches and see which type of games suites my preferences (and I'd be one of the first to agree that getting out of one's comfort zone and trying an approach you'd usually not consider your preference is a very good and healthy challenge for growth), but I personally still wouldn't file that under "roleplaying". Even infamous MMORPG quests that outwardly look like "go there, fetch this" can offer much more than just to-do-lists or simply be a incentive to go somewhere, because on vast maps you might otherwise leave out some interesting places. Of course, if a player decides to check only the boxes on the to-do-list by blindly running towards a quest marker and racing back instead of using it as an opportunity to explore the surroundings, that's on them and not a design flaw.

But as I said, I haven't finished the whole article yet and have to let it sink in, and then I will give more informed and on-topic feedback instead of just voicing general thoughts after a first impression that in the end might be totally unrelated to the rest of the text .

 

[Mitchformer]

That's a really great article. I've read (so far) only the first part of it, and there is a lot to digest. When you mention "Ubisoft releases" and separate them from games that don't do strict handholding, what do you think about settings in Ubisoft games such as Assassin's Creed that disable map markers and other indicators?

Also, what would you say about Skyrim (or Fallout 4)--isn't that game often overlooked when players say that Zelda and Elden Ring allow for natural exploration?

Thanks for the kind words!

I think that disabling map markers and other helpful indicators in Ubisoft sandboxes is a welcome feature. Still, that alone doesn't change the fact that the way in which an open world is designed from the ground up (e.g. as an activity-focused world or an exploration-centric one with little to no handholding) will still be keenly felt by players.

For example, disabling map markers in Skyrim doesn't turn it into Morrowind since the latter game had things like NPCs that provided directions to make up for the lack of non-diegetic elements. Skyrim, by comparison, doesn't have such things and so it becomes easy for one to get lost unless they re-enable quest markers.

The reason that BOTW and Elden Ring are lauded for their focus on natural exploration is that said exploration isn't prompted by map markers, but rather by the player's curiosity and use of landmarks to orient themselves while negotiating their surroundings. That the games are built around spontaneous wandering from the get-go means that players will hardly feel lost due to the lack of map markers.

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

the way in which an open world is designed from the ground up (e.g. as an activity-focused world or an exploration-centric one with little to no handholding)

Do you mean open world games that use markers are designed from the beginning to be focused on activities, a to-do-list, rather than exploration? Or is that just a personal impression?
I'm curious because it never seemed that way to me.

Skyrim for example, if you disable markers, will still have the NPCs that give a quest tell you more or less where to go, at least in the region of which city, or you hear people in some town talking about rumours, about the college in Winterhold etc etc, and since it's a chartered region with villages, castles and roads, it's possible to simply follow along a way until the next crossroads, check the roadsigns and decide if you check out what you heard about Riften this way or Solitude that way...
The landscape encourages exploration, at least in my case I always decided to go look at that waterfall, see what's over that hill, or simply follow a river hunting mudcrabs, suddenly discovering some beautiful hot springs nobody ever told me about...

It may be possible that games that intentionally don't use map markers (I haven't played Elden Ring) are designed in a way that you don't feel lost because they take that into account, but I still find it hard to believe that was the case with older games, so I'm skeptical of "old school" glorification when some tools simply weren't available or widespread a few decades ago.

I'd say it depends a lot on the setting we're in. In a culturally developed and educated surrounding like the world of AC: Odyssey I'd find it outright immersion breaking as a roleplayer if my ship's captain had no idea how to reach the Piraeus, or which way to find which island, or if nobody in the area of greater Athens had a map that shows me where to find this or that temple.

If I'm playing a prisoner who escapes from a penal colony somewhere on an unchartered island, it's a different matter.

I just get very careful when people discuss maps vs natural exploration like a religious war, especially when words like "old-school" and "hardcore" vs "handholding" are thrown around, because we've all read discussions where people used these terms to distinguish themselves as the "true" gamers as opposed to the "casual" ones.

Even the same game can be played in many different styles, and I remember the times where people bought walkthroughs to play a game or later searched for them on the internet, so they probably weren't all happy natural explorers before quest markers were invented.
So different game designs should depend on different purposes and fit the general setting and tone of the game, and I stand by my point that role-playing is not more encouraged or rewarded through lack of quest markers, and that open world games with map markers can be and are far more than activity playgrounds to check off your to-do lists.

The context matters more for role-playing (i.e. very simplified: Give me a map if I'm in a civilized world with paved roads and letters and possibly magic, don't give me one if I just escaped from a prison colony, stranded on an alien planet or am a cave troll in Antarctica) at least to me.

 

[Mitchformer]

Do you mean open world games that use markers are designed from the beginning to be focused on activities, a to-do-list, rather than exploration? Or is that just a personal impression?
I'm curious because it never seemed that way to me.

Skyrim for example, if you disable markers, will still have the NPCs that give a quest tell you more or less where to go, at least in the region of which city, or you hear people in some town talking about rumours, about the college in Winterhold etc etc, and since it's a chartered region with villages, castles and roads, it's possible to simply follow along a way until the next crossroads, check the roadsigns and decide if you check out what you heard about Riften this way or Solitude that way...
The landscape encourages exploration, at least in my case I always decided to go look at that waterfall, see what's over that hill, or simply follow a river hunting mudcrabs, suddenly discovering some beautiful hot springs nobody ever told me about...

It may be possible that games that intentionally don't use map markers (I haven't played Elden Ring) are designed in a way that you don't feel lost because they take that into account, but I still find it hard to believe that was the case with older games, so I'm skeptical of "old school" glorification when some tools simply weren't available or widespread a few decades ago.

I'd say it depends a lot on the setting we're in. In a culturally developed and educated surrounding like the world of AC: Odyssey I'd find it outright immersion breaking as a roleplayer if my ship's captain had no idea how to reach the Piraeus, or which way to find which island, or if nobody in the area of greater Athens had a map that shows me where to find this or that temple.

If I'm playing a prisoner who escapes from a penal colony somewhere on an unchartered island, it's a different matter.

I just get very careful when people discuss maps vs natural exploration like a religious war, especially when words like "old-school" and "hardcore" vs "handholding" are thrown around, because we've all read discussions where people used these terms to distinguish themselves as the "true" gamers as opposed to the "casual" ones.

Even the same game can be played in many different styles, and I remember the times where people bought walkthroughs to play a game or later searched for them on the internet, so they probably weren't all happy natural explorers before quest markers were invented.
So different game designs should depend on different purposes and fit the general setting and tone of the game, and I stand by my point that role-playing is not more encouraged or rewarded through lack of quest markers, and that open world games with map markers can be and are far more than activity playgrounds to check off your to-do lists.

The context matters more for role-playing (i.e. very simplified: Give me a map if I'm in a civilized world with paved roads and letters and possibly magic, don't give me one if I just escaped from a prison colony, stranded on an alien planet or am a cave troll in Antarctica) at least to me.

I'll admit that words alone can't wholly clarify what I'm trying to detail, so I'll include the following video timestamp so that the context is clearer:

 

[Mitchformer]

It's also worth noting that I do not condone gatekeeping. Gamers, regardless of their level of commitment ("casual," "hardcore"), will always be gamers, no matter what others might say.

The point I'm trying to illustrate is the distinction between sundry kinds of open-world design. Neither's objectively better than the other since such matters are subjective and dependent on players' tastes. It's just that folks who are curious about why one sandbox title feels different from another may find such design breakdowns interesting, especially if they're trying to develop something that feels like [insert game title here].

 

[Cahir]

I have another theory why some open world games encourage natural exploration more than the others, and it's a rather simple one. Fast travel option and its implementation. Bear with me for a while. I think the reason why exploration in Morrowind feels more natural than in Skyrim is not the presence of map markers, but the fact that you can fast travel freely in Skyrim, while in Morrowind your fast travel options are limited to the network of silt striders, boats or the usage of magic. Having the possibility to fast travel freely means I often teleported myself from one location to the other just to do a quest or visit a trader, NPC or other person of interest, completely ignoring exploration of the surrounding area. I simply went there to close the task and then jump to another location to do another. In games where fast travel is unavailable or restricted (like in Morrowind, Red Dead Redemption 2 or even The Witcher 3) I need to at least go on foot or by mount to the spot, where I can fast travel to another location. While walking/riding there, I'm more tempted to sidetrack, to check some interesting locations I notice along the road.

I agree that the feeling of exploration in Morrowind is more natural than in Skyrim, but personally I don't think it's because of map markers, but because I actually had to travel more - I couldn't just teleport from place to place easily. And with the fact that I need to reach different locations by foot, I automatically paid more attention to what NPCs said about the direction, that leads to places of interest. I imagine for players that can self-impose a "non-fast travel" policy on themselves, this difference between those two games can be reduced or is even unnoticeable.

As for map markers, I think it's a matter if all map markers are visible from the start (like for example you discover a new region and all map markers in that region are automatically revealed) or you need to discover each location first and only then you can fast travel there. In my opinion, the former discourages exploration, while the latter encourages it (especially when combined with limited fast travel).

As mentioned by others before, this is just my subjective opinion, and you are welcome to have a completely different one.