Multi The Scourge of Scale

[Raine]

Rocksteady's Arkham games have gotten bigger and bigger, from the corridors of Arkham Asylum to the streets of Gotham City. But has the Dark Knight actually benefited from the increase in scale? Is bigger always better?

A simple enough topic that's been on my mind for about a decade now. Open-world games, and the seeming insistence on making everything in the Triple-A sphere have an open world in recent times - even if it doesn't necessarily make sense on paper. Some select few games pull it off to great effect; I don't feel like the overall popularity of something like Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom or Elden Ring can be denied. Yet despite open world fatigue being a fairly common sentiment with regards to Ubisoft's output, many of those games and others like them perform very well year in and year out. There seems to be a prevailing sentiment that if a game isn't a certain size, that it's not worth the Day 1 asking price.



Per the subject within the video, I personally find myself universally liking small(er) linear/sandbox-y games as opposed to sprawling and open spaces. Whether the latter is full of interesting things to see and do or not. And I definitely felt that keenly in the Batman trilogy. I've played through Arkham Aslyum four times so far, but Arkham City I did just once and really wasn't feeling after the first couple of hours. And I've felt zero motivation to start Arkham Knight in the 8 or so years that it's been out knowing that it's even more.

How about the rest of you? Are you, for example, excited about the prospect of an open-world Final Fantasy VII Remake? Or perhaps you'd like to see a smaller, more setpiece-oriented Assassin's Creed?

 

[Cole]

​

A simple enough topic that's been on my mind for about a decade now. Open-world games, and the seeming insistence on making everything in the Triple-A sphere have an open world in recent times - even if it doesn't necessarily make sense on paper. Some select few games pull it off to great effect; I don't feel like the overall popularity of something like Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom or Elden Ring can be denied. Yet despite open world fatigue being a fairly common sentiment with regards to Ubisoft's output, many of those games and others like them perform very well year in and year out. There seems to be a prevailing sentiment that if a game isn't a certain size, that it's not worth the Day 1 asking price.



Per the subject within the video, I personally find myself universally liking small(er) linear/sandbox-y games as opposed to sprawling and open spaces. Whether the latter is full of interesting things to see and do or not. And I definitely felt that keenly in the Batman trilogy. I've played through Arkham Aslyum four times so far, but Arkham City I did just once and really wasn't feeling after the first couple of hours. And I've felt zero motivation to start Arkham Knight in the 8 or so years that it's been out knowing that it's even more.

How about the rest of you? Are you, for example, excited about the prospect of an open-world Final Fantasy VII Remake? Or perhaps you'd like to see a smaller, more setpiece-oriented Assassin's Creed?

I can't watch the video now.

but the Arkham games are among the most complete all around games in existence, in my opinion it's close to the perfect game experience.

and to add to that, only 2 games ever have made me feel like that superhero.

Arkham, and Spider-Man 2 for ps2 (and now the modern spider man)

 

[Raine]

Asylum is legitimately one of my favorite games of all time.

It's not really that City (and Knight, I suppose, by extension) is a bad game; just about everything Aslyum does, City does - and generally mostly as well. Hypothetically speaking playing as Catwoman, Nightwing and (Tim) Robin should also be just straight improvements, but they feel... too same-y and half-baked. Mostly because their challenge missions and such are really just Batman's, so they have different animations (and animation quirks, ugh Catwoman was frustrating) but nothing truly original to make them stand out and kill the monotony.

My biggest issue with City, ultimately, is that there's too much travel time/downtime getting to and from destinations. And that 1) enemies with guns just out and about in the open is pretty pants because those are intentionally overpowered, and 2) respawning enemies makes it feel like a chore to go anywhere. Which is an incredible accomplishment in a game where I like to fight.

So net, in my opinion, City is Asylum but worse and entirely too long for good measure (think it took over 80 hours to 100% everything). And I can only imagine Knight will be lower than that for me considering I've never liked vehicle missions outside of dedicated racing/vehicle-combat games.

 

[Fool's Requiem]

Relevant.

 

[VashTheStampede]

When I think about this discussion, I think about a much-maligned game that I really like but could have been so much more with so much less.

Mafia III

If that was just a story based game with a limited scope open world (kind of like it's predecessors), it might have been Game of the Year for me when it came out. AMAZING story, great characters with top tier acting (for gaming), and hands down the best licensed soundtrack I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

But getting to that story is such a chore because they hide it behind time-padding mechanics where you have to do all sorts of busy work to unlock the story missions for progression.

I still occasionally load that game up to give it another go because there's a diamond deep in all that crap, but I always end up tapping out before long.

Damn shame.

 

[Fool's Requiem]

Dynasty Warriors 9 had a supposedly abysmal open world, completely empty of anything that makes Dynasty Warriors great outside of the hack'n'slash elements.

Falcon of gameranx despises that game for what it did to the franchise.

 

[VashTheStampede]

I do as well. I've been hooked on musou games since DW2 and 9 was an abomination. Killed the franchise.

Thankfully we've got so many other good musou games now like the Zelda and Persona 5 ones.