Early open world games

[moriráslejos]

I've been playing Zelda: Windwaker lately for the first time and I'm impressed by how close to an open world game it is -- the map is pretty large and once you beat the second dungeon the game just lets you wander off in any direction you like.
I also know of this 1999 Japan exclusive called "Germs Nerawareta Machi" which is described everywhere as an open world game... on the PS1. I played for like an hour and it seems to be true: from the beginning you can just get in your car and drive anywhere you want.
Both of these examples fascinate me, because I had heard some people say that game consoles before the seventh generation just "couldn't handle" an open world game. That leads me to ask: what other early open world games do you know of? Do you think these games are really pushing their hardware to the max?

Edit: Also hi, I'm new here. Pleasure to meet you all.

 

[Ferik]

PC's have had open world games for a very long time. Elder Scrolls Daggerfall from 1996 immediately comes to mind.

GTA 3 was a very early PS2 title that originally targeted Dreamcast during development before it was clear that system was a failure. It's also nowhere near pushing the PS2 to its limit as evidenced by GTA San Andreas being much larger and having much better visuals.

Just remembered Immercenary on 3DO. That's a pretty small city all things considered, but it's still entirely open ended from the get go.

 

[Dr.Kisaragi]

They are early open world like Ocarina of Time Super Mario 64 I even consider Mega Man legends a little open world

Shemune, Mizzurna Falls, Tails of the Sun, Urban Chaos and Driver Series are also Open World game.

 

[KaiserMk7]

I wonder if modern open world games can still look good if one develops them as if one were still confined by the hardware limitations of those console generations. Few landmarks visible at any given time, flat texture instead of level geometry until you get really damn close, very few level chunks loaded at any given time, and all that.

 

[Carlnshake Carlnshake]

Even the original Zelda was pretty open world

 

[KaiserMk7]

They are early open world like Ocarina of Time Super Mario 64 I even consider Mega Man legends a little open world

Shemune, Mizzurna Falls, Tails of the Sun, Urban Chaos and Driver Series are also Open World game.

The phrase open world typically means that you can get from one location to a completely different location without full cutaway area transitions and loading screens, that you can usually wander off in any direction with little restriction beyond enemy difficulty at any given time, and that you have many viable paths to most destinations with potential detours aplenty. OoT, SM64, and Mega Man Legends just don't count even if there are some big levels, but oddly enough Zelda 1 does.

 

[prosy.05-capes]

PC's have had open world games for a very long time. Elder Scrolls Daggerfall from 1996 immediately comes to mind.

GTA 3 was a very early PS2 title that originally targeted Dreamcast during development before it was clear that system was a failure. It's also nowhere near pushing the PS2 to its limit as evidenced by GTA San Andreas being much larger and having much better visuals.

Just remembered Immercenary on 3DO. That's a pretty small city all things considered, but it's still entirely open ended from the get go.

I'd go even earlier: Ultima VII (April 1992) presents a single, contiguous open world with a bunch of simmy elements like being able to grow wheat, collect it, mill it into flour, bake it into bread, and then sell the bread for significantly more than the base wheat.

 

[Ferik]

I'd go even earlier: Ultima VII (April 1992) presents a single, contiguous open world with a bunch of simmy elements like being able to grow wheat, collect it, mill it into flour, bake it into bread, and then sell the bread for significantly more than the base wheat.

You could also argue Ultima 4 and Wasteland are open world to an extent, at the very least proto-open worlds where you can go anywhere and perform major objectives in any order although they have instanced towns/dungeons and combat that have a different scale from the overworld.

 

[KaiserMk7]

How closely related to the open world genre are games with seamless exploration of interconnected labyrinths (optionally with doors)?

 

[Ferik]

How closely related to the open world genre are games with seamless exploration of interconnected labyrinths (optionally with doors)?

Well seeing as we're talking about how Ultima may have pioneered the open world style in many ways, and Ultima Underworld was quite possibly the first real time dungeon crawler in that vein, I'd say they're just over the fence from each other.

 

[Phage]

Metal Max way back on the NES was an open world game, and it came out in 1991. While you might debate if various Ultima games qualify as open world or not, Metal Max just straight up *is* open world. Hell, the OG Legend of Zelda is straight up an open world title with little to no guidance and a sprawling world map to explore, full of secrets and challenges, and that's way back in 1986. The formula has been there since the dawn of gaming essentially, it just wasn't able to be realized fully until around that era, outside of text adventure games.

As someone else said, I'd classify Ocarina of Time and Mario 64 as open world as well, if limited in scope, and a lot of JRPGs from the PS1 era were dancing around the genre but put a stronger focus on storytelling, limiting how truly open the world could be in terms of picking your path.

Honestly, I feel like we could stand to take a step back and look to that era again in terms of making open world games. These days they're so focused on absolute freedom and a violent aversion to anything telling you what to do that some barely have a story at all, and those that do are barebones and disjointed without any real sense of progression, because we couldn't *possibly* imply that a player was supposed to do things in a certain order.

I miss things like Jak and Daxter where there was an open world, but progression was gated behind learning new abilities or collecting enough macguffins to allow access to the next area, so the player could still freely explore the world, but they had to go through certain areas and story beats before moving on to the next one, and revisiting old areas to access things that they couldn't before. There was a sort of golden age of these type of games that were essentially sprawling 3D platformer metroidvanias with worlds that were purpose-built to allow the player tons of freedom, but also steer them down a path to a fantastic story.

But I'm kinda rambling now. Point is, we've had open world games since WAY back when, and they've evolved greatly over the years, but somewhere along the way the appeal of those games got muddied up and too much emphasis was placed on "absolute freedom" instead of all the elements that came together to make those smash hit open world games as popular as they were. You've gotta peel back that weird layer of modern open world games that exist for the sole purpose of being open world to truly see the genre for what it is and what it used to be before you can define them.

 

[bjork]

Vette was open world driving in like 89 or 90. It isn't the most detailed thing in the world, but you have to consider the platform and the era.

Sid Meier's Pirates! let you explore freely as well, but I don't know if it's considered open world due to the perspective? But that was 87, so the concept has definitely existed before the tech could serve it in 3D

 

[Crashbandi]

They are early open world like Ocarina of Time Super Mario 64 I even consider Mega Man legends a little open world

Shemune, Mizzurna Falls, Tails of the Sun, Urban Chaos and Driver Series are also Open World game.

Tails of the Sun mention. I loved that game as a kid. I never beat it, but a Caveman Simulator was such a badass idea to me.

 

[JPchicre]

The phrase open world typically means that you can get from one location to a completely different location without full cutaway area transitions and loading screens, that you can usually wander off in any direction with little restriction beyond enemy difficulty at any given time, and that you have many viable paths to most destinations with potential detours aplenty. OoT, SM64, and Mega Man Legends just don't count even if there are some big levels, but oddly enough Zelda 1 does.

I agree that term has ,at least in current discussions, ties to these specific elements (lack of loading being the big one). I would still argue that those titles are probably significant in the discussion and probably relevant in the history of Open World games due to their "Exploration" and "Player freedom" design choices, and well, anything as arbitrary as the definition of a specific game genre is open for contention, in ten years Open World games could be planet destruction simulators for all we know.

Anyway... Gothic is great, both 1 and 2 (the third one is okay at best) and everyone should play it! It gives lot o player choice on narrative progression and character building and it looks like Papier-mâché but has great atmosphere and world building, and it even predates GTA3 by a few months.

 

[Skeleben]

Elder Scrolls III Morrowind is dope, Ik Daggerfall was open world but the whole procedurally generated part kind of makes the scale of it insane. Vvardenfell is a grouse open world cuz there's so much stuff to find, it feels really intentional in its design. They probably used procedural generation to lay out the basic shape and the mountains and stuff, but the finished product feels really curated and a fun place to explore. Pretty good open world design philosophy for a game released in 2002!

 

[sandogma sandogma]

Even the original Zelda was pretty open world

This. During the time the game was out, the world felt huge! I remember opening the box the game came in to read the manual only to discover it also had a map of the overworld. Add to the fact that you could go practically anywhere but there wasn't much hand-holding telling you where you're supposed to go, made the world feel even larger than it was. I would consider this game my first open world experience.

 

[irkella irkella]

Certainly not the earliest, but a bit of an lesser known pair is Drakan: Order of the Flame (PC, 1999) and its sequel, Drakan: The Ancients' Gates (PS2, 2002). Fly around a large world on your dragon, clear out dungeons, find secrets, complete side-quests, the whole "open world" list is pretty much checked.

A couple interesting / influential earlier milestones in open world games that I haven't seen mentioned here would include the Hydlide series and Midwinter.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 5:40 AM

Vette was open world driving in like 89 or 90. It isn't the most detailed thing in the world, but you have to consider the platform and the era.

Sid Meier's Pirates! let you explore freely as well, but I don't know if it's considered open world due to the perspective? But that was 87, so the concept has definitely existed before the tech could serve it in 3D

Turbo Esprit was another neat car-based game with a relatively open world. Nothing like beating up other cars in a Lotus.

 

[Kimberly Belick]

virtua hydlide good open world early game, plays like modern games with map and quests like A to B, but in this game map and markers can be disabled

 

[UnDubious]

Basically any non-linear RPG was "open world" unless you insist on the seamless part, which doesn't seem particularly meaningful to me. Like in Shadowrun on the Genesis, you can go anywhere from the beginning and do all kinds of sidequests and only advance the main storyline when you want to... but there are transitions between the different parts of the city, probably cause it was easier to program/nobody cared.

 

[irkella irkella]

virtua hydlide good open world early game, plays like modern games with map and quests like A to B, but in this game map and markers can be disabled

I don't know if I'd call Virtual Hydlide "good", but it was certainly a pretty ambitious game for its time. The gyre AGDQ run is iconic:

Basically any non-linear RPG was "open world" unless you insist on the seamless part, which doesn't seem particularly meaningful to me. Like in Shadowrun on the Genesis, you can go anywhere from the beginning and do all kinds of sidequests and only advance the main storyline when you want to... but there are transitions between the different parts of the city, probably cause it was easier to program/nobody cared.

Not just easier to program, but basically necessary for the console systems of the time. There were just unavoidable memory/hardware limitations that required either heroic levels of coding or a bit of loading.

Games like The Seven Cities of Gold (1984) pioneered streaming assets as the game ran, rather than having loading screens, but this was pretty novel even in 1988 when the Genesis released (with the same ram as a base C64 in 1982)

 

[CheesyExplosive]

any action rpg game like phanstay star nova.

 

[ChronoFiction]

Sonic Adventure kinda comes to mind, the levels in station square are connected to station square itself, Emerald Cost and Speed highway are near by the hub world and the same can be said for Mystic Ruins having levels such as Red mountain and Icecap be connected to Mystic Ruins hub area.

 

[MemeAlert]

any action rpg game like phanstay star nova.

You are wrong, Phantasy Star Nova isn't open world.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 3:09 PM

Did you know Bubsy 3D is open world?

 

[CheesyExplosive]

You are wrong, Phantasy Star Nova isn't open world.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 3:09 PM

Did you know Bubsy 3D is open world?

Don't say that ever again...

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

any action rpg game like phanstay star nova.

PS Nova is pretty restrictive.


I was finding the Forest from the original Online to be pretty big and open but this is closer to a dungeon crawler akin to Diablo than an open world. I'd still take it over NGS and its empty world.


I also remember how Surface from Goldeneye felt like an open world as well. This was the right amount of "openness".

Sonic Adventure kinda comes to mind, the levels in station square are connected to station square itself, Emerald Cost and Speed highway are near by the hub world and the same can be said for Mystic Ruins having levels such as Red mountain and Icecap be connected to Mystic Ruins hub area.

Maybe nostalgia is speaking but I find those levels more interesting than Frontiers' "Open Zones".