Topic of the Week: How do you feel about the increasing popularity of open worlds?

Open worlds are pretty fashionable at the minute. Every publisher seems intent on bragging about the size of their worlds as if they're comparing wang length at a public urinal. "It's bigger than all three of our previous games combined!" they declare. "It's more dense than people who pre-purchase our Season Passes!"

We've had a fair few open world games of various size and scope over the past couple of years, and the feature looks set to become more and more popular. But is this a good thing?

I'll kick the debate off.

[Bigpappy]

It is human nature for more people to prefer freedom and immersion. Once you get a taste of it, you find that it satisfies more of you senses, and you find yourself wondering of the possibilities, when playing linier games, of being able to go that way or pickup that weapon, etc..

So with more powerful systems with more storage, it is a natural progression.

[anticlimax]

That said,I personally am not happy about the 'make your own story' kind of games. Often it feels like the main storyline is an addon to the game. Skyrim's main story for example felt tiny. It in no way lived up to the rest of the game.

Immersion into a story (for me) supersedes immersion into a world every time.

[Bigpappy]

I understand that a linier story is often easier to follow, like reading a book. But I can always find good books to read. I prefer to be emerged but random encounters like attempted muggings or people trying to recruit me to their cause, and me having choices on how to deal with the situation, then being stratified with it being the choice and result I made rather than the one the writer preferred. This kind of immersion is not possible in a book. Opened World RPG's are the only genre that allows for that level of interactive immersion. This was something I first experienced with Morrowind and it was the game that forever changed the way I see RPG's?