We absolutely love open world games and the freedom they provide, the amount of content they deliver and the longevity they tend to go hand-in-hand with- but like pretty much any other genre or category of games, they do come with their own unique pitfalls. One that has grown increasingly prevalent in the medium with time is the issue of bloat. As players, we tend to be impressed by massive open worlds that are brimming with content, but a byproduct of that has become developers who end up overemphasizing that point, often to the detriment of other aspects of the experience. Here, we’re going to talk about a few open world games in recent years that have suffered from those issues.
ASSASSIN’S CREED ODYSSEY
We’re going to be speaking about plenty of Ubisoft games in this feature, so it makes sense to start off with one- and it’s probably one that most people think of when they think of open world bloat. There’s no denying that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is an excellent game, and the vast majority of the content it delivers is an absolute blast to play through- but there’s way too much of it. And that excessive size results in plenty of issues, from repetitive quests and quest design to excessively reused assets throughout the open world, and more. This is a game that can easily eat up between 80-90 hours of your time, and while most of it is a good time, by the time it’s coming to an end, it does feel like it’s overstayed its welcome a little bit.
