If there’s one common denominator of unsatisfying open worlds in games, it’s bloat. Bloat doesn’t equate to mere size, it’s rather what is done with the size that makes or breaks a game’s map design. Copy and pasting a formulaic list of activities across a map just doesn’t make for meaningful and substantive content.
Players like to be rewarded with additional story, characterization, and fun upgrades upon discovering more of the open world, not another checkmark on a map. The Witcher 3‘s world is huge, but players don’t complain about it being bloated because it’s filled with unique landmarks and interesting side quests around every corner.
These 10 games even manage to disappoint the casual collectathon fan with their uninspired locales and boring terrain, proving that games need to do more than merely populate the world with objects. Here are 10 more open world games in recent years that have suffered from bloat.
Forspoken
Like other games on this list, Forspoken had a ton of potential leading up to its release. We first saw glimpses of it with the impressive next-gen demo when the PS5 was announced but the final result was severely lacking. The best thing about the game, its versatile and engaging parkour, isn’t facilitated well by the open world.
For one thing, there’s entirely too few things to do in the magical world of Athia. What’s more, there’s an absence of ‘magic’ to capture the imagination in the world, consisting of empty rolling hills dotted with repetitive activities as it is. What hinders the empty exploration further is Frey’s constant quipping and complaining. If you’re not keen to hear constant quips and snarky complaints over the course of several hours of empty, though fun, world traversal, you’re not going to have a good time in Athia. After critical and commercial failure, the studio was shuttered.
Rise of the Ronin
Team Ninja’s design identity lives and breathes by its dense and action-packed linear nature, so naturally, the decision to go open-world in their next samurai game was ambitious for the team. Being the first open world game from the studio, Rise of the Ronin doesn’t falter too hard, but it could’ve been better within a more streamlined structure.
The refined action combat the team has been known for helps the formulaic world activities feel a bit more fun than they otherwise would. This is the third game on the list to feature dozens of bandit camps in its large world, but there’s also genre mainstays like watchtowers, and … cats to pet across mid-19th Century Japan, okay at least that’s kind of charming. Still, the lack of organic environmental discovery, unlike, say, Ghost of Tsushima’s waypoint wind, and a more empty and boring world map than other games within the space, keep Rise of the Ronin from reaching the potential set by its unique time period and deep combat. Hopefully, the developers will keep on investing in this IP, because there is potential here and a Rise of Ronin 2 could be a genuinely great game.
Biomutant
Unlike Gotham’s largely samey environments, the open world in Biomutant is rather diverse and visually unique across biomes. But visual distinctness between the six tribal regions is where Biomutant’s open world stops being impressive – unless you enjoy the busywork of clearing checklists, that is. Completing the many outposts, resource towers, ruins, and fast-travel signpost rewards you with little while being but it’s as shallow as it is repetitive.
But the combat and quests don’t really do anything interesting to accommodate the rote world activities, firmly solidifying Biomutant as a quintessential ‘mid’ game. It’s unremarkable, but not bad per se, and when multiplied by the huge open world and all its repetitive activities, makes for a lot wasted time one could have spent in more meaningful game worlds. Biomutant is a prime example where a stong investment doesn’t always result into a meaningful product.
Gotham Knights
If rote repetition is the death knell of open worlds, Gotham Knights feels oddly lifeless for a city meant to be in constant crisis. All of the positives of the Arkham games, save some of the third-person combat DNA, is gone with this game. Sure, there’s some fun stealth sections to be found within the story chapters, but a majority of the game’s content is beating up the same thugs and solving copy-pasted crimes throughout Gotham to grind towards Knighthood progression.
Players can typically look past a bit of padded grinding if the world feels alive and responsive, but Gotham also fails on that front. Alleyways are mostly empty, civilian traffic is practically non-existent, and the city doesn’t evolve or react to story advancements or a recently liberated borough. At least the game looks really nice with its lighting. Gotham oozes atmosphere on a superficial artistic level despite the lack of liveliness and organic activities. Gotham Knights does have its shining moments, but very few of them have to do with the open world structure. Honestly, at this point, we just need a new Batman Arkham, not to mention the disaster that was Suicide Squad.
Just Cause 4
While Biomutant can’t reasonably be considered bad by any means, Just Cause 4 certainly can. The only thing I’m uncertain about is if this game suffers more on the story or exploration axis because it sucks at both. First and foremost, there’s just way too many patches of nothingness in the game world, resulting in terrible activity density.
At least Rico’s versatile grappling hook can be played around with to traverse the boring environments because it’d be downright sleep-inducing to go anywhere in this game otherwise. Accommodating the poor map design is a total absence of a minimap or radar. I mean, come on, an open-world game with no way to track points of interest at-a-glance, and one with such a bloated and empty world at that, is inexcusable. The missions and side activities are also far less creative and interesting than previous Just Cause titles, and the game crashes pretty often. You know what, I can’t even point the main blame on the open world, Just Cause 4 is just plain bad. It’s amazing how the series shifted into a complete free fall after Just Cause 2. Such a massive shame!
RAGE 2
Rage 2 is another game on this list that certainly isn’t altogether bad; its open world design just kinda feels tacked on to extend game time. Avalanche studios used Id Software’s wonderful gunplay tech to craft a fast and fun gameplay. Shooting in Rage 2 feels fast paced but with very lackluster and repetitive map design, its potential is severely diminished. There’s hardly any reason to spend time checking off side activities due to the drip-fed upgrades that players are rewarded with. This is thanks largely to a pretty early plateau in the upgrade tree, which maxes out your character pretty quick.
And without any meaningful side stories or lore to discover out in the wasteland, exploration is largely an exercise in repetition. The rapid pacing of the gunplay also just isn’t well suited for the wide swathes of land, something a more densely populated map could’ve remedied a bit. It’s a shame Rage 2 faltered on the open world front. A synthesis between Id gun mechanics and the open world chaos of Just Cause 3 set within a Mad Max-esque setting seem like a dream come true. But Rage 2’s world is largely average and is enough to pull down the game’s otherwise fun gameplay and traversal mechanics. It’s unlikely we will ever see a new RAGE game and that’s such a disappointment.
Mafia III
The original studio behind the first two Mafia games merged into Hanger 13 for Mafia 3. Hanger 13’s debut game lacks a lot of the charm and density the previous games had, going for a quantity over quality approach. The territory control system quickly becomes repetitive, with little variation between districts. The world itself, a fictional version of New Orleans, also lacks intriguing landmarks and unique stuff to do within it. It’s just a shallow and hollow open world all-round.
At least the story and atmosphere somewhat make up for it; however, repetitive side objectives are often mandatory to progress the main plot, harming that aspect as well. Here’s hoping the Hanger 13 has learned from their first game and refined Mafia: The Old Country’s Italy into something more engaging.
Saints Row (2022)
In a lot of ways, the 2022 reboot of Saint’s Row feels like a first draft of a game from a decade ago. It’s got the basic elements to make a classic Saints Row experience, but hardly any of the creativity, charm, or polish. Where previous Saints Row games made exploring and causing mayhem unpredictable and fun, this reboot turns every open world activity into a chore.
Criminal Ventures are just one example of this; once you do your first couple insurance fraud busts and repo jobs, you’ve pretty much seen done them all. The world does little to encourage curiosity either, considering how empty and vacuous it feels. What’s really a shame is the lack of charm across the whole experience, thanks in part to the odd incongruent meshing of attempted wackiness with serious drama, resulting in an experience that falls flat in the end. This release, more or less, has killed Saints Row.
Crackdown 3
Out of all the games featured on this list, Crackdown 3 reigns supreme when it comes to boring environments. We all wanted to explore a dark sci-fi city in the sequel, but the city’s repetitive building designs make exploration feel stale and uninspired. It’s one of those games where the asset reuse is so glaringly obvious that it significantly detracts from the experience. But it’s not just the bland environments of the city that hurt the open world experience, mission and enemy variety is severely formulaic too. What puts the nail in the coffin is the paltry rewards for doing open world activities.
You’re mostly just collecting ability orbs after completing activities or exploring environments with no interesting lore or customization. And of course, Crackdown 3 commits the major sin of mandating side content to progress the main story, this time in the guise of collecting intel for regional boss fights. At least there’s the charm of playing as Terry Crews throughout the formulaic experience, but even that wears thin pretty quickly. With Microsoft cancelling projects left and right, the future of Crackdown seems like it’s done and dusted.
Need for Speed: Payback
Need for Speed: Payback is a game I still kind of enjoy playing to this day, but it’s not to experience the exploration or anything. No, it’s the superb vehicle selection and customization which is the main draw of the game, but even that can be had in the better NFS maps that Heat and Unbound facilitate. Payback’s fictional map is quite large and spread out, but it features no police chases outside of scripted events.
Instead of hiding from cops and making an intricate escape through a dense downtown route, you’re just collecting stuff and starting events on the map. This makes Payback’s map the least dynamic and least designed for racing than any of the modern-era NFS titles. Fortunately, a lot of great Need for Speed games were released since then, so let’s hope this continues into the future.