MESSING ABOUT WITH EMERGENT SYSTEMS
Open world has become the way to go for most major AAA publishers this generation, and while there’s a case to be made for the value of tighter, more linear experiences, there is one aspect of open world gameplay that has seen a lot of growth of late that makes this style of game design irresistible- emergent gameplay. When games like Metal Gear Solid 5 or Breath of the Wild put players in a huge sandbox where dozens of systems are constantly interacting with each other, it encourages players to mess about with those systems, to experiment and to mix and match and to come up with completely new ways of interacting with nearly everything in a game.
You want to use Stasis on an enemy in Zelda while its in the middle of swinging its weapon so that it can be frozen in place and be struck by lightning at just the right moment? Go right ahead and do it. You want to slide down a cliff in a cardboard box in The Phantom Pain and knock your enemies’ legs from under them while you do so? Of course you can. The possibilities are endless, and discovering even more ridiculous stuff to do is something that has led many of us to pout dozens – if not hundreds – of hours into these games.
