Summary
Sometimes,Open-world gameshave great ideas for settings and mechanics, yet they still miss the mark. Sometimes, it is due to their untimely release window, optimization issues, or parts of the game design that are not up to the players' tastes, and titles that never make the cut are abundant in current times.
This list spotlights several open-world games that missed the mark but offered tremendously positive mechanics, innovative design, or coolaspects of their worldbuilding and narrative. From a great sequel incapable of escaping the shadow of the original game, to one of the best Fantasy RPGs that would have been better without so many puzzles and color.
TheFablefranchisewas the result of the geniality of an incredible game design team and the visionary Peter Molineaux, director of Lionhead Studios. AfterThe Lost Chapters,the team submerged itself in the creation of a next-gen sequel, and that’s howFable IIcame to life. A game that represented the next era in the history of Albion and its Heroes, heirs to the Power of Will, and direct successors of the original Chickenchaser/Sparrow. Players naturally grew with the franchise, and they witnessed how Albion slowly entered an industrialized era, where firearms threatened to replace bow, sword, and magic.
Of course, bandits were also armed to the teeth and represented the major problem for the peasants. So the players had to put in extra effort to rid the lands of these vermin. But then,Fable IIIwas delivered, and the developers committed a heavy mistake: They took a hero from the people, born and raised in the slums, and turned them into princes/princesses with ridiculously comfortable backgrounds. Of course, there was still a lot of room for the characters to grow and earn the title their ancestors wielded with pride, when they slayed the evil Jack of Blades. But, somehow, neither the story, the worldbuilding, nor the pathos of the main character could solidify into something the players could identify with. That’s whyFable IIIis considered the beginning of the end for the beloved franchise.
Avowedis, overall, a great concept for a direct successor ofPillars of Eternity,though there were several issues during launch and in the months posterior to its release that made it miss the mark. For starters, the world looked a little bit empty for an open-world RPG, and the idea of monsters that do not respawn didn’t really fit a gamewith such potential for build crafting. As such, players got stuck with partial builds that didn’t satisfy their needs, breaking immersion and making them think the game was incomplete.
But the story itself also struggled to deliver a truly meaningful experience: with extremely punishing player agency and too many points of no return, the narrative felt rushed, more proper for the first delivery of a multiplayer campaign than an actual single-player open-world RPG. In other words, a great idea for a game, but it was a little bit flawed and missed the mark on some core aspects of its game design.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Warmight very well bethe bestLord of the Ringsgameever made, that dominated its launch window, becoming the best-selling game that month, and holding out after several months. Thanks to Monolith’s constant support and the delivery of two expansions, which added more content to its already overcrowded open-world, the game was quite successful.
Yet, somehow, the business model they initially thought of for the game (plagued by the Microtransaction disease) displeased the audience. The implementation of the controversial DENUVO DRM also caused hundreds of performance issues, and players never forgave the devs for this. The constant technical issues pushed a critical chunk of its audience further away from the franchise, ruining Monolith’s plan for a continued series.
Prototype 2broke a golden rule in terms of narrative design: You should never, ever make a beloved character into a meaningless filler villain to try to catapult the protagonist of a sequel. And that was it; players hated it, and thePrototypeseries became doomed. A game with such potential wasted the perfect anti-hero that could carry the franchise for years.
Fans never forgive such betrayals, and even less if the purpose of ruining such a good character is to impose a new one out of the blue, who follows a similar route but with sloppy background design. ThePrototype 2project was created by an entirely different team, and that might be the root of the problem: they didn’t understand the value of Alex Mercer as a character and his potential for the future of the franchise.
Fallout 4suffered from countless technical issues, bugs of all kinds, a lack of optimization, and inefficient rendering. But the hype of seeing Meatball return after so many years fairly compensated for it, and for a very good reason: It was one of the best things in the game. That dog basically defied all the laws of physics, clipping through high-level locks to deliver prized loot (like the Cryolator) and going toe to toe against Super Mutants and Deathclaws.
It was one of the best things aboutFallout 4’s gameplay (still is) despite its buggyness. The other deciding factor to makeFallout 4a sure hit despite missing the mark in every one of its technical aspects was the return to glory of melee weapons. Both inFallout 3andFallout: New Vegas,melee sucked, but in the 4th iteration of the franchise, these weapons became viable enough to justify some of the wackiest buildcraft in the series.
Mass Effect: Andromedawas incompletein every possible aspect of the word. In terms of narrative, it was fairly inferior to its predecessors. However, it still brimmed with potential.ME: Andromedawas the promise that couldn’t be, aiming for the stars, and crashing down due to some obvious flaws in its design.
The game had some interesting concepts, like the usage of vehicle exploration, and pretty rad combat mechanics and skills that (when they worked properly) resulted in a nice payoff for players that wanted to build their own Shepardesque legends in a galaxy far from the Reaper invasion. It was a pity that such a great series ended its journey there, with many unfinished business, some story gaps that never were explained, and millions of fans still waiting forMass Effect 4.
