Open world games are too small and I hope The Elder Scrolls 6 is different – Reader’s Feature

metro.co.uk:

A reader argues that modern open world games, including the upcoming Starfield, should make more use of procedurally generated content.

Like many, my game of the year so far is Elden Ring, which I loved for many reasons, not least its magnificent open world. I’ve always liked games like that, including Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Fallout, and Far Cry. I’m very much looking forward to Bethesda’s Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 but there’s one thing I hope they do that’s different, and that’s have a much bigger open world.

I’m actually shocked that worlds as large and detailed as Zelda and Elden Ring ever get made but they’re still pretty finite. It doesn’t really take that long to ride across them and while they are super impressive when you realise that everything was made by hand that is kind of the problem.

It’s infeasible to just employ twice as many people to make the worlds bigger, so I wish companies would make more use of procedural generation. This happens a lot in indie games, which is where I think it has earned itself a bad name. Yes, it can create very generic areas but that’s only if it’s being used to create dungeons, that you’d normally expect to be intricate. But when it’s landscapes I think it’s much more useful.

I’m imagining something like Minecraft, where the game world goes on almost forever but is automatically created in believable ways as you go. One of the best things in Elden Ring and Zelda is finding treasure in a really obscure place and feeling like you’re the only person that ever did, even though you blatantly weren’t. But imagine if you were! Imagine if that world was created only for you and everything you were finding and exploring was built just for you!

I find that thought very exciting