Leaving the clichés of inner city freedom behind, we are in a wholly fantastical place of orcs, elves, and possessive yet empowering ghosts. It stands tall among others who attempt to imbue a digital landscape with some semblance of life by doing things drastically differently. (Not least of all because it was another Rockstar joint, but we can get to that another time.) And then games that remix large portions of the framework like Infamous creates an open world with much to be desired. Even Red Dead Redemption, one of my favorite games and one set in a rather original time and place, still felt overly familiar. The recipe is something we know well à la Mafia II, Watch Dogs, and Saints Row.īits and pieces change here and there, but the overall flavor remains the same. Steal cars, fire guns, and blow stuff up. The urban fervor is ripe with possibilities in an open world. More than that, it’s something everyone else has been doing for quite some time as well. It is also something they have done before and continued to iterate and improve upon since the first Grand Theft Auto in 1997. It feels unbelievably full, like it’s about to burst at the seams with just stuff.
The Rockstar opus is, perhaps, a game that singularly qualifies what it means to have an open world. To talk about Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, I have to first talk about Grand Theft Auto V, which also was number four in 2013’s Year in Review.
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