What is an 'Open World'?

So I was palling around the other day and noticed a brand new category pop up on my homepage for Game Pass, another unfiltered and vapid attempt to try and arrest my interest with something eye-popping and bizarre. Of course I'm typically immune to such attempts, but I couldn't help but raise an eye at the category title. "Open worlds" That was the proposition. "Hmm" I thought. "I don't actually know of many open world games on the service and I've definitely perused through it quite a bit." Which led to make my mistake of trusting Xbox to know what game genres are. Dishonoured 2? Prey? My time at Portia? Totally Accurate Battle Simulator? Of course there were some actual Open World games on offer but it was the mistakes that got my attention.

Of course, to call them 'mistakes' might be overstepping a little bit, because when you stop and think about- what is an open world? I mean sure, if we stick to the very strict confines of the genre descriptor when we've given a world without traditional borders which we can explore with largely lateral freedom wherein narrative progression is not the core means by which our environs shift. But let's get Socratic with our examinations here. Let's me annoying about it. What exactly is it that makes an open world? Is it the presentation of a world that feels open? Is it the freedom to immerse ourselves within a world, no matter how limited our actual exposure to that world it? Could 'The Order 1886' be considered an open world despite it's near 'on the rails' presentation? Could Dishonoured or Prey? (But not TABS. That was just a mistake, that game is a literally simulation playground game, what were they thinking?)

There's a certain style that comes to mind with the utterance of 'Open' in relation to our worlds and I think it comes informed by both The Elder Scrolls and, lamentably, Assassin's Creed. We see for ourselves worlds wherein the horizon beckons and we can simply go an see what's over that hill and sometimes that sense of exploration alone is enough to form the backbone of the gameplay loop. The Legend of Zelda 'of the' franchise pretty much masters this formula and creates a vertical wherein the challenge of traversing the world is it's own reward. Open Worlds don't need to touch quite on that extreme, but traditionally we feel the pull of the non constrained and non-linear pathing structure. 

But then what about the 'Immersive Sim'? Isn't that entire genre funded around the core principal that a focused and directed mission can be anything but linear? Give us a locked door and formulate several dozens ways around it by freely exploring the immediate area, with dictation or direction, utilising wits and skills to take the path less travelled. It's a game mode encouraging and rewarding curiosity, once again! The 'Openness' here is less a open assortment and more a clandestine wave teasing the player to defy the obvious with the multitude of creative problem solving. You'll never be set off to run through fields like a mad man- but wouldn't that still be considered an 'open' approach to world design?

I suppose it comes down to the question of what exactly are we trying to have players experience with the presentation of an open world- then we can really nail down the genres. And right away I'd say there has to be something of a sense of freedom implicit in the act of world navigation. Sure that freedom might be tempered with hazards or complications- you wouldn't have a game if the entire map was a clear open field with nothing to challenge you- but there must be the prevailing sense of non-linear possibility as the player travels. That is a sensation that just so happens to be implicit in a great many games outside the traditional purview of your everyday Open World labelled game- so are we being too broad or is the confines of definition itself too ephemeral? 

Perhaps we might narrow things down by breaking it down to gameplay. We could eliminate the pool somewhat by defining that Open Worlds need expand their scope beyond the Core Path of the game thesis and permit, or even encourage, absolute dalliance. Go around collecting flags that have nothing to do with anything, get lost hunting all the different types of butterfly wings in the wild, go fishing for several hours too many. Is it side content that makes an Open World? And if so- then what counts as Side Content? Are lazily scattered Ubisoft-style collectibles good enough, or do we need dedicated minigames with effort, Like a Dragon style? Or are we getting too nitt-picky? Afterall, 'Shadow of the Colossus' would be excluded under these stipulations and that world is as starkly open as they come.

Is Star Wars Jedi Survivor an open world game for the way it allows us to somewhat freely explore a snaking path around the worlds we discover, or the recent Tomb Raider games that feature directed paths of action dotted with wider and less directed hub spaces? What about Atomic Heart with those wide empty spaces of nothing but copy-pasted prefab structures and endless enemy spam? What are the barriers of design that block off a world from being 'open'? It can't be as nebulous as a simple invisible wall because that would literally prohibit all video games of all time except for, perhaps, No Man's Sky. So does that make No Man's Sky the only real Open World?

For the sake of the genre I do feel like rules should apply, and games that cater towards the free acquisition of mission objectives outside the explicitly mandated pace of the game designers should probably be as far as the rules go. 'Freedom' is really the point of the genre, and as long as we can keep some feeling of control with how we decide to experience the game- as long as there remains significant chunks of the crafted world that are optional to view, that should be considered a game of open persuasion. And at the very least TABS is a ridiculous proposition for 'Open world game' that should have been filtered out on principal alone!