my theory of whats a open world rpg is this

the governing principle is no essential non-player character
a game is truly open world if it does not have any characters that every player always meets

but outside of this pure state, games are more open world the more this is true:
-the fewer characters you always meet
-the less time you spend with them
-the less essential they are

the correlary would be, a truly open world game would have no characters that cannot die (and when a character dies, the game continues without them without breaking anything. a third thing would be, if they can die but dont, they still exist and matter as much as before. the player can choose to kill or save characters and it matters what they choose.)

other correlaries would be, no essential faction. no essential quest. theres no one central faction that every player must join. there's no one central venture that every player must support.
but these follows naturally from the first thing.

the underlying principle is that a true open world game would have each playthrough support a distinct player character. each character makes different choices and does different things. you and your friend play different campaigns. in subsequent runs you play different games.

but morgan brackish meadows, you will say, that doesnt sound very much like any open world game i've ever played. and maybe you will say, i like these games, why should they be otherwise? presumably some people like the grey wardens in dragon age or the dad in fallout 3, some people just play baldurs gate because they want to fuck astarion or something, and that's fine. but its not what we're talking about here.

the answer is, if you want a game that is a movie, that exists. and its done better when its not in the open world mode, probably. the open world mode affords us this other possibility, something to strive for.

everyones talking about mount and blade

mount and blade 2 bannerlord come out some time ago, ive been keeping a lazy eye on it, and im experimenting with ‘xbox game pass for pc’ this week, which is a cheap way to play it. i wanted to try starfield but it doesnt run on my machine. i think mount and blade is probably a better use of ones time, although who can say whats a good use of ones time out here at the end of the earth.

xbox game pass is like 10 bucks and you can also play citizen sleeper on that (in which: you’re a dying replicant on the run trying to make a life for yourself on a potentially hostile station while your body slowly betrays you, which plays kinda like blades in the dark if it were a visual novel, and is very good) so i think mount and blade is a budget friendly game, although it costs a lot of your time. mount and blade is a hobby.

this is the third mount and blade game ive played, they are very similar, so you could play an older one and it might run better. mount and blade is a big medieval battle simulator with a dynamic overworld map where simulated nobles ride around fighting battles and burning villages and taking castles from each other. i have not played and will not play the multiplayer. the singleplayer campaign is sort of the scope of the thing we are talking about.

im not sure what game reviews are for. if this is a product review, then yes, you should get it if you like this sort of thing. if this is a critical analysis, then no, its not a ‘good video game’, unless you like this sort of thing, which of course you should.

mount and blade is accurate in the sense that you can shoot your bow over the left side of your horse but not the right side. if you mime being on a horse and trying to shoot right handedly to the right you can sort of see why this is so. mount and blade thought this was an important enough detail to include and its preserved in all the games. so like, its accurate in this way. you can be a mongol horse archer. its that kind of thing. if you want to hit a guy, your sword has to actually pass through that guy.

the combat is really goofy. you spend a lot of time trying to find guys and hit them. when you finally get the guy, he slumps over sillily and you get to laugh heartily and then youre off chasing the next guy. if you go down, the combat keeps going, perhaps for an hour if you dont stop it. you can just watch other guys try to clobber each other, perhaps in fast forward, until either you get bored or there are no more guys. a combat can have thousands of guys in it, your graphics card permitting.

what wins combats is almost never you clobbering guys in person and almost always bringing more guys than the other team. you can choose not to resolve the combat manually and just simulate the outcome, and this is almost always the way I’ll do it. sometimes the type and quality of guys in an army matters, but nothing matters as much as having more guys. 

so yeah, why do this thing? why, this year, should we spend any of our time doing anything other than to build communism, blow up oil pipelines, and tell our loved ones that we love them? how can we apportion any of our time or braincells playing this sort of thing, or to deciding whether to play this or starfield or baldurs gate? deciding which of these is the real game.

well, let me tell you about the overworld part of mount and blade. i wanted to start my description of mount and blade by saying, its a bit like skyrim, but its not very much like skyrim. your army is a pawn on an overworld map where other pawns represent other armies. you travel between villages collecting more guys for your army. you try to find enemy armies of a smaller size than yours. you run away from enemy armies of a larger size. some times you come around a mountain to find that theres a large army right there that you could not see. some times you raze villages to the ground, or otherwise force them to give you all their stuff. if an army you’re chasing has a higher speed than yours theyll sometimes take you on a wild goose chase for several days into enemy territory until you sandwich them against a coast or a mountain or another army thats trying to get them, or they lead you into a larger enemy army that gets you.

when you enter a battle, you can choose to either go to the battle or just send your guys and simulate the outcome. you mostly only do the battle when the outcome is uncertain and you think your being there might swing it (either because you’re a tactical genius or because the game’s difficulty setting swings battles in your favor when you’re there). this is a nice feature because it lets you decide which battles are important to you and how to spend your time. personally, i try to avoid playing out most battles, get to the looting, but you get to choose.

if you win a battle, you get to take loot and prisoners. then you can go to a larger town to sell those. this is the gratification you were seeking. if you lose a battle, you lose all your shit and you become a prisoner. and it takes you to the overworld map to see yourself dragged around by the enemy army until you get an opportunity to escape or buy your freedom. you get to keep your equipment, your horse, and your hidden wealth, but youll have to build your army back up from just having your one guy. this is the risk. perhaps you savescum to avoid this outcome. but thats the meat and potatoes of the game. you’ll do this for hours and hours until your clan grows large enough to start taking castles and towns, thats the siege game. and even then you’ll continue to do this stuff but now you’re also trying to capture these properties in times of war and retain them to build them up in times of peace.

to win sieges you need to to either find soft castles that everyone’s already besieged a million times, or gather significantly more dudes than are inside a castle, and sit there for a while, vulnerable outside the castle, while other armies are still roaming around. when you’ve sat for a bit you’re allowed to attack the castle. in these battles you’re at a significant disadvantage and you’ll lose more dudes than the defenders. if you sit for a while your wounded guys will come back, but being a siege camp draws a big target on your back. so its sort of a higher risk higher reward version of the normal combat. once you take a castle you leave it in a weakened state, so keeping castles sometimes means you have to revisit them and keep them flipped to your side. so keeping a hold of lands you can grab is sort of the long game.

i guess i should argue that mount and blade is in fact the real game, the ‘good video game’. and that its worth doing this rather than blowing up pipelines or whatever. but youll only like it if you like this sort of thing. i dont really know who has time to do any of this stuff. but noone ever talks about mount and blade, noone else is doing it like mount and blade, and i think its worth your time.