Why You Missed Cyberpunk's Sidequests - Extra Credits Gaming

You step out of the vault in Fallout and see a sweeping view of the wasteland before you. Or you walk out of the hero's grave in Elden Ring and immediately feel dwarfed by the majesty of the Erdtree in the distance. But then you walk around downtown Night City and you have an experience that's a little different because you're in the middle of a city that somehow, despite its grand visual splendor, still feels kind of samey all around and it doesn't really invite any true sense of exploration outside of where a dot on a map is telling you to go. This was just something that became apparent as I was actually really enjoying Phantom Liberty, but it did force me to ask the question, why are open-world games set in cities so hard to design for? Thanks so much to Factor for always getting me great tasting fast and fresh meals delivered right to my door, no matter how open the world I'm exploring is. When you think about it, it is kind of funny how many games we call open-world when that whole world is basically just one city. But a ton of games from

Cyberpunk to Spider-Man to GTA offer you an open world within a modern urban environment. And while many of these games are great, they all do face one similar colossal problem, the problem of landmarking. In open-world games, landmarks are points of interest meant to catch your eye from afar. And I'm sure you've probably had a moment in Skyrim or Assassin's Creed or Elden Ring where you've seen something off in the distance that looked interesting or well, just plain kind of awesome and were like, "Hey, yeah, I'm going to go check that out." And then you toddled off that way, right? Well, creating those moments is a core part of good open-world design because it gives you, the player, the feeling of exploration, which, let's be honest, was probably the thing you were looking for when you picked up an open-world game in the first place. But also, it allows the designers to control the pacing of your experience in an otherwise uncontrollable environment. You see, one of the major challenges in designing an open world is that since you, the player, can do whatever you want. You can make the game a very boring for yourself very quickly. I am incredibly

guilty of that from time to time because we can wander around the middle of nowhere or fight like sheep for 3 hours for some reason, and then at the end of that experience decide the game is stupid and quit. So, as designers, we somehow have to build an interest curve into a game where the player has basically total freedom. And how do we do that? By getting you to go to all of the cool tailor-made places that we carefully crafted for you while still making you think you are totally free and wandering the world by your lonesome. And we do that by, you probably guessed it by now, creating landmarks. These types of landmarks are the invisible hand of the designer guiding you through it open world. Usually, they're placed in such a way that you're never far from one, and sometimes you'll even find that as soon as you're done exploring one of these, and you stumble out of whatever dank dungeon you were dungeon hearing in, you'll just happen to see, in a complete coincidence, what's that in the distance? Is that a castle? And you think, I better go check that out right now. Beyond just that though, these landmarks also serve another very

important gameplay purpose. They help you, the player, navigate. You know an area because it has the 1,000-ft tall tree or the collapsed temple or the radioactive water tower in it. They're the mnemonic that helps you memorize an otherwise same area and the lighthouses that help you navigate without always flipping to the mini-map. So, overall, landmarks are a very powerful tool in the open world designer's tool belt. So important in fact, we actually did a whole episode specifically about them and how most of the lessons were learned from Disney World. You can check that out over here, but I digress. Let's take the conversation back to Urbania, that densely packed modern mass of concrete and glass and steel. Here, landmarking becomes a huge problem for a few reasons. First, in a modern city, few things have awesome silhouettes that can be seen from far away. Second, color tones don't vary wildly. Third, you're rarely high up enough to get sweeping vistas where something could stand out from afar. And finally, just skyscrapers, like the concept of them. The density of modern buildings block most sight lines and skyscrapers make

that problem even worse. So, how do we overcome these issues? Well, games like Spider-Man and the Arkham series handle this roadblock by essentially just lifting you very high above it by putting you on rooftops most of the time. And when you're up there and you've gotten over that beautiful sense of vertigo, they can give you those broad vistas and long sight lines we mentioned earlier, allowing the designer to make the most of whatever landmarking they can get in there and provide the player with a sense of exploration by giving them that moment where they can look around them in 360° spot something interesting on the horizon and beeline in that direction. But this isn't possible for a lot of games, right? What if your protagonist isn't a superhero, doesn't have cool gadgets, or heaven forbid cannot rely on the power of parkour? Well, there's a lot that we can learn from Yakuza in those situations because it takes a totally different approach. First, the Yakuza games usually have a much smaller map size when compared to something like GTA. This means that when you look down a major street, you're often seeing something like a tenth of the total world. And this is kind of like standing

on a mountain top and gazing out into a more traditional open world game because if the game's well designed, you're going to see something cool down that corridor and go to it. Second, the best Yakuza locations are more often than not a riot of color. They're filled with blazing neon signs and every store has some whacky logo just popping out of its storefront, right? The architecture is wild in ways that US cities just don't adhere to. And this allows the developers to use every tool they have to make what in most urban environments are flat vertical planes jump out at you and be enticing. Then, because of the smaller world, they're also able to pack the environment very densely. You think something might be interesting? You're probably right because the world's small enough where almost everything kind of has to be. They also make more use of interior spaces. You can go into more buildings in a Yakuza game than Spider-Man, for instance, you know, outside of those cutscene walking simulator parts, allowing them to get away with a world that still feels vibrant, but has a smaller exterior footprint to let them pack everything in. Finally, they limit skyscrapers.

You'll find Yakuza maps often only have one or two of them. And by limiting them in that way, they themselves become awesome landmarks all on their own. But more than that, it allows the designers to build the street layout of the world in such a way that these never really block lines of sight or dominate the player's entire screen. And it's this last one that we can really see Night City struggling with. Look, I'll be the first to say, Cyberpunk has one of the most beautifully crafted, meticulous urban environments games have ever seen. It's honestly a marvel if you take the time to just put on some tunes and cruise through it. But, they hit all of the problems of blocked sightlines, few high vistas, and streets that look unremarkable because that's just how urban streets often look. And many of their best landmarks involve looking up in a world where the player rarely does that, and where even when they do, their view is often blocked by buildings. So, players just end up bouncing from mission to mission rather than exploring, often just fast traveling between pins on the map rather than wandering the city and finding adventure

on their own, which I just have to reiterate is such a shame because of how much love and effort clearly went into this world. I do not want to use the tried and true phrasing of breathtaking cuz it's, you know, cliche at this point, but insert Keanu Reeves meme here. So, all of that is to say, if you want to encourage exploration in your open-world city games, you need to find a way to give the players landmarks, and of course, let them see them. And you can do that by either bringing them up high or shrinking the world down. Also, it wouldn't be the worst idea to make sure you're not designing such things on an empty stomach, which is where our preem chooms over at Factor come in. In In opinion, Factor is just the best ready-to-eat meal delivery service. And I've been using them for over a year now for just tons of amazing lunches and dinners. Each of their meals is ready in 2 minutes with no prep, no mess, and no cleanup. Just great food ready for me when I have time to eat it. Pretty straightforward. Every week I review Factor's rotating menu and pick what I'm feeling from their tons of meals and add-on options. Actually, I just got

hooked on their new wellness shots that I've been kicking off my mornings with those. Maybe a little too extremely as you can see here. And because they have so many options to choose from, I can always be sure that everyone in my household is going to get the food that they love fast. Like right before I recorded this, I had their ground pork cheddar chili mac. Oh, yeah, that hit the spot. And because I saved so much time, I was able to wrap up work early and got to have a relaxing evening with Jamie and catch up on my new obsession, the Great British Baking Show. And I swear to you here and now, one day that Hollywood handshake will be mine. Also, a high five from Prue would be nice. But until then, you can get your first Factor box for 50% off at factor75.com by clicking the link below and using the code extra credits 50. So, it's tasty task time. Get fast and flavorful meals for 50% off that you'll love here. And once dinner is decided, check out our next savory selection here. Once upon a time, Michael Hogg, Akuyakoi, Joseph Flame, Easy Coin, Dominic Valenciana, Arclight Games, Angelo Valenciana, and Ahmed Ziad Turk were the best legendary patrons. That time is now.