I agree that mixing sandbox with storytelling can make the game feel more real - but I think that it could be very tough to balance. If there is a definite path the player should follow, then having sandbox elements can often get the player lost of confused. In half life, having most doors be walls might be unrealistic, but it lets me know that I'm not supposed to go that way, so I don't get lost checking every building in a large city while being (potentially) chased by enemies. Additionally, if you have sandbox elements in some places, but not in others, than the areas where all the doors are walls stands out more to you because you know they were all open-able in another area. This is definitely a good idea if done right, and I want to attempt it in my next game, but I feel like having sandbox areas could add more complications than worth (not even including the extra work to make all those areas).

I think mafia 2 does a really good job of creating a limited open world as well. cars , the environment, and even radio stations change depending on the time period. it does a good job of making the world around the player area yet there are only key places where anything really progresses for the player. the only issue i ran into when visiting forums was a lot of the times players didn't get having the freedom of an open world but only as an extended set piece for the strong narrative direction. I saw a lot of people were upset about the entire thing. Still i thought it was awesome and it actually made the story portions of the game that much more important because it made locations within the city have meaning in that " X happened here".

Those things are all right, but peripheral. In a story driven game, the story is make or break. It's like getting caught up in graphics or sound effects or whatever. Play an older game with a good story, and you find those things are just not very important. They become important to the gamer because the designer has done a good job and blended the story and game play so well, and written a good one.

there's been a huge backlash from the games-as-art community??? Really?

HUh, I must be an oddity then, because I think games are indeed art, but yet I prefer open worlds which allow the participants to make what they will of the "art". And the more I think of it, Im not an oddity because much of the great art of the world has always allowed this type "freedom". Art isnt about leading someone around by the nose. Its about creating a moment, an emotion, a perspective, and in these games cases..a world.

A minor opening quibble: I wouldn't call the Mass Effect games "open-world." I think I understand what you mean; you can choose where to go on the galaxy map. But those side missions are highly constrained; only a handful are open at any time, based on where you are in the story. That's very different from the kind of open-worldiness delivered by games like Fallout 3 or Two Worlds or Skyrim, where you can go pretty much wherever you want whenever you want (as long as you don't mind dying a lot).

To constrain that openness can, I think, sometimes be a good design choice. But it seems to me that's best determined not by the presence or absence of a developer-told story, but follows from what kind of story-based experience the developer is interested in providing.

Notice that Remedy explicitly talks about the core choice to tell a "thriller" type story. That is a kind of player experience that is driven by intense adrenaline bursts. It's basically a roller coaster game.

Like a roller coaster, that kind of experience doesn't emerge on its own -- you have to design that experience to be tightly controlled, deciding for the consumer when and how the intense moments will come. By that standard, Remedy's decision not to make Alan Wake an open-world game was a good one. The level of control applied in the world's structure matches the design need to dictate the intensity of gameplay through story events.

(I would say the same about the Mass Effect games. Other than the Citadel Station downtime moments, the constraints on exploration -- both on the galaxy map and in all the main-story tactical maps -- were appropriate to maintain the action/excitement experience that was the primary design goal for Mass Effect.)

But not every game is intended to be a white-knuckle roller coaster ride. I think a good argument can be made that Bethesda's games are centered on producing the experience of pleasure at discovery and exploration. Such games can have main stories, but those stories don't need to be as tightly controlled as action/thriller games. Fully open worlds, with main story lines that can be followed when the player wants to do so, are IMO a very good match for discovery/exploration games and don't need to be constrained even to the extent found in Alan Wake.

Again, that's not to say the hybrid, "sort of open" approach doesn't work for Alan Wake. I'm suggesting that even if it does, that doesn't mean fully-open is wrong for other games meant to offer other kinds of player experiences. It's about matching the structure of the world you build to the type of story experience you want to offer your players.

I'm pretty sure this kind of level design predates Alan Wake. The original Deus Ex absolutely *nails* the creation of believable in-game spaces for precisely this reason. And Dishonored (which shares some staff with Deus Ex) shows that this style of level design isn't totally dead.

True sandboxes aren't only expensive to create -- they also encourage a certain style of play. Sandboxes encourage not only emergent gameplay, but emergent *goals* -- Minecraft, for instance, shows that a robust enough environment tends to lead players to invent objectives never laid out for them. I suspect that's why many sandbox games also include diverse objectives that span the game world and aren't tied to a specific mission: they suggest new and interesting things to do in a highly robust environment.

That play style has its downsides, though. The "emergent game" in, say, Grand Theft Auto involves a lot of wild car chases and wanton violence, directed by the player's inclinations and perhaps creativity. That's great fun, but not always immersive: Grand Theft Auto's environments are designed to feel exaggerated and parodical, I suspect because players wouldn't find a "realistic" city that plays host to GTA's gameplay to be believable.

So, for creating more grounded environments, the limited open-world approach has real benefits. Dishonored and Deus Ex build limited environments in which player actions have serious consequences, often irreversible short of a load-from-save. Then, they pack these environments dense with interesting content -- sidequests, conversations, or incidental events -- giving the player the feeling of being in a real space crowded with people. There are a lot of stories to absorb at any given time, and they have some serious weight. It's a very cool technique.