Naughty Dog did some solid storytelling in TLoU. It would be great if they could figure out how to apply that well to a game that isn’t on rails.

“I think some of the best storytelling in The Last of Us – yes, a lot of it is in the cinematics – but a lot of it is in the gameplay, and moving around a space, and understanding a history of a space by just looking at it and examining it.

I do appreciate this in game worlds, although this alone is not a substitute for storytelling, and not enough to make an open world fun. The world has to be interesting and diverse, full of unique things, characters, places, and situations to discover, so players will want to spend their time exploring it. Evidence of the world’s history is great for adding background depth, but I’ll be bored quickly if that’s all there is.

Here’s hoping Naughty Dog makes something brilliant in this genre that they aren’t known for (have they ever done an open world?) rather than repeating the mistake other studios have made by churning out another open world of monotony.