There is a lot of discourse surrounding the accessibility of games. I am not referring to accessibility for those with physical disabilities, which is something I think games should have; I’m talking about the accessibility of a game’s aesthetic experience, the approachability of a game and the scope of its audience.
[This article contains spoilers for the movie Dune]
The sci-fi genre is teeming with worlds of the future marked by technological advancement beyond our wildest dreams. We see how such technology and scientific knowledge influence society’s view of the world and how they affects the ways in which characters interact with each other.
Imagine a carnival with no attendees; a wrestling match with no audience; a baseball game with no spectators. This may not be very hard to envision given our post-Covid experience, but there was someone who was remotely hosting such grand-scale events before it was even a requirement of the Center for Disease Control.
Why do we love open world games? What makes an open world worth exploring? To answer this, I’d like to look back on an open world Role Playing Game (RPG) that has recently been getting a lot of attention due to its incredibly dedicated community: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall—not Skyrim, not Oblivion, but Daggerfall.
It was difficult to avoid hearing about Cult of the Lamb (2022) while browsing Twitter and other social media circles, and having finally finished the game myself, I can see what the buzz is all about.