To define open world I’d like to use a game called Skyrim as an example. It creates a large explorable world, in which the player can do just about whatever he wants within reason. While there is a main storyline you can completely skip to instead enjoy the world that has been created, as most do.
I think wikipedia does a good job of describing Open World as well
For the last three weeks I’ve been working on a open world game in Inform 7. The initial seed for my idea came when I was playing Rune Factory 3 a game for my DS. And I thought, Hey look if I can run a farm here why can’t I somehow implement this in a interactive fiction. So I sat myself down and began to type away furiously at my keyboard. And the more I sat the more complicated my farming implementation got, requiring water and fertilizer, levels of sunlight ect
And then, finally, I finished it. And my mind began to wander. Why just stop there why not keep going. And soon I was adding mining, weather and a form of crafting items. Now if I get this done, and don’t fall into the trap of to create everything, of which I am slowly making the maddening descent, I could have a open world IF game ready within a few months. Maybe more than a few.
But the more I work the more I would think is there even a niche for this kind of game in interactive fiction which is itself a very small niche, do most people just want emotional well crafted stories? Would they play a text-RPG? I’ve heard it said that interactive fiction has moved past the conventions of the past in games like Zork where gameplay was the foundation rather than plot?
So my long winded rant has finally led me here to ask you the community, is it possible to create an open world RPG with out plunging into the madness that is trying to recreate a whole world in text? And if a game is created would people actually play this game which seems to break the traditional norms of todays IF conventions? And is this just a stupid question ?