Because you could kind of play it this way, Ghost of Tsushima is an easy comparison point. What if they had actually removed the icons from the game, completely guided players by the gusts of the wind, foxes, birds etc. but otherwise all of the content is exactly the same? In every way it's still an open world game, it's just not telling you that this hut triggers a side quest or a main story quest or has a bamboo challenge or whatever.

To me, that's what Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring are. I'm not really torn on the game itself at all, I just get a little wide-eyed when people prop these games up as some kind of shift in game design. They made a choice that suits the vibes they were going for - desolate, lonely, apocalypse-stricken wastelands. And actually, because of all the physics stuff, I get it more with Zelda and can admit I'm just not experimental enough to want to simply goof off with its systems. I think two of the more interesting examples of this style of design are the open levels of Uncharted 4, Lost Legacy and The Last of Us Part II, though in each case you have NPCs nudging the player in the right direction.

Elden Ring is another From game, just huge as hell. By the end it may overtake Bloodborne as my favorite one of these, it may not, but it's the mystery of the dungeon design, the weird weapons and magic they've dreamt up, the insane enemy designs and everything that is very endemic to the fact this is a game by From Software. They are very good at surprising players, and equally good at making them feel unworthy. But what if that's not what a game's designers are interested in or good at? Would an Assassin's Creed that just dropped a player in Istanbul and let players loose inherently be better by default? Or should they guide people towards the best stuff and heighten the efficiency so players who just want to see the story can do that in a "reasonable" 20-30 hours? And would it actually feel great to get dropped in one of the incredibly dense, vertical towns of Horizon and have to figure out who was a quest giver and who was just flavor? The further you get from the desolate vibe of Elden Ring and towards something not just dense in content but in design like a Red Dead Redemption or GTA, I wonder if it just becomes frustrating.

I'm really just interested in the psychology of it.

And I also think it's important to note that structurally, this is just an open world game that wants all your time and attention the way they all do. When I hear people get interested in the game because it's being represented as this seismic sea change in how these games are designed I feel like it's important to keep in mind just how much of that is owed to what a Soulsborne game feels like in the first place and doesn't have much to do with the actual structure of the game other than you might, like me, start doubling back to locations you've already cleared because you either can't remember if you did everything or the game seems to imply you haven't and grinding away even more hours than you would in a game with more clear sign posting.

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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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