When it Comes to Games like Watch Dogs and Grand Theft Auto V, What Makes an Open World Feel Real?

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you're a fan of open-world games, sometimes it feels hard to articulate what makes you click with one game's world while another leaves you completely cold. There are a lot of intangible qualities that factor into how immersive that world is.

At least they seemed intangible to me, before I saw Danny O'Dwyer's latest video in Gamespot's ongoing game analysis series The Point. In it, he does an excellent job of solidifying so many of those little je ne sais quoi points many of us have struggled to put into words, in this case specifically about why the world presented in Ubisoft's Watch Dogs just isn't up to snuff. It turns out that a lot of what makes an open world feel truly open (and for that matter, interesting) is in the presentation. Watch the full video on Gamespot here.

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times, and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.</