True open worlds are “the opposite of fun”, says The Unfinished Swan dev

The thing about true open world games is that they’re just too, you know, open. That’s according to The Unfinished Swan creative director Ian Dallas, who reckons the trick is to give players a sense of freedom, rather than the actual freedom. So kind of like real life.

The Unfinished Swan is a game about exploring the unknown. The player is a young boy chasing after a swan who has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished kingdom. The game begins in a completely white space where players can throw paint to splatter their surroundings and reveal the world around them.

It’s being developed exclusively for the PlayStation 3 and will be available for download sometime in 2012. You can check out the progress over on developer Giant Sparrow Games’ website.

“We do want the game to feel like it’s really open and freeform,” Dallas told GiantBomb. “We want players to feel like they’re exploring the game world, like legitimately we’re not telling them what to do. They’re actually just going out there and finding it for themselves.

“But it turns out if you make a game that’s completely open that’s the opposite of fun, it just ends up being really frustrating. The goal for us is to make it feel a little more open than it is.”

I think the man is onto something here. Those of you who have been reading MyGaming for a while now might remember that I (inevitably controversially) criticised Just Cause 2 for the same reason, prompting one reader to declare that I was a “retard” for playing it, even though it’s kind of my job. Now that an indie dev agrees with me, I’m so vindicated. So I’m going to make myself a cup of VINDICATED COFFEE, just for specials.