When will people realize open world isn't really all that great as most think...
NFS2, NFS3, NFS4, NFS5, Screamer 2, Split/Second:Velocity, even NFS Hot Pursuit 2010 to a degree. Unique tracks with different themes, unique corners, elevations, inetresting buildings, memorable things along the road that are interesting to extent you want to just stop and look at it. It has to be amazing, interesting, almost artistically nice. It's what makes tracks enjoyable.
But NFS Hot Pursuit 2 is what it shouldn't be done. While it had nice segments here and there, for the most part tracks were generic looking with no memorable jaw dropping parts, what's worse, they've reused majority of track segments to build other maps. So you realyl had like 5 worlds, but 50 variations made out of those.
And the open worlds, problem with it is that you have to invest TONS and TONS of work into gameplay that utilizes it, makes sense, is interesting and also comforms to the above closed circuits design decisions. What they've used so far was only to make police chases after the actual race which is in the end done in closed circuits cut out of the open world, making open world redundant. And since world is so big no one even bothers implementing track times into the game. Time tracking and ghost cars, something absolutely crucial for a competitive racing games.
I don't care if world is open to explore, it gets fucking boring after 2 hours. I got bored of NFS3 after like 5 years of playing all the variations of maps, adding extra cars, even editing tracks myself, then doing allt he same in split screen mode with relatives and friends. Only game that I've invested as much time into was NFS Hot Pursuit 2010, because it had memorable tracks and time tracking through AutoLog and that was an awesome stuff to play for years literally.
That's why I'd frankly rather see return of highly thematic high quality circuit tracks than generic open worlds just because they had to make it big...
I loved the way you could create your own route though.
