How about the Gothic series?You had that magical barrier around the colony, which had a very good explanation for being there, and in the second game you swim and swim until you get bored and return to the shore, except for the last chapter, where when you try to swim towards the horison ends with a giant fish eating you.

@copperfish: Nice. I decided to hold off playing the old Fallout games until I play through this one. :) This way I avoid the crushing disappointment a lot of people feel when they play this game. I’ll just treat it as Oblivion with guns. :)

Just FYI, 6 hours into Fallout 3 and I’m thoroughly impressed. Maybe all Oblivion needed was guns ;) Playing on Xbox360.

Atmosphere, presentation and general gameplay is excellent so far. I’m having a great time on side quests and not even touching the main storyline yet. And V.A.T.S is perfect.

@feeshy: I don’t know – I heard a lot of good things, and a lot of bad things about Fallout 3. People seem to have a love-hate relationship with it. But I think it is a bit more than just Oblivion with guns.

I’ll probably try it, once I upgrade my machine (or get a new one).

Also, the spiderman game looks intriguing.

@Luke

I share your love for Morrowind. I loved that game and I tried hard to enjoy Oblivion, but something never “clicked”. I’ve stayed away from Fallout 3 for the same reason (“Oblivion with guns”). But I’ve sunk a lot of time into Far Cry 2 and Spiderman: Web of Shadows recently. Somehow they work for me. Maybe Fallout 3 is worth it?

@Ian Clifton: Yeah, the gravity thing could be hand waved away and most people wouldn’t be bothered by it.

@Alphast: You know what’s funny? That this would probably be actually a doable project. I mean look at the freakin size of WoW. I’m pretty sure that it is much bigger than the Cyrodil map in Oblivion.

Of course on the other hand you probably have to consider the level of detail. WoW is pretty but 99% of the quests are shallow “kill X of Y” affairs. Oblivion on the other hand has many fun quests with interesting backstory – and fully voice acted briefings. So yeah, the logistics for both projects are different.

@feeshy: True. I wouldn’t attempt to climb/jump a cliff or run across the highway. But in the game I’m playing my bad-ass level 20 super dude with maxed out athletics, acrobatics and agility, wearing magical ring of slow fall, and a full set of magical weightless armor which makes him harder to hit than a tank. That guy should have no issues climbing cliffs or running across the highway. That’s the problem.

Yeah, I was ok not being able to run through bushes in Fable but that game was just a very linear action/adventure romp that pretended to be a sandbox rpg. You do get used to unlimited freedom very quickly.

For example, in Morrowind I used to just to levitate over mountains to save time. The game made no attempts to restrict player’s movement and it was great.

Oddly enough I’m mostly happy with the limits games place on the environment. In the real world I’m not usually going to:

Run across a busy free-way.
Climb a sheer cliff.
Swim across the Atlantic.
Climb through thorn bushes.

So in a virtual world if there are some limitations on movement I’m okay with that. That said, make it at least consistent. Fable was like that – walk along the path, but not through the bushes – a rule I could live with. It’s the inconsistency that kills the user experience. I’m more bothered by the “you can’t jump higher than your knees” experience. That breaks believability.

I have no problem with any of the listed ideas (although I obviously prefer the last one, because it is the most realistic, but also the most difficult to create so that it is big enough to feel ok). However, I am afraid that it is not really applicable to the Oblivion settings. Unless of course, the Bethesda people had decided to describe the entire Tamriel world. I would absolutely buy a game which would be as rich (in terms of settings and graphism) as Oblivion and would include so many regions AND be virtually toroid. I wouldn’t mind paying a couple of times the price of what I paid for Oblivion itself.

I think games like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, etc. have done this the best. In Chrono Trigger, there were specific areas where you could go from the huge overworld map to the regular, detailed map. Other areas weren’t important. Secret of Mana was somewhat similar, except that the main mode of travel (via a dragon) would allow you to land in various places, and then place you in the most appropriate nearby area. It also had a desert that did much of the repeating you described above.

An island or similar is the next best thing. Instead of having them go on forever though, why not have the player’s character start to get tired and risk drowning (or dying of dehydration, if it’s a desert, etc.)? You can also do the whole “colony inside of a dome” thing, making it deadly to leave the artificial atmosphere.

Of course, it all depends on a game. Why not a game where you control a robot remotely. In the beginning, your relay antenna is dropped where you are, then that becomes the central part of the world you can explore. If you go too far, your robot starts becoming sluggish, not properly responding to signals, and eventually might only react to a signal that brings it back toward the antenna.

Worlds that simply wrap around tend to work pretty well, even if it’s a relatively small world. Most players won’t think “Well, gee, if the world is this small, then the gravity must be extremely weak….”

In a war game, leaving the local battleground could put you out in the open where you would be sniped off or hit by a plane doing a strafing run. Of course, you want some kind of warning first, like a call over the radio or maybe some nearby puffs as bullets zip past and into the ground. If a player is dumb enough to keep running out into the open with shots getting closer and closer, a hit wouldn’t be too surprising.

@Mart: I think you were looking for Aman.

Anyway, we do not need to go to such extremes. Many months on the sea is nothing unusual. That’s how the trade between Europe and American colonies was conducted. You probably don’t want to make your island look like it is completely isolated. We want to hear the news from the mainland, or indicate that there is trade going on.