Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West: Is 2022 the Year of Open-World Adventure Games?

We all remember where we were this past February when BANDAI NAMCO and FromSoftware dropped the eagerly expected collaboration between renowned gaming director Hidetaka Miyazaki, from the Dark Souls saga, and the award winning fantasy writer George R. R. Martin, from A Song of Ice and Fire, from which was adapted the groundbreaking series Game of Thrones, causing so much buzz in the industry.

On top of that, the shortest month in the year came punching with another acclaimed fantasy production, this time in the form of the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, released exclusively for Playstation 4 and Playstation 5, this time called Horizon Forbidden West. Let’s talk a bit about what these two games have done for the industry and the gaming landscape in general.

What’s with gaming in 2022?

Recently, the industry has been giving a lot of focus to this category of games called open-world adventure, where the player has the freedom to take one of many paths towards the game’s main objective, making it a great opportunity for the developer to build some outstanding world building and for the player to explore it for all its worth.

This type of approach has been increasingly popular from the start of the century, and, with the increased reach of gaming from the decade of the 2010s onward, the interest for open-world gaming has soared as well. Interest for these narratives has been at an all-time high, with audiences in the millions flocking to gameplay streams in dedicated platforms and services.

Other platforms have also taken these developments into account, and mixed them with their own versions of open-world adventure, including big online services like online casino NetBet. Gaming providers like this one are known to offer their users a wide variety of games in different categories. There’s not only classic card games like poker, but also different kinds of themed slot games. Users decide if they want to play fantasy, adventure or puzzle themed games.

Now, what’s special about Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West?

Knowing that the open-world format has been around and been popular since Grand Theft Auto, it is also known that the linear-narrative type of game has always dominated the share market. What’s special about 2022 is that the two biggest launches in the industry have been acclaimed and accepted by audiences and critics alike, with loud cheers.

Furthermore, what these two games have in common apart from an incredible buzz from all audiences is their approach to an already tried formula while also innovating in the narrative aspect, giving them an important edge that puts them in a very enviable position, when taking a look at the competition in the market.

Especially in the case of Elden Ring, the collaboration between legendary author George R. R. Martin and highly praised gaming director Hidetaka Miyazaki had driven up a lot of buzz since its official announcement in 2019. Ever since, gamers all around the world have been eagerly expecting this entry, which, looking at audience comments and critics’ reviews, has been a tremendous success.

Meanwhile, it is still early to say there will be a substantial change in the industry only taking into account the developments coming from Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West, but it can be said that there is a paradigm being broken, and that studios and the market are taking a closer look at what was done with these two entries, and how they will evolve with time, because their journey has just begun.