You either focus on the plot, skipping side quests and exploration entirely ( which are the vital part of RPGs, especially open world ) Or play game at your leisure, screwing up the main story.

Time limits are good for particular quests, but not for the game itself. Unless it is a railroad with little-to-no optional content.

The original version of Fallout 1 ( with both timers on ) is an example of that design issue. Second timer ( in current version ) has been disabled for a reason.
Optional timer is fine. And I don't think, this would be a popular option. ;)

What is the point of making urgency the narrative driving force if there's none ?

I guess some of it boils down as to how you see a specific game. For me it's for the most part a non issue on F4 since i regard it primarily as sandbox but it ruins a game like TW3 since i regard it as primarily narrative.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, there's virtually no chance they'll implement it as anything other than an option toggle.

Then make the game linear, not open sandbox

Make it open world and adequately and gradually woven urgency into the narrative instead of dropping it on the table 10 seconds in.

I'm just saying, if you really want to fix the "lack of urgency" issue, not making the game an open world RPG is a better way to go than basically saying "yes, there are all the side quests and all the space to explore, but you really shouldn't do any of that". There seems to be this obsession with large open worlds in games and that's not always the best way to go, not even for RPGs, but it just sounds so darn impressive as a "back of the box" feature I guess. But I often enjoy more linear, tighter games so much more. So to me it seems the most sensible way is to either not make it open world, or embrace the inherent unreality of how time works in a game, just like how we embrace the fact the player character can carry on him twelve swords, ten helmets, fifty flasks, forty books, a spear, an assortment of animal skins and enough food for an army to cross a continent on foot.

The whole point of an open-world sandbox is to encourage exploration and experimentation. If players are punished for doing so, it defeats the very purpose of the game.

The prospect that for all eternity those two are all we're ever going to get is a rather bleak one. I refuse to believe that narrative wise there's nothing in between linearity and dissonance when the narrative is moved to an open world setting, i believe there's a whole world of possibilities in between the two liable to strike a better balance between the freedom of an open world and impositions - time flow or otherwise - dictated by a meaningful narrative in place.

Only we'll never know for sure unless someone is willing to look there by virtue of experimenting.

Part of the problem is that we, gamers, refuse to let go of ways of looking at things that i personally consider to be outdated in general and borderline inappropriate for an open world setting.

We need to stop thinking about the "perfect" ending as winning the RPG and every other ending as losing the RPG. We need to stop accepting epilogue slides that merely reflect 3 hours of picking dialogue lines from trees + narrative driven choices and for the most part ignore the other 37 hours of engagement with the gameworld as a whole.

The narrative says, "urgency"

Characterization says, "deep emotional ties to the object of the urgency"

Open world says "whatever, have at the pirates, cannibals, slavers, deserters, bandits, marauders et al"

If i chose to ignore narrative and characterization and instead listen to the open world then i won't necessarily regard a less than perfect or even dire ending as punishment, i can look at it as an accurate reflexion of how i engaged with the game world as a whole, as a broader concept of the "choice and consequence" RPG mantra applied to an open world setting.

Bottomline, 20 years from now i don't want to be playing games built under the same concepts of the games i've been playing for the past 30 years. That means new concepts, new ideas and the willingness to try them out both in which concerns devs and audiences.

It's not the same. In order to engage with a fictional setting we're asked to accept a multitude of unrealistic premises, sure. Urgency is not a premise, its meaning doesn't change from real space to fictional space, it always means the exact same thing - "drop what you're doing and get to it". So it's not a premise up for acceptance, in this context it's merely the narrative painting itself into a corner, it's merely a contradiction, ie, bad writing unless you're going for it with a very specific goal in mind, like, establishing a narrator's unreliability.

I'm perfectly willing to accept imperfect endings. My problem isn't with being denied a perfect ending, my problem is with being forced to give up on large portions of the game in order to actually "roleplay" the main storyline. Without a ticking clock, I can interact with side content as much as I want, and still play the character I want to play in the main narrative. My imagination, or suspension of disbelief or whatever, will paint over the "urgency" issue (at least most times).

Unrealistic premise of a fictional setting is a guy casting fireball. Unrealistic inventory is not a matter of a fictional setting, it's a matterof "gamification" of that setting, just like "cheating" on urgency is. When story beats play out we pretend the timeline makes sense, and that the wagonload of stuff I just used to kill a boss and trigger the cut scene doesn't exist. Games exist in this weird space were things that we might otherwise call non-diegetic nevertheless interact with the world. Time and space themselves are warped in open world games, regardless of narrative. Day and night cycles, distances, they are all "wrong". It's partially up to the writers and devs to mask all that, partially up to the player to decide what they're ok with and when it just irks them too much. It's not that I think an open world RPG with a more realistic timer is inherently a bad game- the first Fallout was a great game. But it wasn't as fun for me as ti cld have been without it, that's all I'm really saying.

In my other post i wasn't focusing strictly on timer like implementations and certainly not in timer like implementations we've already seen, i was speaking in broader terms about my want for a better marriage between two key parts of an open world game featuring a narrative..

Naturally since those, timers, is what was put on the table regarding this title and what got this conversation going it's only fair to focus on them. So focusing on them, and going back to my previous post, we're still looking at two pov's fundamentally at odds with each other, yours, firm in the conviction that an "either" "or" type of deal, like the one you outline, is all that is possible, and mine, made up of an entirely different conviction.

Sure, it's not a world building premise, but crazy inventory, unlike urgency, it's up for acceptance just the same as any departure from reality of significant magnitude so at my end i think of it as a premise nonetheless, only a mechanical one in nature. In TW3 i didn't accept the premise of a horse that comes from around the nearest corner when whistled at so for the most part i abandoned Roach, i walked, sailed and fast traveled everywhere while the notion of relying on Roach to get around was permanently trashed early on in White Orchard.

I don't have just one hard ceiling when it comes to "gaming nonsense", to put it in a way that bypasses our different understandings/definitions.

I have one for the mechanical side of it and a substantially lower one for the narrative side and marriage between narrative side with everything else. And the more i "care" about the narrative, the more it resonates within me as meaningful, the lower that hard ceiling gets in regards to "gaming nonsense" "no-no's", like pushing urgency out the door 10 minutes in on a 40 hours long RPG, that's the type of thing i simply can't get over because, using your words, it irks me too damn much, i'm left with the feeling that the writers'/devs' unwillingness to even try is the only reason i'm being asked to go along with substantially more than what i can honestly go along with.

So if an urgency driven narrative in an open world game is what devs chose to go with, yes, i want to see that narrative set on that open world and i want to see that driving force backed up by something tangible, else it will likely detract greatly from my overall enjoyment of the game - TW3, prime example - the same way the inability of "having your cake and eating it too" in terms of narrative/side content detracts from yours.

I want to see that happen, or at the very least experimented with, which is why, assuming the information we have is on the up and up, i would consider this title's, or any other title really, attempt to take as shot at it as a boon, specially if it can be done without impact on those who share your pov.

You can look at it as a shortcoming at my end imagination wise if you wish. I look at it as a matter of unreasonable asks being a thing even within the confines of "gaming nonsense".

I guess this perfectly illustrates how subjective these things are, because I did the exact opposite for similar reasons - I almost entirely rejected fast travel in favor of riding everywhere, because regardless of where the horse came from it was far more immersive for me and it was fast travel that felt too artificial.

Indeed, I tend to avoid plain fast travel, because it is immersion-breaking.

However, when fast travel is disguised as teleportation magic / technology ( or has any other acceptable explanation ), I have no problem with it.

The whole talk of urgency and open-world reminds me of what I've heard about Final Fantasy 15, where the game is open world until a certain point, when the rest of the game is linear.

An earlier (though still modern, by my definition) entry into the series, Final Fantasy 6, did the reverse; the game is linear (with some plot urgency at points, particular involving certain statues) until you get the second airship (some time after a certain apocalyptic event), at which point the game becomes non-linear and open world until the end. (Worth noting that the game does provide clear guidance at the point it becomes non-linear.)

There's also Final Fantasy 2, where there's a war ongoing and no sidequests. (There's one dungeon that looks like it might be a sidequest at first, but eventually you're required to go there; for whatever reason, the dungeon is balanced with the assumption that you'll go there right away, even though the game doesn't point you to it.) There's also a point in the game where the whole war plot feels like it gets rather quiet for a while, a point when you're basically left alone as you go on a quest to unseal an ancient spell, but as soon as you get that spell, things happen.

Don't play Arena or Daggerfall; fast travel is *mandatory* in Arena, and highly recommended in Daggerfall (the wilderness is vast and featureless).

So, the Return/Zoom spell from the Dragon Quest games is a form of fast travel you'd consider acceptable?

Sure, why not?

I always fast travel in large open world RPGS. My time is precious and walking back and forth take too long.