Dragon Quest XI Designer Explains Why The Game Is Not Open World

While 2017 is filled with games that look towards an open world game with games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn, Dragon Quest XI decided not to jump on the bandwagon and instead stuck to its time honoured tradition of linear gameplay.

When asked why Dragon Quest XI is not an open world game by Edge Magazine, series creator and designer for Dragon Quest XI, Yuji Horii,  said that there are obvious development costs when it comes to open world games and that it may eat into the time spent on perfecting other parts of the game.

”If you’re going for a completely open world, there’s obviously a development cost attached to that, affecting where you spend your time and effort,”

Horii continued saying that they would rather concentrate on perfecting the story than making the game and open world for the sake of it.

“If you want to, for example, go fishing somewhere, then you have to put a lot of effort into developing a fishing system. I felt that rather than spread our effort across a breadth of things, we’d rather concentrate everything on the story. I felt that was a much better use of our time.”

Dragon Quest XI might be released on the 3DS and PS4 already but gamers who wish to play the game on the Nintendo Switch, you might have to be a little more patient.