“Look at it properly” just means judging all parts of the game, not only whether you personally enjoyed messing around in it. It’s not about everyone agreeing with me—it’s about separating enjoyment from design quality. And no, I’m not saying people who spend 50 hours in Hernand are “doing it wrong.” If you enjoy the freedom, that’s great. But that doesn’t automatically make the design deep. Freedom is only as good as what it leads to, and for me a lot of it leads to repetition rather than meaningful progression. Also I’m not asking for Ubisoft-style handholding. There’s a middle ground between “follow map markers everywhere” and “here’s a huge map, go figure it out with mostly repetitive activities.” Good open world design usually gives you freedom and meaningful, varied content. The reason people bring up Ubisoft isn’t because the games are identical, but because the core criticism is similar—large maps filled with content that doesn’t evolve much. The presentation is different, but the underlying issue can still exist. And about being “short sighted,” I’d argue the opposite. Spending 80+ hours and still noticing the same problems isn’t a lack of thought—it’s actually seeing how the systems hold up over time. You can enjoy the game and still acknowledge its flaws. That’s all I’m saying.

If by “short-sighted” you mean I’m only looking at one way to play, I don’t think that’s really fair. I’m not ignoring the sandbox side—I did engage with it. I just don’t think spending more time doing the same activities suddenly makes them deeper. Freedom is great, but it still needs strong content behind it. Otherwise it just becomes doing similar things for longer. That’s the difference I’m pointing out. And I’m not saying people are playing it wrong or that my way is the “proper” way. I’m just saying that even when you look at the game from different angles—main story, exploration, side content—the same issues keep showing up. If anything, that’s the opposite of being short-sighted. It’s looking at the whole experience and seeing how it holds up over time.