>I’ve also wondered about reduced scale in open world games
This used to be a popular strategy, my favorite being lego island 2. You don’t need anything as grand an excuse as a neet pc or detective to allow for it: just take away the fucking car.
>It should allow the game designer to treat a procedural world like he were a location scout. They can then build sets within that world where story elements can take place, locations modified as required and the remaining 99% left as a living world that swallows up the player
This is how I believe open world games are usually done now, if not actually generated, then done mentally (imagine a town by a river, add a simple crisis and let things play themselves out. Not necessarily likely events, and certainly not realistic, but sufficient).
Most open world games do have a decent number of setpieces to find. The problem, I think, is thats all they are. Oblivion, skyrim, witcher, etc all make the same mistake: “you can climb any mountain” and thats where it stops. They are open only in the sense that you can travel in a non-linear path, in an non-linear order of the story. But they forget that the main interesting facet of games as a medium is interaction. That the player has autonomy.
They’re merely open in story, but mechanically they’re extremely linear. They don’t provide open interactions. It doesn’t matter what backdrop you give it, or how well designed and populated things are, if I can’t interact with them.
Roguelikes (note the k), simulation-games and dwarf fortress (and from tabletops: adnd and its kin) are my favorite in this regard: you can interact with everything, in a somewhat limited and controlled fashion, with the potential for interesting, unexpected results. They essentially forgo any real plot or story in favor of letting player autonomy act as its own source of interest. The games and its internal interactions are mechanically complex, while the world around it is significantly less so.
But thus, my opinion is the opposite of yours: the advancements in technology surrounding games, outside of perhaps AR/VR, currently and in the near-future, offers nothing new. The same style of games have already existed, and will continue on independent of these advancements. The only difference will be their graphical complexity, and more likely than not, each advance in graphics will come at the cost of the game’s design, in general. We’re in for nothing new.