Open-world games like No Man’s Sky, Red Dead Redemption, Breath of the Wild, and Skyrim rank among the most beloved and highly rated titles today. They allow players to break away from the usually linear nature of gaming and explore vast worlds and stories at their own pace.
What many fans of the genre don’t realize is that all open-world games can trace their roots back to a single groundbreaking game called Elite. While it might not look like much by today’s standards, Elite is one of the most important titles in history, often credited with single-handedly starting the open-world genre.
This One Game Changed Open-World Titles Forever
It Broke The Mold Of Traditional Video Games
Elite was created by David Braben and Ian Bell, and released on September 20, 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. It had players travel through outer space, battling enemies, trading with other spaceships, and managing money, fuel, and hyperspace travel.
In the years since Elite’s release, both Ian Bell and David Barben continued to work with computers. Bell pursued a career in computer-aided design (According to an interview with The Register), while Barben went on to co-found the Raspberry Pi Foundation, providing low-cost computers for education.
The game accomplished a lot of firsts in the gaming industry, including being the first to use wire-frame technology to revolutionize 3D gaming. But the most impactful of the game’s groundbreaking elements was its open-ended storytelling.
Until Elite, video games took a story-first approach to interaction. In other words, players controlled the character, and story and gameplay happened to them, guiding them from point A to point B. Elite took a player-centric approach, instead, allowing players to direct where the game went.
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This fundamentally changed the way developers and players approached the medium of video games and paved the way for modern open-world masterpieces.
How Elite Influenced The Open World Genre
It Introduced The Concept Of Player-Driven Storytelling
All open-world games today were created thanks to Elite’s unprecedented approach to video games. Games like No Man’s Sky, Skyrim, and Breath of the Wild were indirectly influenced by the 1984 title, while the developers of the massively popular MMO EVE Online named the title as a direct inspiration in a 2000 interview with IGN (accessible through archive.org).
Elite has gone on to have many subsequent titles, many games inspired by it, and even a musical created in its honor by The Artisan on YouTube.
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Elite was created at a time when gaming was in its infancy. It was very much a product of its time, both held back by the constraints of technology and unstoppable by a limitless imagination for the medium’s potential.
Without Elite paving the road for games to follow, titles like Breath of the Wild and No Man’s Sky might not exist today. Thanks to the game’s groundbreaking idea to take gaming beyond its limits, we can enjoy exploring larger-than-life virtual worlds.
Source: The Artisan/YouTube, The Register, IGN
No Man’s Sky
- Released
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August 9, 2016
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Fantasy Violence, Animated Blood
- Engine
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Proprietary
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
- Cross-Platform Play
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PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC
- Steam Deck Compatibility
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Verified
