Does not mean it's not an aberration, though it's a bit odd to think of removing post-flight movement control as giving the player more control. You're ignoring my questions.

That's not completely different, that's called subdivision. You could say that 2d and 3d are completely different genres within video games, as well, because, well... From within a subset, yes, you can make such divisions, but we're talking nuance compard to major categories. Most people, for example, would consider metroidvania to be a subgenre of platformer, so if we speak in terms of platformers, metroidvanias vs "games like mario" are complete opposites. Still, within action adventure, even a generic platformer or "runner" game is still more controlled than a metroidvania, thus it's still not an opposite. And it's not even remotely true that open world games allow you to go anywhere at any time: there are usually doors locked with keys, places you can't get to without other certain items, and lots of places where you have to progress a certain amount in the story before getting to them. Good luck getting to Sovengarde in Skyrim without using the console or doing more of the main storyline outside of the opening tutorial.

Go ahead and make the case, then. It's not sequence breaking in the mentioned cases: because there was no sequence. It's entirely intentional, and thus not sequence breaking (sequence breaking is by definition unintentional). I've yet to hear anyone speak of such a spectrum until this thread. Who operates by this standard? Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly valid way to look at things, but I wouldn't argue that this is an accurate metric for separating the genres, especially when a major part of the appeal of metroidvanias is the exploration aspect, which implies player control. Usually when metroidvanias are brought up, they're in direct contrast to "platformers," not "open world." The audience for both is generally the same.

EDIT: So what do you think of Minecraft's sequence? Did you know that sequence breaking is a thing in minecraft, as well? Yet almost everyone would consider minecraft an open world game, but there is a defined sequence.

Well as I've said, there are degrees of openness. You could say total linearity sits at one end and total freedom at the other end. Few games sit at the actual ends of the spectrum, but ability-gating (which I think most of us can agree is a key aspect of a metroidvania) is the game controlling the player rather than the other way around. An "open world" game implies to me a game that sits fairly close to the "freedom" end of the spectrum.

If you were to plot out the gameplay as a flow chart, a metroidvania would be a string of requirements that branch out and then resolve back together at certain bottlenecks (because certain things can only be done after doing certain other things). An "open world" game is even more parallelised than that, with many possibilities open from the beginning with progression rarely being bottlenecked behind a specific event. The result is a sort of flattening of the gameplay and is something I tend to dislike a lot of the time.
I felt Breath of the Wild lacked focus compared to earlier Zelda games and there was little-to-no story progression in the present (everything was gradually revealed backstory), I like a bit of linearity as it gives a sense of purpose and progression.

I find this quite funny actually, because my other great love - point and click adventures - has been heading in the opposite direction. A lot of modern examples are hyper-linear and story focused. If you were to chart their gameplay, the puzzles would mostly be required to be solved in a specific order due to the requirements of the story. Earlier games had a lot more parallelisation where many locations were accessible at once and multiple puzzles needed solving in any order before the next set of puzzles and locations. I think what I'm getting at is that (for me) there's a Goldilocks point in the middle of the spectrum and my favourite genres have migrated to opposite ends of the spectrum.

Clearly I'm operating with a different use of "open world" from you (and others?). For me, exploration in an interconnected world that allows backtracking isn't automatically open world. Open world implies that there are few (or no) limits placed on where the player can go and what they can do when they get there. To go back to the example of Breath of the Wild, it gives you all of your runes at the beginning of the game. Once you leave the plateau you can pretty much do anything before anything else, there's very little that is dependent on doing other things first. Even things that require special armour and the like can be done with potions.

Well there's not much stopping you going literally anywhere right from the beginning of Minecraft, right? I admit, I've not played it in about 10 years so I might be forgetting things.

That's beside the point of open world being mostly different by design to MVs (and zelda-like AA). Zelda 1 is pretty open-ended but isn't really open world, it's hard gated by the tools and you can only break that in an artificial way by backtracking out of dungeons instead of finishing them.

Like dtgreene was talking about, some of the Metroid games are more open world than that thanks to "hidden" sequence breaks via stuff like bomb jumping, wall jumping and mockball.

While I don't have an example atm, there's no reason a MV can't be top down; you simply use the metroid world structure instead of an overworld and dungeons one, and add platforming or some other movement-focused ability.

I struggle to think of a completely open OW game other than maybe Pirates where you just do some side missions until strong enough to do the "main quest" but in that game there's also not a clearly defined narrative structure with a story ending other than your death or chosen retirement.
There's Outcast, but I think there were some story mission triggers and locked doors in that one. Most AA or ARPG games seem to fall somewhere in-between OW and these other genres.

Agreed with this part, though there are hybrid games which can be seen as MV or at least MV-lite. Clash at Demonhead and Powerslave/Exhumed for example, and to an extent Quackshot and Rayman 1.

Actually, the only tools that you need are the raft, ladder, whistle, and bow+arrow (with the last one only needed for boss fights). Everything else is optional (other than needing bombs, but I don't count them as they can drop from normal enemies right at the start of the game). Furthermore, there's nothing else preventing you from doing dungeons in any order. In fact, in the second quest doing the dungeons out of order can be a good strategy (it might even be required, though I don't actually remember).

Also, A Link to the Past's dark world is not entirely linear. If we assume that any dungeon entered must be completed before going into any other, and we don't allow glitches, the order for the dark world is something like this:
* Level 1 has to be done first. (Get the Hammer.)
* Levels 2-4 can be done in any order.
* Level 4 (Titan's Mitt) is required for Levels 5 and 6. Note that levels 5 and 6 can be done in either order, and are independent of levels 2 and 3 (you might argue level 2 being required, depending on what counts as a glitch; doing level 5 before level 3 is possible thanks to Bombos).
* Level 7 requires the items from levels 3 and 6, and you might need the one from level 2 to reach it.

Even Ocarina of Time isn't entirely linear, as the first three adult dungeons can be done in any order.

By that standpoint, there's no reason a FPS can't be top down; you just use FPS gameplay in an overhead view structure, correct?

Some JRPG examples of nearly open world games:
* Dragon Quest 1: You can go most locations right away, with only a few locked behind doors. Once you reach Rimuldar, you can buy keys, at which point you can go anywhere in the world except for Charlock castle. Note that enemy strength in this game is area based, so you can't realistically survive most areas at the start without RNG manipulation, however.
* Romancing SaGa: To trigger the ending quests, all you need to do is fight a certain number of battles to open one of them up. In the mean time, there's plenty of sidequests to do.
* SaGa Frontier: It varies depending on the main character. For Blue, you need to do the magic quests (optional for everyone else), and then you can start the endgame. For Lute, you can go to the final dungeon right away (but you won't be able to get back, so doing so is not a good idea).
* (Also, I note that Final Fantasy 6 becomes open world once you get the second airship.)

1. Yeah well that's still half the game/dungeons IIRC (Zelda 1).

2. You know FP=first-person view right? Other than that, no, and there already were games structured pretty much like Doom, Wolf 3D, Catacombs 3D etc. before them:
Berzerk, Time Bandit, Paradroid, Gauntlet, Druid, Alien Syndrome, The Mysterious Murasame Castle, Ai Senshi Nicol, Catacomb, the Ikari no Yōsai games, are some of them.

3. Right, I was thinking of some of those RPGs earlier but wasn't quite sure. Thanks.

By your definition, then, "open world" would be a misnomer. Unrestricted access held back only by "tough enemies" is hardly even a game, but instead a grind fest if it's an ARPG. Once again, this notion hurts your claim, because on this spectrum both open world and metroidvania are really close in comparison to other genres like platformer (some platformers like Super Mario Brothers don't even let you move the screen to the left once you moved to the right, and even more only give you the ability to jump and just auto run on their own). Compare that, then, to something like a Kirby game or shovel knight where levels obviously reset, but give you freedom to choose which you do. Most wouldn't consider this metroidvania, but this is alot of freedom. Compare that relative freedom to the separation between "open world" and "metroidvania" in your sense. By comparison, we're talking nuance, not major changes. Depends alot on your metroidvania. It's not unusual to give a player alot more freedom of direction with metroidvanias. The reason for this is because it's way, way easier to control the player than to let them have freedom. Sure, control mechanisms are more work than the lack of when it comes to the engine, but when it comes to trying to force a storyline or narrative down someone's throat, more freedom means the ability to skip parts or tackle them in "unintended ways." Therefore, in it's own way, it's a sign of developer laziness. We know the industry is getting more and more crunchy, so it makes sense for games on the whole to get more and more restrictive, especially when the industry is getting more politicized than before.

Of course, sandboxy games will move towards freedom due to the lack of need to tell a narrative, or by using other methods to lasso the player. A good example of this would be Dragon Quest Builders, where you have all the freedom of minecraft, but certain block types are untouchable without story progress, and to progress the story you have NPCs sitting on untouchable block with lots of building requests. I get the impression that you're indeed have some really whacked definition or you're not all that experienced in the genre. There seems to focus on BotW, and it's unfortunate 'cause I'm not at all familiar with the game outside of screenshots and 5 second clips. But by your definitioins, not even minecraft is open world, because it has hard restrictions on where you can and can't go without enemies (which is really odd to say about minecraft): to get to the nether you must gain diamonds or use a "bucket trick" coupled with iron and flint to create a portal. To go to the end, you must get materials only found in the nether. To go through a water temple, you more or less also have to get materials from the nether. To get the diamonds for going to the nether, you need to get to the bottom of the overworld, which will inevitably result in encountering a cave system, whether you actually use them or not. And that requires coal and iron to even mine the diamonds. This game is also very, very much on the freedom end. No, and that was never the case. You have lots of options for overworld terrain to choose from, but progress wise you're restricted to getting certain equipment. You certainly have more freedom than "this item only exists in this corner of the map," but there's not only a sequence, but there have been "bugfixes" fixed for the express purpose of "removing sequence breaking." It certainly doesn't feel like it when playing, but most definitely there is an intended sequence of events and there are certain things you must do to accomplish certain goals.

So intent of what you do with zelda applies, but not the intention behind "tough enemies"? Not really my bone to pick for this in general, but you make a really odd case. They're not sequence breaks, though. These are designed. Sequence breaks are bugs by definition, because sequence implies lack of options. I'll impatiently await for you to have a moment to find an example. Unity's free: feel free to make one if you're so confident, even if it's a 5 minute mockup. This is why i'm asking these questions: because they're obvious struggles with the definitions. These angles/perspectives are crucial to the style of gameplay: you can't have someone sidestep to the left or the right in street fighter, 'cause it's 2d and it's a side-view. Can't really have link duck to dodge an attack, 'cause you have a top-down perspective. I mean, in theory you could do all these things, but it wouldn't work very well, which gets back to my point about the true separation between open world and metroidvania. If we're going to speak on intentent, the intent of open world and metroidvanias is precisely the same: to appeal to the desire for exploration and to give the player freedom and incentive (hidden items) to do so. Where does Cave Story sit?
You're missing the point of his question: could you have, essentially, all the elements of a first person shooter, from your definition, except the one and only exception being the viewpoint?

Not every unintended thing that can happen in a video game is a bug.

For example, in Final Fantasy 6, I once managed to get softlocked in a battle in a manner that doesn't involve any bugs. (Gau (Magic Urn rage) and Umaro (no Blizzard Orb) were fighting an enemy that turned invisible, used elemental attacks, and which it's not possible to run from; other two party members were dead.)

If you're playing Zelda 2 or one of the 3D Zeldas, you can hve Link duck to dodge an attack (or to block an attack with a shield).

First of all, it's "her", not "his". (Did you miss my forum title, which has my pronouns?)

With that said, it reminds me of an argument I've used in RPG definition discussions; what if you had all the elements of a classical turn-based RPG, except the one and only exception being that your character(s) don't get stronger as the game progresses.

That's considered a logic bug/error, but your overall argument is correct. Specifically, however, anything that runs counter to intention is a bug, where as something unplanned that does not run counter to intention is an "undocumented feature." For example, bitmasking in loops and conditionals in C to result in a non-zero (thus true) value is not something that was necesasrily intended, however it doesn't run counter to the intention (reliable conditioinal statements), thus is an undocumented/unintentional feature. Meanwhile, when a game presents a situation where no outcome is possible (softlock), it is a bug (because the intention is to reward winning conditions and punish loosing conditions and not present neutral outcomes outside of running). That said, your example is not necessarily a softlock, because, iirc, you can attack party members and ultimately result in your own destruction. Moreover, you don't save in battles, thus resetting to get out of that scenario is entirely possible. I've found that RPGs typically do not have genuine softlocks, though it's common to propose them in pokemon (metapod and magickarp proposals are especially common, but struggle breaks them). The wing commander series has intentional softlocks, though, which is an interesting exception to the rule. Those are not the LoZ games in question, however. The point being, adding a motion that is hard to identify and/or account for given the perspective of the player controlling the character is not very effective. Following this to it's logical conclusion leads one to understand that player perspective is inevitably going to result in drastic feature changes in a game, thus also having significant impact on genre. A beautiful genre comparsion with obvious edge-cases and overlap is 3rd person shooters vs first person shooters (and action tied games like elder scrolls, dungeon keeper [which is primarily an RTS], etc). When dealing with classifications, usually a 1-off feature won't completely redefine a genre. Take the platypus for example. Pardon me. Normally when referring to you in particular I try to keep to neutral terms when referring to you in the 3rd person, because I don't accept pronouns as a function of gender (especially when our society is suggesting more than the primary three that come with english) as opposed to sexual, and your thought patterns are more consistent with those of a male than a female, thus pronoun usage at all inevitably will result in offense. But, this is more conducive to another topic, elsewhere, not here (i was going to just ignore it entirely, but i figured it'd be a disservice to you to do so).

Not when I'm not in control of either character. Umaro is not controllable, period. Gau can only be controlled until you select a Rage, then you no longer control him until the end.

Another thing to note is that, in FF6, after a game over you return to your last save point, but keep experience and levels (but not any esper level up stat bonuses from those levels). In this case, however, I didn't even get to keep that when resetting under this condition.

@kohlrak:
No, sequence breaks can be intentional. The wall jump in SM seems obviously implemented as it is by design, and does break the intended sequence for a first time player of getting the tools and beating the bosses in a specific order.

I don't really need an example though lol. Just think Zelda: Link's Awakening (or I guess Minish Cap) where there are no self-contained dungeons but instead one big, interconnected world where you backtrack to previously visited areas at times to progress.

You can do ducking in a top down game, see Beyond Oasis for that. And you can do sidesteps in 2D, see Fatal Fury series or Guardian Heroes for fighting/beu, and Blackthorne for an action platformer.

Open World focuses on freedom while a MV can be completely linear in the overarching structure, just having detours for optional upgrades within sub areas. Some examples: Metroid 2 and Fusion, Ori 1, Guacamelee IIRC, Monster Boy.

Cave Story is basically linear too, but it does have some story choices and one of them affects your path in the end-game so it stands out in that sense.

"You're missing the point of his question:"
I don't think I did and the answer is the same to yours (yes, see all the examples). Of course we wouldn't call it FPS but Top Down Shooter or Maze Shooter instead.

Interesting: i've not gotten a game over there. I guess i can play more aggressively, then. I would, in turn, go as far as to say that is a bug in FF6, then. This isn't a copout, bur rather precisely how the definitions go, unless you're aware of how softlocking was intentional in SE.

Then it's not a sequence, is it? A sequence is the concept that certain events are designed by intention to restrict players to a specific chain of events. If that chain of events can be avoided through a mechanism, then it is either a bug (breaking the intention) or it is not a sequence (an intended restriction). What's this with not using quote tags all the sudden? Is this your argument for a metroidvania, or what? That's not "top down," but "isometic." That's the same view that most 3d open world games take. They separate between "left sidestep" and "right sidestep" like i asked about, or generic "sidestep" like in smash?

Let's see, Guardian Heroes looks 2.5d to me. This is common in beat'em-ups, though i recently played an oddball that didn't allow 3d movement.

I only touched fatal fury for a hot minute some time ago, and do not recall sidestep. So i googled, and found "generic sidestep" which was not left|right like i specified.

As for Blackthorne, unless i'm seeing wrong, there's two animations, neither of which are sidesteps. The one is a lean (his feat don't move) and the other is a pivot (only 1 fot moves). A sidestep is where both feet move, allowing for continuous movement. The closest you'll normally find is an isometic view with a beat'em-up like streets of rage.

To show the issue, Dead or Alive and similar games had trouble dealing with this problem. The question that was introduced in 3d fighting games was how to deal with free 6-degrees of movement. Some tried command sidesteps, some tried command jumping, but it quickly became obvious that 6 motions out of 4 buttons is pretty damn hard. The most reliable solution for a crouch is diagonals. I think only dead or alive implements a straight jump. Mind you, these are 3d games and they had this problem. This has no substance: as an open world game can also be completely linear, but there's little reason to do this so you won't find many examples. A metroidvania can also be completely open. I've even seen an RPG game that advertised itself as being non-linear. I'm told Hallow-Knight and La-Mulana are examples of this. Supposedly Super Metroid as well, but i'm skeptical on that one. Metroid Zero mission is said to have only one statue requirement for movement in the game, and you can bypass the rest using hidden corridors, but i'm also skeptical there, too. It's entirely linear, and the movement upgrades are far and few between. Moreover, it's not a continuous dungeon, but a dungeon with a menu for all it's branches. Backtracking is possible, but there's hardly a reason to do so, since almost always the upgrades to health and such can be gotten without doing so. And, for the most part, leaving an area resets it. I seem to miss the example of a game with all elements of a first person shooter minus the viewpoint. Perhaps using a separate text editor like notepad++ could be used to help ctrl+z back far enough when you accidentally delete something would be helpful.

I just notieced that I confused the word there and understood what you meant now.
I was actually defending the same point of view as yours, so that "This adds one more layer of complexity to a Vania/Platformer..(...)" applies to in-flight jump control.

Sorry, was just saying generally, not to counter your questions and arguments specifically.

---

I've written a quite long post talking about freedom in games and how the antithesis of Quantity of Freedom in games is Sandbox with "100% freedom", but somehow my post just got deleted to void. Im just lazy to try to remember it all so I will just say this:

I believe we're not talking about 100% Freedom in games, but in the quantity of freedom a game needs to be considered a Metroidvania. The antithesis of mechanical-story linearity to a game to work as the developer intended is a Sandbox, as the game need to have it's constraints to follow a path for story progression, like @dtgreene said.

This "necessary quantity of freedom" would be how players fulfil this pre-designed path with Items/Abilities currently at hand at the moment.

2D Platformers, many times, tend to be totally linear in their path (may vary, of course), while in Metroidvanias you are required to exhaustively explore the path you've already uncover to find a new Item/Ability to further progress or open new sections of the map.

So the result is a game where, in the beginning, we've a section of map open for exploration with Items/Abilities, enemies, bosses and/or platform challenges to be fulfilled to further improve Exploration, Item/Abilities Gathering, Boss killing, etc, and so on.