» Wed Mar 09, 2011 1:11 am
Arma did it... Its not exactly "open world" but the landscape is so huge it mine as well be... Some slight conversions to make it more compatible and its easily conceivable. Besides, any "open world" game with any multi part mission, is "objective based"... be it to go get a key to open a door, the key is the objective and the door is the mission. On a more dramatic scale, perhaps your mission is to destroy a building, but first, as an objective, you need to destroy the powergrid to take down the defensive emplacements.
One could pickup any casual mission, such as the one above, and easily be led into several sub missions with their own objectives, for example, now you got into the base and destroyed the target, re-enforcement enemies arrive and now you gata hold out, and perhaps re-arm the defensive emplacements with a backup power supply. Again, on the way, you could meet resistance and be offered to either do another sub objective that might induce the player to either find a way around the problem or find another solution.
Mission structuring is pretty easy to be creative, its just finding a good way to pull it off. Trust me, its out there just not many have invested the time and creativity.