[picometer]

I think the possibility of this alternate navigation through cities and buildings is why certain open world games are so popular. For instance, the buildability of Minecraft and destructibility of GTA both enable worlds of exceptions and edge cases, where players can come up with alternate pathways to their goal, and where the latent environmental possibilities can even shape the player’s goals.

In ill-designed sandbox games without sufficient storyline (or other meaning-making mechanisms), if I run up against the edge of a map, or can’t pick up whatever decorative object, there’s a certain disappointment - that the world is limiting, but there isn’t sufficient purpose/meaning to balance those limitations.

In real life, there’s a reason we don’t indiscriminately blast holes through walls (other than perhaps lack of appropriate tool) - we care about the people on the other side, the asset comprised by the wall material, etc. But the material possibility of such hole-blasting always remains.

This is a rambling comment with unfinished thoughts, but what I’m getting at is: there’s a relationship between potential interactions w/ our environment and the “amount” of meaning that we ascribe and extract from it.

[dEnigma]

I don't think GTA is the best example for "alternate navigation" through "destructibility". Apart from a couple of fences and lampposts, what can you really destroy that gives you new navigation possibilities? There are games that took this way further (e.g. Red Faction)

[bbddg]

Yeah GTA doesn't have much in terms of destructibility. Some of the battlefield games do this pretty well though, particularly Bad Company 2. It was very common in that game to use explosives to make different ways in and out of buildings.

[lobsterthief]

Also Battlefield 1. With the wide range of tanks and explosives, the WWI-era buildings become quite destructible