With the development ofMario Kart Worldso close to the finish line, there’s a lot we know about the game already. From its new characters to its new mechanics, and evena leaked ‘Reverse Mode’that just seems like a better fit for an open exploration game than any Mirror Mode could be.
And then, of course, there’s the name. It’s Mario Kart World! You can free-roam your way through a colossal map of the game’s various courses, exploring at your leisure and discovering secrets in a big… open… wait, it’s not an open world game?
At least, that’s what the game’s producer, Kosuke Yabuki claims in a recent interview withThe Washington Post. In fact, the interview goes so far as to say you shouldn’t call the game ‘open world’ within earshot of the dev team.
“We actually don’t use the phrase ‘open world’ in development." Yabuki explains in the interview, touching on how the team views the project behind-the-scenes. He calls the term too “ambiguously defined,” and says it doesn’t quite work for them.
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“Even though we are creating this vast interconnected world with racing routes," he says, “you still do need some traditional elements.”
The funny thing about ambiguous terms is that they can very easily be applied to things. We’ll see whether all those various storefronts tag the game as open-world or not, but the game’s producer has a pretty clear stance on the matter.
Yabuki does elaborate on what those ‘traditional elements’ are - specifically name-dropping the fact that courses return from previous Mario Kart titles - though does not explain how that excludes an ‘open world’ classification.
If Mario Kart World Isn’t Open World, What Is It?
Assuming Mario Kart World can’t be labeled an open world game, what might that look like for the finished product? Is exploration limited to, say, individual cups rather than having the whole map available to you at once? That certainly allows you to roam, but focusing this much marketing hype around a freer kind of roam might have been a mistake.
Maybe you may explore everything, but there’s just loading screens between where the cups take place? That’d certainly be a bit more open, and would mesh with what we know from the game’s development.
Despite the Switch 2’s ability to handle a massive, beautiful open world, the original Nintendo Switch apparently had some challenges with that fact. In no uncertain terms, we already know that the Switch 2’s hardware was a blessing to Mario Kart World’s development.
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So perhaps then, sectioned-off areas with loading screens between them was the original gameplan for making Mario Kart World work with the Switch’s hardware. And the programming for that was just carried over into the Switch 2?
Either way, we’re not going to wait very long to find our answers here. Fans can start playing Mario Kart World injust a few days, and you can decide for yourself it it feels like a real open world game or not.
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