Open-world referred to video games where the player could move around freely in a big, open area and approach objectives in any order and in any way they wanted. With limitations, of course.
They had existed for more than two decades. It was a miracle that hardware from that time could put up with having an entire world's graphics and logic loaded at once. Developers had to be very clever about it at the time, which I always admired.
Many techniques engineered over the years were still used today. However, the exponential growth of the processing power of consoles and computers led to developers worrying less about optimization and more about creative limits. The last thing I wanted was to become one of those developers.
