Since the very beginning the promise of the open world game has been to allow the player to go anywhere and do anything, but that rarely works out. An open-world platforming game is generally defined by jumping and other parkour abilities, for example, while your more traditional Grand Theft Auto-alike is driving and shooting. Even in an open-world farming game you have the options of growing crops and livestock plus socializing, with nothing in the way of options for cattle rustling. This makes a kind of sense thanks to games being difficult to build and every new verb in the player’s arsenal providing a new way for things to go horribly weird, but for the first Streets of Rogue “horribly weird” was the goal. The “do (almost) anything” part came through but even so, it was a more level-based affair than open world so the “go anywhere” aspect was limited.