Posted December 2, 2019 at 6:59 pm

Time passing in RPGs with day/night cycles is so weird. Sometimes, it will matter. More often than not, it will not.

For example, in The Outer Worlds, you can walk onto your ship, and it can potentially be implied that one or may days have passed since you got on board and walked a few feet to talk with a companion. "Oh, hey, yeah, I've done a lot of talking back and forth with that character we just met a minute ago in real time. This is what you get for immediately going back to the ship talking to me after we did that."

Meanwhile, in Fallout 4, you can tell someone you'll meet them somewhere, go do stuff for several in-game months, and when you finally do go meet up with them, they act like they've only just arrived themselves.

It's all a bit silly, but likely a far better solution than holding players to rigid schedules in open world games.