"The game that made open world a thing is GTA3. It is a city you can explore freely."
Doesn't say it was the first, heavily implies it was the thing that popularised the concept though. Earlier GTA titles, Elite, Might and Magic... all somewhat earlier and all incredibly popular in their day.
"the game is cut up into levels"
San Andreas saw me shuffled around the map and going back to earlier places was not exactly much use most of the time.
"the levels are cut up into stars"
Several locations were reused/revisited a lot.
"the levels funnel you into specific paths"
Once you have taken whatever circuitous route you prefer to the start of the trick show then most would hardly call most earlier GTA missions sprawling, free form and dynamic. The Far Cry sequels might be able to get there (though this is not necessarily a good thing) and possibly some of GTA5, not so much for pre 5 GTA.
"not all the stars are attainable right off"
Leaving aside the islands/sections/instant wanted of GTA (possibly also things like the mafia in GTA3 meaning you have to think long and hard about going back to the first location after a certain point in the story) there are parts that you really need flight/skills/weapons and more that the game very specifically downplays to get into.
At this point we are very much into the semantics world (what move you can do in a fighting game depends upon your character, though as you can freely choose a given character does that still count? Maths would argue it changes nothing and is just a branching path on an instance, most gaming types are less mathematically inclined and might argue otherwise), and that only gets worse if you include some minutia that a developer might have included as a bonus or something, even worse if you include glitches.
Doesn't say it was the first, heavily implies it was the thing that popularised the concept though. Earlier GTA titles, Elite, Might and Magic... all somewhat earlier and all incredibly popular in their day.
"the game is cut up into levels"
San Andreas saw me shuffled around the map and going back to earlier places was not exactly much use most of the time.
"the levels are cut up into stars"
Several locations were reused/revisited a lot.
"the levels funnel you into specific paths"
Once you have taken whatever circuitous route you prefer to the start of the trick show then most would hardly call most earlier GTA missions sprawling, free form and dynamic. The Far Cry sequels might be able to get there (though this is not necessarily a good thing) and possibly some of GTA5, not so much for pre 5 GTA.
"not all the stars are attainable right off"
Leaving aside the islands/sections/instant wanted of GTA (possibly also things like the mafia in GTA3 meaning you have to think long and hard about going back to the first location after a certain point in the story) there are parts that you really need flight/skills/weapons and more that the game very specifically downplays to get into.
At this point we are very much into the semantics world (what move you can do in a fighting game depends upon your character, though as you can freely choose a given character does that still count? Maths would argue it changes nothing and is just a branching path on an instance, most gaming types are less mathematically inclined and might argue otherwise), and that only gets worse if you include some minutia that a developer might have included as a bonus or something, even worse if you include glitches.