2D side scrolling open world? Thread

I'm in the process of making a game which is kind of an RPG set in a modern day city. Kind of like a Jack Bauer RPG.

The stealth/action parts of the game will be 2D side scrolling/platform style and I have the majority of this coded. These will all take place inside buildings around the city.

I want the player to be free to explore the city, visiting different locations and talking to different people, and this is where I have the problem. How do I achieve this in a 2D environment.

A number of options have occurred to me, though I'm not particularly satisfied with any of them.

1. Stick with side scrolling and move from area to area. I would prefer to stick to side scrolling because I'm a coder not an artist and I feel I could manage to create reasonable artwork for 2d backgrounds, but this leads to very linear gameplay. If the city consists of 4 areas say: Slums, Residential District, Shopping District and the Industrial District, and I want to go from the Slums to the Industrial District do I have to run through all 4 districts to get there. It seems like this would quickly get tedious.

2. Side scrolling with path choices. I remember an old game on my Amstrad called Roy of The Rovers where you had to explore a small town looking for your teammates. (It was a terrible game) This was side scrolling but there would be roads leading upwards into the screen, and you could choose to take these roads. So you were always moving right and left across the screen but depending on what road you are on you could be moving East, West, North, or South. (it even had a little compass on the screen) I kind of like this but it seems like it could get disorientating.

3. Side scrolling areas but with some sort of world map/area select, so you could just instantly select the area you want to go to (though maybe only at the start and end of areas not at any time). So you could move straight from the slums to the industrial district. This seems like an easy approach but feels like it would break the players immersion into the game and lose the open world feel to it.

4. When exploring the city switch to a standard 2D JRPG view. Something like Final Fantasy 6 but in a modern city. This seems like the simplest option but it seems boring, and I really suck at creating this type of artwork, but there are modern tilesets to be found online which I could use. I also don't really want to have to worry about things like having cars travelling along the roads, which I think might be needed to make this view feel authentic.

As I said before I feel that i'd like to stick to a side on view, but I'm struggling to think of a nice way of navigating between areas in this view.

I'd really appreciate any opinions on the ideas mentioned above and would be especially interested if anyone has some alternative takes on how this could be achieved, and any alternative games that have implemented a similar system.

Thanks,

Adam.

Hi Adam,
Well if you want you can always get an artist to help you create more then a 2D background, the site is full of them after all.
That being said, when you go to an open world 2D style, I would look at Aliens 3 for the SNES as an example. Your in a huge area and in addition to being able to move like a traditional platformer you can go through doors adding a different type of depth to the world. The drawback to this is that it does get confusing running around. But of the options you presented I'm most in favor of #3, especially for towns. It would feel more like a traditional Mario game in the over world view.
There was a flash game I had played on Newgrounds(cant remember it now), but you had a full range of movement in the over world, but then when you selected a level/town or had a random enemy encounter you went to a 2D side scrolling view.