They made it open world for no reason other than it was the style at the time, and it adds nothing of value to the game. In the first version, which I originally played, you couldn't even restart an event, you had to drive all the way back to where the start is, which tells you how much they put thought into designing the open world.

The one thing the open world brings to the game is having to choose which route to take, which absolutely sucks ass because it's not fun and if you miss one turn, you might as well restart (in the original version, have fun driving all the way back). Crash mode was also removed in favor of the bouncing car thing, which is boring and way too easy. I will give them credit for making takedowns in road rage much easier than Revenge and de facto removing traffic checking, but that's about it.