Departing from the fictional setting of Lytton, California from the first three installments, Open Season follows police detective John Carey as he investigates a series of brutal murders in Los Angeles.

The game was produced in cooperation with former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) chief Daryl F. Gates, replacing former series director ex-California Highway Patrol officer Jim Walls, who left Sierra around 1991.

In Los Angeles, LAPD Robbery-Homicide detective John Carey is dispatched to investigate a brutal homicide in a South Central alleyway.

As Carey investigates the murders, the believed motive for them shifts from gang-related reasons to the work of a serial killer(the young boy was gunned down by a drug dealer, but Hickman was the first in a string of torture killings).

Sierra had three box designs in consideration for the game: A bloody hand reaching for the title, a file folder, and the Los Angeles city skyline.

The final decision was reached because parents in the focus group often had a negative side comment about the bloody hand design, so the skyline cover eventually won.

However, Markus Krichel of PC Games noted that "interest on the part of the gamer fell slightly" with Open Season (Mainly due to the absence of creator Jim Walls, and those who did play the game weren't happy playing as anyone besides the series's classic protagonist Sonny Bonds), which led Sierra On-Line to experiment with a new direction for the series with Police Quest: SWAT.

[6] A longer review in March 1994 stated that the game had succeeded "at so many levels", that its realism and "seemingly endless amounts of" police procedure offered "larger implications about our society and its struggle against the drug machine".

[7] James V. Trunzo reviewed Police Quest: Open Season in White Wolf #43 (May, 1994), giving it a final evaluation of "Very Good" and stated that "If you don't enjoy meticulous attention to detail, you're going to hate this game.

"[9] In a retrospective 2013 review, Adventure Gamers gave the game 2 out of 5 stars and lambasted it for constant backtracking to find what the player missed, pixel hunting, an unsatisfying ending rendering most of the plot irrelevant, and flat and stereotyped characterisation.