A great story can be enhanced by a great environment, and a great environment is always better with a punchy story. It’s not always easy to balance these two things out, but when they are delivered and both are abundant, it’s usually a recipe for a masterpiece. In the best-case scenario, simply walking around in a game world can end up being the most memorable experience you’ll have, especially if it doesn’t take away from the story but serves it instead.
Longest Open-World Games
Even the most sophisticated gamer will be bewildered by the sheer scale of these games. These are the open-world games that take the longest to beat.
The following games are some of the finest examples of that. They have great environmental storytelling, to the point where their worlds suck you right in and almost make you forget about the main story. The main quest or goal, however vague or specific, also takes you around some of these fantastical locations, using them as a way to deliver the lore and the background of the world to you.
Find all 10 pairs
Find all 10 pairs
Outer Wilds
Exploring Delivers The Story’s Mystery
A game that’s all about delivering its story through exploration, Outer Wilds is a game best experienced without any guides or spoilers. As you set out into space and explore the solar system around you freely, you start to discover that something strange is happening. Every 22 minutes, you find yourself back at the beginning of the day.
During this loop, various things take place on each planet, and you’ll have to fly, connect the dots, and collect all the hints and clues to figure out what it is that’s really going on. In this sense, exploration and story in Outer Wilds are two inseparable facets of the game. One can’t exist without the other, and the whole point of the story is that it’s a mystery for you to uncover with each consecutive time loop.
Fallout 4
A Fish Out Of Water Story Paired With Awe-Inspiring Exploration
Bethesda’s strength has always been delivering great environmental storytelling over thought-provoking main questlines, and Fallout 4 is proof of that. However, there is something special about emerging from Vault 111 for the first time at the start, and seeing the state of Sanctuary Hills that just moments ago (seemingly) was a normal, bustling neighborhood.
7 Open-World Games With Locations You Can Miss If You Stick To The Story
Just sticking to the main quest line in these open-world games will have players missing out on some incredible locations.
As the Sole Survivor, you go through the game with this fish-out-of-water mentality, and that really fits a game like Fallout 4, where the player is also discovering new vistas and potentially brand-new lore if they’re newcomers to the franchise. The protagonist and the player get to share their sense of awe, and one thing that the main quest does well is take you around some of the coolest locations in the game. I won’t spoil them for you in case you’ve yet to jump into Fallout 4, but just get ready to endure radiation.
Subnautica
Stranded With A Sense Of Wonder (And Fear)
Another game that delivers its lore and secrets through the environment is Subnautica. You find yourself stranded on an ocean world planet, your only goal being to find a way to leave. With limited resources at first, you’ll have to do the usual song and dance of any open-world survival crafting game: get resources by exploring, craft important gear and tools in order to progress deeper into the oceans, and figure out what’s really hiding beneath the surface.
There are some pretty spooky parts in Subnautica as well, and locations underwater that will take the unsuspecting player by surprise. Let’s just say, if you have thalassophobia, this might be a difficult game to enjoy. Given its sandboxy nature, it’s not as story-driven as some of the other games here, but that heavy focus on exploration to complete your “main” quest definitely justifies its spot among the other titles.
Red Dead Redemption 2
You’ll Want To Linger Just A Bit Longer
Red Dead Redemption 2 has been praised for almost every feature. It did manage to nail a surprising number of things: music, world, characters, graphics… There are very few things about the game that feel janky or underdeveloped. Its story is often hailed as one of the most emotional ones out there, particularly due to how it makes you care about the characters you meet during your journey in Arthur’s shoes. But another great part of that journey is the world and exploring it.
Rockstar Games managed to craft a world that feels so alive and so detailed that it’s difficult not feel like you’re actually there. These two features work perfectly in tandem, and the environmental storytelling is on another level. Things are most often shown to you, not explained. By wandering the world, you learn more of it, from finding lonely burned houses to corpses rotting away. It’s a silent but heavy way of delivering the tale of Arthur and the gang, and as the story progresses, the world changes as well to reflect the events occurring within the gang and the general tone of the story. It’s one of the best games to harness its world and the act of exploring to prop up each beat in every act of the plot.
The Main Quest Takes You All Across The Province To Sovngarde
Like Fallout 4, Skyrim suffers from a main quest that left a lot of gamers somewhat lukewarm. With that, it’s no wonder that the act of actually moving around the province to get to your next location and avoiding fast travel is the best part. You might stumble onto something unexpected, like a secret side activity hidden away that opens up into its own dungeon.
Best Open-World Games With Rich Lore and Backstory, Ranked
Open-world games are known for their extensive game mechanics and variety. Here are some titles in the genre that also feature rich lore.
Like with RDR2 and Fallout 4, the lore of the world is also delivered in these silent, show-don’t-tell type of ways. You might find a secluded Talos shrine hidden away from the world, perfectly in line with the brewing tensions regarding Talos’ worship in Skyrim. The vistas, the music, and the dynamic weather breathe life into the game as well, and there are some incredible dungeons you’ll visit, from Bleak Falls Barrow to Sky Haven Temple and the Throat of the World. Once again, Bethesda made sure everyone’s jaws were on the floor with their impeccable environmental work.
Cyberpunk 2077
See All The Facets Of The City Of Dreams
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt could have easily been here, too, but its story and character interactions trump Cyberpunk 2077’s by a slight margin. With that, exploring Night City during the main story of the latter game was definitely a more magical moment, even if CD Projekt Red did deliver a deep, meaningful, and heart-wrenching tale, particularly in Phantom Liberty. Night City as a world screams at you from every direction, rubbing the main message of the story in your face at every turn in a dystopian, neon-lit, absurd way: corpos are king and gangs rule the city.
You’ll see this with random gang activity at street corners, MaxTac showing up to cordon off a place, or a shootout breaking out between NCPD and some troublemakers. Walking through the city, you’re blasted with lore thanks to advertisement jingles and blaring news that announce the latest developments, thanks to your actions in a quest. There are also plenty of little secrets and easter eggs peppered in, from finding your very own feline friend in your apartment complex to discovering Dex’s body at the dump days later, just to loot his gun off his body.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl
The Zone Is A Character Of Its Own
I’ve always been of the mind that the Zone in the STALKER games is a character of its own. STALKER 2 delivered in that regard to perfection despite all the jankiness and lackluster performance, thanks to its incredible environmental storytelling. Not only does the Zone stand as an uncaring challenge to Skif, daring you to take another step, forcing you to survive and scavenge (all part of the story!), it also delivers lore of the world and what happened before and after in slow, silent, deliberate ways.
STALKER games are not known for handholding, so you’ll definitely have to rely on your best judgment and exploration to piece things together, from finding abandoned locations, labs, campfires, and lone skeletons. The world is also very dynamic, living and breathing around you, as if you’re just one drop in its bucket rather than some epic main protagonist. It’s not uncommon for you to stumble upon the Zone’s different factions clashing in the world. Your survival here depends on your ability to observe your environment and to make judgments on where to go next and what to do to progress the story. It’s the main challenge of the game, because nothing is ever explained explicitly.
Elden Ring
The Lore And Story Are In The Environment
Speaking of games that expect you to figure stuff out on your own, we have Elden Ring. The Lands Between are oozing with lore and mysteries that explain the events briefly touched upon in the intro sequence of the game. Every major boss and big dungeon you’re meant to defeat to progress to the Erdtree is another part of a greater story about demigods and their conflicts. It’s why the big legacy dungeons all feel so incredibly unique, and why the devil is in the details.
Have you ever wondered why Leyndell’s doors are all sealed with corpse wax, for example? Where did the fallen dragons come from, and what is the Crumbling Farum Azula? And what about the Albinaurics and their confined village? The grand vistas, the distinct appearance of every region, is not an accident; they all tell a very intentional story of a land that suffered a great war, and we’re simply a little fly walking in, a lowly Tarnished, trying to find our place among these great, hulking, and arguably decaying demi-gods, dragons, and other, lesser creatures. Explore, observe, and make your own judgment. FromSoftware really challenges you to be vigilant if you want to understand the world and its tragic tale.
6 Most Relaxing Side Activities In Open-World Games
When players get worn out by the intensity of an open-world story campaign, these relaxing side activities are there to give them a break.
