For anyone looking to get lost in an open-world game, there are plenty of options available across various genres. For example, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is set in a post-apocalyptic version of both Mexico and Australia, where players deliver packages to underground shelters. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild features one of the largest versions of Hyrule ever made, with bright and colorful graphics reminiscent of a painting.
Those games and others are great, but others are more immersive thanks to the expansive, detailed, and imaginative world-building on display. Some of these games require a bit of community outreach to make sense of everything, and while they may be fantastical, they are also believable in their own ways. These open-world RPGs will be ranked based on overall quality and how imaginative their worlds are.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
Getting Down With Dragons
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim takes place in Tamriel, within the province of Skyrim, a frosty region of the continent with plenty of Norse influence in its design. No matter what type of character players create, they will be a chosen one, a Dragonborn who is gifted with the knowledge to communicate directly with dragons as well as absorb their language and power. In dungeons, players can find written text to unlock new powers, or they can acquire them directly by defeating a dragon. There aren’t a lot of games out there that have this kind of power, and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim does a good job at slowly explaining the character’s backstory of why dragons are so feared and how players came into their abilities.
Beyond the main focus on the Dragonborn, the world's rich culture comes alive with small villages, crumbling ruins, and even some large castle keeps, all of which encourage exploration and sightseeing over speeding through the main quest. This is not a thriving land thanks to wars and wandering dragons, but players can surmise that with how NPCs react and the state of everything in between the world's housed locations. In many ways, it’s kind of a basic fantasy world complete with magic, dungeons, and monsters, but the dragon twist helps elevate this world beyond others in the genre.
Elden Ring
Might Require Research
Elden Ring requires a bit more research than Skyrim because it’s not exactly a story-focused game. Players are a character called the Tarnished, a surviving warrior with basically no purpose other than to reach a glowing tree far off in the distance. What will happen there? That’s the question that will fuel players to keep going, even suffering death after death, as this is a Soulslike. FromSoftware, as a developer, thrives on creating deep worlds with tons of lore, but they will not spoon-feed players. It’s up to them to understand what NPCs say, to read notes left in the world, and to interpret all of that with what they see while exploring.
Between tall giants wearing grated masks and talking jars on quests for glory, players will be shocked by the variety of colorful NPCs they come across. This is also why Elden Ring has such a strong community, as they share lore notes, theories, and gameplay tactics. It’s an exciting mystery that helps immerse players in the game as they build their own little story about what happened to this world known as The Lands Between, and what awaits them at the end of their journey.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
A Grim Fairy Tale
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a grim fantasy world, but one that is rich with characters and creatures. It helps that the game, and its previous iterations, are based on a series of Polish fantasy books by Andrzej Sapkowski, which also drew from European folklore. Players will find and fight familiar monsters like trolls, ghouls, and harpies, but their designs are more accurate to folklore and less fantastical than other video games that tend to shave off the rougher edges. The quest system is also deep, between main missions and side projects, all of which will affect the story in some way. For example, there are forest witches, the Crones, who will have their hand in various plots, like with the Bloody Baron and an elder tree spirit who has some missing children.
How the game weaves all of these narratives together is quite something, and there’s never an altruistic right or wrong answer to how to end a quest. It goes beyond black and white, as monsters, including ugly trolls, can have feelings too. By playing the game, players will start to understand why it’s so hard to be a Witcher, like Geralt or Ciri, in this world. It’s not just about fighting monsters; they have to be judge, jury, and executioner, and that can take its toll on a soul. There’s simply nothing else like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt out there, even beyond the grim fantasy is a gorgeous world, with European-style villages and more imaginative cities like Kaer Trolde, which is built into a mountain.
Fallout: New Vegas
Now With Slightly More Sand
No one can rightfully predict how a post-apocalypse is going to change an area, but Fallout: New Vegas, among the many Fallout games out there, does a decent job at interpreting the area of Nevada in which it is set. Specifically, players will explore an region around the city of New Vegas, home to dozens of factions both big and small that were all created from old-world beliefs.
For example, Elvis impersonators used to line the Vegas strip back in the day, and there are still plenty in Vegas right now in the real world. Fallout: New Vegas used that idea and created a faction called The Kings, who worship Elvis as the king among kings, as if he were Jesus. Another great thing about the world of Fallout overall is the Vaults that players can stumble upon, each with a different experiment hidden inside. Vault 11 attempted a social experiment based on sacrifices, for example. How people live in the radioactive wastes of Nevada makes sense within Fallout: New Vegas, as the game draws from reality in smart and creative ways.
Cyberpunk 2077
A Believable And Dark Future
Cyberpunk 2077 represents the good and bad of futuristic storytelling. On one hand, Night City as a location is bustling with all kinds of enhanced individuals, from humans with cybernetic appendages to straight-up robots trying to live out their lives. The glitz and glamor on the billboards paint a picture of the lives that players and NPCs could have, but the catch is money, which reflects real-world dilemmas. Corporations run Night City, and to get anywhere, players either need to sell their souls to the corporate lifestyle or become a hacker to fight for equality outside the system.
Outside of Night City is a big wasteland where naturalists and raiders live. Players can find huge electronics dumping grounds along highways, from fridges to microwaves. It paints a bleak picture of the Earth's future, where people throw away electronics with reckless abandon to get the latest and greatest tech. The little linguistic nicknames help build the world too, like the usage of “Choom”, which means "friend", or "Chrome", which refers to cybernetic tech. Overall, it’s not surprising that CD Projekt Red can build two believable open-world games, from Cyberpunk 20077 to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
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This article originally appeared on GameRant and is republished here with permission.
