Open-world games have always been loved for their breathtaking environments and epic narratives, which often stretch across dozens of in-game hours, immersing players in stories that stand among the best in the video game space. While many have their favorites, it is pretty hard to mention open-world history without talking about Elden Ring. Set in an entirely original universe, amidst a gorgeous landscape full of characters and secrets just waiting to be discovered. However, the biggest draw comes from the lack of direction the game provides, forcing players to venture out and uncover the lore themselves, rather than being explicitly given details.
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Open-world games are beloved for their massive maps. Here are some of the biggest open worlds that gamers can explore in the genre.
As far as gaming goes, Elden Ring is pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to rich lore, but within the open-world genre, there are a few other games that manage to fill their worlds with even deeper backstories and tales that make every NPC and city come to life. Over the years, players have been gifted post-apocalyptic adventures that blur the lines between reality and make-believe and fantasy journeys that are interwoven with every aspect of the world itself, all demonstrating a dedication to narrative depth in ways that virtually no other game can compete with. By having such an extensive background for players to uncover over time, their actions suddenly carry far more weight, and rather than just completing a series of disconnected quests, they are instead slowly painting a picture of an entire universe that lies just beyond their screens.
Fallout: New Vegas
Interweaving Ideologies And Philosophies
- Factions and political rivalries are dictated by player choice.
- Each region reflects a different future.
Fallout: New Vegas presents a world where lore is not hidden in fragments or scattered in audio logs, but actively shown through every piece of dialogue and every quest completed. The Mojave is shaped largely by ideology, with factions like the NCR and Caesar’s Legion representing fully realized philosophies rooted in pre-war history and the evolution of humanity in the apocalypse. With that said, the encounters and stories themselves never feel like one-off remarks. Instead, they serve to reinforce larger themes in the world and the player's choices within it.
What elevates New Vegas above Elden Ring in terms of lore depth is how well it conveys its narrative without simplifying things. Each location tells its own story, whether it be about survival or economic collapse. While FromSoftware's storytelling is more interested in subtlety, in the Mojave, reading between the lines only serves to bolster the already powerful narrative that's before the player. The world invites speculation and analysis, letting the player observe how political movements fail and cultures shift in ways that are dictated by the past and the characters within it.
The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
A Whole History In The Palm Of Your Hands
- Deep mythologies are embedded in the world.
- Cultural perspectives run through every interaction.
The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind’s lore operates on an entirely different level from most open-world RPGs, functioning more like a dense historical archive than a setting for the action. The game is filled with books and texts from eras well before the game takes place, forcing players to piece together different truths and myths to create a clearer picture of the world around them. Gods may be real, false, or something in between, and the game never provides a definitive answer to many of its more obscure questions, opening the door for theories that are almost never confirmed.
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A lot of the lore is heavily rooted in anthropology, detailing the stories of adventurers and figures from various lands and tying them all together within a single universe. In many cases, the stories can actually be told from several different perspectives, like the history of the Dunmer and the Derevarine prophecy, meaning that one tale can quickly turn into a layered set of notes that may be equally true and false simultaneously. At its core, Morrowind is about long-term engagement, rewarding players who choose to read carefully and pay attention to one of the richest and most impressive fictional universes ever created.
World Of Warcraft
Borders On Too Much Lore
- Decades of evolving lore across continents and regions.
- Everything from lowly villages to cosmic forces plays a part.
World of Warcraft’s lore was already pretty intense in its early days, but two decades later, the stories have only gotten bigger and more expansive. Azeroth is not just a playground for players to run around in; it's a fully realized universe with its own creation myths, ancient wars, and recurring historical cycles for players to sink their teeth into right from the start. Because the game continues to receive new expansions every few years, new layers are constantly added, recontextualizing old events while introducing new factions, gods, characters, and a few terrifying existential threats.
Scale is truly the key. Rather than taking place over the course of a 50-hour playthrough or a short series of main quests, the story of WoW is instead made up of thousands of quests and battles that all feed into a larger narrative. While not every storyline lands perfectly, the breadth is truly remarkable, taking players on adventures through Orc lineages and Elder beings, making the world feel alive every step of the way. For eagle-eyed players, not only is there an insane amount of actual content, but there are plenty of obscure details to discover, taking them down enough rabbit-holes to fill a lifetime.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura
Tying Stories Into Mechanics
- Conflicts within ideologies.
- History has a direct impact on gameplay systems.
Arcanum’s lore is inseparable from its mechanics, binding even the smallest story details into the gameplay itself. The central conflict between magic and technology is both a flavorful narrative hook and a foundational truth that shapes the world’s politics, cultures, and even physics, while also defining much larger aspects of the universe like entire races and belief systems. Players will often find themselves confronting philosophical themes in the midst of combat, needing to choose not only which spells and attacks to use, but also factoring in the ramifications of those actions on the wider world around them.
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.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, stories and historical events can explain why certain technologies failed, why magic is feared, and why societies developed along radically different paths than the ones that may have seemed more obvious. Much like a traditional RPG, the lore is mostly delivered through dialogue, books, and the environment, but it is also experienced through the world's reaction to player choices, tying decision-making directly into big narrative reveals and even the fates of characters throughout the game.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Connecting Humanity To Legends
- Regions shaped by historical politics.
- Myth and folklore are grounded in reality.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s lore excels because of how deeply human it is while still focusing heavily on the fantasy elements that govern the world. Monsters and magic dominate the surface, but the true narrative weight comes from centuries of political conflict and cultural decay, fusing mystical beings with a more realistic depiction of society and the tensions within it. Every kingdom has a documented past, detailing the triumphs and failures of the people within it, and every myth is tied to humanity, no matter how dark and mysterious they may be. The main narrative itself is where most people place their focus, but the wider world is arguably where the game really shines. It is pretty hard to wander far from the beaten path without encountering a long and exciting quest that could take players on an equally compelling adventure.
The characters are also a huge driving force in the narrative's depth. Not only do characters interact with one another and the player, but they also explicitly mention tales from the past and the suffering or success that followed shortly after. There are plenty of instances where stories from long ago become just as relevant as those in the present, rewarding players who pay close attention to the finer details with huge revelations that they would have otherwise missed. This makes every piece of dialogue feel like a series of crucial details that bring the folklore and history into the present, giving players more chances to experience the world's story in ways other than following the main story.
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