Summary
- Open-world games evolve into unexpected, eerie, and metaphysical experiences as players venture deeper into them, subverting expectations.
- Games like Dying Light, Sable, and Red Dead Redemption 2 hint at ancient forces, alien worlds, and surreal undercurrents beneath their surface.
- Exploration in titles like Elden Ring, Kenshi, and Pathologic 2 uncovers cosmic origins, buried catastrophes, and psychological distortions, evolving into something mesmerizing and terrifying.
Open-world games often begin with a clear structure, offering maps and questlines that lead players towards familiar tropes or down straightforward paths. But in some cases, as players explore deeper into these worlds, surface-level realism gives way to strangeness in the form of forgotten ruins, surreal logic, or disturbing truths buried beneath the landscape.
These games don't merely have big maps, but ones where exploration gradually alters the player’s perception of what kind of story is being told. In a lot of ways, the worlds can evolve drastically into something unexpected, eerie, or even metaphysical as players venture further into them, subverting expectations.
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Dying Light
Forces Straying Into The Supernatural
Dying Light
- Released
- January 27, 2015
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
- Techland
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Survival Horror
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC
- OpenCritic Rating
- Fair
Dying Light opens with a straightforward survival narrative set in the quarantine zone of Harran. Zombies, rebels, and scarce supplies frame the experience as a conventional urban apocalypse. But over time, fragments of myths and unexplained phenomena begin to emerge in side quests and hidden environments.
The game hints at deeper, possibly ancient forces behind the outbreak. Isolated ruins and otherworldly events suggest that something more than viral science fiction is at play in the area. The world’s logic starts to fracture just enough to feel uncanny, leaving the impression that the map contains secrets far older and stranger than its modern setting implies.
Sable
Relics From A Time Before
Sable
- Released
- September 23, 2021
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- e
- Developer(s)
- Shedworks
- Genre(s)
- Adventure
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
Sable appears serene and grounded, telling a personal tale of cultural tradition and individual identity. Its vast desert world is devoid of enemies, but populated with quiet outposts and decaying relics, with a few scattered NPCs in between. Initially, its mysteries seem purely historical or architectural. Yet, after venturing further into the world, things start to turn in a different direction.
As exploration continues, those relics reveal a world shaped by forgotten civilizations and unknowable technologies. Some structures suggest cosmic or extradimensional origins, opening up the universe and turning the narrative into an introspective journey through a world that becomes increasingly alien in tone and implication.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Witchcraft To Mystical Lights In The Sky
Red Dead Redemption 2
- Released
- October 26, 2018
WHERE TO PLAY
Though best known for its realism, Red Dead Redemption 2 conceals a strange undercurrent beneath its historical setting. Ghost stories, pagan shrines, mysterious disappearances, and inexplicable lights are tucked away in remote corners, far from the main path in typical Rockstar fashion.
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These discoveries don’t just surprise, but they slowly reshape the player’s understanding of the American frontier. The game’s obsession with death and decay takes on new weight as players encounter the surreal and the supernatural. The world becomes a mythic graveyard, haunted not only by violence but by something far stranger.
Death Stranding
Ghostly Spirits In A Barren Wasteland
Death Stranding
- Released
- November 8, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
- Kojima Productions
- Genre(s)
- Action
- Platform(s)
- iOS, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
Death Stranding offers a lonely trek across desolate terrain, which is mostly deprived of structures and enemies, unlike other open-world titles. But its world is permeated by the dead, time-warping rain, and spectral entities tied to memory and trauma, constantly delivering a sense of unease thanks to its emptiness and atmosphere.
Further exploration uncovers ruins suspended in limbo and dreamlike war zones, with things going as far as allowing for communication between realms of the living and the dead. Geography becomes increasingly symbolic, and the story moves into metaphysical territory. What starts as post-apocalyptic science fiction quickly shifts into something psychological and esoteric, grounded more in emotion and concept than in physical reality.
Elden Ring
Below The Surface Lies A Whole Other World
Elden Ring
- Released
- February 25, 2022
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
- From Software
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
In Elden Ring, The Lands Between begins as a shattered kingdom of gods and knights in a seemingly standard dark fantasy setting with a touch of magic. But as exploration pushes into hidden realms both on the mainland and further afield, the game’s cosmology collapses into something surreal.
Ancient forces beyond comprehension lurk beneath every divine order, challenging the coherence of the world’s history. From the Rot to the Frenzied Flame, every new discovery adds layers of contradiction and horror. The deeper one goes, the clearer it becomes that the world is not governed by law or logic, but by chaos and buried catastrophes.
Kenshi
Remnants Of The Past
Kenshi
- Released
- December 6, 2018
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- nr
- Developer(s)
- Lo-Fi Games
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Open-World, Survival
- Platform(s)
- PC
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
Kensh i starts as a lawless, sandblasted survival game with no central narrative. Towns are crumbling, factions are entrenched, and the world seems desolate. But buried within ruins and encoded in factional hierarchies are signs of a long-dead civilization and technological godhood.
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The game’s deepest ruins suggest extinction-level events, uploaded consciousnesses, and forgotten wars between higher intelligences, going far beyond the initial primitive nature of the world. The more one explores, the clearer it becomes that the current wasteland is merely the husk of a deeply alien past. The realization that there is more at play is both mesmerizing and terrifying.
Pathologic 2
Psychological Distortions That Warp The World
Pathologic 2
- Released
- May 23, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ // Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Ice-Pick Lodge
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
- OpenCritic Rating
- Fair
Pathologic 2 presents a town infected by a mysterious plague that quickly dissolves into a time-bending, reality-shifting nightmare from which there seems to be no escape. The disease becomes psychological rather than physical, and the entire area begins to fall into the incomprehensible, despite its simplistic exterior.
Buildings appear to move, as the town’s architecture, economy, and rules mutate in subtle, disorienting ways that go far beyond just minor changes. As the player progresses, the less the world behaves as it should. The setting becomes a distorted moral labyrinth, a place where logic and self-identity collapse under the weight of a metaphysical illness.
Outer Wilds
Collapsing Planets And So Much More
Outer Wilds
- Released
- May 28, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
Outer Wilds presents the player with a scientific expedition across a charming solar system. Yet every planet, when explored thoroughly, defies the laws of time and physics in unexpected and wild ways. One collapses into a black hole, while another is devoured by falling sand. Hiding behind each calamity lies the story of an extinct race attempting to control the cycle.
The more is uncovered, the more time itself becomes a puzzle. The game’s structure spirals into themes of entropy and the fragility of knowledge, as the only real constant is the player's awareness of their surroundings. The journey turns into an elegy for lost civilizations and a meditation on the end of all things, as the universe becomes existentially stranger with every discovery.
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