Summary
- Some open-world games tackle mature themes like sacrifice, honor, and redemption.
- Open-world titles can challenge players' worldviews through social commentary and freeform travel.
- Games like "Death Stranding" and "Outer Wilds" offer philosophical depth that makes players reflect.
Open-world games aren’t just about exploration or combat. They can shift a person's perspective and change how they see the world. Like great works of art or transformative travel experiences, the best open-world games offer emotional depth, cultural insight, and philosophical themes that stick around long after the credits roll.
8 Best Open-World Games That Explore Mature Themes
Some open-world games address important mature themes, such as loss, sacrifice, honor and redemption.
Not every video game rises to that level. However, when an open-world title leans into freeform travel, self-reflection, or social commentary, it has the power to challenge players' worldviews in subtle and surprising ways. Whether they communicate a message directly or indirectly, the following offer more than miles of explorable land, but also other ways to see the world.
7 Dread Delusion
The Wisdom Of Clockwork Kings And Mushroom Cults
Dread Delusion
- Released
- June 15, 2022
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- m
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG
This PS1, Kingsfield-era looking open world RPG might not seem like much of a vehicle for mind changing at first glance. However, Dread Delusion contains some of the most difficult and thought-provoking choices in an open-world game throughout the main story (and as a part of its side quests). As such, players will not finish the game with their picture of morality and ideology unscathed.
From questions about progress, self-sacrifice for the greater good, to the role of the state in relation to its citizens (when the state appears to be a literal magi-computational monarch with infinite power and terminal dementia), Dread Delusion will have players pondering their choices long after they have made them (especially since the game autosaves your selection), and all while staying firmly in the domain of grusome high fantasy, may even cause them to reassess their own ethical and political points of view.
6 The Sims 3
Zooming Out To See Life's Big Picture
The Sims 3
- Released
- June 2, 2009
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T For Teen due to Crude Humor, Sexual Themes, Violence
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
Getting a different perspective on life doesn't need to be literal, but The Sims 3 affords the player a bird's-eye view of everything, from day-to-day life to the entire surrounding world. Although the simulation is complex and deep enough to hold a mirror to life, it affords players a chance to see entire lives play out, from cradle to grave and all between.
8 Best Life Simulation Games Of The 2020s, Ranked (So Far)
The 2020s are far from over, but there have already been numerous fantastic life simulation games that are must-play for fans of the genre.
Although much of their virtual lives are abstracted, being able to see Sims' lives, from their own cast of characters to the entire community, play out in fast-forward can make players reflect on the habits, experiences, and achievements of their own lives. The imperfect utopia where every person gets a starting cheque to kickstart their lives and secure a place to live might also prompt questions about how real life might be if everyone were granted such a financial equalizer.
5 Eco
A Management Game Without Easy Externalities
Eco
- Released
- February 6, 2018
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- e
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Strategy
If open-world games like Minecraft or Factorio that focus on exploiting the natural world for progress, Eco is the counterbalance that tasks its players with averting a natural disaster while building a better world for everyone, but without destroying the balance of nature that makes creating such a world of abundance even possible. Set on a shared server, Eco tasks players not only to survive and build but to govern, regulate, and collaborate.
Pollution, over-harvesting, and unchecked industrial growth have real consequences that affect the game world and its eventual outcome. Players must pass laws, track data, manage resources, and balance personal ambition with long-term sustainability while a planet-wrecking meteor hangs overhead. Eco provides a rarely-seen simulated framework that acts not only as a series of interesting choices for players to grapple with but a lesson in civics, holistic economics, and collective responsibility.
4 Death Stranding
Bridging The Divide, One Package At A Time
Death Stranding
- Released
- November 8, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language
- Genre(s)
- Action
Death Stranding is not only a game that will challenge a player's sense of space and traversal, but also how they think about connection. In a fractured, timefall-ruined America, players take on the role of a porter delivering packages. That job involves rebuilding communication networks and reconnecting people.
8 Best Open-World Games That Feel Hand-Crafted
Open-world games with stunningly handcrafted worlds like Morrowind or Elden Ring weren’t auto-generated but built with care, story, and soul.
Love it or hate it, Death Stranding's gameplay mechanics stress the pain of long-distance journeys, alleviated only by faceless friends who lay down helpful structures and shortcuts for no other reason than goodwill. Although the story may be baffling on its face for some, the core message about how people need each other (and can be good for each other) shines through, and is something that now, of all times, when the world seems so fractured, should be heeded.
3 Outer Wilds
A Quiet Space Game About Big Ideas
Outer Wilds
- Released
- May 28, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ due to Fantasy Violence, Alcohol Reference
- Genre(s)
- Adventure
Outer Wilds is an open-world space exploration game where players uncover a mystery locked in a 22-minute cycle. There’s no combat or inventory grind. Instead, the player is left to focus on learning about planets, civilizations, and the dark mystery at the heart of the miniature solar system.
What makes Outer Wilds profoundly different is how it explores concepts like time, death, and knowledge without ever spelling them out. Players are encouraged to piece together the truth for themselves, as a scientist or explorer might, as they navigate the game's endlessly repeating time loop. By the end, it is hard to walk away and not think differently about the universe, humanity's place in it, and what it means to search for meaning when time is running out.
2 Minecraft
Lessons On Failure, Willpower, And Existentialism
Minecraft
- Released
- November 18, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ Due To Fantasy Violence
- Genre(s)
- Sandbox, Survival
Without a single dialogue box or spoken voice line, Minecraft serves several philosophical lessons to its players from the moment the world loads in. Minecraft offers no goals, quests, or captivating story, but silently prompts the player to ask themselves what they want to accomplish with the life (or lives, outside of Hardcore Mode) they have been given. They can use their time for grand projects or simply reshape a little patch of the world like they might a bonsai tree.
While being able to reshape the world with creativity is more commonplace now, the idea that the player could go out and exploit any plot, biome, or entire world is still mind-bogglingly deep upon consideration. Besides its quiet lesson about will and resource exploitation, Minecraft has a stern lesson about greed and failure, experienced with potency when the player digs too deep and loses everything, prompting a miniature existential crisis that any seasoned player will have experienced.
1 Fallout: New Vegas
Power And Ideology In The Twenty-Third Century
Fallout: New Vegas
- Released
- October 19, 2010
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
- Genre(s)
- RPG
As Courier Mix makes their way through the scorched wastes of New Vegas, they’re confronted with a remarkable spectrum of political ideologies and social structures. Though each is filtered through Fallout’s trademark brand of dark satire, New Vegas explores everything from corporate oligarchy and militarised fascism to scientific anarchism and status-quoist (for this timeline, at least) democratic federalism. The questions it poses about war, loyalty, colonialism, democracy, and personal responsibility are rarely answered cleanly.
Rather than caricaturing the realpolitik of today's world, NV often presents convincing, steelmanned arguments for even the most extreme worldviews. A conversation with one of Caesar’s lieutenants is unlikely to change the player's mind about slavery or the divine right of power. However, it offers a glimpse into the internal logic and seductive promises of authoritarianism and those who adopt it as a worldview.
16 Open-World Games With The Best Stories, Ranked
The focus in open-world games is often placed on explorations and player freedom, but some titles manage to tell awesome stories, too.