In open-world games, the story rarely sits at the front of the experience, often taking a backseat. Instead, the strongest titles in the genre focus on freedom, exploration, and countless optional activities. Players constantly get sidetracked on their way toward the main objective, discovering everything the world has to offer. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but generally, getting wonderfully lost along the journey is one of the best compliments a game of this kind can receive.
Some open-world games handle this so well that players might ignore the main plot entirely, which is arguably one of the best ways to play them. It doesn’t mean the stories are weak or forgettable; it’s just that the core gameplay loop and freeform mechanics are so engaging that players choose to simply live in these worlds, inventing personal goals, exploring every corner, and delaying the story for as long as possible. Here are some of the best open-world games that excel in that.
For this list, we won’t include open-world titles that are primarily sandboxes with no fixed narrative at all, so games where the story is almost entirely player-driven, like Kenshi, State of Decay 2, or Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord, are excluded.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl
The Zone Is Calling
Just like the previous entries in the series, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s biggest allure is the Zone itself. It’s a strange balance of unique beauty and danger, a place where countless stalkers wander day after day in search of rare artifacts that could change their lives forever. Few ever succeed, though. The Zone has a way of turning people into lifelong admirers, and once you step inside, leaving it behind can become almost impossible. That is, if you even manage to survive.
This time, the world is fully seamless, without loading screens between areas (even if there’s a slight artificial sense of separation between regions to mask transitions). The map is enormous, packed with side quests, activities, and hidden stashes literally everywhere. While STALKER 2’s story is surprisingly long, cinematic, branching, and worth experiencing, it’s easy to imagine experienced stalkers abandoning the main quest just to exist in the Zone on their own terms.
Free Open-World Games With The Best Exploration
These free open-world games offer vast and beautiful open worlds, great exploration, loads of content; there's almost no catch.
Exploring terrifying underground labs, clearing out bandit hideouts, hunting mutants for valuable parts, learning how to navigate anomaly fields, surviving powerful emissions that refresh artifacts, steadily upgrading gear piece by piece, searching for the rarest legendary artifacts few even know exist, taking on randomized tasks from NPCs, and lugging an overstuffed backpack across half the Zone to stash the treasures before heading out again the next morning — that’s the real magic of STALKER 2, a game that can be unapologetically ruthless to one’s spare time.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
The Original RPG to Simply Live In
Skyrim emerged as one of the best seamless open-world RPGs that allowed players to fully exist in its world, living day by day and soaking in the unmatched freedom of exploration. With so many quests, NPCs with their own routine, places to discover, and activities to chase, it felt like a living world rather than just a game. Over time, Skyrim became almost synonymous with the idea of ignoring the main quest entirely, simply because wandering, experimenting, and doing whatever felt right was far more exciting. And after more than a decade, countless players still can’t let it go, as this special game still feels like home.
Best Open-World Games That Are Hard To Put Down
A well-designed open world can keep players hooked for countless hours, sucking them into an immersive world they don't want to leave.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is perfectly vast, incredibly dense, full of freedom, and truly has something for everyone, even if that sounds cliché at this point. Numerous factions with their own quest arcs, activities that affect character growth, endless radiant missions, memorable NPCs, lively towns, forgotten ruins, mysterious caves, and major expansions with new features and possibilities — Skyrim embodies almost everything an open-world RPG can aim for. And that’s not even counting the massive modding community, which lets every player tailor the world to their exact preferences, making it feel endlessly fresh and personal.
It’s no wonder that players wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 with both excitement and a bit of caution, wondering whether Bethesda can ever match the brilliance and legacy that Skyrim continues to hold.
Elden Ring
Wait, There Is a Main Story?
Elden Ring is widely known for its cryptic narrative, where many players finish the game without ever fully understanding what actually happened. Traditionally, for FromSoftware, that doesn’t mean there’s no story — it’s just buried behind vague clues, character dialogue, item descriptions, and environmental storytelling. Players either need to patiently piece it together themselves or check one of the countless deep-dive lore videos on YouTube afterward. Granted, this approach has both fans and skeptics, but even without knowing a single detail of the plot, playing Elden Ring completely blind is already an incredible journey.
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Despite ranking among the best open-world games ever made, these titles have managed to objectively surpass Rockstar’s Western in key areas.
With a world this vast and beautiful, full of hidden areas and secret regions, players constantly get lost just by figuring out how to reach certain places. With total freedom to go anywhere (as long as they’re strong enough to survive the dangers waiting for them), nothing stops players from exploring at their own pace and in whatever order feels right. Experimenting with weapons, gear, and spells, learning how enemies behave, and slowly mastering every challenge becomes its own story. And almost every cave, tomb, castle, or dungeon feels meaningful to explore, always offering a memorable boss, unique environment, and valuable loot.
It’s widely recommended to play Elden Ring blind on the first run, without worrying about the “correct” progression or understanding every piece of lore. Approached this way, Elden Ring becomes a deeply personal adventure full of surprises, triumphs, mistakes, and discoveries.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Embrace the Adventurous Life of Misthios
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is one of the most impactful turning points for the long-running franchise, for better or worse. It fully embraces RPG elements like random loot, dialogue choices, and branching side quests with multiple outcomes. It’s also one of the first entries where the central narrative and the whole Templars vs. Assassins layer is overshadowed by the vibrant open world full of discovery, adventures, and activities. It’s safe to assume that among those who spent hundreds of hours exploring Odyssey, very few remember it mainly for the story, as there’s simply too much to see and do beyond the main missions once the prologue is over.
6 Open-World Games Officially Longer Than Any Assassin's Creed Game
Odyssey and Valhalla rank among the biggest Assassin's Creed titles to date, but these massive open-world games are even longer.
While AC Odyssey starts strong and cinematic, with an unforgettable Spartan introduction, many players found themselves losing interest in the main plot soon after leaving the starting island of Kephallonia. The story often feels too stretched across the huge world, and the freedom the game offers makes it easy to ignore. After all, there’s the fully customizable Adrestia ship, crew recruitment and management, countless islands to explore (each with its own little side arc), exciting naval combat, dozens of side quests, tons of loot to hunt down, resources to gather, and much more — all set against the backdrop of the Peloponnesian War, which is all but paradise for a Misthios, a wandering sword for hire.
With Odyssey’s dynamic mechanics, including territory control and large-scale conquest battles, endless contracts, massive fortresses that refresh with new targets, and a randomized mercenary system where elite enemies can be hunted (or hunt you), Assassin’s Creed Odyssey becomes a perfect playground for anyone wanting to embrace the chaotic, opportunistic life of a Misthios driven by personal goals rather than a grand narrative.
Fallout 4
A Scavenger’s Dream for Looting, Crafting, and Building
One of Bethesda’s biggest games to date already speaks for itself, as Fallout 4 continues the familiar formula that the studio’s RPGs are known and loved for. The post-apocalyptic wasteland of Boston and its surroundings is huge, dense, and layered. Much like Fallout 3, the story is there, but it’s so optional that many players barely feel compelled to follow it. Instead, just like STALKER 2, Fallout 4 is primarily an explorable playground where every new location, vault, bunker, settlement, or abandoned factory can turn into a memorable detour worth taking.
With its heavy focus on looting anything that isn’t nailed down, Fallout 4 is a true paradise for scavengers, full of unique weapons, armor, valuables, and resources. This time, though, almost everything players pick up can be of use later, as Fallout 4 introduces game-changing crafting and settlement-building mechanics (expanded even more in the DLC). Weapons, armor, and even entire bases can be shaped from scratch, transforming the world and allowing players to leave a lasting personal mark.
On top of that, Fallout 4 leans even harder into randomized radiant quests than previous titles, making the game feel flexible and highly replayable. With multiple factions to encounter and join along the way, there’s always a new direction to take, so it’s no surprise that many players keep returning to Fallout 4 even after thousands of hours.
Open-World Game Franchises That Are Effectively Dead
Despite their strengths and plenty of promise, some open-world series are very unlikely to make a comeback.