Half the fun of playing an open-world game is exploring. These open-world games encourage you to leave the main story behind and do just that.
In recent years, games have ballooned in size. Whereas once upon a time it was common for AAA games to only take a weekend to complete, these days they’re more likely to take a few dozen hours. This trend has gone hand in hand with the rise in popularity of open-world games. Game maps are getting bigger and developers are stuffing them full of optional content to complete.
It’s reached the point where the main story now often takes a backseat to the various side activities on offer, with some games barely having any kind of story to speak of. Whether or not this optional content is always fun, or even worth doing, is up for debate.
Updated July 20, 2024 by Robbie Mitchell: With open-world games more popular than ever before, it’s time to add some more entries to this list. Palworld has given Pokemon a run for its money, Horizon: Forbidden West recently got its big PC release, Once Human has proven free-to-play games can be just as good, and Elden Rings’s big DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, has set the gaming world alight.
These titles have helped prove that it’s not always a bad thing when big open-world games focus on optional content over their main stories. For anyone looking for more games that let them do their own thing, each one of these is a great pick. 1 Palworld
Survival games tend to be famously light on story elements, but even for this genre, Palworld is incredibly light on actual story. It doesn’t feature any kind of main story quest, and outside of a tutorial and missions encouraging the player to take on world bosses and reach new areas, it lets the player do whatever they like.
This is a wise choice because Palworld’s core gameplay loop is a ton of fun. There are tons of Pals to “recruit” and either use either to battle other Pals or work on one’s base. The quests that do exist are entirely optional but offer meaningful rewards and tend to lead to the player discovering new areas. While some players might miss Pokemon’s slightly more structured approach to catching monsters and exploring the world, Palworld offers significant levels of player freedom. 2 Once Human
Once Human has a surprisingly good story for an open-world, live service free-to-play survival game. Based around a particularly bizarre alien invasion, the game’s story is mostly an excuse to push the player into new areas and discover new gear and blueprints.
The game’s real focus, though, is on undertaking sidequests, weekly/seasonal challenges called commissions, and building up the player’s gear and base. In an interesting twist, the game’s servers are set to reset every six weeks (a bit like Tarkov), wiping certain parts of the player’s progression. These resets will also add new features, including continuing the game’s story. This will likely lead to a cycle where every six weeks players will complete the next bit of story as quickly as possible and spend the rest of their time doing optional content while they wait for the next reset/story drop. 3 Horizon: Forbidden West
Unlike some games here, Horizon: Forbidden West does have a decent story to tell. As a direct follow-up from the first game, it follows Aloy not long after she defeats the rogue AI, Hades, and has her searching for a way to save the world. That main story is pretty beefy and will take most players just under 28 hours to complete.
Most of the player’s time spent playing Horizon: Forbidden West, however, will be spent tackling its side content. The game has various side quests and tasks to complete, many of them meaningful, some feeling like filler.
