What are some games with really interesting settings that aren't just fun to look at...

Your moms ass is pretty interesting
xenoblade chronicles is an intresting setting

Morrowind, Oblivion and I'd argue for Skyrim are good for this. You explore them once and are content. The other TES games aren't as fun to explore, and subsequent explorations are dull.

Just looking through my currently installed games, and some fun games with exploration I see are:

Kill yourself :)

it would help if the locales were interesting, but nothing in the elder scrolls series sparks any sort of intrigue.

Red Dead Redemption really hit the spot for me, so varied.
But I'm also a big fan of westerns so that might be it.

Will we ever get an open world with good lighting?

The rules quite clearly state you have to be 18+ to post here.

Oh, and add to my list Darksiders 1 and 2. They were fun to explore.

Eventually we will.
Gtav has the potential for it, but for some reason Rockstar didn't take the opportunity.

Luckily mods fixed that

mushrooms and displacement hills don't really do much for me, there needs to be some semblance of design

the Myst series, definitely, and of course Metroid should probably be mentioned.

It was alien and foreign; ripe for exploration and full of random shit in terms of coherence that gave it a unique feel. The Tamriel Unlimited mod looks pretty good at recapturing that, but some of the fan added buildings look garbage and need holocausting.

vanilla wow had pretty decent skyboxes, and night time was actually dark
then for god knows what reason they made night time a slightly darker shade of the daytime

Hello /a/ crossposter. made in abyss is good though so I don't mind To stay on topic, Pikmin always gave me an amazing sense of exploration.

The Witcher 3 allowed lot of fuckery because you can grab on things like on GTA IV. Dont think they did that on purpose, just something that was left in the game and you can exploit to complete some quests in ways you arent supossed to. The map is huge so if you turn off the hud you can even get lost and find things you didnt expect.The invisible wall around the witches tree doesnt allow any of that tough, i spent hours trying to fuck my way through it early in the game. You are only supossed to go there at the very end of the game

Dying Light is also a game where you just go off running and climbing shit but most buildings are closed and the "parkour" is asscreed style, so there isnt much room for skill or getting creative

Crysis 1 levels arent that big, the game is more about creative ways of killing than exploration

yes it is, and you should all watch it

yes, I definitely wouldn't consider Crysis a game that's about exploration, it's a pretty game but it's action focused and is all about pushing you along from one point to the next.

You can explore MY ASSHOLE if you want.

Besides all the games that have been mentioned itt, I'd say The Longest Journey for it's interesting worlds, atmosphere, characters and music.
Also stay away from it's sequels.

Ubisoft is getting good at that. You should check GR: Wildlands.

I should have mentioned, that there are plenty of point&click games with good worlds to explore, but if someone is new to the genre, TLJ is a good starting point, with mostly intuitive puzzles and not having all that much backtracking(compared to other games from the genre).

I would say Xenoblade X but

Before coming in the thread I thought the thumbnail of the 1st pic was a minecraft with glsl shaders and a textsure pack screenshot.

Planetside 2 has a good lighting system but of course if you turn it on your fps drops from 5 to 1 and it's not consistently like in your pics, and the game itself is trash.

What saddens me is that if rockstar starts listening to their userbase, their userbase nowadays is gta forums and the kind of people who say gta 4 was good so not even that will save them. And listening to their userbase is important because with gta 5 they showed it's obvious they don't actually play their own game so they need someone to tell them what to do with the franchise.

great imagery and a heavy focus on exploration and manipulating your environment. the only downside is the disconnect between different areas where you get tossed into an entirely different venue.

Best games ITT

It's freeware in terms of distribution. You can't argue that an optional donation makes it proprietary, especially since RMS advocates optional donations to developers.

Be sure to actually learn what words mean before you use them, user.

I really don't think either 4 or 5 deserve the hate they get.
I like both, they do some things really well and other really poorly, but it's good that after all this time they're still trying to change things around.

Don't get me wrong I also love the ps2 games, but they do all feel very samey if you play them now, at least the new ones are very different from each other

I actually cannot think of any truly good exploration games that tick all the boxes. Exploration is usually just some thing tacked onto an existing game for a bunch of low effort and unrewarding secrets, or is the main focus using random procedural generation and putting all the gameplay aside so you can do nothing but see the same creatures and structures in different colors for hours.
I cannot remember the last time I found some secret and was truly amazed by it and felt a sense of accomplishment for finding it.

proprietary freeware is still proprietary, the donations make no difference in this.

It's called REAL LIFE

Again, lack of source =/= proprietary as it is not under any copyright law.

You mean read the manga.

do both.

Never heard of it, but a quick search shows that its review scores are absolute shit.

It's always under copyright law. By default, all rights are reserved regarding the source code, since there isn't any license explicitly stating anyone can use it.

Just when I thought I escaped /g/. You're a fucking retard.

Basically I want Mount and Blade with updated graphics and deeper faction mechanics. I'd be fine with that.

What's your problem now you fucking retard? I didn't even mention a game because none exist and then you come up and post a retarded reply that doesn't even make sense.
Jesus Christ this board is getting more autistic by the day.

Go back.

Fuck off you autist. I've been here for much longer than you.

Made in Abyss

Aoty tbqh

If konosuba got a 3rd season it would be asspounding made in abyss.

Nah, first half of ep1 of miab is better than the entirety of konosuba, which is nice, but dragon maid tier otherwise.

If you consider an Interesting world only then Borderlands is a top tier Universe that they trashed with shitty writing, story and gameplay.

why is she getting raped like 29 seconds in

Just cause 2 had some pretty good looking mountains and clouds.

Tfw konosuba will NEVER EVER get another season because the only reason it got animated in the first place was to promote the light novel

That is literally why most anime exists. Anime exclusively is not a profitable venture, you either need to kike up the Bluray prices or use it to advertise other stuff.

Man, you are so dumb and uninformed.

Ivalice. I know FF12 gets a lot of hate from the Ivalice fans who prefer the grittier Tactics version of the world, but one of the things I think FF12 did right was making towns both large and populated. It feels like most video game towns have maybe a dozen NPCs, but Rabanastre alone has probably upwards of a hundred citizens wandering around between the upper areas, Lowtown, the Airport, and the three access areas.

punished, watch the show fam

...

K goon

All 3 Metroid Prime games suit the bill

...

STALKER is pseudo open world I guess.

Nothing you posted is an argument either.

Stalker

Dishonored is pretty good for first playthrough.

tbh both Dishonored games did jack shit to explore their weirdass setting.

2 did the complete opposite and torpedoed any and all mystery the setting had.

Why do people even give a shit?
I played through XBX on cemu twice and didn't have any real problems.

Subnautica. I can't recommend this game more. I've been playing it constantly the last few days and I've never felt more wondered and tense. The different types of biomes are amazing, the monsters that exist inside of them are super neat, too.

And for exploring them in different ways: you have so many tools to do so as you progress through the tech tree. It's good stuff, fam.

Also side game: Zeno Clash. Game is a bit rough mechanically but you're in a bizarre fucking world with lots of strange critters and fun landscapes to explore.

There are games like that? There wasnt much to find, but I liked riding around in shadow of the colossus just exploring the landscape

This must be bait. The only thing that series has going for it is exploration and the occasional really interesting quest.

This is specifically why I didn't mention 2, because I agree

I think in Witcher 3 all I could find that I could "glitch" was that hedge maze in that mansion, where if you jumped up on a roof and then walked across it towards the maze you could walk about 4 feet above the maze hedges.

Bump for quality posting.

Fallout 4, with unlimited jetpack mod. The world is definitely more varied than Oblivion and Skyrim, although still not as good as Morrowind.

I think the Professor Layton games, if a little simple, are pretty good for this. They're just fun little puzzle games is all with a cozy world and some light exploration.

No one has mentioned Dark Souls yet which is crazy. But Demon Souls is also pretty good in this regard. Both have really interesting settings, though Dark Souls 1 is a bit more heavy on the exploration side than Demons.