What are your favorite locations/landmarks in open world games that you would describe as "arbitrary" or "unimportant"...

What are your favorite locations/landmarks in open world games that you would describe as "arbitrary" or "unimportant" or even "forgotten"?

When I say this I don't mean in the context of the game itself, like when the entire point of a village is to be the "remote outpost" that doesn't count. When I say arbitrary and unimportant, I mean even outside of the context of the games world

Here's an example, Serenne Stable in Breath of the Wild. It serves no real purpose other than being a stopgap between the Snowfield Stable farther up the path north and the Tabantha Bridge Stable farther down the path South, which is the quicker path to Rito Village, while Snowfield serves the purpose of being a rest stop before reaching the tower. It's probably the most useless stable.

Any other examples of locations like this in video games?

Can find a picture but Stalker had one I liked.
In Shadow of Chernobyl, when you enter Red Forest, there's a watchtower there. Usually a Monolith guy will be standing watch with a sniper.
I like the place because it's a neat detail that makes sense within the world but it's easy to miss since when you're aproaching, you're actually going down a slope to it's right and there's a few bushes in the way.

bump
I think another example would probably be Rustboro City in Hoenn
It's a city on the far west of the entire region and it's likely you'll only visit it once or twice. It's a big city, but it's not a port city like Slateport or Mossdeep City and there's no landmarks worth returning to other than for story events so it's mostly left forgotten.

Entire game of Dynasty Warriors 9. Faggot at koei could fill so much space with content. But sometimes its emptier than empty.

If we're just talking worlds in general you can apply that to pretty much every open world ever made. A lot of empty space. But that's part of the open world experience in my opinion

Digimon World had an area that fits the bill.
Toy Mansion. You go there to fight Warumonzaemon, recover Monzaemon's suit and save Hagurumon.
But after you do, there's no reason to ever return there.
Aside from Nanimon.
I mean, the whole game is riddled with areas like that.

I also want to add that World of Warcraft in its heyday was the master of shit like this because Blizzard would often use distant parts of the map to dump NPCs and buildings for testing purposes that otherwise had no dialogue

I remember travelling along the coast reaching points where there's nothing but water and tall hills you can't climb, and eventually landing on a secluded beach with an empty house. There was no way too it other than swimming and wasn't considered remote in the context of the game but nevertheless was just one of hundreds of testing houses Blizzard put in remote places

about all rpgs save for some cookiecutter locations like New Reno, which is a meme fest

Any out-of-the way detail, really.
Here's a shot of xenoblade 2, looking at the landscape through a generic hotel window. There are vistas meant to show you the landscape, but I found charm in being indoors and seeing it.

Naw, in the vast majority of RPGs every settlement serves a purpose. Even if that purpose is literally to be the designated forgotten place which like I said doesn't always count

There is no feeling cozier in open world games than being at an inn or some other building and looking out at the distance, seeing far-out locations you can explore, through a window. Bonus points if the weather outside is hard/raining

Too bad Blizzard made the entire world meaningless outside the latest raid tier. Hell even the new Mythic Difficulty dungeons are easier than leveling dungeons due to item stat bloat.

Blizzard killed WoW by making it easier to turn it into a mindless grind fest. I mean, WoW was always a grindfest, but I felt like the early days there was still a big emphasis on just filling the world with real people to make it feel alive

Also I live less than 20 mins from Blizzards HQ. I saw a couple of Blizzard employees last time I was in Irvine at a Sushi bar talking about Diablo. I would've asked them a question but it didn't seem appropriate at the time
sage for doublepost

The Falls in GW1. It'd a huge area. The nearest outpost is Ventari's Refuge. It's a solid 40-minutes to an hour to get to the actual falls at the end unless you're using a running build and the titular falls don't do anything except give a small text prompt saying something like "this is a waterfall". The only two things of note along the way that I recall; a beautifully over designed statue of Balthazar that can take you to the Fissure of Woe, which is utterly useless as you've already been to the Temple of Ages by this point, and a mesmer boss close to the falls themselves. This means the only people who have any pressing need to go to the falls are poor mesmers who need to skillcap a very specific skill for their build, and they will need to take a full party to go get it, since you can't kill a boss with a running build they'll take a solid hour to get there and before Nightfall added heroes it probably took a lot longer.

Most of GW1's maps probably count.

99% of them you need to traverse to get the next mission. 99% of them have quests that unlock skills taking place in them. Back when GW1 was actually alive, no matter what outpost you'd go to you'd find players forming groups to go out and do something, nobody was ever headed to the falls. The Falls goes literally nowhere and there is next to nothing to actually do there.

I remember stumbling across this beautiful flower field in the middle of nowhere in JC2. As far as I remember it had no purpose, no quest led there, it didn't exist for any gameplay purpose, it was just a beautiful little glen in some mountains.

That IS weird as fuck. Some dev having his Zen moment, I'd wager.

This forest in Shadow of The Colossus.
I was always disappointed that you don't fight a smaller Colossus in it.

Eh, I really liked dirtboarding down from the top of the hill to that stable, it lasted like 15-20 seconds but it was pretty fun to do.
It was very fun to find all of the stables too, although I found some about like 50-70 hours into the game because I would usually never follow the roads, thus, miss a lot of stuff/details that game had to offer.

the forest is a fantastic little area in sotc. I kinda prefer that it's a nice peaceful area. Reminds me of the forests I've explored as a kid.

There are quite a few areas like that in JC2. I think the most notable one is on the WW2 outpost island, just west of the biggest tower. On the southwestern coast of the desert island there's a small valley that is green and full of blossoming cherry trees. There are also some rather nice rice fields in an out-of-the-way location on the northeast of the main island.

My nigga. I also liked the small lake area before you fight Kuromori. I was never able to grab the fish though.

Lucky you.
I always wanted to explore forests like that in real life.
As for the game, i also like the idea of having to run away (and then fight with) a large creature that appears out of nowhere in an isolated forest. It would make for a great fight, being hunted down by a larger animal.


That lake is the second best area for me. I prefer those landscapes than the desert, mountains or ruins ones.

Another one I remember I liked was the location of one of the fruit trees which was next to a cliff that lead to the sea, can't find any images of it though. The view from that place was pretty comfy and it stuck with me till this day.
Also one of the save shrines that was in the middle of a valley of green, I remember saving there and staying there asleep for a good ten minutes just because the view was so nice. I think it was the ravine entrance.

Spyro's worlds seem so barren after collecting all the gems. I wish they'd included gray gems that fill a level after you've collected everything like blue stars that replace the stars you've already collected in Mario 64.

The sea one i think that i know. A great view on that one.
This save point in your image was one of the first images that i saw of the game, and i rushed to find this lace as soon as i began to lay. It really adds to the view having all the light pillars lit when staying there.
Also, seeing the initial plains from inside the shrines always felt good.
It looks so peaceful.