Yeah, the thread title is wrong.
I was about to take exception to some of these as I find their open worlds to be subpar (Forbidden West) but do find them to be great games.
I mean, if we are talking open worlds it is shocking how bad the world itself is in so many open world games.
Also, I take exception to games like Morrowind and Daggerfall being missing from this list as those titles epitomized the nascent open world RPG and frankly to this day feel like the closest precursors to what Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring are going for - true sandboxes.
To me, there are two types of "open world" games:
1) Games where the world is truly open and about discovery - finding hidden missions, hidden narrative elements, hidden gear that feels organic and lived in where you will miss much of the game on your first playthrough. These come from the Elder Scrolls sort of world building.
2) Games where the open world is a giant hub - This is the vast vast majority of open world games. HUD markers, auto-navigation, etc. where the game really isn't encouraging much exploration other than happening upon random encounters or side-content. In my opinion these games are really not about the open world - they are very on rails games that just have open sandboxes that you move through to get to the next on-rails section of content.
I far prefer the first and wish more game in the second category would ditch the open world.
