Exploration is one of the core pillars of most video games wherea sense of discovery and mystery is paramount for the game to be engaging. Many games have experimented with this aspect of gaming quite a bit with varying results. Unfortunately, gaming has also become slightly stagnant over time, with many reputed AAA developers preferring to play it safe and not really trying to reinvent the formula any more than required.
This is why it’s crucial to celebrate games that changed the wayplayers approached exploration in their games. Without innovation, gaming will soon become joyless, and the sense of wonder that players enjoy while exploring a vast and detailed open-world landscape would be lost.
6The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
Nintendo needed to come back with a bang after the failure of the Wii U. The launch of the Switch promised to be a step in the right direction, and Nintendo had the perfect launch title to entice as many people to buy this console as possible —The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Pretty much everyone is aware of how revolutionary this game was when it came out, withBreath of the Wildshowing justhow much developers could innovate in the open-world genre. The sense of exploration in this game is unmatched, with players being able to explore a wealth of areas in the game without having to rely on map markers, something that has plagued modern open-world design for quite some time now.
5Super Metroid
TheMetroidvania genrecame into existence with the release of two games that have become legendary in their own right.Castlevania: Symphony of the Nightintegrated the many RPG elements that fans have grown accustomed to in this genre… but when it comes to the sense of exploration that fans expect from this series, they haveSuper Metroidto thank for it.
The game allowed for a great sense of exploration as players explored a hostile alien planet while gaining a lot of power-ups along the way. These powerups not only let them even the odds against the hostile lifeforms in the game but also gave players access to areas that they couldn’t reach early on.
4Dark Souls
The release ofDark Soulscouldn’t have come at a better time, with many people being sick and tired of how AAA gaming had completely stopped taking risks and tried to make their games as accessible and easy to get into as possible.Dark Soulsdid the complete opposite of all of this, forcing players to come to grips with the game on their own terms and understand how the many systems of the game worked.
Dark Souls' incredible level design is one of its biggest strengths, with the carefully constructed map allowing players to loop back to areas they’d visited before and be absolutely floored by the connectivity on display here. The game is truly wonderful in this department and does a great job of evolving the design ethos of Metroidvania games to fit in a 3D landscape.
3Shadow Of The Colossus
Most players expect big open worlds to be packed with details, side activities, NPCs, quests, and everything else along the same lines. So,whenShadow of the Colossuscame out, the somber nature of its vast but empty world served as a sobering way to show how loneliness and isolation could be translated to the video game medium.
The Colossi present in the game didn’t harm a single soul, and the fact that players are tasked with taking down sixteen of these gentle giants for their own selfish purposes makes for a truly harrowing endeavor. Love may triumph over logic more often than not, but there are times when this notion can lead to a less-than-desired outcome.
2Death Stranding
Death Strandingis a game that surprised many people when it was announced, with players being kept in the dark about what this title was all about. After release, the focus on traversal and quieter moments over all-out action perplexed most fans who didn’t realize what made this title so special.
Many yearsafter the release ofDeath Stranding, fans finally understood what Kojima was trying to achieve with this ambitious game. The simple act of exploration has been gamified to impressive levels, and becoming a package delivery man is somehow one of the most engrossing things that fans can ever perform in a video game.
1The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
There’s no denying thatThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrimis one of Bethesda’s biggest gamesand a huge reason why they’ve become such a powerhouse in the gaming industry. However, what this game essentially did was perfect a formula that had been slowly worked upon, withMorrowindsetting up a great base for the company to improve upon.
The fact thatMorrowindlacks any usual forms of Fast Travel and forces players to use carriages and silt striders (among other modes of transportation) to explore the game world feels incredibly unique to this day. The Nerevarine starts out very weak before eventually becoming strong enough to traverse the world of Morrowind at their own pace without having to worry about a random monster or bandit taking their life in no time flat.
