Open-World Games With Locations You Can Miss If You Stick To The Story

The scale and breadth of the open-world genre can get somewhat overwhelming sometimes. These games present some truly massive worlds for fans to explore, and they often demand a correspondingly huge time commitment to boot.

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Given the scope of such games, it often happens that simply completing the main story alone will cause players to miss out on some interesting locales. Here’s which titles have plenty of cool spots that story-focused fans might simply never encounter.

7

Fallout 4

Missing Links In The Supply Chain

Released

November 10, 2015

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Fallout 4 is one of Bethesda’s most successful games, and it’s easy to see why. The vividly detailed Commonwealth Wasteland is full of interesting ruins and cityscapes to explore. The game’s new enhanced crafting systems give players a multitude of options for exploring the wastes and giving themselves a fighting chance against whatever they find there.

One of Fallout 4‘s biggest claims to fame is the new settlement system, which lets players claim pockets of the Commonwealth for themselves and build new bases and even villages for NPCs to flourish and trade in. Working with the Minutemen faction will open up a lot of these settlements for industrious fans, but players who are dead-set on finding their son will likely never see most of these nascent homesteads. Many potential settlement spots are small and somewhat generic, like County Crossing and Somerville Place, but others, like Kingsport Lighthouse and the massive Spectacle Island, are extremely distinct, and definitely worth a visit.

Skipping Skyrim’s Holds

Released

November 11, 2011

Developer(s)

Bethesda Game Studios

OpenCritic Rating

Strong

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is one of Bethesda’s most influential games. This expansive open-world RPG gives players countless ways to build their Dragonborn and explore a rich and robust northern setting, slaying dragons and discovering legendary treasures along the way.

Skyrim is packed so full of side content that most players find themselves ignoring the main storyline entirely. On the other hand, players who do focus on the main story will completely miss several major regions in the game. Regions like Morthal and Dawnstar have very little to offer players who don’t stray from the critical path, even though they are home to some pretty major sidequests. If the Dragonborn doesn’t get involved in Skyrim‘s ongoing civil war, they likely won’t spend much time in Solitude either.

5

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Mystery and Misdirection

Released

March 22, 2024

ESRB

Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Themes, Violence

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Dragon’s Dogma 2 made some truly strange creative decisions, heightening the surreal nature of the game’s story. The title’s limited fast travel capabilities means players will constantly be wandering the expansive open world on foot. Many players might find this tedious, but given the game’s rich and endless array of secrets, there’s plenty to reward the determined explorer.

Secrecy and misdirection are some of the core pillars of Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s design, and the world of the game exemplifies this very well. If players aren’t extremely focused on the game’s many secrets, they’ll miss out on some major parts of the world. Some of the most significant locations and encounters, like the lairs of the elusive Sphinx, can quite easily be missed by players who aren’t curious enough to journey off the beaten path.

4

Red Dead Redemption 2

Skipping The Series’ Legacy

Released

October 26, 2018

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Rockstar’s iconic prequel to Red Dead Redemption ratchets up the detail and historical realism of its fictionalized Western setting, bringing players deep into the Wild West through minor historical details and enhanced graphics. As is Rockstar’s milieu, the developers have spared no expense on the story, entrancing players with the slow but inevitable decline and collapse of the Van Der Linde Gang.

The game’s open world is almost as vast as the real United States that inspired it, and players will have a lot of ground to cover if they want to see everything. Fans who are solely interested in experiencing Arthur’s tragic story will inevitably miss out on a lot of what the vast frontier has to offer. Most notoriously, the previous game’s setting of New Austin and West Elizabeth are present in the game, but can only be fully explored after the campaign is all but over.

3

Tears of the Kingdom

Staying Out Of The Caves

Systems

Released

May 12, 2023

Developer(s)

Nintendo

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom did a lot to elevate the expansive map it mostly inherited from its predecessor. The complex structures and vehicles players can cobble together using the game’s Ultrahand ability open up wild new avenues for exploration and traversal, and the addition of Sky Islands and the expansive Underground vastly increases the size of the play space.

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Link’s quest to defeat Ganondorf and protect the land of Hyrule will inevitably bring him all over the world, from the desert sands of the Gerudo to the Gorons’ volcanic domain. But some of the greatest treasures are hidden in more secret realms, where the main story never treads. Players can find terrifying and fascinating secrets like the menacing Gleeok Den and a series of brutal coliseums, but only if they spend much more time underground than the storyline expects them to.

2

Elden Ring

Choose Your Battles

Released

February 25, 2022

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

FromSoftware pulled out all the stops for its first open-world soulsborne game, and the result is a staggeringly large open world that fans can lose dozens of hours exploring. Players have multiple options to pursue their main goal of restoring the Elden Ring; they must challenge a variety of Shardbearers lurking in Legacy Dungeons throughout the land.

Fans can pick and choose their battles on their quest to the top. This means that even major, prominent locations like Stormveil Castle can be entirely bypassed if fans so choose. Players can make it through an entire playthrough without ever meeting some of the most prominent bosses. In fact, if they aren’t diligently pursuing questlines and referencing walkthroughs, many fans will likely entirely miss regions like Miquella’s Haligtree, a massive location home to Malenia, one of the game’s most notorious bosses.

1

Fallout: New Vegas

Fighting For Hoover Dam

Released

October 19, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas remains an enduring open-world RPG due in large part to the high level of interactivity and flexibility of its world. As players make choices and side with factions throughout the Wasteland, characters begin responding to their decisions, opening up new paths and possibilities in future quests.

The Mojave Wasteland is full of secrets. Players who focus on the main quest and their journey to get revenge on Benny will miss out on a lot of surprising and intricate sidequests, some of which might even have implications on the final battle. While the main storyline does see the Courier bumping elbows with most of the major factions in the game, intricate and detailed regions like Vault 11, which features a gripping and involved story of political corruption and cruelty, are completely optional, and easy to miss.

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