Epic Exploration Games (recommend me some EPICness)

[Red Stray]

Hello Escapist!

I was born in the wrong century. It's an eternal pisser to me that I've been born exactly between the two great exploration ages of our civilisation. Too late for the age of sail, too early for the age of rocket-ships.

Anyway, enough waffling. I love exploration games. I want to play more. Recommend me some. I should probably include some parameters as not every RPG (they're usually RPGs) has the good stuff I want...

I used to play EVE Online, and just 'explore' all day, but play it for any length of time and the feeling that you're just shifting bits of information around on a server becomes unbearable. It doesn't feel exciting, or exploratory. It feels like a desk job with a space-themed UI.
So MMORPGs are... ok... but can get very unimaginative. And repetitious. And the content can seem underdeveloped.

Something like Skies of Arcadia would be perfect (ANYONE remember that game?). Y'know, a game built around discovering a world.

I don't care a whole lot for newness, or graphics or min-maxing or PvP or all that. Just that genuine "oooh!" feeling of discovery.

Tough one, innit?

 

[Dalek Caan]

Minecraft is pretty obvious, 4 times the size of Earth.

 

[kebab4you]

I saw zetaplays play a bit of Dungeon of Dredmor seems to kinda fit in on your description. Also I would suggest Terraria.

 

[Irridium]

Fallout 3 is a damn-fine exploration-based game. But it's not the main point of the game, sadly.

I also suggest Freelancer, if you can find it.

 

[AugustFall]

Minecraft is pretty obvious, 4 times the size of Earth.

8 times sometimes but as much as I love it there isn't much to see past maybe a few cool randomly generated cliffs.

Guildwars is a beautiful game which gives you titles for exploring. I mind finding a giant statue of Balthazar and just looking at it for a while.

 

[Glowbug]

Just Cause 2. Although some/a lot of it was painted with a clone bush, it's always fun to explore. Not quite epic, though. The Witcher 2, however, looks like the sort of game you'd enjoy.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Fallout 3 is a damn-fine exploration-based game. But it's not the main point of the game, sadly.

I also suggest Freelancer, if you can find it.

Exactly the two I would mention. Fallout 3 is a great game to stumble upon weird and cool stuff. Freelancer isn't as diverse, but a good game to go wherever you want and quite literally explore the wonders of universe.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

Minecraft, Terraria, Oblivion, Morrowind (i'd take a guess at, never played it)
Fallout 3 (but not so much Fallout New Vegas, although it still is good.)
And probably the upcoming Skyrim.

Oh and Just Cause 2, LBP (exploration maps and so on).
Oh and those MMORPG, they have degrees of exploration, if not massive amounts of it.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Try the Elder Scrolls series if you haven't already. Bethesda made the first two games (Arena and Daggerfall) available as free downloads a few years ago, and Morrowind and Oblivion were some of the most popular open-world RPGs for last-gen and current-gen systems respectively.

 

[RoboPenguin]

Minecraft is pretty obvious, 4 times the size of Earth.

8 times sometimes but as much as I love it there isn't much to see past maybe a few cool randomly generated cliffs.

Guildwars is a beautiful game which gives you titles for exploring. I mind finding a giant statue of Balthazar and just looking at it for a while.

That's why I recommend the Yogbox to my friends who say the game has gotten a bit stale. It's an easy to install mod compilation that adds some neat new features, treasure boxes all over the world, more crafting recipes, more animals and npcs and villages! http://yogiverse.com/showthread.php?11841-YogBox-A-carefully-chosen-compilation-of-good-mods

 

[Sixcess]

Fallen Earth. It's an indie post-apoc MMO set in the Grand Canyon. The game world is absolutely huge and if you stray off the beaten path you'll often stumble across cool little details, caches of good resources and even entire quest lines. I can't count how many times I've logged in with the intention of doing some missions... then 3 hours later my xp bar hasn't moved because I got on my horse and thought "I wonder what's over that ridge?" and then just kept riding...

Oh, and the entire world is open to you from level 1. Yeah, it's dangerous to explore the higher level areas at low level, but there's nothing to actually stop you from doing so. Get a motorcycle and you can outrun most of the hostiles... well, msot of the time anyway.

 

[AugustFall]

Minecraft is pretty obvious, 4 times the size of Earth.

8 times sometimes but as much as I love it there isn't much to see past maybe a few cool randomly generated cliffs.

Guildwars is a beautiful game which gives you titles for exploring. I mind finding a giant statue of Balthazar and just looking at it for a while.

That's why I recommend the Yogbox to my friends who say the game has gotten a bit stale. It's an easy to install mod compilation that adds some neat new features, treasure boxes all over the world, more crafting recipes, more animals and npcs and villages! http://yogiverse.com/showthread.php?11841-YogBox-A-carefully-chosen-compilation-of-good-mods

I heartily condone this I have the Yogbox too. It rules.

 

[Bad Jim]

There's a racing game called FUEL with a massive game world. There's not a whole lot to do apart from racing, and you have to win races to unlock most of the map (Grrrr) but it is quite fun to grab a motorbike or something and randomly ride around, climbing hills, flying off cliffs etc.

I wouldn't pay full price for it unless you are into arcade style racing as well. But if you see it really cheap on a Steam sale or something you'll probably enjoy yourself.

Here's a speeded up video of someone going from one corner of the map to the other. It took over 2 hours.

 

[w00tage]

Ok, Skies of Arcadia looks like a really fun concept. We should make games like that.

 

[Blastinburn]

Fuel, 14000 square kilometers. You drive cars around an abandoned landscape with nothing but ill tended roads and occasional trucks as remaining signs of humanity. There are plenty of beautiful, wow inducing spots to find, and the game tells you when one is nearby so you less likely to miss them without telling you exactly where each one is from the start.

EDIT: After spotting (pass in range of your radar/gps) vista points and other important items are added to your map. This way you can find them again easily if you wish to ignore them at first.

 

[ms_sunlight]

I loved Skies of Arcadia. The most fun I ever had exploring in a game was Morrowind, though. There are just so many cool things to find in Morrowind, you never know what's around the next corner.

 

[EcoHulk]

Shadow of Colossus, once you take time not going after the Colossi and go jumping into gorges, you will have trouble not exploring for awhile in that game.

Knytt, free downloadable game.

Morrowind, go explore some wasteland to find a nice enchanted weapon.

Those are the ones off the top of my head.

 

[Red Stray]

cheers for the responses guys! This is easily enough to keep me entertained.

It seems like the Morrowind / Oblivion series has the most votes, I'll give that a go.
I've heard a lot about Freelancer and space is definitely my kinda place.
Stuff like FUEL looks cool but I'm not really into racing.

Yeah Skies of Arcadia was genius. When you really got down to it, it was just an average JRPG with those "didn't have to include it but included it anyway" touches that make a game truly great.

I mean, it's perfectly linear, the fight system was uninspired, the story was saturday-morning cartoon stuff.
But the difference between being told,
"your next mission is in this mysterious pyramid" and being told,
"there's a pyramid out there somewhere, go and fly around the world in your sky-boat until you discover the continent it's on" is MASSIVE.
It makes you feel as if you are actually contributing something to the world rather than riding through it on story-rails.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

FUEL

I had hours of fun just driving around on my ATV exploring the world.