Games where you can get lost

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Recently while watching some Let's Plays and Spoony's excellent Ultima retrospective I remembered how exciting the Souls games are in the aspect of not knowing what's ahead of you, and losing your directions from time to time. It's perhaps the only mainstream game series right now where one can get genuinely lost and just keep going, and constantly find new places to explore. It adds so much to the sense of adventure and danger when you don't know what's ahead of you or find a way back. Bethesda sandboxes achieve this to an extent, but there's always the minimap and quest tracker to get your bearings.

Or at least to my knowledge. Soulsborne, Fallout and Elder Scrolls series aside, can you name (actually good and enjoyable) games where you can really lose your sense of direction? Preferably RPGs of some sort, because I've recently felt an itch to get back to them. I'd really, really want to feel that rush of constantly finding new places and not knowing what might be lurking around the corner.

 

[Saelune]

Morro---oh...meh, screw it, Morrowind. No quest arrows, no dungeon finder. Hell, when you were told to go to a place, they gave you real directions, like "Go down the road south of town until you reach the fort, turn right until you can turn left, then go until..."

Two World is an underrated diamond in the rough. The game is pretty huge and tries a few interesting ideas that other games dont. 2 is a better game, but its more...focused, so if you want a big world to explore, Id say 1 more than 2. Alot of different environments, like frozen tundra, open deserts, and even a huge bamboo forest.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Silent Hill anything really. 2, 3, Homecoming(vastly underrated), Downpour. So much fog, so many roads. So much mindless fucking back-tracking through near empty streets with monsters trying to buy a blueberry pie from the corner store without asking the baker how his trip to Florida was! So much...

The Amnesia games. Less so Machine for Pigs, though the lab level with the invisible pigs got to me a bit. But certainly the DD had more than a few 'oh...uhmm...I think...blarrgg...' moments.

Oh! The Void! Fuck me, love that game, but fuck me! And the fact the Brothers keep coming to murder your face with giant spikes and pinwheels of flaming mutant flesh didn't help.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Early Silent Hill/Resident Evil games. I remmeber getting lost quite a lot in Code Veronica.

 

[WolfThomas]

Just throwing this out there. The original Darkness. Great game and when you were playing it you got a gist for where everything was. But I tried playing it again a bit more casually (as in not over the space of 2days like I originally did) and that city is confusing. Like you have to know which train station to take to connect to one hub and which back alley to walk and if you don't you end up wondering around lost.

 

[Saelune]

Morro---oh...meh, screw it, Morrowind. No quest arrows, no dungeon finder. Hell, when you were told to go to a place, they gave you real directions, like "Go down the road south of town until you reach the fort, turn right until you can turn left, then go until..."

Yes.

Xenoblade X for good measure for having the best exploration since Morrowind and I don't say it lightly.

My brother got it, but we were disappointed with the combat. I havent played it myself, but I watched him. He considered returning it. Cant say anything about the exploration part of it though.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I remember getting totally lost in Soul Reaver 1 and 2. The first one was because there were so many rooms that looked similar just block everywhere and with the morphing mechanic I eventually lost all bearing. In the second one I also got lost but thta was more because it was so dark. I was literally walking into a wall for 15 minutes thinking it was a long dark tunnel didnt help that the camera was yank again and I had no idea on the puzzle I was on.

Recently I suppose I got lost in Xenoblade Chronicles X that game is huge (some bits are to huge imo) and I can never remember where people are supposed to be.

My brother got it, but we were disappointed with the combat. I havent played it myself, but I watched him. He considered returning it. Cant say anything about the exploration part of it though.

Combats not great and overall the game imo is a step down from Xenoblade Chronicles in every regard except world size (less interesting world though) it does get better later on and you can do some crazy stuff but if we are just talking combat Morrowind isnt very good either imo.

 

[Saelune]

I remember getting totally lost in Soul Reaver 1 and 2. The first one was because there were so many rooms that looked similar just block everywhere and with the morphing mechanic I eventually lost all bearing. In the second one I also got lost but thta was more because it was so dark. I was literally walking into a wall for 15 minutes thinking it was a long dark tunnel didnt help that the camera was yank again and I had no idea on the puzzle I was on.

Recently I suppose I got lost in Xenoblade Chronicles X that game is huge (some bits are to huge imo) and I can never remember where people are supposed to be.

My brother got it, but we were disappointed with the combat. I havent played it myself, but I watched him. He considered returning it. Cant say anything about the exploration part of it though.

Combats not great and overall the game imo is a step down from Xenoblade Chronicles in every regard except world size (less interesting world though) it does get better later on and you can do some crazy stuff but if we are just talking combat Morrowind isnt very good either imo.

Atleast I am an active participant in the combat.

Give it a chance, while the combat is a bit MMO-ish, the exploration is just amazing, I think the best part was when in a quest I had to go to an island (a whole seperate area with it's own enviroment), the island was off the coast and I thought "surely I need a boat or something", but no, the game actually had me straight up swim to that island half a map away, I didn't think games today had the balls to actually do that sort of thing. Another great moment was when you finally get the flying pack for the robots and can go pretty much everywhere, one of the areas that was now accesable was on top of a waterfall, what I found there was definitely not something I expected...

If I am bored maybe I will give it a shot. He did leave it here.

 

[WolfThomas]

Morro---oh...meh, screw it, Morrowind. No quest arrows, no dungeon finder. Hell, when you were told to go to a place, they gave you real directions, like "Go down the road south of town until you reach the fort, turn right until you can turn left, then go until..."

And the paper map they provided. Dungeons and ruins documented in tiny detail. Included routes through the foyadas around Ash Mountain. Individual islands and islets up around Dagon Fel. I would have that thing open half the time tracing my route as I planned it. Trying to work out where I'd gone wrong.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Friday the 13t--

can you name (actually good and enjoyable) games where you can really lose your sense of direction?

Oh poo, way to take the fun out of things.

Minecraft? Especially before compasses pointed to beds, it was really easy to get lost and spend ages wandering around trying to figure out where you built your house.

 

[pookie101]

fallout 4 in the boston ruins. 1600 hours and i still get constantly lost in the alley ways in the city proper

 

[SmallHatLogan]

Morro---oh...meh, screw it, Morrowind. No quest arrows, no dungeon finder. Hell, when you were told to go to a place, they gave you real directions, like "Go down the road south of town until you reach the fort, turn right until you can turn left, then go until..."

I remember once being unable to find a quest destination no matter how much I looked for it (and this was before I had internet access). Unfortunately the quest was to cure my vampirism. I scrapped that character and started a new game.

 

[Saelune]

Morro---oh...meh, screw it, Morrowind. No quest arrows, no dungeon finder. Hell, when you were told to go to a place, they gave you real directions, like "Go down the road south of town until you reach the fort, turn right until you can turn left, then go until..."

I remember once being unable to find a quest destination no matter how much I looked for it (and this was before I had internet access). Unfortunately the quest was to cure my vampirism. I scrapped that character and started a new game.

My first thought was that one. Probably the hardest to find location based on in-game info.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Morro---oh...meh, screw it, Morrowind. No quest arrows, no dungeon finder. Hell, when you were told to go to a place, they gave you real directions, like "Go down the road south of town until you reach the fort, turn right until you can turn left, then go until..."

I figured someone?d get to this before me. I spent a fair amount of time lost (in a good ?I love truly exploring? sort of way) in Morrowind. The first time I played, I started off adhering to the main plot thread until I got to Balmora an hour or so in and found the guilds. Fast forward about 10 hours, I went back DOZENS of pages in the journal and couldn?t find where I dropped the main thread; I had no idea who, where, what, why or how. I had to start a new game an play it just long enough to get back to Balmora and jog my memory, then switched back to my first game. Good times, Bethesda; you?ve since lost your way.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Bloodborne. Man, those streets and branching pathways does get an inebriated woodland creature lost pretty easily.

 

[Bobular]

Friday the 13t--

can you name (actually good and enjoyable) games where you can really lose your sense of direction?

Oh poo, way to take the fun out of things.

Minecraft? Especially before compasses pointed to beds, it was really easy to get lost and spend ages wandering around trying to figure out where you built your house.

I left behind hundreds of tiny houses that I couldn't find my way back to when I first started playing Minecraft. It got to the stage where I wouldn't explore anywhere that wasn't in line of sight of one of the giant beacons I started making everywhere, exploration became a task of find highest mountain, build beacon, explore area, go to next area and build beacon in sight of first beacon.

 

[sageoftruth]

When playing Wizardry, if you don't hand-draw a map as you play through it, you WILL get lost.

Getting hopelessly lost in this first-person dungeon crawler is just as much of a threat as being killed by enemies.