Open world games with a richer tradition than Elden Ring

Open world games they have always been loved for their breathtaking environments and epic stories that often stretch for dozens of hours in-game, immersing players in stories that are among the best in the video game space. While many have their favorites, it's pretty hard to mention open world history without talking about it Elden Ring. It takes place in a completely original universe, in the middle of a beautiful landscape full of characters and secrets waiting to be discovered. However, the biggest draw comes from the lack of direction the game provides, forcing players to go out and discover the lore on their own rather than being explicitly told the details.

When it comes to gaming, Elden Ring is about as good as it gets rich traditionbut within the open world genre, there are several other games that manage to infuse their world with even deeper stories and narratives that make every NPC and city come to life. Over the years, players have been gifted with post-apocalyptic adventures that blur the lines between reality and make-believe and fantasy journeys that are woven into every aspect of the world itself, all of which demonstrate a commitment to narrative depth in a way that virtually no other game can compete with. By having such a vast background for players to uncover over time, their actions suddenly carry a lot more weight, and instead of just completing a series of disconnected tasks, they instead slowly paint a picture of the entire universe that lies just beyond their screens.

Fallout: New Vegas

Interweaving of ideologies and philosophies

• Factions and political rivalries are dictated by player choice.

• Each region reflects a different future.

Fallout: New Vegas presents a world where lore is not hidden in fragments or scattered in audio logs, but actively shown through every dialogue and every quest completed. The Mojave is largely shaped by ideology, with factions like the NCR and Caesar's Legion representing fully realized philosophies rooted in pre-war history and the evolution of humanity in the apocalypse. As a result, the encounters and stories themselves never feel like one-off notes. Instead, they serve to reinforce larger themes in the world and the player's choices within it.

What uplifts New Vegas above Elden Ring when it comes to the depth of a lore, it's how well it communicates its narrative without simplifying things. Each location tells its own story, be it survival or economic collapse. While FromSoftware's storytelling is more concerned with subtlety, in Mojave reading between the lines only serves to reinforce the already strong narrative in front of the player. The world invites speculation and analysis, allowing the player to observe how political movements fail and cultures change in ways that are dictated by the past and the characters within it.

The whole history in your hands

• Deep mythologies are embedded in the world.

• Cultural perspectives permeate every interaction.

The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind's lore operates on a completely different level than most open-world RPGs, acting more like a dense historical archive than a setting for action. The game is filled with books and texts from times long before the game takes place, forcing players to piece together various truths and myths to create a clearer picture of the world around them. Gods can be real, fake, or something in between, and the game never provides a definitive answer to many of its more obscure questions, opening the door to theories that are almost never confirmed.

Many of the lore is heavily rooted in anthropology, detailing the stories of adventurers and characters from different lands and tying them all together in a single universe. In many cases, stories can actually be told from several different perspectives, such as Dunmer history and Derevarine prophecies, meaning that one story can quickly turn into a layered set of notes that can be both true and false at the same time. in the core Morrowind it's about long-term engagement, rewarding players who choose to read closely and pay attention to one of the richest and most compelling fictional universes ever created.

World Of Warcraft

Bordering on too much tradition

• Decades of evolving tradition across continents and regions.

• Everything from lowly villages to cosmic forces play a role.

World of Warcraft the tradition was already quite intense in its early days, but two decades later the stories have only grown bigger and wider. Azeroth is not just a playground where players can race; it's a fully realized universe with its own creation myths, ancient wars, and recurring historical cycles that players can immerse themselves in right from the start. As the game receives new expansions every few years, new layers are constantly being added that recontextualize old events while introducing new factions, gods, characters, and a few terrifying existential threats.

Scale really is the key. Story WoW instead, it consists of thousands of quests and battles that all add up to a larger story. While not every storyline plays out perfectly, the breadth of it is truly remarkable, taking the player on an adventure through the orc lineages and elder beings, making the world feel alive at every turn. For eagle-eyed players, there's not only an insane amount of actual content, but also plenty of obscure details to discover, giving them enough rabbit holes to fill a lifetime.

Arcanum: From Steamworks A Magick Obscura

Connecting stories with mechanics

• Conflicts within ideologies.

• History has a direct impact on game systems.

Arcanum's the lore is inseparable from its mechanics and weaves even the smallest details of the story into the game itself. The central conflict between magic and technology is both a charming narrative hook and a fundamental truth that shapes world politics, cultures, and even physics, while defining much larger aspects of the universe, such as entire races and belief systems. Players will often find themselves confronted with philosophical themes in the middle of combat, and will have to choose not only which spells and attacks to use, but also consider the consequences of those actions on the wider world around them.

When it comes to actual gameplay, stories and historical events can explain why certain technologies failed, why magic is feared, and why societies evolved along radically different paths than might have seemed more obvious. Like traditional RPGs, lore is mostly conveyed through dialogue, books, and environments, but it's also experienced through the world's reactions to player decisions, with decision-making directly tied to major story revelations and even character fates throughout the game.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Connecting humanity with legends

• Regions shaped by historical politics.

• Myths and folklore are based on reality.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's the lore stands out for how deeply human it is, while still focusing heavily on the fantasy elements that rule the world. On the surface, monsters and magic dominate, but the real narrative weight comes from centuries of political conflict and cultural decay, combining mystical beings with a more realistic depiction of society and its tensions. Each kingdom has a documented past, detailing the triumphs and failures of the people within it, and each myth is connected to humanity, no matter how dark and mysterious it may be. The main story itself is where most people focus, but the wider world is probably where the game really shines. It's pretty hard to stray far off the beaten path without encountering a long and exciting quest that could take the player on an equally impressive adventure.

The characters are also a huge driver in the depth of the narrative. Not only do the characters interact with each other and the player, but they also explicitly mention stories from the past and the suffering or success that followed shortly after. There are plenty of cases where stories from the past have become just as relevant as those from the present, rewarding players who pay close attention to the finer details with huge revelations they might otherwise miss. This makes each dialogue feel like a series of crucial details that bring folklore and history into the present, giving players more chances to experience the world's story in ways other than following the main story.