The best games in an open world with a surprisingly dark tradition

Summary

• Games in the open world often have hidden tragedies.

• Haikus in the spirit of Tsushima explores dark themes.

• Subnautica's Eerie Deep Dive reveals a dark tradition.

Games in the open world often thrive the excitement of freedom. Players go to sunset, a scale of impossible mountains, or diving heads into an uncharted terrain – all of it at a pace. But sometimes, behind these horizons and cheerful NPCs, something, something bleeding with cracks. A layer of tradition that does not shout but whispers. It gnaws at the edges of adventure and makes every step feel a little harder.

These are stories that hide their tragedies in temples, carry warnings through static or burials of whole civilization under the land – and they are all the more scary because the world is still moving.

1

Ghost tsushima

Even the wind carries sorrows in Tsushima

There is no lack of beauty in the goldfields of Tsushima, from the sakura flowers captured in the wind to the silent reflection of temples set in the cliffs. But for all your aesthetic poetry, Ghost tsushima He is quietly choking. Silence in the world is not peace – it is the consequences. The bodies hang from Toria Gates. The villages smoke after Mongolian raids. The whole community disappears between one track and another.

Players who decide to read haikus scattered throughout the island will find themselves writing about death, isolation and release. There is a persistent tension between the teachings tied to the honor of Jin's samurai education and the desperate tactics needed to fight the enemy who does not play according to the same rules. And under all the buried, the growing feeling is that no matter how many Mongols are expelled, something sacred has been lost.

2

Subnautica

Under the waves no one can hear you go crazy

At first sight, Subnautica is calm. There is a kind of hypnotic calm that glides with neon reefs while Peepers have arrows between corals. But as soon as the sun sets – or worse as soon as the deep breakup checks around 300 meters – players begin to understand that they are not alone. And they should never be here in the first place.

The deeper the dive is, the foreign ecosystem becomes. Giant predators lurk in black water, bioluminescence flashing in unnatural samples and abandoning extraterrestrial structures with a tongue that does not want to decipher. Then there is an infection – a bacterium pulsating under the skin of a player, a mysterious platform for recovering a quarantine that shoots down any ship that tries to leave, and a quiet consequence that this ocean was not only to maintain people. He was designed to never let them leave.

3

Horizon Zero Dawn

The ground is not just dead. It was an autopsy

About the world is something frighteningly untouched Horizon Zero Dawn. Cities broke into dust. Wildlife was replaced by cold, humming machines. And yet nature regenerated everything in brilliant color. But the beauty is camouflage. This world is not in the usual sense of post-apocalyptic-it is after extinction. Humanity did not survive. Restarted.

When players peel off the layers of the story of Project Zero Dawn, the tone moves out of curiosity to horror. The best minds of the Earth realized that they could not stop the swarm of separate machines for deadly death, and instead decided to erase their whole life in a controlled collapse and then later deployed it through AI and genetic engineering. World Aloy wanders through the second chance – it is the digital hail of Mary performed by Ghosts.

4

Wilderness

It's not the end. It's about the loop

From the outside, Wilderness I feel like a perfect independent adventure. Small solar system, a rough wooden spacecraft and a charming extraterrestrial society driven by curiosity. But this is a game where the sun explodes every 22 minutes and no one can remember except the player.

The deeper the survey goes, the darker the tradition gets. Civilization deleted by black holes, scientists imprisoned in time bubbles and an ancient species that tried to prevent the death of the universe, but only became Doom. The story of Nomai is told in fragments – deployed in the walls, scattered through the planets, always one grating from sadness. And when players finally reveal the truth, there is no boss struggle, no finals save. Just a quiet, inevitable conclusion that requires them to go.

5

Deadly death

Delivery of hope while the world bleeds

Few open worlds feel lonely than the one in Deadly death. In the traditional sense it is not empty – it is ghosts. Every ridge, valleys and ruins were scarred by something called Death Stranding, an event that torn the boundary between the living and the dead. Now, Timefall Rain ages anything that touches, the soul manifests itself as invisible monsters, and children in jars are the only way to feel what comes.

But the darkest part is not what is in the world – so it was like this. Suicide causes an explosion at a nuclear level. All cities are erased from the map by the only BT meeting. And all this is somehow packed in a delivery simulator. The irony is brutal. Players walk for hours to reconnect the broken America, carry the corpses on their backs and watch the holograms smiling at them, while the world ends quietly behind the locked door of the bunkers.

6

The Legend of Zelda: Major's Mask

The month is not the only thing that falls

There was always something a little Major's mask. Certainly, re -uses the characters of the characters from OcarinaAnd technically, it takes place in the land adjacent to Hyrule. But from the opening scene where Link falls into the thermine and becomes scrubbing, it is clear that this story is not here to comfort anyone.

The moon crashes. Everyone knows it. And they either pretend that it is not happening or not despair. One woman is waiting for her fiancé who was cursed to the child. Father forgets the name of his daughter. A little girl watches her house to attack her ghosts every night. And a link that will save them all will never stay. No matter how many lives it touches, the three -day loop reset everything. No one remembers. In addition.