No Man’s Sky. Take advantage of the custom game rules to tweak to your preferred gameplay. Personally, I skip all the tutorial stuff and boost resources as I like flying around/upgrading my ship more than the core gameplay loop.

Disco Elysium. I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned yet. There was also legal drama with the original creators, so feel free to pirate. Not that Lemmy needs convincing of it.

• Subnautica

>“Atmospheric” game

>Looks inside

>Water.

Cyberpunk 2077. It had a lot to build on with the IP being decades old with a lot of worldbuilding done already. Such a huge, intricate, and alive world. My first playthrough took 200 hours just from exploration, and there’s a TON i never got to. Over 1k hours later, there’s still connections i haven’t made, secrets i haven’t found. I honestly haven’t found a more immersive game for me.

Runner up: Red Dead Redemption 2. Again, the world is so alive and detailed that my immersion goes off the charts. Another 200hr first playthrough. NPCs have lives and schedules, the voice acting is fantastic, and the overall world building is immaculate. Tiny details that 0.01% of players would ever notice are carefully constructed (Lemat cartridges, looking at you). Wildlife interacts realistically with other wildlife and other stimuli. Cats in cities will search for, find, and hunt mice. I never fast traveled because just riding across the landscape and looking around was a better time. Could not recommend more highly, but watching or playing the first one first is advised.

Fallout NV

While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea there’s something about playing NV with radio NV running and running around the emptier parts of the map, then I get jumped by a bunch Romaboo larpers.

Arcanum

While it’s immesian is a bit different it’s music and story telling can drag me in easily.

Outer wilds

Death is inevitable, so you may as well enjoy some music with your pals.

If you’re willing to hunt for a 2009 oldie, I have a guilty love for The Saboteur.

GTA/Assassin’s creed esque where you play a race car driving Irishman helping the resistance in WWII, Nazi occupied Paris.

Gameplay can be repetitive, but free roaming Paris was a lot of fun. Plus, when I finally travelled to Paris IRL, I had a few “I know this place!” moments that felt really cool as a first-time visitor.

Firewatch was a good game for me to get immersed in for an evening. It involves hiking around an isolated open world park. It follows a linear story which is pretty interesting, but I think there’s an option to wander freely after completion

Noita.

Just be prepared to die. A lot.

I’ve been playing Pal World this past week and been having a lot of fun exploring and discovering the world. The atmosphere is quite cartoony but you can also have a pet monkey with a gun go into battle with you. I’ve spent hours at a time just wandering the lands discovering new areas and also get lost in the base building aspect of the game.

Dishonored and BioShock come to mind.

They’ve likely already been mentioned.

Sekiro

Lies of P

Hollow Knight & Silksong

Gravity Rush.

OMG I could float for hours in this game and I HATE TRAVERSAL. Like, literally traversing long distances is one of the main reasons I never play open world games.

Gravity Rush is one of a kind though.

I realize this may be irresponsible of me to mention, but Skyrim* in VR has had me forget IRL hours by the dozens —often several per session. I’d pop in for a quick game, and finally close out to find it’s been dark for hours. 🫨

*modded to your taste, ofc

I’ve been getting into Avowed and having more fun than I expected. The dialogue is a bit bland though so I’m glad you can speed read and skip.

This is Breath Of The Wild or Death Stranding. Both got me through COVID lockdown.