Best Open-World Games That Let You Explore Freely From the Start

Tutorials are a necessary evil sometimes, but not everyone wants to be told exactly how to play the game. It can be more fun to jump directly into the world and just start exploring, even if it's risky, and some of the best games with systems and worlds that enable this are Minecraft, Kenshi, and No Man's Sky. You're not forced to watch lengthy cutscenes or engage in a ton of busywork. Go wherever you please, at your own risk.

If that sounds like the best time for you, then join in as we uncover other games that also drop you straight in without too much dilly-dallying. Some of them might have a bit of an intro section, while others explain absolutely nothing to you, and even push you to rely on wikis for information.

The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

Fresh Off The Boat And Ready To Explore

One of the fastest starts in the later Elder Scrolls games is without a doubt Morrowind, the third installment. You arrive in the province by boat, go through a quick character creation section where you also get to pick up a few items, and as soon as you leave the offices, you're pretty much free to go anywhere.

There are very few limitations, as per Bethesda's typical tradition, but you'll probably find it hard to go absolutely anywhere without proper weapons and gear. Still, if you're not a fan of the longer intro sections that take place in Oblivion's prisons and in Skyrim's Helgen, this is the ideal pick for you. Besides, Morrowind's world is without parallel, and arguably is one of the more exotic settings we've seen so far in the Elder Scrolls games.

No Man's Sky

Spawn In And Start Your Adventure Starside

No Man's Sky has a very sandbox-style beginning. You spawn in, your suit activating, and you're pretty much free to do whatever you want. There are, of course, some starting tasks that show up when you begin that you should take care of, but for the most part, you're absolutely free to do whatever you'd like.

Go explore the planet you're on in more detail, gather resources, and start building right away. Or, you could get on your vessel and head out to explore the stars and see everything the universe has to offer. No Man's Sky has grown a lot since its rocky release, so there's no shortage of things to see and do, and you're free to narratively tell the kind of story you'd like about your own explorer.

Project Zomboid

Choose Your Spawn Location, And Start The Survival Games

The advantage of Project Zomboid is that its tutorial is entirely optional, and if you truly wanted to jump in blindly, you absolutely could. Would I recommend it? Probably not. The tutorial is short and gives you basic information that barely scratches the surface, so do complete it before exploring the game's default difficulty in its sandbox. You pick your occupation, spawn location, as well as your difficulty, and from there on, it's game.

Your only job is to just survive in this big open-world environment against a horde of zombies, gather resources, and deal with the threat of water and electricity eventually cutting off across all of Knox Country. If you'd like to stay alive in the long-term, you'd better establish yourself fast and start looking for gear, food, water, and materials, while also building your skills. The world of Project Zomboid is massive, and you'll need a car to get around efficiently. Once you find a pair of keys and get enough gasoline, the whole world is your oyster.

Minecraft

Immediately Explore An Infinite World That's Procedurally Generated

Mojang's darling doesn't need an introduction. Minecraft is pretty much the ultimate exploration sandbox game, a title that's served as a blueprint for many that came after in its footsteps. Loading up a world produces a random seed for you, with biomes and structures arranged differently every single time you start a new game. Better yet, the world is infinite. You can keep going for thousands of blocks if your machine can handle it.

With every update, the game has added new structures, mobs, and things to do, so how you experience the game and go about playing it is up to you. Exploration is one of the more thrilling things to do, with dungeons and massive underground caves filled with ores to find. And that's without mentioning the other two dimensions and the riches and foes they hold to challenge you. It's a game famous for not holding your hand or telling you what to do, and directly dropping you into exploration as soon as you spawn in.

Outer Wilds

Once You Launch Your Spaceship, You're Free

While there's a bit of an intro section in Outer Wilds, it doesn't take very long to get through it. And once you do, you're pretty much free to do anything you want and go wherever you please. There's an entire solar system out there, and as an astronaut of your kind, it's your main job to explore it and see what you can find. Very quickly, you realize something isn't right.

The whole system is actually stuck in a time loop that sends you back to the beginning at the end of every day. Each loop, you try to piece the mystery together to uncover what's truly going on. Any exploration and mystery fan will fall in love with this game and how little it holds your hand. Go into it without any spoilers or cheating, and it will be a game to remember.

Kenshi

Spawn In And Immediately Get Ganked

If you're not afraid of being faced with a challenge and possible major setbacks from the get-go, Kenshi is the perfect open-world game for your exploration needs. You're essentially dropped in after creating your character, and you can do and go anywhere you'd like. Now, whether you should go anywhere you like is another matter, as the world of Kenshi is known for being punishing to players who are jumping in blindly.

It doesn't explain anything to you, nor does it point you in any specific direction. That said, if you find yourself perpetually annoyed by how handholdy some games can get nowadays, Kenshi is the perfect palette cleanser for you, as it will respect your capabilities to figure things out on your own, usually through brutal trial and error.

7 Days To Die

Like Project Zomboid, You're Free To Try And Survive Right Away

7 Days to Die is a zombie survival game that's essentially exactly what the title implies: a race to survive before the Blood Moon that rises every seven days. You're plopped down into a huge world that's full of cool locations to loot and explore, and potential safehouses and terrains to build your own base in.

In the beginning, you basically spawn in almost naked, with nothing to your name and your sheer willpower as your sharpest tool. While there are a few things to prioritize first for an ideal start, you can technically just wander out there and figure everything out on your own terms to see if you could reasonably survive in a zombie apocalypse, come the seven-day horde. Bonus points if you have friends along with you, because things get even more fun in co-op while exploring and building.

Elden Ring

Tutorial? Only If You Want To!

Elden Ring has one obligatory starting section, which is extremely short and teleports you to Limgrave after you fail to kill your first boss. Then, in Limgrave, it's very easy to miss the actual, real tutorial section of the game if you never drop down into the cave below. You can just walk past and head straight into the Lands Between. In fact, you can directly go to Margit, the game's first major boss, if you so please, without doing any preparation at all.

That's the beauty of this game: you get to choose where to go, though the world is full of mighty enemies much stronger and cunning than you (at least in the beginning), so you might want to focus on exploring and unlocking some necessary gear as much as possible (as well as your trusty mount, Torren). Still, it's always nice to know you can start a new game fast and just get into the action of things without sitting through a lengthy intro section.