New Open-World Games That Are Rewriting The Rules Of The Genre

The open-world genre has a well-established set of norms that pretty much every seasoned gamer has come to expect: waypoints and quest markers, a lengthy list of main and side quests, a huge map loaded with collectibles, and a runtime pushing 30 to 40 hours (if not more). These genre rules aren't mandatory, but they've become standard in the modern open-world sphere.

That's what makes these next games stand out. They take those rules and rewrite them to fit a new concept. Sometimes that just means making exploration feel more organic, while other times it means changing the very fabric of the open-world genre. It's not easy to successfully innovate on a genre as well-loved as open-world games, but these titles tried it, pulled it off, and have helped shake up a stagnant set of gaming trends in the process.

Shadows Of Doubt

A Case-By-Case Basis

Outside of Minecraft, procedurally generated open-world maps aren't particularly common. Sure, you've got your side-scrollers like Terraria or Noita, but design contraints typically force 3D open-world games to use a set map so that the devs can stuff it with well-paced content. Not so with Shadows of Doubt, a 3D detective immersive sim set in a procedurally generated nine- to 20-block map.

There are many impressive things about Shadows of Doubt. For one, those city blocks are fully explorable, and not just the exterior. Building interiors, rooftops, and back alleys are all accessible. From there, you can approach each case (also procedurally generated) however you like. Break into a suspect's house, follow them to work, or interview every single tenant at an apartment building crime scene. As long as you accuse the right suspect, your methods won't be questioned. Accuse the wrong suspect, though, and the string of murders will continue. Shadows of Doubt is an unbelievably deep game with a ton of freedom, but the fact that it can offer all that while randomly generating most of its key content is a remarkable achievement.

Mina The Hollower

Old-School Look With New-School Sensibilities

Open-world games are typically thought of as "modern" games. Sure, the genre dates back to 2001's Grand Theft Auto 3, but advancements in tech, design, and hardware power have made it so that these games are at their best when they're made to run on the best consoles and PCs around. Then, there's Mina the Hollower, a throwback to retro games from the 1990s, but one that is still very much an open-world game.

It takes that title seriously, too. Mina the Hollower gives you basically no direction as to where you should venture first once you reach the main hub city. Instead, it encourages you to explore by hiding things everywhere. Virtually every screen has something hidden in it; sometimes it's just a few Bones (the in-game currency), and other times it's a new weapon. The game is crafty with its puzzle solutions, too, forcing you to figure out on your own if you need a certain trinket or sidearm to reach an inaccessible area. It all works in tandem to encourage your innate curiosity, but for a retro-inspired game like this, it's astounding to see an open world this dense with content, easily rivaling some of the biggest triple-A open-world maps out there.

Crimson Desert

Getting Its Priorities Straight

Speaking of maps that are dense with content, Crimson Desert may seem a bit meandering at first as it guides you through its lengthy (but very necessary) tutorial. The combat system is very unusual. The story is... well, not great honestly. Visually it's spectacular, but those first hours may have you questioning what all the hype is about. Then it turns you loose on its open world, and it all starts to make sense.

Crimson Desert is not a game that wants you to focus on its narrative, or on creating a perfect character build (although it helps), or even on completing a checklist of activities scattered throughout the world. Crimson Desert is a game that wants you to wander. There is an incalculable number of things to find in the world, and many of them have no quest markers, no waypoints leading to them, not even a specific reason to venture to that part of the map. These aren't just hidden chests or bits of resources either; we're talking giant boss fights, ridiculously intricate puzzles, hidden areas, and more. Crimson Desert, in many ways, feels like it is fulfilling the promise that open-world games have been teasing for decades, and that alone makes it an easy recommendation.

Drova: Forsaken Kin

Keep Your Wits About You

If you've ever played Gothic, either the original or the recent remake, then you have a sense of what Drova: Forsaken Kin is about. It's an open-world RPG set in a dark, brutal world that isn't particularly vast by the genre's standards, but is densely packed with both activities and atmosphere. It's also brutally difficult, but only if you aren't paying attention. After all, everything you need for success you can learn by exploring thoroughly and paying attention to what NPCs tell you. Rushing through anything is almost certain to lead to failure.

While this is a concept that Gothic was doing decades ago, we've never seen in done in a top-down RPG before, where that information is delivered through pixel art rather than detailed textures. On top of that, Drova has a very strict narrative choice and consequence system that will lock you out of certain options based on choices you make, especially which faction you choose to side with and how devoted you are to furthering their cause. Most impressive of all is that Drova can run on mobile platforms like Android and iOS. Combining all of these already unfriendly elements into a game that pushes back as hard as Drova: Forsaken Kin does is something we don't see often in a genre where hand-holding and quest markers are commonplace.

Palworld

What If We Give Them Guns?

Pokemon clones are already hard to come by with Nintendo's litigious tendencies, and even Palworld can attest to that. "Creature collectors" that aren't Pokemon do exist, like Cassette Beasts or Temtem, but none have veered quite so audaciously into Nintendo's territory as Pocket Pair's breakout hit. Given that it seems to have survived Nintendo's team of lawyers, Palworld already rewrites a lot of genre rules, and gaming rules in general. You can make a game that is visually similar to another game, even to the point of being almost indistinguishable, as long as you distinguish it in other ways.

Palworld takes things further than that, though. Okay, so you've got a creature collector. The assumption, then, is that you're battling in turn-based combat. Not here. Palworld is a third-person shooter more than anything else. It's also a sandbox sim, where you can build and personalize a little base and assign Pals to complete jobs at home while others join you on an adventure. None of these things align with Pokemon or creature collectors at all, but Palworld doesn't care. It's a genre mishmash on a level we haven't seen anyone attempt before, and yet somehow, it all works. That's a sign that both untouchable IPs and established genre conventions aren't as restrictive as we once thought.

Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora

Ubisoft Without The Ubisoft Staples

This one comes with a bit of a caveat, because Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora doesn't rewrite the open-world playbook to any significant degree. What it does is take everything that you thought you knew about Ubisoft open-world games — tower climbs, tons of waypoints, heavily guided exploration — and remove them entirely. Okay, not entirely. There are settings you can turn on that let you play the game in a more traditional open-world manner, but not only are they not the default, but they take away the best parts of the game.

Instead, Frontiers of Pandora encourages you to explore organically. Use your Na'vi senses to find a path through the jungle. Climb and run along branches and cliffs to look for a vantage point where you can see your destination in the distance. Befriend animals rather than hunt them. It's also a remarkably immersive experience, even compared to the genre as a whole. With so little cluttering the screen as you play, its visuals and smooth controls draw you in immediately and make it hard to pull away. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is the kind of open-world game that feels like a call-out to other games in the genre. This is what these games could be like if the teams making them weren't so worried about players getting turned around while exploring. If the world is designed well, then players will lose themselves in it, and that should always be the goal.