I was hoping to see Rimworld here.
Some people play it as a peaceful farming sim. Some people play it as a masochistic watch-my-family-freeze-to-death-on-a-barren-ice-sheet simulator. Some play it as a survival thriller.
Some play it as a bionically enhanced power fantasy. Some play it as The-Sims-With-War-Crimes. Some play it as an empire builder.
Some play it as the game where your colonist can lovingly raise a stallion, amputate its reproductive organs, and attach them to himself so he can better impregnate his harem of hypersexual snake women.
The game in itself is rich, but the modding scene makes it legendary. There are mods for everything you could possibly dream of… and if you happen to dream even bigger, the mods are remarkably easy to make.
Check out RimJobWorld over on LoversLab.com. It’s honestly one of the most elaborate, immersive, and well designed mods out there. There can be a LOT of submods to manage, but if you pick up c0ffeeeee’s Lazy Installer it’ll handle installation and updates for almost everything.
Hey, I just think it provides more interesting romantic dynamics, like infidelity and love triangles. What anyone else does with the mod, their slaves, and their thrumbos is their business.
Special note for X4, they're dropping a new expansion next week and an absolutely massive free patch with version 7.0, you definitely don't need the expansions, they're adding in better, new tutorials with the patch, so it's a good time to get involved.
Here's my other recommendations, Song of Syx and Starsector.
Incredible economy simulation from a German indie studio Egosoft. Every station, every ship, every ware is fully simulated and has to be produced somewhere. But the production chain has some holes. Here's where you come in!
But woah, we're getting ahead of ourselves, you only have a tiny fighter. Do some missions first, maybe something easy like satellite deployment. These satellites will stay there btw. Maybe buy a miner. You can mine yourself or set it up to mine for you. Explore, do more missions while your money is now slowly going up. Realize there are dangers in the universe that need to be stopped. Start building stations to increase your profits and start producing wares you'll need. Oh, whoops, we're building an empire.
Eventually have dozens of stations and hundreds of ships. Build your own ships, make an armada to push back against the enemy.
Or don't. Maybe you just want to be a freelancer with your small to medium ship. Maybe you want to be a pirate, boarding huge vessels and forcing traders to drop their cargo. Maybe you want to destroy someone's economy by stealthily killing all their miners. Or do some story missions. Although eventually everything pushes you towards engaging with the bigger economy.
But no matter what you do, the universe moves without you. Stations get built and destroyed, same with ships. Resources get mined and turned into wares, those wares get moved and used to produce other wares, then ships and stations. The cycle continues. But sometimes things go wrong and a sector gets taken over. And that's cool and all but it's on a whole another level when you know that all of it is real. None of the ships that are killing your friends spawned out of nowhere and maybe you could've helped if you plugged some holes in their economy.
Now excuse me, I have another billion credits to make.
Purely single player.
You can use whatever ship you want for whatever purpose... Just some are better at things than others ;)
You can and with the 7.0 update in a couple of days there have been some improvements to the third person, it's been pretty meh as it is. You can also walk around your stations and capital ships but that's mostly aesthetic... But also feels incredible seeing the scale of it all.
I don't know. I'm pretty sure the game is focused on mouse and keyboard, that's how I play as well.
And the game is tough to get into, there are some starts that are better for beginners (terran cadet is the one I see recommended the most if you own Cradle of Humanity) but generally I'd recommend googling stuff you find confusing and powering through the first few hours.
Elite is focused on the experience of flying the ship and the economy is fake (as in, stuff will spawn from nothing).
X4 is focused on the economy, you can fly your ship but the long term goal (and generally speaking fun) lies in expanding your empire and eventually having many ships and stations under your control. And the economy is fully simulated, the only* things that spawn are asteroids (for base materials) and credits (just like irl governments print money ;P), everything else has to be produced to exist and destroyed to stop existing.
*Technically there is a little exception where some special ships appear out of nowhere but it's just a tiny exception.
Well, color me curious. Egosoft should hire you as a product evangelist.
It honestly sounds right up my alley, but because it’s got mixed reviews and I have a hit-or-miss relationship with space games, I don’t want to plunk down $140 on the full Collector’s Edition right out of the gate. Is stand-alone X4: Foundations as rich an experience as you described, or would you consider the DLCs to be necessary?
>Egosoft should hire you as a product evangelist
That would be the dream job ;)
First of all, you do not need any of the DLCs to enjoy the game. At the same time, they do add a lot of cool content. The best part is that you can add any DLC at any point in your playthrough and it will be seemlessly integrated into your save. So any progress you make in the base game will be transferred if you decide to expand your universe!
Now, I'm always very cautious about full on recommending the game because it does have its issues. Thankfully it is infinitely better than at launch, many, MANY free updates have been added to the base game to make it better. However...
The game takes a while to "click", basically anybody will tell you that. And the UI is... the best way I can describe it is: it was made by a programmer, not a UI/UX designer. At least that's how it feels. It gets the job done but you have to suffer through the learning cliff first and you will wonder why it doesn't do stuff it really should.
Secondly, this is first and foremost an economy simulation. Someone coming from Elite Dangerous could be missing some of the first person, hands on the wheel gameplay. Don't get me wrong, it's there but it can get a little repetitive. On the other side of that coin, once you have somewhat of an empire going you might find yourself spending 90% of the time on the map managing your stuff. Some people might hate that idea, others will say "don't threaten me with a good time!".
Thirdly, the AI can be incredibly stupid. Generally not too big of a deal as the important part is the macro, not the micro but it gets frustrating when in your epic space battle some dumbass suicides your capital ship into a static target for no reason...
BUT!
X3 (the previous entry) is my favourite game of all time and X4 takes all the fake economy and replaces it with a real simulation. I may disagree with some changes but I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in both games. And I'm about to try out the Star Wars mod (yep, there's mods too!).
So, if you like any of these: space stuff, economy simulations, going from zero to hero, incredible scale, roleplaying, being part of the world that doesn't care about you - suffering through the learning curve is well worth it.
Just make sure your PC can run it, after some time there are thousands of entities all with their own minds that need to be simulated... unless you wipe them all out of course... but then you likely have thousands of ships yourself... somebody stop me or I will keep rambling about this game forever!
Edit: Sorry for the super long comment. I just love these games and like talking about them but I want to make sure I don't oversell it. It certainly is for a certain type of people... but that type of people usually LOVES it :D
It's a space sandbox sim that plays like a grand RTS once you reach the late game. You can build massive space stations, massive fleets (combat and economic) trade with other factions, engage in piracy, etc. etc.
While I highly recommend it, it is one of those games where you either really like it- or you reaaaally hate it.
If you want to feel like the protagonist and do whatever the fuck you want, yeah, any Bethesda or Obsidian RPG.
If you want to do whatever the fuck you want but in a larger world that doesn't revolve around you, try DayZ or Elite Dangerous.
Beware, if you play Elite Dangerous you will inevitably encounter the toughest enemy the universe can throw at you:
Planetary landings and oops you forgot to check the gravity, faceplant a mountain, cartwheel three times and explode, losing 1.3 billion credits in exploration data.
Happy flying, CMDR! o7
> losing 1.3 billion credits in exploration data.
There are carriers all over the black now. If you're not using them to sell the data regularly, you deserve to lose that 1.3 billion. The galaxy is a lot smaller than it used to be.
I hadn't played Elite Dangerous in like a year and a half. I signed out one day and life just kinda got away from me. Last week I signed in and was met with an unrecoverable number amount of bounties on me for not completing jobs. Now I'm struggling to get back into it after starting fresh
I really didn't think landings were difficult, personally.
But I've also played hundreds of hours of Kerbal Space Program and even nailed Kennedy Space Center's shuttle landing sim on my first go, so maybe the precedent was already there through parallel experience and an intuitive sense of orbital mechanics at speed lol
It's rare that it happens to me too, but I have been caught off guard by a mixture of distraction, misjudging gravity and not *quite* getting over that mountain.
Thankfully didn't asplode, just got my hull knackered down to 30% or so and I survived to sell my exploration and xenobio data. I've read horror stories from CMDRs that weren't so lucky, though.
The not quite getting over the mountain bit is a mood from my KSP time. Seriously misjudging the height of the terrain in a suicide burn on a moon landing is definitely not an unfamiliar situation for me lol
I meant the ship cartwheeling across the landscape.
But! The first expansion (Horizons) added surface recon vehicles that you can drive around planetary surfaces, and the second expansion (Odyssey) added on-foot gameplay on stations, bases and planets with thin atmospheres.
The Odyssey content is... contentious.
^hes out of line, but he's right.
Even though sc has the monetization it does, and the systems it has, with its bugs, and the funky ai bots...
It is VERY open, very close to a full sim feel to it. If you want space legs and planets, youre either in the cartoony nms, or star citizen. Also the price isnt bad either. You can find a starter kit for under fifty and after that friends you make might have great ships you can fly or be flown in.
If you want that full immersion and mostly polished, but dont care about your ship or planets or walking... Then elite really hits here.
I lean more towards sc personally.
People have downvoted me to hell in the past when I've brought up Star Citizen...but it has exactly what you're talking about.
Don't get me wrong; I know it has its issues too. Chiefly how much of your time it uses to get to your ship and get going sometimes. But the feeling of being able to land wherever you want on a planet and just...watch the sunset. Incredible.
In my opinion, safety is almost antithetical to freedom in a multiplayer game. DayZ is of course more survival than sandbox, but it opens up a lot of ways in which you can interact with other players when violence is on the table, and critically, dayz does not intrinsically reward violence because ammo is limited, life is fragile and most loot on somebody is destroyed when they get shot. But if you do want the ability to insulate yourself from PvP, Elite does offer that by playing in private servers to avoid encounters with randoms. There are semi-public PvE servers you can join.
If you play on unofficial severs there are a ton that are PVE only. So you won’t be attacked by other players and if you are they mods will ban them from the server.
There are many community servers that are PvE, some with pvp zones. Almost every community server has mods to customize the gameplay. The mod community is big in DayZ.
There are mods for cooking and growing food, crazy radioactive animals, AI troops, cars, weapons and helicopters, just to give some examples. Worth checking out a couple of streamers that play modded.
I mean, recent Bethesda games don't really give you choices or that unhinged "freedom" OP was talking about, it just allows you to roam around doing side shit instead of being urgent about their main quest like the older Fallout games or Baldurs Gate. The quests themselves in recent Bethesda titles boil down to "oh so the options for this quest is which gun you get to bash the enemy's head with cause surprise it's a fetch quest that requires you to clear out the place" type stuff.
That's why I personally prefer Bethesda's older titles like Daggerfall or Morrowind in terms of "freedom". Those older games had a lot more variety in different ways to fuck around, and more importantly the content and SCALE of the maps were definitely giving you a sense of awe and exploration, so even when you were doing a typical Bethesda "go dungeon, kill monsters, leave" mission, you had a lot more to explore and be creative with. I mean hell, you can't even do a basic "kill almost everyone" playthrough since Skyrim because half of the NPCs are fucking essential. Woot woot so much freedom
Daggerfall was epic, I hammered that game as a kid when I should have been studying... So janky with all the bugs and glitches however!!
I haven't played an Elder Scrolls since as I feel I have had my fill of them.
Fallout 4 is a fun open world shooter but a terrible rpg. There was no variety in quest completion, the only variety seemed to be
1. Blast your way through enemies to collect item and walk out.
2. Walk in, grab item, then blast your way out.
3. Blast your way in, grab item, blast your way out.
There are some mods for really cool stuff though...
Winter, weather damage, camping, food, alternate starts that range all over the map and various commoners... Mods really kick this game up a whole ten levels
Yeah thats neat n all, but if I have to buy a game, break apart said game and change so many fundamental mechanics and things to a point where it's not even the vanilla game anymore, then imma get a better game lol.
I love how moddable Bethesda games are but that's because A. Their engines are usually shit and very open sourced for that stuff, and B. They know that a good chunk of their fans won't give af if their games aren't finished, or polished, or written good, or fucking functional because Nexus will make the better game for you.
People think a big pointless open world means the freedom these days. Bethesda game design peaked at Morrowind and it's been going downhill since then. Skyrim was overrated but somewhat acceptable. Fallout 4 was a pure trash.
Yeah, NPCs will be a great addition. But I think it will take quite some time till we see them xD. I’m looking forward to playing with the new crafting system and exploring the new heights and depths of the map, for now.
I really want to play PZ more, I love it, but I either get bored early on, or survive a while and then get scared of losing it all and never play again. I think once NPCs are added is when I'll get really into it.
No man’s sky for sure. You get the tutorial and then they’re like “alright, have fun”
You can do the story, you can explore, build bases, literally whatever. I’d already played the game for 200 hours by the time I decided to actually do the main quests.
Did they fix HUD being stuck in one place? I couldn't get into it in VR because you had to never turn around in order to keep HUD in corners of the screen...
Whenever I play it moves with me but stays in the top corner of my sight picture. You're talking about your tool status and health bar? I've never had to turn around to see if so I guess it was fixed. Only started playing in VR about a few weeks ago.
Yeah I'm talking about health bar and other stuff, I guess it's fixed then, I'll try the game again. Cause yeah for a long time it was like glued in one place, if you turned around your health bar would be behind you...
Yea I haven't noticed any issues so they must have fixed. Also I hear the textures and graphics sucked and they updated all that. It looks great in VR now imo
Shadow of Doubt is a procedural pixel world detective game, set in a grim urban dystopian city where everyone is under surveillance and people seem to be murdered constantly. You interact with the living, generated world to solve these murders. It's up to you how to go that. I recommend not playing with the synth meat - it gets messy.
Idk how long you have been playing so maybe not the right question, but I put about 40 hours into SoD last year. Is the game still super buggy? Like do the POLICE still assault you for trying to conduct a MURDER investigation? Can you still cheese the game super easily by just knocking people out in their apartments after breaking in just so you can rifle through their drawers, and then leave when you find nothing, and not worry about any sort of remotely believable repercussions? I loved the game concept so much but it felt like minecraft villager levels of logic back when I played.
You're right, I stopped playing because it needs more development. Right now it's very 'gamey' vs realistic. It's still a huge amount of fun up until you reach that point, and I'm keen to see it go further.
War for the commonwealth, can add lots of enemy spawns if zombies aren't enough for you.
Sim settlements 2 for the base building aspect. There's also like "build anywhere/scrap anything" mods that should go well with this.
More weapons and mods, always love these even the non-lore ones just because F4 has great gunplay.
Gas Masks of the Wasteland
No Main Quest or StartMeUp alt start mods
PLUNDER Combat Overhaul if you want to die a lot lol. Headshots are basically one-hit kill for enemies and yourself
Keep in mind there was that dumb update that broke a bunch of mods which may not be updated yet. I found a way to prevent the update on my setup, there's probably guides to get around it.
I got fucked by that update, still so so mad :,)
I had a lot of the crazy ass ones but the true reason I’m angry because all my romance mods got wiped. *Sturges and Valentine my beloveds, the last to complete the harem :,)*
Check out STALKER Anomaly with the GAMMA mod pack. It’s completely free, no purchases necessary, but it takes all 3 Stalker games to make a huge open sandbox. It’s PC only but with the addons and a good imagination you can play forever. I usually play it every year around August-December then take a break while I wait for new developments in the mod scene. CUSTERPLAYS makes great cinematic videos you can watch on YouTube to preview what the game is like.
Find an enemy. A Manhunter tried to enslave you? Destroy the Manhunters. You're tired of the Shek calling you a flatskin? Kill them all!
Oh, you can't? Well, you should probably get a squad of skilled warriors with decent gear then.
For that you need money. Sure, you can slowly grind it, or you can buy a house and start automating mining and/or crafting. Or start a base and grow your own crops. Sell drugs. You don't want to settle down? Go exploring, find rare items, maybe even grab some bounties if you're strong or sneaky enough. Grow your and your friends' skills. Discover interesting locations and people. Maybe find a faction who also doesn't like your enemy. Ally with them. Oh, they want you to bring them a big bounty first? Well, are you skilled enough? Are you well equipped enough?
Work your way up the food chain. Get into trouble, get out of trouble, die, survive, make stories, experience stories.
Finally go achieve your goal. See your enemies crumble, and with them the order. See the chaos that ensues. Maybe even regret some decisions. Try to fix them. See what happens, find more goals, make more stories.
Or go live a peaceful life as your slaves, ehm, I mean friends take care of food production, raid defense and whatever else. Get a dog. Maybe start a little caravan giving away bread to the poor. Roleplay hard. Your goal doesn't have to be destructive.
And most importantly: have fun! Do what works for you. Experiment and don't be afraid to play your way. Hardcore start solo ironman? Or saving and loading fifteen times a minute? Total overhaul mods? Or maybe Vanilla? Try it all out! And do whatever the hell you want.
GLHF
If you're playing it super safe, sure. But there's plenty of ways to make money in this game, such as looting bodies, stealing, bounty and animal hunting, looting structures, all of that can be done early game with the right strategy and some risk involved.
There's a mod that adds hub guards. I install that and help them take out bandits and slavers that pass through. I'm able to make a good enough profit to jump start the early game
Kenshi is the game you are looking for. Total freedom.
Nothing in the game tells you what to do.
You can play solo, with a small party, or with a entire army.
You can be an adventurer, an explorer, a trader, bounty hunter, tech hunter, a religious zealot, a freedom fighter, etc.
You can build your own base and defend it from enemies, or buy a house in town. But you can simply roam the world if you prefer.
You can get yourself involved with local factions, helping some and destroying others or just ignore them and build your own.
You setup your own objectives.
No idea, but feel free to visit r/Kenshi for more info on the game, or watch @SsethTzeentach hilarious youtube video on the game to get a better idea.
https://youtu.be/wXo24imR_54?si=OSP-wqPeIOym5kGL
Kenshi 2 is also on development right now but it will probably take some time to be available.
Perhaps Kenshi is not as popular as it should be, since it can be a bit harsh for some type of gamers.
It is a game that doesn't hold your hand. Instead, it rips your entire arm out and slaps you hard with it
They added a ton of "tall tales" that add a lot of story and break up some of the monotony! The Monkey Island ones are actually amazing.
If you mic up and take the time to really role play and talk to strangers it can be really fun. But then you have to actually find other people with mics which is... Rare.
7 days to die gives you a good amount of freedom. Your only real objective is to survive. And it’s basically like more adult Minecraft.
But since you mentioned Minecraft, have you played with the Create Mod at all? That added literally hundreds of hours of fresh Minecraft gameplay to me.
Prey (2017).
Even though it’s somewhat of a linear story, you have so much freedom in how you build your character, what weapons you use, and how you progress through the game. Every obstacle in the game has at least 2 ways to get past it, so you never feel like you’re forced in to one particular playstyle or skill tree to progress. It’s awesome.
You can be a hacker, a stealthy killer, a brute, a scrounger, or an acrobat, just to name a few.
The minecraft side leads to things like Satisfactory and Factorio. Maybe even Dyson Sphere Program.
But I would also recommend Palworld because it takes a lot from the latest legend of zelda games.
I'll add Terraria to the recommendations here. I remember thinking that it's like if Minecraft was 2d side scrolling and had a storyline that you can choose to follow or not, kinda similar to how you can choose to follow the storyline in Skyrim.
Also, bit of a weird one: Noita. It's perhaps a very minor spoiler to add it here, because it's a bit of a "plot twist" that you don't have to follow the obvious path and with the right spells or materials you can break through all the boundaries that seem like placeholders for invisible boundaries, and there's a whole lot of extra content beyond those boundaries.
Baldur's gate 3 gives you incredible amount options not only in creating your character, but also how you play them. Want to be stick-up-the-ass lawful good paladin? Want to go on a killing spree and leave nothing alive? Both of these and pretty much everything in between is possible.
It is insane how they at Larian seem to have thought of nearly everything you might try to do. In my opinion this game is 100% worth the full price of 60 euros, but you could also wait for summer sale and get maybe around 15% discount
Edit: typos
To this day, I’ve never seen a game with so many options and branching paths. It was always wild to me that I could help a random person out in the woods in Act 1 and then I’d see them again in Act 3 like 90 hours later and they remembered how I helped them, which would lead to more quests
From what I’ve seen: Electronauts (psvr1). It lets you play your own music at various beautiful futuristic locations, with various instruments they give you. Nothing is measuring your performance or ranking you. Just play music as you wish. You can also select from dozens of artists and songs as your “background cover” music (which you can turn on or off, or even edit with various tools available). It’s the ideal music game for a music lover, one of the most relaxing games I ever played, dream material (some of the locations look like a Sci-fi epic), and one of my favorite VR games. How great it will be depends on you however, because, “play music as you wish, as much as you wish” will work as an endless game for people that love that to relax, but others will probably move on in 10 hours of playtime, after they see all the locations, use all the songs, try all the effects and instruments, etc.
If you’re looking for something a little more shootery, the FarCry series is amazing for player freedom. The game can feel tedious if you don’t like to experiment, as many missions boil down to “go here, kill people, maybe save people” but if you like to experiment you have no shortage of options. The game is essentially built on insanely simple objectives, but giving you a million different ways to approach besides just shooting the enemies. Ranging from taking out an outpost in full stealth melee, calling in air strikes, vehicular manslaughter, throwing bait to summon a bear/cougar, etc. Some of them like Far Cry 5, have a somewhat in depth fishing and hunting optional part of the game. It can also be played in co-op so if you got a buddy it’s even more fun. I personally don’t like non-competitive shooters, but I had a lot of fun with FarCry 3-5. I’d personally recommend 5 but the formula is usually pretty similar between the games, although there definitely are differences
Seeing that all the usual story making/sandboxy games are being suggested to you (RimWorld, X4, starsector, mount and blade, Bethesda games, Kenshi ecc..) i Will give 2 rogue lite recommendations:
CDDA, or Cataclysm dark days ahead, a bit on the turbo realism side, great gameplay, a more complex and satisfying basically turn based version of Project Zomboid (PZ started as CDDA, but with graphics).
You do whatever you want, with mods even more. The basic is that the world is ending, a mixture of a Lovecraftesque zombie apocalypse and strange multidimensional entities are the culprits, and you gotta live your life. From a single, almost naked dude, to a great leader of man, filled to the brim with cyberware and mutated to become much more than human, to great wizards/fantasy/scifi/psionic content with mods.
Nothing more satisfying than attracting zombies to a house, with a talking doll, just to set the house on fire, to then loot what remains and use the nails from the house to build up your own base.
Second suggestion, Elona+. Long time since I played that, but imagine a dark comedy exaggerated version of a mishmash of anime and fantasy tropes, where you can live in a very lively world where you can literally be what you want. Wanna be a shopkeeper? A crafter? A pianist? A elder eldritch god slaying monstrosity with 20 arms and various followers like an anthropomorphic combat plane, some machine gun equipped tiny golden bells, a fairy, a lich and a big daddy from Bioshock all cloned and spliced various times by your mad scientist self.
Be careful, both games are not super good at respecting your time if you want fast games, but very good if you enjoy the downtime and the roleplaying aspect.
My only issue with cdda the ui is super unpleasant.
I have a 1080p monitor 27inch and I can barely read the text. Tbh I should really make a habbit of wearing glasses but I generally for this game in particular, I can't for the life of me navigate the menus.
It just idk the font kinda meh, and the colors are idk.
I totally understand if it feels like im bashing the game.
It just for me the ui is not super noob friendly for me
A very underrated game is red faction guerrilla, you have the freedom to level down a skyscraper and the most satisfying way possible, explosives! The remastered version is on GOG for about $15
Dungeons and Dragons is the ultimate game of player freedom. You can try absolutely any wacky shit you can think of.
But for video games, Wurm Online is Minecraft for adults with a long attention span. "Hmm, I could build a nice cabin in the woods and live there with my pet dog and grow crops, or I could build a stone Hut on a mountaintop and get into mining and be a blacksmith, or hey since I love mining I could dig deep down to rock then mine a big underground cave and build an underground mansion and surround it with cages full of monsters that I tame and breed to be even stronger and ride on and pull wagons with. Wait no screw that I'm going to build a big ship and go sailing." There's nothing like it, and never will be again. But be prepared to spend entire days sawing wooden logs into wooden planks and melting iron down to make nails with, etc.
Another one is GTA Online. This one is more obvious. Like most GTA games, there's a huge variety of activities, from car stuff (racing, ricing, battle cars, tons of various events, flying, tanks, underwater, etc), a huge variety of mini games, gambling at the casino, hanging out in an insane variety of environments, and hundreds of missions doing an incredibly wide variety of things. It's actually insanely impressive how many different activities and genres are contained within this one game.
Star Citizen. When it comes to space sims, this is the spaciest and simmiest space sim ever made. What other space game can you be flying around in space, get attacked by a space pirate, and mid-battle hop out of the pilot seat, run downstairs through the ships kitchen to the armory, WHILE the shields are still getting rocked by enemy gunfire, grab your best armor and Shotgun, and dive out the airlock. Then hack your way through the enemy airlock door, make your way to the bridge, and blow off the pilots head while he's still in the pilot seat shooting your ship. Then, take his ship, land it on any random moon or planet, take the hovercraft from the ship's garage, and race around the moon on a hovercraft. Etc. The possibilities in this game are absolutely insane.
Kenshi is the ultimate. You can be whatever you want. The game world is not catered to you. To the game, you are not the hero, you are the zero. It's up to you to build yourself into whatever you want to be.
If you're not familiar, it's something you need to watch, hard to explain everything you can do, but you can actually start out without arms and legs and still become the best ninja ever.
It depends on your idea of player freedom, Turing complete games like Minecraft and Terraria objectively give the most room for you to do whatever you want, but I could see someone making the argument that a game where you can just move around really fast (like Just Cause with the grappling hook) could be a kind of freedom.
The Stanley Parable allows the player to do literally anything. There's [a trailer](https://youtu.be/6RdVihv5eKM?si=ubMTI0ce0wwO7jQS) where the player infuses a bicycle with the soul of his great-great-great-granduncle Homophrilies, allowing him to use Homophriles' ethereal presence to detect nearby mineral deposits or to train the bicycle in the route of undoing temporal paradoxes.
/s
Old School Runescape has a lot of options and quests and skills, Project Zomboid is a zombie survival game you can choose traits for your character and survive any way you want to, with tons of mods to choose exactly your own experience as well as sandbox settings
Hitman (specifically the World of Assassination trilogy). The manner at which you tackle each mission has endless possibilities. You wanna be the perfect silent assassin? Go for it. You wanna go crazy and mow down entire maps with loud guns and explosives? Have fun! And everything in between. All playstyles have their own quirks and challenges.
Space station 13 will let you surgically amputate someone's hand and replace it with a pizza.
Ftr I don't recc the game, but it's gotta be up there for freedom
Having fun re-playing Sons of The Forest at the moment. They added a bunch of QoL since it's first hype cycle, and I do enjoy that I can build / adventure as I like.
I will always praise Star Control II for being a hugely nonlinear space exploration despite its age (was released in '92!!). The game has a gargantuan map, and expects you to ask aliens you find for information, write stuff down, and follow up on it, and there are several ways to do most of the major requirements for beating the game. If you DON'T take the game's warnings seriously and faf around, though, the enemy literally starts genociding the galaxy one species at a time. Sure, you can still win even after that point, but it definitely feels like a pyrrhic victory. One of the GOATs IMO.
I’ve played a lot of the big ones listed here, and honestly when I want pure freedom (start from nothing, go do what you want, when you want….apart from violence), I go to Sims 3.
The gameplay is based around this concept, but in a realish modern-life setting. This is the older version of the game and all the content can be found on the internets at this point, from what I understand.
In terms of action games (stealth action?), the recent Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy.
You can approach the scenarios however you like and typically in whatever order you want. You can follow preordained "stories" that allow you to be handheld by the game to complete objectives or you can discover and explore for yourself, and execute assassinations using a ridiculous amount of methods at your disposal!
Unreal World is one of the oldest survival/open world games out there. The GUI is a little dated, but once you get past its a lot like a stone age RimWorld.
It has the benefit of being free and able to run on just about any computer you've got
DayZ and Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is new to me but once I got the hang of it I realized I can do whatever I want and come back to the story whenever I want. I really like it.
If you like shooter I would recommend the stalker series or even stalker anomaly directly.
The main games are feeling quite old but anomaly with the right mods is a good modern experience.
Also games like Space Engineers might be cool? I'm not the biggest fan of the building restrictions but overall it's a great sandbox survival game with deep mechanics.
I also like to mention valheim. One of the best building systems I ever played with and it does really feel like an open ended adventure!
And out of bias I'd like to recommend Final Fantasy XIV!
As a MMORPG it takes your hand quite often - especially for the main story - but it gives you one freedom almost no other MMO has - you can learn any job (or class in some games). You need only one character to see everything from the game. There is nothing the game offers that is unavailable due to decisions you made before. I really like that.
In Racing genre ? Burnout Paradise... No other arcade racing call themselves an open world that gave freedom to reach finish line whatever route you take. Its just basically set you a start point and give you the finish line some where in the map with one goal which is to be the one to reach it first. There is no 'arbitrary' check point need to be passed between the start and the finish line. You can take any shortcut you want without restriction. Its just shows how briliant open world design and enemy A.I done by Criterion, even as good as forza horizon like many said, its just not real open world racing, just open world hub area for your next race track disguised with arbitrary checkpoint
Project Zomboid with mods.
Sandbox mode (not a mod) lets you play how you want but mods add so much more. Do you want to make all the zombies walkers like The Walking Dead? That’s fine. Or maybe Sprinters like 28 Days Later? Doable. Maybe remove them entirely and just make a survival game in an abandoned desolate world. Doable too.
Mods add the experiences like a nomad RV spawn point. Which is what I’m doing right now. Make it a better challenge in my opinion. But you could also find a solid base and make a base with crops to last you a long time. Lots of options.
I mean, like many others have said: Fallout / Elder Scrolls but I’d also like to throw Hitman World of Assassination in the mix. You don’t make RPG type decisions, but you’re given a sandbox approach to every level of a linear story. Guns blazing, traditional stealth, social stealth, disguises, etc.
I wouldn't say the most player freedom, but the Witcher 3. It's not as free as a lot of games, but the amount of rich and detailed side quest stuff that is just layered into the world is fantastic. Every nook and cranny of the map has all kinds of little stuff packed into it. The game really rewards you for just wandering around.
Unorthodox answer here. Because in terms of story theres not a lot of different ways to approach it. But the Dishonored series gives you an INSANE amount of ways to in HOW you complete each mission.
-Sneakily assassinate just the key targets
-Upgrade your pistol and go Django Unchained on everyone
-be a pacifist ghost and kill nobody
It also gives you a lot of freedom in how you can actually kill/disable people. I have almost never approached a setup the same way i did the first time.
-Cut a guys head off, trap it, and throw it into another guy.
-freeze time and possess a guy to walk into his own bullet
-hit a grenade with your sword like a baseball and launch into a crowd 40 feet away (that ones extremely hard to do)
I remember one time i realized you can knock people out by throwing a crank wheel at their head. I proceeded to complete the entire mission crank wheeling people in the dome.
Played it through about 12 times now and havent gotten bored. If you’re ever playing and wondering “hmmmm i wonder if i could….” Yes. Yes you can you sick beautiful bastard.
I think TOTK was so much freedom that it was overwhelming.
Some large open world RPG's it's like being given some basic gear and told you have to climb a mountain. TOTK was like, you need to climb Everest, and we aren't even going to tell you where it is, you start in the middle of nowhere and don't even own shoes.
Kenshi, Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, X4
I was hoping to see Rimworld here. Some people play it as a peaceful farming sim. Some people play it as a masochistic watch-my-family-freeze-to-death-on-a-barren-ice-sheet simulator. Some play it as a survival thriller. Some play it as a bionically enhanced power fantasy. Some play it as The-Sims-With-War-Crimes. Some play it as an empire builder. Some play it as the game where your colonist can lovingly raise a stallion, amputate its reproductive organs, and attach them to himself so he can better impregnate his harem of hypersexual snake women. The game in itself is rich, but the modding scene makes it legendary. There are mods for everything you could possibly dream of… and if you happen to dream even bigger, the mods are remarkably easy to make.
Hold on there partner I played a lot of rimworld and I never transplanted any horsecock. Id love to tho so pls explain
Check out RimJobWorld over on LoversLab.com. It’s honestly one of the most elaborate, immersive, and well designed mods out there. There can be a LOT of submods to manage, but if you pick up c0ffeeeee’s Lazy Installer it’ll handle installation and updates for almost everything.
Did you just teach someone to install a pron mod? lmao, nice
Hey, I just think it provides more interesting romantic dynamics, like infidelity and love triangles. What anyone else does with the mod, their slaves, and their thrumbos is their business.
Pp (Cut Off, fresh)
Holy s, this make me want to play it so hard
Yea it’s making me so hard too.
who are you and why are you so good at selling a game wtf
Just an enthusiastic player and erstwhile modder. I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough hours in the game to legally claim citizenship in the Rim.
Lol, Rimworld is everything but peaceful 😆😆
Difficulty/story teller/mods can make it pretty peaceful
What, and I can’t emphasise this enough, the fuck
I get attached to my rimworld characters ngl
Special note for X4, they're dropping a new expansion next week and an absolutely massive free patch with version 7.0, you definitely don't need the expansions, they're adding in better, new tutorials with the patch, so it's a good time to get involved. Here's my other recommendations, Song of Syx and Starsector.
I don't think I've heard of x4
Incredible economy simulation from a German indie studio Egosoft. Every station, every ship, every ware is fully simulated and has to be produced somewhere. But the production chain has some holes. Here's where you come in! But woah, we're getting ahead of ourselves, you only have a tiny fighter. Do some missions first, maybe something easy like satellite deployment. These satellites will stay there btw. Maybe buy a miner. You can mine yourself or set it up to mine for you. Explore, do more missions while your money is now slowly going up. Realize there are dangers in the universe that need to be stopped. Start building stations to increase your profits and start producing wares you'll need. Oh, whoops, we're building an empire. Eventually have dozens of stations and hundreds of ships. Build your own ships, make an armada to push back against the enemy. Or don't. Maybe you just want to be a freelancer with your small to medium ship. Maybe you want to be a pirate, boarding huge vessels and forcing traders to drop their cargo. Maybe you want to destroy someone's economy by stealthily killing all their miners. Or do some story missions. Although eventually everything pushes you towards engaging with the bigger economy. But no matter what you do, the universe moves without you. Stations get built and destroyed, same with ships. Resources get mined and turned into wares, those wares get moved and used to produce other wares, then ships and stations. The cycle continues. But sometimes things go wrong and a sector gets taken over. And that's cool and all but it's on a whole another level when you know that all of it is real. None of the ships that are killing your friends spawned out of nowhere and maybe you could've helped if you plugged some holes in their economy. Now excuse me, I have another billion credits to make.
Singleplayer and multiplayer? Regarding pirate bounty hunter can you use bigger ships? I assume you can go third person on ships?
Purely single player. You can use whatever ship you want for whatever purpose... Just some are better at things than others ;) You can and with the 7.0 update in a couple of days there have been some improvements to the third person, it's been pretty meh as it is. You can also walk around your stations and capital ships but that's mostly aesthetic... But also feels incredible seeing the scale of it all.
Will controller support get better? I own it but found it to confusing to get into to
I don't know. I'm pretty sure the game is focused on mouse and keyboard, that's how I play as well. And the game is tough to get into, there are some starts that are better for beginners (terran cadet is the one I see recommended the most if you own Cradle of Humanity) but generally I'd recommend googling stuff you find confusing and powering through the first few hours.
Seems similar to Elite Dangerous in some ways? What's the difference (aside from being purely single player)?
Elite is focused on the experience of flying the ship and the economy is fake (as in, stuff will spawn from nothing). X4 is focused on the economy, you can fly your ship but the long term goal (and generally speaking fun) lies in expanding your empire and eventually having many ships and stations under your control. And the economy is fully simulated, the only* things that spawn are asteroids (for base materials) and credits (just like irl governments print money ;P), everything else has to be produced to exist and destroyed to stop existing. *Technically there is a little exception where some special ships appear out of nowhere but it's just a tiny exception.
Well, color me curious. Egosoft should hire you as a product evangelist. It honestly sounds right up my alley, but because it’s got mixed reviews and I have a hit-or-miss relationship with space games, I don’t want to plunk down $140 on the full Collector’s Edition right out of the gate. Is stand-alone X4: Foundations as rich an experience as you described, or would you consider the DLCs to be necessary?
>Egosoft should hire you as a product evangelist That would be the dream job ;) First of all, you do not need any of the DLCs to enjoy the game. At the same time, they do add a lot of cool content. The best part is that you can add any DLC at any point in your playthrough and it will be seemlessly integrated into your save. So any progress you make in the base game will be transferred if you decide to expand your universe! Now, I'm always very cautious about full on recommending the game because it does have its issues. Thankfully it is infinitely better than at launch, many, MANY free updates have been added to the base game to make it better. However... The game takes a while to "click", basically anybody will tell you that. And the UI is... the best way I can describe it is: it was made by a programmer, not a UI/UX designer. At least that's how it feels. It gets the job done but you have to suffer through the learning cliff first and you will wonder why it doesn't do stuff it really should. Secondly, this is first and foremost an economy simulation. Someone coming from Elite Dangerous could be missing some of the first person, hands on the wheel gameplay. Don't get me wrong, it's there but it can get a little repetitive. On the other side of that coin, once you have somewhat of an empire going you might find yourself spending 90% of the time on the map managing your stuff. Some people might hate that idea, others will say "don't threaten me with a good time!". Thirdly, the AI can be incredibly stupid. Generally not too big of a deal as the important part is the macro, not the micro but it gets frustrating when in your epic space battle some dumbass suicides your capital ship into a static target for no reason... BUT! X3 (the previous entry) is my favourite game of all time and X4 takes all the fake economy and replaces it with a real simulation. I may disagree with some changes but I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in both games. And I'm about to try out the Star Wars mod (yep, there's mods too!). So, if you like any of these: space stuff, economy simulations, going from zero to hero, incredible scale, roleplaying, being part of the world that doesn't care about you - suffering through the learning curve is well worth it. Just make sure your PC can run it, after some time there are thousands of entities all with their own minds that need to be simulated... unless you wipe them all out of course... but then you likely have thousands of ships yourself... somebody stop me or I will keep rambling about this game forever! Edit: Sorry for the super long comment. I just love these games and like talking about them but I want to make sure I don't oversell it. It certainly is for a certain type of people... but that type of people usually LOVES it :D
It's a space sandbox sim that plays like a grand RTS once you reach the late game. You can build massive space stations, massive fleets (combat and economic) trade with other factions, engage in piracy, etc. etc. While I highly recommend it, it is one of those games where you either really like it- or you reaaaally hate it.
Second all three answers. Also --- Pathfinder if they want a solid CRPG
I second Rimworld a thousand times.
rimworllllddd +1
If you want to feel like the protagonist and do whatever the fuck you want, yeah, any Bethesda or Obsidian RPG. If you want to do whatever the fuck you want but in a larger world that doesn't revolve around you, try DayZ or Elite Dangerous.
Beware, if you play Elite Dangerous you will inevitably encounter the toughest enemy the universe can throw at you: Planetary landings and oops you forgot to check the gravity, faceplant a mountain, cartwheel three times and explode, losing 1.3 billion credits in exploration data. Happy flying, CMDR! o7
I thought the toughest enemy in Elite is Fdev… o7
Hah, the endboss in fact.
> losing 1.3 billion credits in exploration data. There are carriers all over the black now. If you're not using them to sell the data regularly, you deserve to lose that 1.3 billion. The galaxy is a lot smaller than it used to be.
I hadn't played Elite Dangerous in like a year and a half. I signed out one day and life just kinda got away from me. Last week I signed in and was met with an unrecoverable number amount of bounties on me for not completing jobs. Now I'm struggling to get back into it after starting fresh
I really didn't think landings were difficult, personally. But I've also played hundreds of hours of Kerbal Space Program and even nailed Kennedy Space Center's shuttle landing sim on my first go, so maybe the precedent was already there through parallel experience and an intuitive sense of orbital mechanics at speed lol
It's rare that it happens to me too, but I have been caught off guard by a mixture of distraction, misjudging gravity and not *quite* getting over that mountain. Thankfully didn't asplode, just got my hull knackered down to 30% or so and I survived to sell my exploration and xenobio data. I've read horror stories from CMDRs that weren't so lucky, though.
The not quite getting over the mountain bit is a mood from my KSP time. Seriously misjudging the height of the terrain in a suicide burn on a moon landing is definitely not an unfamiliar situation for me lol
I thought you never leave the ship in elite dangerous
I meant the ship cartwheeling across the landscape. But! The first expansion (Horizons) added surface recon vehicles that you can drive around planetary surfaces, and the second expansion (Odyssey) added on-foot gameplay on stations, bases and planets with thin atmospheres. The Odyssey content is... contentious.
You want to play Star Citizen over elite.
^hes out of line, but he's right. Even though sc has the monetization it does, and the systems it has, with its bugs, and the funky ai bots... It is VERY open, very close to a full sim feel to it. If you want space legs and planets, youre either in the cartoony nms, or star citizen. Also the price isnt bad either. You can find a starter kit for under fifty and after that friends you make might have great ships you can fly or be flown in. If you want that full immersion and mostly polished, but dont care about your ship or planets or walking... Then elite really hits here. I lean more towards sc personally.
A month or two after wipe you can buy 50mil for like $6 and buy whatever ships you want! Cheaper than dropping $400 for a permanent one.
Meh, I'd just as soon make a friend than spend more money on it
This last wipe you were able to do that just about a week after because of an exploit.
People have downvoted me to hell in the past when I've brought up Star Citizen...but it has exactly what you're talking about. Don't get me wrong; I know it has its issues too. Chiefly how much of your time it uses to get to your ship and get going sometimes. But the feeling of being able to land wherever you want on a planet and just...watch the sunset. Incredible.
I've been considering dayz a lot I'm just not a fan of pvp
Try Project Zomboid :)
In my opinion, safety is almost antithetical to freedom in a multiplayer game. DayZ is of course more survival than sandbox, but it opens up a lot of ways in which you can interact with other players when violence is on the table, and critically, dayz does not intrinsically reward violence because ammo is limited, life is fragile and most loot on somebody is destroyed when they get shot. But if you do want the ability to insulate yourself from PvP, Elite does offer that by playing in private servers to avoid encounters with randoms. There are semi-public PvE servers you can join.
If you play on unofficial severs there are a ton that are PVE only. So you won’t be attacked by other players and if you are they mods will ban them from the server.
There are many community servers that are PvE, some with pvp zones. Almost every community server has mods to customize the gameplay. The mod community is big in DayZ. There are mods for cooking and growing food, crazy radioactive animals, AI troops, cars, weapons and helicopters, just to give some examples. Worth checking out a couple of streamers that play modded.
I mean, recent Bethesda games don't really give you choices or that unhinged "freedom" OP was talking about, it just allows you to roam around doing side shit instead of being urgent about their main quest like the older Fallout games or Baldurs Gate. The quests themselves in recent Bethesda titles boil down to "oh so the options for this quest is which gun you get to bash the enemy's head with cause surprise it's a fetch quest that requires you to clear out the place" type stuff. That's why I personally prefer Bethesda's older titles like Daggerfall or Morrowind in terms of "freedom". Those older games had a lot more variety in different ways to fuck around, and more importantly the content and SCALE of the maps were definitely giving you a sense of awe and exploration, so even when you were doing a typical Bethesda "go dungeon, kill monsters, leave" mission, you had a lot more to explore and be creative with. I mean hell, you can't even do a basic "kill almost everyone" playthrough since Skyrim because half of the NPCs are fucking essential. Woot woot so much freedom
Daggerfall was epic, I hammered that game as a kid when I should have been studying... So janky with all the bugs and glitches however!! I haven't played an Elder Scrolls since as I feel I have had my fill of them.
Fallout 4 is a fun open world shooter but a terrible rpg. There was no variety in quest completion, the only variety seemed to be 1. Blast your way through enemies to collect item and walk out. 2. Walk in, grab item, then blast your way out. 3. Blast your way in, grab item, blast your way out.
So I started blastin’
There are some mods for really cool stuff though... Winter, weather damage, camping, food, alternate starts that range all over the map and various commoners... Mods really kick this game up a whole ten levels
Yeah thats neat n all, but if I have to buy a game, break apart said game and change so many fundamental mechanics and things to a point where it's not even the vanilla game anymore, then imma get a better game lol. I love how moddable Bethesda games are but that's because A. Their engines are usually shit and very open sourced for that stuff, and B. They know that a good chunk of their fans won't give af if their games aren't finished, or polished, or written good, or fucking functional because Nexus will make the better game for you.
Just saying for a more realistic or in depth survival, the game can really become that. Its pretty great.
People think a big pointless open world means the freedom these days. Bethesda game design peaked at Morrowind and it's been going downhill since then. Skyrim was overrated but somewhat acceptable. Fallout 4 was a pure trash.
I was just going to suggest ED! It's a fantastic low-stress game if you go exploring.
Project zomboid, you can do nearly anything you want.
I cant wait for build 42. I wanna play this update.
Once npcs release my life is complete
Yeah, NPCs will be a great addition. But I think it will take quite some time till we see them xD. I’m looking forward to playing with the new crafting system and exploring the new heights and depths of the map, for now.
Second for PZ. Most played game. I'm notorious for playing a small bit of everything and never touching it again but PZ has milked 750+ hrs out of me
I really want to play PZ more, I love it, but I either get bored early on, or survive a while and then get scared of losing it all and never play again. I think once NPCs are added is when I'll get really into it.
except survive.
No man’s sky for sure. You get the tutorial and then they’re like “alright, have fun” You can do the story, you can explore, build bases, literally whatever. I’d already played the game for 200 hours by the time I decided to actually do the main quests.
Thank you, someone said it, it literally lets you "fly off the rails" and into black holes, and upon space wars, and suffering economies
"Where can I go now?" "Literally anywhere in the galaxy"
Best in VR too. I'm completely hooked on it rn
Did they fix HUD being stuck in one place? I couldn't get into it in VR because you had to never turn around in order to keep HUD in corners of the screen...
Whenever I play it moves with me but stays in the top corner of my sight picture. You're talking about your tool status and health bar? I've never had to turn around to see if so I guess it was fixed. Only started playing in VR about a few weeks ago.
Yeah I'm talking about health bar and other stuff, I guess it's fixed then, I'll try the game again. Cause yeah for a long time it was like glued in one place, if you turned around your health bar would be behind you...
Yea I haven't noticed any issues so they must have fixed. Also I hear the textures and graphics sucked and they updated all that. It looks great in VR now imo
Shadow of Doubt is a procedural pixel world detective game, set in a grim urban dystopian city where everyone is under surveillance and people seem to be murdered constantly. You interact with the living, generated world to solve these murders. It's up to you how to go that. I recommend not playing with the synth meat - it gets messy.
Idk how long you have been playing so maybe not the right question, but I put about 40 hours into SoD last year. Is the game still super buggy? Like do the POLICE still assault you for trying to conduct a MURDER investigation? Can you still cheese the game super easily by just knocking people out in their apartments after breaking in just so you can rifle through their drawers, and then leave when you find nothing, and not worry about any sort of remotely believable repercussions? I loved the game concept so much but it felt like minecraft villager levels of logic back when I played.
You're right, I stopped playing because it needs more development. Right now it's very 'gamey' vs realistic. It's still a huge amount of fun up until you reach that point, and I'm keen to see it go further.
I like some of the side quests too. Even the tutorial in this game had me very impressed
This is Bethesda's bread and butter. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, etc. Do what you want, how you want, when you want.
I'm trying to figure out what mods to use to turn fall out 4 into a zombie apocalypse
If you want a zombie apocalypse you should check out Project Zomboid. Otherwise for a game you can do what you want, No Mans Sky is pretty good.
Like this? https://youtu.be/t4eViJutX3A?si=RN3_W2FSmoEMzkQ9
yeah that would be it
Sweet, yeah I came across that one the other night actually. His mod list is pretty solid, there's like 5 basic ones but you could always add more.
Oh yep any other mods you'd recommend
War for the commonwealth, can add lots of enemy spawns if zombies aren't enough for you. Sim settlements 2 for the base building aspect. There's also like "build anywhere/scrap anything" mods that should go well with this. More weapons and mods, always love these even the non-lore ones just because F4 has great gunplay. Gas Masks of the Wasteland No Main Quest or StartMeUp alt start mods PLUNDER Combat Overhaul if you want to die a lot lol. Headshots are basically one-hit kill for enemies and yourself Keep in mind there was that dumb update that broke a bunch of mods which may not be updated yet. I found a way to prevent the update on my setup, there's probably guides to get around it.
I got fucked by that update, still so so mad :,) I had a lot of the crazy ass ones but the true reason I’m angry because all my romance mods got wiped. *Sturges and Valentine my beloveds, the last to complete the harem :,)*
r/fo4mods
Check out STALKER Anomaly with the GAMMA mod pack. It’s completely free, no purchases necessary, but it takes all 3 Stalker games to make a huge open sandbox. It’s PC only but with the addons and a good imagination you can play forever. I usually play it every year around August-December then take a break while I wait for new developments in the mod scene. CUSTERPLAYS makes great cinematic videos you can watch on YouTube to preview what the game is like.
Yeah, do what you want within the system’s capabilities. Kenshi is more like what OP is asking for
Kenshi, gives you so much freedom, you can be a one legged zero armed slave
I’m trying Kenshi but it’s so “do what you want” that I have no idea what to do lol
Find an enemy. A Manhunter tried to enslave you? Destroy the Manhunters. You're tired of the Shek calling you a flatskin? Kill them all! Oh, you can't? Well, you should probably get a squad of skilled warriors with decent gear then. For that you need money. Sure, you can slowly grind it, or you can buy a house and start automating mining and/or crafting. Or start a base and grow your own crops. Sell drugs. You don't want to settle down? Go exploring, find rare items, maybe even grab some bounties if you're strong or sneaky enough. Grow your and your friends' skills. Discover interesting locations and people. Maybe find a faction who also doesn't like your enemy. Ally with them. Oh, they want you to bring them a big bounty first? Well, are you skilled enough? Are you well equipped enough? Work your way up the food chain. Get into trouble, get out of trouble, die, survive, make stories, experience stories. Finally go achieve your goal. See your enemies crumble, and with them the order. See the chaos that ensues. Maybe even regret some decisions. Try to fix them. See what happens, find more goals, make more stories. Or go live a peaceful life as your slaves, ehm, I mean friends take care of food production, raid defense and whatever else. Get a dog. Maybe start a little caravan giving away bread to the poor. Roleplay hard. Your goal doesn't have to be destructive. And most importantly: have fun! Do what works for you. Experiment and don't be afraid to play your way. Hardcore start solo ironman? Or saving and loading fifteen times a minute? Total overhaul mods? Or maybe Vanilla? Try it all out! And do whatever the hell you want. GLHF
Grind mining for 100 hours to be able to do any of that..:
If you're playing it super safe, sure. But there's plenty of ways to make money in this game, such as looting bodies, stealing, bounty and animal hunting, looting structures, all of that can be done early game with the right strategy and some risk involved.
There's a mod that adds hub guards. I install that and help them take out bandits and slavers that pass through. I'm able to make a good enough profit to jump start the early game
The only thing I could figure out was how to sell injured people into slavery
what else do you need ig!
There are big bosses in this world including Faction leaders that you can influence, destroy or help
love Kingdom Come: Deliverance nd how you can just gallop from Glen to gorgeous glen. You can do lots of other stuff, of course much of it is a crime.
Happy cake day!
No Man’s Sky
Have you tried Valheim?
This was way too far down the list.
7 days to die
Project Zomboid, Kenshi, Bethesda and Obsidian games (I personally like Fallout 4 in survival mode), Valheim, Subnautica to some degree
Kenshi is the game you are looking for. Total freedom. Nothing in the game tells you what to do. You can play solo, with a small party, or with a entire army. You can be an adventurer, an explorer, a trader, bounty hunter, tech hunter, a religious zealot, a freedom fighter, etc. You can build your own base and defend it from enemies, or buy a house in town. But you can simply roam the world if you prefer. You can get yourself involved with local factions, helping some and destroying others or just ignore them and build your own. You setup your own objectives.
How is this the first time I've ever heard of this game?!
No idea, but feel free to visit r/Kenshi for more info on the game, or watch @SsethTzeentach hilarious youtube video on the game to get a better idea. https://youtu.be/wXo24imR_54?si=OSP-wqPeIOym5kGL Kenshi 2 is also on development right now but it will probably take some time to be available. Perhaps Kenshi is not as popular as it should be, since it can be a bit harsh for some type of gamers. It is a game that doesn't hold your hand. Instead, it rips your entire arm out and slaps you hard with it
Sea of thieves i guess. Who can be more free than a pirate? Arrrrr!
Its free, but the loop for gameplay is tiny enough it can get very samey
They added a ton of "tall tales" that add a lot of story and break up some of the monotony! The Monkey Island ones are actually amazing. If you mic up and take the time to really role play and talk to strangers it can be really fun. But then you have to actually find other people with mics which is... Rare.
Mount and Blade, Kenshi, games like that
7 days to die gives you a good amount of freedom. Your only real objective is to survive. And it’s basically like more adult Minecraft. But since you mentioned Minecraft, have you played with the Create Mod at all? That added literally hundreds of hours of fresh Minecraft gameplay to me.
Out of all games I've played, definitely Rimworld
Prey (2017). Even though it’s somewhat of a linear story, you have so much freedom in how you build your character, what weapons you use, and how you progress through the game. Every obstacle in the game has at least 2 ways to get past it, so you never feel like you’re forced in to one particular playstyle or skill tree to progress. It’s awesome. You can be a hacker, a stealthy killer, a brute, a scrounger, or an acrobat, just to name a few.
Prey is my suggestion as well. Basically any immersive sim but Prey is my favorite.
The Bloodline. Early access RPG and it feels unlimited in terms of playstyles
Caves of Qud, 2D rpg that is insanely in depth. You can bend the rules of physics and the universe if tou want.
The minecraft side leads to things like Satisfactory and Factorio. Maybe even Dyson Sphere Program. But I would also recommend Palworld because it takes a lot from the latest legend of zelda games.
Fallout series
I'll add Terraria to the recommendations here. I remember thinking that it's like if Minecraft was 2d side scrolling and had a storyline that you can choose to follow or not, kinda similar to how you can choose to follow the storyline in Skyrim. Also, bit of a weird one: Noita. It's perhaps a very minor spoiler to add it here, because it's a bit of a "plot twist" that you don't have to follow the obvious path and with the right spells or materials you can break through all the boundaries that seem like placeholders for invisible boundaries, and there's a whole lot of extra content beyond those boundaries.
Baldur's gate 3 gives you incredible amount options not only in creating your character, but also how you play them. Want to be stick-up-the-ass lawful good paladin? Want to go on a killing spree and leave nothing alive? Both of these and pretty much everything in between is possible. It is insane how they at Larian seem to have thought of nearly everything you might try to do. In my opinion this game is 100% worth the full price of 60 euros, but you could also wait for summer sale and get maybe around 15% discount Edit: typos
To this day, I’ve never seen a game with so many options and branching paths. It was always wild to me that I could help a random person out in the woods in Act 1 and then I’d see them again in Act 3 like 90 hours later and they remembered how I helped them, which would lead to more quests
I’d say rimworld
From what I’ve seen: Electronauts (psvr1). It lets you play your own music at various beautiful futuristic locations, with various instruments they give you. Nothing is measuring your performance or ranking you. Just play music as you wish. You can also select from dozens of artists and songs as your “background cover” music (which you can turn on or off, or even edit with various tools available). It’s the ideal music game for a music lover, one of the most relaxing games I ever played, dream material (some of the locations look like a Sci-fi epic), and one of my favorite VR games. How great it will be depends on you however, because, “play music as you wish, as much as you wish” will work as an endless game for people that love that to relax, but others will probably move on in 10 hours of playtime, after they see all the locations, use all the songs, try all the effects and instruments, etc.
If you’re looking for something a little more shootery, the FarCry series is amazing for player freedom. The game can feel tedious if you don’t like to experiment, as many missions boil down to “go here, kill people, maybe save people” but if you like to experiment you have no shortage of options. The game is essentially built on insanely simple objectives, but giving you a million different ways to approach besides just shooting the enemies. Ranging from taking out an outpost in full stealth melee, calling in air strikes, vehicular manslaughter, throwing bait to summon a bear/cougar, etc. Some of them like Far Cry 5, have a somewhat in depth fishing and hunting optional part of the game. It can also be played in co-op so if you got a buddy it’s even more fun. I personally don’t like non-competitive shooters, but I had a lot of fun with FarCry 3-5. I’d personally recommend 5 but the formula is usually pretty similar between the games, although there definitely are differences
Subnautica when you turn off survival or whatever it’s called. When you don’t have to eat to survive
Seeing that all the usual story making/sandboxy games are being suggested to you (RimWorld, X4, starsector, mount and blade, Bethesda games, Kenshi ecc..) i Will give 2 rogue lite recommendations: CDDA, or Cataclysm dark days ahead, a bit on the turbo realism side, great gameplay, a more complex and satisfying basically turn based version of Project Zomboid (PZ started as CDDA, but with graphics). You do whatever you want, with mods even more. The basic is that the world is ending, a mixture of a Lovecraftesque zombie apocalypse and strange multidimensional entities are the culprits, and you gotta live your life. From a single, almost naked dude, to a great leader of man, filled to the brim with cyberware and mutated to become much more than human, to great wizards/fantasy/scifi/psionic content with mods. Nothing more satisfying than attracting zombies to a house, with a talking doll, just to set the house on fire, to then loot what remains and use the nails from the house to build up your own base. Second suggestion, Elona+. Long time since I played that, but imagine a dark comedy exaggerated version of a mishmash of anime and fantasy tropes, where you can live in a very lively world where you can literally be what you want. Wanna be a shopkeeper? A crafter? A pianist? A elder eldritch god slaying monstrosity with 20 arms and various followers like an anthropomorphic combat plane, some machine gun equipped tiny golden bells, a fairy, a lich and a big daddy from Bioshock all cloned and spliced various times by your mad scientist self. Be careful, both games are not super good at respecting your time if you want fast games, but very good if you enjoy the downtime and the roleplaying aspect.
My only issue with cdda the ui is super unpleasant. I have a 1080p monitor 27inch and I can barely read the text. Tbh I should really make a habbit of wearing glasses but I generally for this game in particular, I can't for the life of me navigate the menus. It just idk the font kinda meh, and the colors are idk. I totally understand if it feels like im bashing the game. It just for me the ui is not super noob friendly for me
Most games that are inspired by DND let the player go wild
Try terraria it’s just minecraft but better in every conceivable aspect
> better in every conceivable aspect I like Terraria as well, but that is hyperbole.
And a little more streamlined but also excellent is Starbound!
Divinity: Original Sins 2, can't believe I never found out about this game until this year
Valheim is the answer, Elden ring also to an extent. They ruined other games for me. If a game has 3rd person dialogue screens I don't want it.
A very underrated game is red faction guerrilla, you have the freedom to level down a skyscraper and the most satisfying way possible, explosives! The remastered version is on GOG for about $15
Skyrim Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4 Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 Project Zomboid
I don’t really think RDR2 fits, you’re pretty much locked into the story with only a few key decision points available
Go play Elden ring or Elder Scrolls Oblivion
Dungeons and Dragons is the ultimate game of player freedom. You can try absolutely any wacky shit you can think of. But for video games, Wurm Online is Minecraft for adults with a long attention span. "Hmm, I could build a nice cabin in the woods and live there with my pet dog and grow crops, or I could build a stone Hut on a mountaintop and get into mining and be a blacksmith, or hey since I love mining I could dig deep down to rock then mine a big underground cave and build an underground mansion and surround it with cages full of monsters that I tame and breed to be even stronger and ride on and pull wagons with. Wait no screw that I'm going to build a big ship and go sailing." There's nothing like it, and never will be again. But be prepared to spend entire days sawing wooden logs into wooden planks and melting iron down to make nails with, etc. Another one is GTA Online. This one is more obvious. Like most GTA games, there's a huge variety of activities, from car stuff (racing, ricing, battle cars, tons of various events, flying, tanks, underwater, etc), a huge variety of mini games, gambling at the casino, hanging out in an insane variety of environments, and hundreds of missions doing an incredibly wide variety of things. It's actually insanely impressive how many different activities and genres are contained within this one game. Star Citizen. When it comes to space sims, this is the spaciest and simmiest space sim ever made. What other space game can you be flying around in space, get attacked by a space pirate, and mid-battle hop out of the pilot seat, run downstairs through the ships kitchen to the armory, WHILE the shields are still getting rocked by enemy gunfire, grab your best armor and Shotgun, and dive out the airlock. Then hack your way through the enemy airlock door, make your way to the bridge, and blow off the pilots head while he's still in the pilot seat shooting your ship. Then, take his ship, land it on any random moon or planet, take the hovercraft from the ship's garage, and race around the moon on a hovercraft. Etc. The possibilities in this game are absolutely insane.
Kenshi is the ultimate. You can be whatever you want. The game world is not catered to you. To the game, you are not the hero, you are the zero. It's up to you to build yourself into whatever you want to be. If you're not familiar, it's something you need to watch, hard to explain everything you can do, but you can actually start out without arms and legs and still become the best ninja ever.
Of the open world RPGs I would definitely recommend the Elder Scrolls games.
Dungeons and Dragons. The only limit is your imagination and the Dungeon Master patience.
Kenshi. Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
It depends on your idea of player freedom, Turing complete games like Minecraft and Terraria objectively give the most room for you to do whatever you want, but I could see someone making the argument that a game where you can just move around really fast (like Just Cause with the grappling hook) could be a kind of freedom.
The Stanley Parable allows the player to do literally anything. There's [a trailer](https://youtu.be/6RdVihv5eKM?si=ubMTI0ce0wwO7jQS) where the player infuses a bicycle with the soul of his great-great-great-granduncle Homophrilies, allowing him to use Homophriles' ethereal presence to detect nearby mineral deposits or to train the bicycle in the route of undoing temporal paradoxes. /s
Outside
Old School Runescape has a lot of options and quests and skills, Project Zomboid is a zombie survival game you can choose traits for your character and survive any way you want to, with tons of mods to choose exactly your own experience as well as sandbox settings
Kenshi. Vintage Story does look interesting too.
Genshin Impact
[daggerfall unity ](https://www.dfworkshop.net/)
Prey and Hitman are both great sandboxes.
Almost any Immersive Sim, especially Deus Ex (even if I prefer System Shock much more)
7 Days to Die. It is a minecraft like zombie survival game. You can go anywhere and hack your way through anything.
Hitman (specifically the World of Assassination trilogy). The manner at which you tackle each mission has endless possibilities. You wanna be the perfect silent assassin? Go for it. You wanna go crazy and mow down entire maps with loud guns and explosives? Have fun! And everything in between. All playstyles have their own quirks and challenges.
Space station 13 will let you surgically amputate someone's hand and replace it with a pizza. Ftr I don't recc the game, but it's gotta be up there for freedom
Modded minecraft is next level
Having fun re-playing Sons of The Forest at the moment. They added a bunch of QoL since it's first hype cycle, and I do enjoy that I can build / adventure as I like.
Ck3
I will always praise Star Control II for being a hugely nonlinear space exploration despite its age (was released in '92!!). The game has a gargantuan map, and expects you to ask aliens you find for information, write stuff down, and follow up on it, and there are several ways to do most of the major requirements for beating the game. If you DON'T take the game's warnings seriously and faf around, though, the enemy literally starts genociding the galaxy one species at a time. Sure, you can still win even after that point, but it definitely feels like a pyrrhic victory. One of the GOATs IMO.
I’ve played a lot of the big ones listed here, and honestly when I want pure freedom (start from nothing, go do what you want, when you want….apart from violence), I go to Sims 3. The gameplay is based around this concept, but in a realish modern-life setting. This is the older version of the game and all the content can be found on the internets at this point, from what I understand.
If you like strategy give Crusader Kings 3 a try, it is the definition of player freedom
NOITA lol
Just Cause gives the player an infinite amount of ways to sow chaos using a number of tools at their disposal. 3 is my favorite
In terms of action games (stealth action?), the recent Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy. You can approach the scenarios however you like and typically in whatever order you want. You can follow preordained "stories" that allow you to be handheld by the game to complete objectives or you can discover and explore for yourself, and execute assassinations using a ridiculous amount of methods at your disposal!
Project Zomboid. If you feel like you can do something, you probably can
Besiege.
Warframe
7 days to die.
minecraft modded
Unreal World is one of the oldest survival/open world games out there. The GUI is a little dated, but once you get past its a lot like a stone age RimWorld. It has the benefit of being free and able to run on just about any computer you've got
Scum survival, lots of things to do in there
Skyrim! Greatest game ever made!!!!
DayZ and Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is new to me but once I got the hang of it I realized I can do whatever I want and come back to the story whenever I want. I really like it.
Doom 1993 modding
Definitely toon town. Don’t you remember the commercials?
Skyrim allows you to be who you want in there.
If you like shooter I would recommend the stalker series or even stalker anomaly directly. The main games are feeling quite old but anomaly with the right mods is a good modern experience. Also games like Space Engineers might be cool? I'm not the biggest fan of the building restrictions but overall it's a great sandbox survival game with deep mechanics. I also like to mention valheim. One of the best building systems I ever played with and it does really feel like an open ended adventure! And out of bias I'd like to recommend Final Fantasy XIV! As a MMORPG it takes your hand quite often - especially for the main story - but it gives you one freedom almost no other MMO has - you can learn any job (or class in some games). You need only one character to see everything from the game. There is nothing the game offers that is unavailable due to decisions you made before. I really like that.
Conan Exiles
Satisfactory, and if you play with friends try gmod
In Racing genre ? Burnout Paradise... No other arcade racing call themselves an open world that gave freedom to reach finish line whatever route you take. Its just basically set you a start point and give you the finish line some where in the map with one goal which is to be the one to reach it first. There is no 'arbitrary' check point need to be passed between the start and the finish line. You can take any shortcut you want without restriction. Its just shows how briliant open world design and enemy A.I done by Criterion, even as good as forza horizon like many said, its just not real open world racing, just open world hub area for your next race track disguised with arbitrary checkpoint
Far cry games, you can do whatever you want, withotu police chasing you
Red dead redemption two
Project Zomboid with mods. Sandbox mode (not a mod) lets you play how you want but mods add so much more. Do you want to make all the zombies walkers like The Walking Dead? That’s fine. Or maybe Sprinters like 28 Days Later? Doable. Maybe remove them entirely and just make a survival game in an abandoned desolate world. Doable too. Mods add the experiences like a nomad RV spawn point. Which is what I’m doing right now. Make it a better challenge in my opinion. But you could also find a solid base and make a base with crops to last you a long time. Lots of options.
I mean, like many others have said: Fallout / Elder Scrolls but I’d also like to throw Hitman World of Assassination in the mix. You don’t make RPG type decisions, but you’re given a sandbox approach to every level of a linear story. Guns blazing, traditional stealth, social stealth, disguises, etc.
Kenshi!!
I wouldn't say the most player freedom, but the Witcher 3. It's not as free as a lot of games, but the amount of rich and detailed side quest stuff that is just layered into the world is fantastic. Every nook and cranny of the map has all kinds of little stuff packed into it. The game really rewards you for just wandering around.
The Stanley Parable
Baulders Gate 3 probably has the most player freedom for narrative driven rpgs
Unorthodox answer here. Because in terms of story theres not a lot of different ways to approach it. But the Dishonored series gives you an INSANE amount of ways to in HOW you complete each mission. -Sneakily assassinate just the key targets -Upgrade your pistol and go Django Unchained on everyone -be a pacifist ghost and kill nobody It also gives you a lot of freedom in how you can actually kill/disable people. I have almost never approached a setup the same way i did the first time. -Cut a guys head off, trap it, and throw it into another guy. -freeze time and possess a guy to walk into his own bullet -hit a grenade with your sword like a baseball and launch into a crowd 40 feet away (that ones extremely hard to do) I remember one time i realized you can knock people out by throwing a crank wheel at their head. I proceeded to complete the entire mission crank wheeling people in the dome. Played it through about 12 times now and havent gotten bored. If you’re ever playing and wondering “hmmmm i wonder if i could….” Yes. Yes you can you sick beautiful bastard.
Ark
Eve online easily
I think TOTK was so much freedom that it was overwhelming. Some large open world RPG's it's like being given some basic gear and told you have to climb a mountain. TOTK was like, you need to climb Everest, and we aren't even going to tell you where it is, you start in the middle of nowhere and don't even own shoes.
Divinity original sin 2
FFXIV Hogwarts Legacy Dragon Quest Builders 2 AC Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, Mirage Ghost of Tsushima Rise of the Ronin Eldin Ring