Hey all, I’m on the hunt for games that really suck you into their world, the kind where you look up and suddenly three hours have gone by.
Games I’ve loved and couldn’t put down:
- Plague Tale
- Horizon
- Subnautica
- Mass Effect
- Expedition 33
- Homeworld
Doesn’t matter the gente, as long as it’s got that vibe where you just exist in the atmosphere and forget about everything else.
What are your go-to games when you want to disappear into another world? Bonus appreciation if it’s something underrated or off the beaten path.
Edit: Thank you all. I will definitely keep this thread bookmarked. You all dwarved what I found on Reddit ir any other platform! Well done!
No Man’s Sky. Take advantage of the custom game rules to tweak to your preferred gameplay. Personally, I skip all the tutorial stuff and boost resources as I like flying around/upgrading my ship more than the core gameplay loop.
If you’re willing to hunt for a 2009 oldie, I have a guilty love for The Saboteur.
GTA/Assassin’s creed esque where you play a race car driving Irishman helping the resistance in WWII, Nazi occupied Paris.
Gameplay can be repetitive, but free roaming Paris was a lot of fun. Plus, when I finally travelled to Paris IRL, I had a few “I know this place!” moments that felt really cool as a first-time visitor.
Cyberpunk 2077. It had a lot to build on with the IP being decades old with a lot of worldbuilding done already. Such a huge, intricate, and alive world. My first playthrough took 200 hours just from exploration, and there’s a TON i never got to. Over 1k hours later, there’s still connections i haven’t made, secrets i haven’t found. I honestly haven’t found a more immersive game for me.
Runner up: Red Dead Redemption 2. Again, the world is so alive and detailed that my immersion goes off the charts. Another 200hr first playthrough. NPCs have lives and schedules, the voice acting is fantastic, and the overall world building is immaculate. Tiny details that 0.01% of players would ever notice are carefully constructed (Lemat cartridges, looking at you). Wildlife interacts realistically with other wildlife and other stimuli. Cats in cities will search for, find, and hunt mice. I never fast traveled because just riding across the landscape and looking around was a better time. Could not recommend more highly, but watching or playing the first one first is advised.
Disco Elysium. I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned yet. There was also legal drama with the original creators, so feel free to pirate. Not that Lemmy needs convincing of it.
I can’t get it to run with Linux. Must check again…
https://www.protondb.com/app/632470
You should as lots of folks say it works straight away.
- Subnautica
>“Atmospheric” game
>Looks inside
>Water.
Fallout NV
While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea there’s something about playing NV with radio NV running and running around the emptier parts of the map, then I get jumped by a bunch Romaboo larpers.
Arcanum
While it’s immesian is a bit different it’s music and story telling can drag me in easily.
Outer wilds
Death is inevitable, so you may as well enjoy some music with your pals.
Firewatch was a good game for me to get immersed in for an evening. It involves hiking around an isolated open world park. It follows a linear story which is pretty interesting, but I think there’s an option to wander freely after completion
Noita.
Just be prepared to die. A lot.
Kingdom Come Deliverance.
Amazingly beautiful and realistic world with incredible detail. The forests, pastures, meadows and towns are incredible to just walk around in and lose yourself in the atmosphere.
Also the game(s) are very, very, good.
Medieval realistic role playing. You stay as a peasant who can’t pretty much do anything. Fight, sneak, or even read. You have to learn everything and you decide what you want to learn by doing it untill you get better.
Medieval realistic role playing
“Realistic” is used very favorably in this case… I get what you mean: Henry’s story feels plausible enough to suck you in and I don’t mean this as a critique. But it is in no way realistic: Henry starts as a smiths son and is pretty useless at everything but he becomes a proficient fighter in the story and as far as I remember pretty influential. This is extremely unrealistic for his timeline because social mobility in the late middle ages was very much on existent.
To be fair there are some examples from the middle ages where common people achieve great power in times of trouble.
There’s this game that’s actually really short, around two hours gameplay, but in that time they manage to absorve you into a world that after a few years I still remember fondly. The experience is really unique, just like the gameplay.
I am actually surprised it is not already mentioned.
The price is well worth it. And in general, games by that company, annapurna are great examples of atmospheric games.
Stray for instance, it is more classical in the approach to the game style but it is amazing ( you play as a cat in a postapocaliptic world).
And talking of those games another that comes to mind as really absorving is Firewatch. Less action, more adventure style but so pretty.
Journey is brilliant. Thank you for the reminder. A second run might be in order. It’s short enough.
Stray… I probably should love cats for that. I’ll take another look.
Firewatch. I’ve seen it a few times. Should check it out again. At every look it feels like it’ll bore me. Might be wrong.
Stray was another case of the marketing made it look like an entirely different game (open world platformer with puzzle elements) when it’s really an intentionally linear puzzle game with no platforming
Your post made mine obsolete. Will check out firewatch some day.
Elite: Dangerous consumed a significant part of my life for quite some time, especially when I discovered VR.
I became one with my ships. Bounty hunting, exploration, and mining were my main staples.
Yeah same with me, I’d get lost for hours in that game just smuggling items from system to system. I’m not even sure if I ever figured out if there’s an actual story in the game, the flying in space was all I needed.
Dishonored and BioShock come to mind.
They’ve likely already been mentioned.
Bioshock… couldn’t stop until all three were binge-played.
The Witcher 3.
Awesome writing, really beautiful rendering, really good main history and side quests.
Watch one of the thousands of ‘how to start the Witcher 3’ to avoid common mistakes at the beginning of the game. And be ready for plenty of hours in The Continent.
(Oh, and forget the Netflix series, the games follow a completely different canon)
I’ve been playing Pal World this past week and been having a lot of fun exploring and discovering the world. The atmosphere is quite cartoony but you can also have a pet monkey with a gun go into battle with you. I’ve spent hours at a time just wandering the lands discovering new areas and also get lost in the base building aspect of the game.
Control and the Alan Wakes
Control was so great. Can’t wait for the sequel.
