Exploration in Video Games

So I've been playing the World of Warcraft trial for the past week*, and one of the things I'm enjoying the most is just the pure expanse of the landscape. I think I'm a bit of an explorer by nature, anyway - whenever my family goes to the beach, I always end up walking all the way to the end and back looking for interesting things to photograph, cool rocks and shells, and all that rot. Therefore, I love games that have large areas with lots of nooks and crannies to probe into, caverns to spelunk in, mountains to climb, etc.

I don't know if a game exists that is exclusively exploration, but I would love to play something like that. Perhaps an open-ended GTA style game where, instead of the missions involving killing people or stealing things, you have to find fossils or jewels, explore caverns, find exotic species of animals, maybe investigate lost temples for priceless artifacts. There wouldn't be a focus on combat, though obviously there'd be some - after all, exploration has its risks like wild animals, angry natives, and the like, but the focus would be on the environment. There could be elements from Metal Gear Solid 3 as well, like the camouflage system, or having to hunt for your food and heal your wounds.

I would kill for this game, if it existed.

*P.S. - I think I'm hooked, currently looking to get an actual copy of the game.

I was just putting some thought into how to make an interesting hiking game over the weekend (while hiking, unsurprisingly). I was thinking that discovery would need to be one of the pillars of the experience, as well as map reading, and landmark identification.

I don't think anything like this exists.

Yellow5 wrote:

I was just putting some thought into how to make an interesting hiking game over the weekend (while hiking, unsurprisingly). I was thinking that discovery would need to be one of the pillars of the experience, as well as map reading, and landmark identification.

I don't think anything like this exists.

Hadn't thought about map reading, but that makes me think maybe it would be better if you had to do your own cartography.

Robinson's Requiem explored some of those themes. Unfortunately, the game was terribly buggy and the interface was horrible.

It's hard to think of anything recent that fits this. Maybe 'Trespasser' comes close, as it's mostly about exploration and the combat was merely to survive. The whole arm simulation thing seemed to turn many people off but it's one of the few games I've played all the way through. The main reason was despite it's flaws the exploration was fun and trying to survive with little to no weapons against physics based dinosaurs kept me entertained.

Seems most modern games are all about shooting or blowing up anything that is discovered during exploration.

I remember an awesome game I used to play on my C-64 (or maybe C-128D, not sure) that was basically a planet exploration game. The graphics were basically just wireframe (think like the old tank arcarde game "Battlezone") but this was a complex simulation. You had your main spacecraft and then you had a drone you could send out and control to do more detailed exploration. The game came with this huge paper fold-old map divided into quadrants that was completely empty. It was up to you to explore and graph the entire planet and discover "some mystery" that I've completly forgotten now. Oh, and you'd find these ancient artifacts along the way that were clues to puzzles and find cool ancient ruins and as you graphed them out you'd start seeing shapes and patterns. The game was huge. Big enough that I don't recall my 14 year old self even coming close to finishing, but even today I remember just the coolness of exploring it. If my memory is right it even came with a headset and you could give your ship voice commands (which for back then was pretty incredible on it's own) as I seem to remember talking to my ship a lot. Or maybe I was just yelling at the TV.

-edit-
A little bit of digging and I found the game: Echelon

Man, I loved that game. A review can be found here. After reading the review I do now remember the slowness of the game and flying was an exercise in patience. Still, the exploration and artifacts were worth it.

I'm with dhelor as I'd love to see more games focus on the exploration than on the combat.

dhelor wrote:

Hadn't thought about map reading, but that makes me think maybe it would be better if you had to do your own cartography.

I don't think this quite covers all of your requirements, but the comment about cartography reminded me of a recent DS game, Etrian Odyssey, which had a fairly large focus on exploring and literally drawing your own map as you walk around, including the ability to mark notations about what's unique in each step.

Unfortunately, aside from that, it looks like a pretty typical dungeon crawler, with the usual combat every dozen steps.

For exploration you're pretty much limited to the Elder Scrolls series, MMO's, and There. I would also enjoy a game focused primarily around exploration.

Endless Ocean sounds kind of right, basically just exploring and learning about sea critters. Apparently it is quite meditative.

Might be a little niche, but games focussed on exploration are pretty niche.

Check out Noctis - explore the universe, open ended, no goals. Just pick a planet, land, wander around to find something interesting.

Shawdow of the Colosus also had a landscape I just lost myself in as well. Wasn't quite big enough though.

I spend half my time in Lord of the rings online exploring the beautiful landscapes and landmarks... That game has some awesome sights!

I remember one of my friends made a mission for Operation Flashpoint which was basically a tressure hunt. A box was placed somewhere on the map and a series of points were placed where you got hints of where to go next. So you used your map to navigate from point to point. Was awesome

There was also a Game Boy Color game that I think was called Survival Kids or something. It was about two kids stranded on an island and they have to survive. Lots of exploration. I only played it for a short while, but I really liked what I played. There are some sequels called Lost in Blue, but they don't sound to be as good.

The Missus is currently playing through Lost in Blue 3 for the DS. I haven't played it, but it seems to be mostly about exploration and survival skills (there's a minigame for making fire). The only combat I've heard her mention is the occasional bat encounter.

I don't know how extensive the exploration is, though. All I know is she seems to like it enough to be playing it through a second even though she just beat it (the game has multiple characters and endings).

I'm currently playing Pirates! on my PSP, and there's a bit of exploring in that. Searching for buried treasure and lost relatives is pretty cool. They give you a map with some reference points, and you have to find your way to the X using landmarks. It's on the simple side, but it's fun enough.

You could always go subversive and buy a GTA game to search for hidden items and do nothing else. Kind of urban exploration. Who says you have to play the missions? I don't know if the games after Vice City come with maps, but if they do you can run off some photocopies and mark them up. (At any rate, you could download one of the cheater maps with all the secret items marked on it and use that)

I don't know how persistent GTA cities are, but if you have a friend he or she could hide something in the city somewhere (maybe a particular kind of car), mark it on a map and send you looking for it. That would only work if the car didn't erase itself after it got out of sight, though, and I haven't played a GTA game since Vice City several years ago, so I don't remember whether that would work.

If it wouldn't work in GTA, it might work in some other open-world game. Can you bury treasure in WOW for others to find?

Finally, to steal a page from Rabbit (I'm surprised he hasn't already said as much) you could always buy a flight simulator.

I agree that an exploration-based game would be pretty cool. I believe they used to call these sorts of things "Adventure games." Seriously, though, a game that centered on finding photographable vantage points, or some such, would be pretty cool. Heck, maybe a game featuring an archaeologist that actually engages in archaeology. That would be novel, wouldn't it?

Sadly I doubt there'd be much of a market for it.

I'd have to go back to old Megadrive (Or Genesis, if you like) titles like Toejam and Earl (Almost all about exploration) or King's Bounty (Lots of fighting but definite exploration element)

I think you wouldn't go far wrong with the Elder Scrolls series as someone mentioned, especially Daggerfall if you can still get it. The map was huge, full of small, similar looking towns and buggy dungeons, but still... it's as if Bethsoft find it difficult to strike a balance. They either have gigantic, pretty empty or samey landscapes (Daggerfall) or landscapes full of things that feel entirely scripted - there's something to be said for the mysterious sculpture that isn't actually part of one quest or another, even if it only gives us all something to talk about

Vega wrote:

It's hard to think of anything recent that fits this. Maybe 'Trespasser' comes close, as it's mostly about exploration and the combat was merely to survive. The whole arm simulation thing seemed to turn many people off but it's one of the few games I've played all the way through. The main reason was despite it's flaws the exploration was fun and trying to survive with little to no weapons against physics based dinosaurs kept me entertained.

I'm sure it had nothing to do with being able to look down at the character's huge boobs, including a heart tattoo on one that represented her health.

My problem with exploration games is that I absolutely love loot. Love it! Can't get enough of it. If a game is open to exploration then I start looking for every single nook and cranny that might have some interesting loot shoved in there, and I CAN'T MOVE ON until I've checked. It rarely pays off but on occasion it's paid off with some super cool stuff, so I keep on doing it. The result is that it takes me forever to get through games with any sort of exploration element. Even JRPGs with basic dungeons, I could find the end but even knowing I'll have to face dozens of annoying random battles I won't be able to go on without checking out that last hallway I passed over.

Oh but my neurosis gets worse. If I head too far down one hallway I'll assume it's the one I was SUPPOSED to use, which means the hallway I DIDN'T take will be a dead end... a dead end that may have GOODIES in it! So I'll turn right around and head back... only to find out that I was heading toward the potential honeypot of dead ending in the first place and need to retrace my steps once again! Or I'll start to second guess my instincts, as if there's some sort of subliminal suggestion in dungeon design that hints where the dungeon designer WANTS me to go. But then, does he want me to go that way first so the dungeon takes longer and I find those neat goodies, or is he guiding me toward the exit!?

That's right, I second-guess what the game designer meant by a HALLWAY.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Endless Ocean sounds kind of right, basically just exploring and learning about sea critters. Apparently it is quite meditative.

Might be a little niche, but games focussed on exploration are pretty niche.

D'oh forgot about that one. Endless Ocean has been great actually. Surprisingly good exploration game, but lacks any sense of peril.

Lobster, that's hilarious about the hallways because I do the exact same thing.

I would, however, also really dig an exploration-focused game. This is probably why I loved Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time so much: yeah, it had combat, but so much of the game was puzzle exploration platforming, and so incredibly well done.

But an open world exploration game, looking for and recovering various things, would be incredibly awesome. The Elder Scrolls games are good in this regard, but a little too combat-heavy and a not enough scavenger-hunting in the caves and ruins. The ES series is tops on the PC gaming for me (though I play Oblivion on the 360) because of the heavy exploration and lore focus. I spend far, FAR more time enjoying exploring and finding & reading through books and journals and such in the games than I do fighting.

One of the reasons I loved the Ultima games (at least until U8 and U9) was there open gameworld. You could/did spend hours just kicking around the gameworld finding new areas.

One of the more (relatively) recent games that had a great open gameworld was Sacred. It's a bit outdated now, but the world was *huge* and it was a lot of fun just to explore the countryside.

Another was Divine Divinity...another huge open gameworld. Oblivion wasn't too bad in that respect, but I didn't find much about that world interesting.

I'm with Lobster. I usually won't go down what I think is the "right" path in a dungeon crawler because I want to be sure and explore everything off to the sides first. I check every door, take every fork (ala Yogi Berra) and I'll backtrack if I think I'm going the way the developers originally intended. I'm especially paranoid about it since so many games make it impossible to go back and explore if you didn't do it the first time.

Oddly, whenever I get stuck in a game it's usually because I didn't go somewhere or didn't know I could go somewhere. (Most recent example: I got stuck in one episode of Sam and Max Season 1 because I didn't think to go back into the alley where the posters were hanging) O! The Irony!

For an old, old, incredible Old school exploration game, you could always try Pitfall on the 2600. Nothing but you and a ton of branching paths to explore. Plenty of obstacles to jump over, but for the most part there's nothing to that game but exploration.

Botswana wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

Endless Ocean sounds kind of right, basically just exploring and learning about sea critters. Apparently it is quite meditative.

Might be a little niche, but games focussed on exploration are pretty niche.

D'oh forgot about that one. Endless Ocean has been great actually. Surprisingly good exploration game, but lacks any sense of peril.

I liked poking sharks for a while. They'd whip around and show me their teeth and then just kind of go "oh you! tee hee!" and go on swimming. That game would've had a lot more replayability if they'd just made it a little more interactive, maybe added some more things to do (fishing, maybe?).

Pure Exploration? Sounds like Myst to me. There are also ways to play Fallout(boost charisma, personality traits) and never fire a shot to get the game done.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I liked poking sharks for a while. They'd whip around and show me their teeth and then just kind of go "oh you! tee hee!" and go on swimming. That game would've had a lot more replayability if they'd just made it a little more interactive, maybe added some more things to do (fishing, maybe?).

I don't know about anyone else, but I would KILL for a good Wii fishing game. The controls are perfect for it.

cube wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

I liked poking sharks for a while. They'd whip around and show me their teeth and then just kind of go "oh you! tee hee!" and go on swimming. That game would've had a lot more replayability if they'd just made it a little more interactive, maybe added some more things to do (fishing, maybe?).

I don't know about anyone else, but I would KILL for a good Wii fishing game. The controls are perfect for it.

Some friends and I got a kick out of the fishing game on WiiPlay but part of that might've been that I kept giving all the fish my own names.

Get the Noodle Fish! Get the Noodle Fish!

LobsterMobster wrote:

Oh but my neurosis gets worse. If I head too far down one hallway I'll assume it's the one I was SUPPOSED to use, which means the hallway I DIDN'T take will be a dead end... a dead end that may have GOODIES in it! So I'll turn right around and head back... only to find out that I was heading toward the potential honeypot of dead ending in the first place and need to retrace my steps once again! Or I'll start to second guess my instincts, as if there's some sort of subliminal suggestion in dungeon design that hints where the dungeon designer WANTS me to go. But then, does he want me to go that way first so the dungeon takes longer and I find those neat goodies, or is he guiding me toward the exit!?

That's right, I second-guess what the game designer meant by a HALLWAY.

I had this problem in God of War. Any split lead to one of: 1) the way you need to go, 2) a locked door you can't get past until you go down the first, or 3) a stash of red orbs, refill chests, or an eye/feather.

I forgot to mention that I too loved World of Warcraft for the exploration. I did quests and such to get XP just so I could move in to new regions and explore them. Grouping? f*ck that! My pet and I are busy inspecting every nook and cranny of a new area I can finally survive.

Un'Goro Crater was one of the best first-time-here experiences. It's like, wow, this place is cool HOLY F*CK A TYRANT DEVILSAUR KILLED ME IN ONE BITE!

For old-schoolers out there, Seven Cities of Gold was an awesome exploration game. Not pure exploration, but exploration was a huge part of the game. Don't play the DOS port of this.

Probably not what you are looking for though.

LobsterMobster wrote:

My problem with exploration games is that I absolutely love loot. Love it! Can't get enough of it. If a game is open to exploration then I start looking for every single nook and cranny that might have some interesting loot shoved in there, and I CAN'T MOVE ON until I've checked. It rarely pays off but on occasion it's paid off with some super cool stuff, so I keep on doing it. The result is that it takes me forever to get through games with any sort of exploration element. Even JRPGs with basic dungeons, I could find the end but even knowing I'll have to face dozens of annoying random battles I won't be able to go on without checking out that last hallway I passed over.

Oh but my neurosis gets worse. If I head too far down one hallway I'll assume it's the one I was SUPPOSED to use, which means the hallway I DIDN'T take will be a dead end... a dead end that may have GOODIES in it! So I'll turn right around and head back... only to find out that I was heading toward the potential honeypot of dead ending in the first place and need to retrace my steps once again! Or I'll start to second guess my instincts, as if there's some sort of subliminal suggestion in dungeon design that hints where the dungeon designer WANTS me to go. But then, does he want me to go that way first so the dungeon takes longer and I find those neat goodies, or is he guiding me toward the exit!?

That's right, I second-guess what the game designer meant by a HALLWAY.

I am very much the same way. Thank goodness for "save anywhere" features in most PC games!

In term of exploration/loot hunting, the worst has to be the Wilds in HGL. They are usually hard as heck to solo, but my compulsive disorder in exploring every corner, killing everything, and find every piece of loot just make those places sooo much hard...

As for game with lots of explorations, I definitely think Eldar Scroll games are the way to go, esp. with all the mods and all. I also enjoyed exploration in WoW immensely before they nerfed the heck out of "wall walking"

LobsterMobster wrote:

...The result is that it takes me forever to get through games with any sort of exploration element. Even JRPGs with basic dungeons, I could find the end but even knowing I'll have to face dozens of annoying random battles I won't be able to go on without checking out that last hallway I passed over....

Take your compulsion, and add the complete inability to navigate by direction and you get me. I get lost in my own bathtub in real life, and in virtual worlds it's even worse. I try to systematically canvas the place, but inevitably they have one of those battle screens that pulls you in going one way but turns you around coming back out or one too many featureless hallways and I loose my place. I spend hours wandering around killing the same go ram four spawns of Creeping Features or whatever until even the characters are probably wondering if I'm taking my directions from Moses. I'm so bad I wrote an article about it.

I play these games and I love them, but sometimes they are a trial to me.

LobsterMobster wrote:

My problem with exploration games is that I absolutely love loot. Love it! Can't get enough of it. If a game is open to exploration then I start looking for every single nook and cranny that might have some interesting loot shoved in there, and I CAN'T MOVE ON until I've checked. It rarely pays off but on occasion it's paid off with some super cool stuff, so I keep on doing it. The result is that it takes me forever to get through games with any sort of exploration element. Even JRPGs with basic dungeons, I could find the end but even knowing I'll have to face dozens of annoying random battles I won't be able to go on without checking out that last hallway I passed over.

Oh but my neurosis gets worse. If I head too far down one hallway I'll assume it's the one I was SUPPOSED to use, which means the hallway I DIDN'T take will be a dead end... a dead end that may have GOODIES in it! So I'll turn right around and head back... only to find out that I was heading toward the potential honeypot of dead ending in the first place and need to retrace my steps once again! Or I'll start to second guess my instincts, as if there's some sort of subliminal suggestion in dungeon design that hints where the dungeon designer WANTS me to go. But then, does he want me to go that way first so the dungeon takes longer and I find those neat goodies, or is he guiding me toward the exit!?

That's right, I second-guess what the game designer meant by a HALLWAY.

Wow, that was my exact experience with every FF game, or dungeon crawl I've played. I hate leaving a room unexplored. Metroid has always hurt me, because you had to pass rooms until you got the specific item to allow you to enter them later on. Couple that with a bad memory, and not always taking notes (which I used to do a lot), I just got frustrated.
WoW has been scratching that itch lately, Crackdown (kinda), and Oblivion before that.

Aries wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

My problem with exploration games is that I absolutely love loot. Love it! Can't get enough of it. If a game is open to exploration then I start looking for every single nook and cranny that might have some interesting loot shoved in there, and I CAN'T MOVE ON until I've checked. It rarely pays off but on occasion it's paid off with some super cool stuff, so I keep on doing it. The result is that it takes me forever to get through games with any sort of exploration element. Even JRPGs with basic dungeons, I could find the end but even knowing I'll have to face dozens of annoying random battles I won't be able to go on without checking out that last hallway I passed over.

Oh but my neurosis gets worse. If I head too far down one hallway I'll assume it's the one I was SUPPOSED to use, which means the hallway I DIDN'T take will be a dead end... a dead end that may have GOODIES in it! So I'll turn right around and head back... only to find out that I was heading toward the potential honeypot of dead ending in the first place and need to retrace my steps once again! Or I'll start to second guess my instincts, as if there's some sort of subliminal suggestion in dungeon design that hints where the dungeon designer WANTS me to go. But then, does he want me to go that way first so the dungeon takes longer and I find those neat goodies, or is he guiding me toward the exit!?

That's right, I second-guess what the game designer meant by a HALLWAY.

Wow, that was my exact experience with every FF game, or dungeon crawl I've played. I hate leaving a room unexplored. Metroid has always hurt me, because you had to pass rooms until you got the specific item to allow you to enter them later on. Couple that with a bad memory, and not always taking notes (which I used to do a lot), I just got frustrated.
WoW has been scratching that itch lately, Crackdown (kinda), and Oblivion before that.

Count me in in the "must explore everything" club. Although some games (Oblivion) were so expansive that I couldn't go everywhere, I did enjoy the feeling that there was in fact a world out there waiting to be explored if I wanted.

I was huge into exploring in WoW also - pre BC, me and some friends used some terrain exploits + wallwalking to get to some inaccessible areas, like the Airport above Ironforge and the crypt under kharazan.
Some of my best times were spent doing this.

If you want a pure exploration game without so much of a combat focus, you could always try oblivion and morrowind and just download mods that reduce the combat focus in the game (more powerful character, less creatures spawning - there are a myriad) - there is definitely a lot of territory to explore.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

You could always go subversive and buy a GTA game to search for hidden items and do nothing else. Kind of urban exploration. Who says you have to play the missions? I don't know if the games after Vice City come with maps, but if they do you can run off some photocopies and mark them up. (At any rate, you could download one of the cheater maps with all the secret items marked on it and use that)

GTA4 sends you an in-game email with a low resolution of secrets to find, like pigeons, stunt ramps, weapons, armor, and some others. The lower resolution makes this perfect for scavenger hunting, and having it completely in-game retains the legitimacy of the endeavor.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

I don't know how persistent GTA cities are, but if you have a friend he or she could hide something in the city somewhere (maybe a particular kind of car), mark it on a map and send you looking for it. That would only work if the car didn't erase itself after it got out of sight, though, and I haven't played a GTA game since Vice City several years ago, so I don't remember whether that would work.

If it wouldn't work in GTA, it might work in some other open-world game. Can you bury treasure in WOW for others to find?

There was really good for this in that it provided quest items, like chests and bottles, that other players could find. It was really cool to just randomly find a message in a bottle, with a riddle or screenshot that led you on to the next bottle, the intrinsic reward being the nooks and crannies you had to find, and often there was a monetary reward for the first to find the last item.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Finally, to steal a page from Rabbit (I'm surprised he hasn't already said as much) you could always buy a flight simulator.

Flight and swimming as main movement mechanics are troublesome, in that they make navigation effortless, and therefore kill the achievement of reaching some arbitrarty point. I'd technically call it exploration, and I think it'd be interesting in real life, but not nearly so much in a game.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

I agree that an exploration-based game would be pretty cool. I believe they used to call these sorts of things "Adventure games." ;-)

Old school adventure games are too linear to really qualify as exploration in my mind.

Lobster wrote:

My problem with exploration games is that I absolutely love loot. Love it! Can't get enough of it. If a game is open to exploration then I start looking for every single nook and cranny that might have some interesting loot shoved in there, and I CAN'T MOVE ON until I've checked. It rarely pays off but on occasion it's paid off with some super cool stuff, so I keep on doing it. The result is that it takes me forever to get through games with any sort of exploration element.

The problem I see here is that for true exploration, there can be not "getting through." There's individual goals that the player can set for themselves, but no one clear finish line. Progress can't really be gauged by the game at that point, only by the player.

To that end I don't really see a great game built around exploration coming out until developers are comfortable enough with procedural design to generate the worlds to be explored. That way when I scale a mountain, it's possible I'm taking in a view that no one has seen before, even the developer. That's an intangible incentive, but worth a great deal.

Farscry wrote:

I spend far, FAR more time enjoying exploring and finding & reading through books and journals and such in the games than I do fighting.

Definitely. Books, scrolls, and accounts of the history of an area are some of the greatest rewards.

KingGorilla wrote:

Pure Exploration? Sounds like Myst to me.

Myst is another example of a game being too linear to really be exploration. Perhaps linear is the wrong word. It's that every spot you could ever be was intended to be found, it was crafted solely for every player to find.

Linear games can be explored, but only if there's a way to break out of the bounds of the designer's intent.

Quentin wrote:

I forgot to mention that I too loved World of Warcraft for the exploration. I did quests and such to get XP just so I could move in to new regions and explore them. Grouping? f*ck that! My pet and I are busy inspecting every nook and cranny of a new area I can finally survive.

That's exactly how I played my trial, much like the original post. In the end I found that Blizzard was overly harsh in designing enemy behavior that restricted players to level appropriate areas. Beasts aggro more aggressively from further away depending upon how much lower you are in level compared to them. They can even see you while you sneak! That's BS. I'd pay for a month to just explore around in the neat world they've made, but the combat and logarithmic RPG treadmill just make it prohibitive. Grinding for ten hours to be able to survive in an area I can completely explore in three hours isn't a good fun/work ratio.

I found the original Everquest to be much more forgiving in this regard. A low level character could survive by tracking huge threats and avoiding them, hiding in the wakes of higher level adventurers, and basically just being crafty.

Baggz wrote:

Check out Noctis - explore the universe, open ended, no goals. Just pick a planet, land, wander around to find something interesting.

Shawdow of the Colosus also had a landscape I just lost myself in as well. Wasn't quite big enough though.

I was going to also suggest Noctis, but you beat me to it. Nicely done.

My favorite exploration game of all time are the two Starflight games. Sure they're old as hell now, but no other game, to this day, gives me a feeling of awe and the rush of discovery that Starflight does. Fontier: Elite II comes close, but is a bit more complicated to play and somewhat less enjoyable, though still amazing in its own right.