There are many fantasy computer RPG worlds where players must travel across mountains, forests, rivers, deserts, and plains, but the following fantasy RPGs are particularly noteworthy for special features designed to make exploration the heart of their gameplay. From released games such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to upcoming titles like Book of Travels, each of these RPGs tries to make the act of exploration as challenging, surprising, and rewarding as other mainstay RPG mechanics like combat or crafting.
Early tabletop RPGs like 1970s Dungeons & Dragons were centered around dungeon-crawling. In these old-school RPG systems, combat was risky, and monster encounters weren't always balanced to be "challenging but fair": for this reason, veteran players put a great emphasis on scouting, observing, mapping, and cataloguing their surroundings. Computer RPGs of the 1980s and 1990s took inspiration from these early tabletop RPGs in multiple different ways, with early Roguelikes such as NetHack used procedural generation to create new worlds for players to explore during every new game cycle, while early party-based RPGs like Wasteland were set in open worlds with locations and stories players could discover in a non-linear fashion.
Modern-day fantasy RPGs with open-world settings must strike a balancing act between expansive freedom and coherent, articulate narrative threads. Some open-world RPGs focus too much on the main story, and consequently have repetitive or bland-looking sandbox settings. Other RPGs focus too much on the open-world design, with dull narratives that lack momentum. The RPGs listed here are noteworthy for tightly integrating their core exploration gameplay with their core storyline: the main character has a good personal reason for wandering all over the place, and wandering all over the place both rewards players and advances the game's story.
Exploration RPGS - Book of Travels
Book of Travels, an upcoming game self-described by its developers as a "Tiny Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game," takes place in a fantasy landscape called the Braided Shore, a landscape of ruins and rural terrain beautifully rendered using watercolor painting-style graphics. Rather than a fixed campaign story, Book of Travels players will experience an emergent narrative revealed through going off the beaten track, discovering new foods, magical recipes, items, strange spirits, and characters as they wander.
Exploration RPGS - Outward
In Outward, a survival-fantasy RPG released by Nine Dots Studios, the main character is not a chosen one or hero of prophecy, nor are they blessed with superhuman powers; they are an everyday person in a post-apocalyptic world forced to venture out into the untamed wilds to repay a massive debt to their community. This RPG's theme of "ordinary person embracing the life of an adventurer" is supported by gameplay mechanics exploring the parts of wilderness exploration most other RPGs gloss over. An Outward player must gather food and water, wear the right clothing for certain climates, and set camps at night to restore their vigor. There are no tracking functions on the game's map interface, obliging players to navigate using landmarks and compass directions.
Exploration RPGS - Everwild
Everwild, an upcoming wilderness fantasy game made by the creators of Sea of Thieves, has been kept under close wraps by its developers, with only press releases, interviews, and cinematic trailers giving gamers a glimpse of its core narrative and gameplay. What is known is that the druid-like humanoid protagonists of Everwild are called "Eternals," literal and figurative shepherds of the natural world who can form symbiotic bonds with the animals around them and perform rituals to invigorate the ecosystems they visit. No scenes of combat or violence have been shown in any of the Everwild trailers to date, suggesting a core gameplay loop centered on exploration, puzzle-solving, and evading hostile creatures.
Exploration RPGS - The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
The latest game in the long-running Legend of Zelda series, The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, builds upon the open-world mechanics introduced in previous Legend of Zelda games by making the land of Hyrule larger, wilder, and filled with more rewarding secrets. As Link collects weapons to vanquish Calamity Ganon, players are given tools to augment their ability to explore - a horse to ride across open fields, the ability to climb steep terrain, and a hang-glider for gliding down from high places - along with the weapons, food, and recipe components that The Legends of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has become known for.