exploration is a large part of what makes the silent hill games fascinating, and frightening.

I think MMOs do a good job of exploration. I always found discovering new areas and learning about the lore in WoW way more interesting than battle grounds or raids.

Holy crap. Oncomouse beat me to my comment. MMO's are very good about the exploration aspect you are talking about Anthony.

I explored the world in Metroid Prime (the first) because I was just fascinated by everything I saw. I loved it, I'm sorry that you don't get the same enjoyment out of Metroidvania games. Not that I expect everyone to like them, but it's a good feeling.

It's funny how it seems the games that offer fun exploration generally weren't designed with exploration in mind.

Was the first background clip Kingsfield?

There has been a handful of games in which I've just picked an area or direction and thought "Hey, I'm gonna go look over there."

LoZ:OoT
WoW
GTA

Probably some more, but I can't remember right now.

Honestly, I really am surprised you didn't mention any of the Elder Scrolls games as that kind of exploration is pretty key to the series. I mean, sure, Oblivion kinda ruined it by being generic high fantasy, but Shivering Isles totally made up for it.

I agree with you almost entirely though. I love digging into the little bits about the worlds of games. The most odd game that I felt this sensation about is Legend Of Mana. You wouldn't think it'd be very exploratory given the very disconnected feel of the world, but each location is so detailed. And then the times where the game lets go of your hand(story wise), and you just have to go everywhere to find new quests and such. It really does have a hidden greatness to it.

I'm with Oncomouse. There's an achievement for exploration in wow, requiring you to uncover all parts of your map. The process of doing that, and going to little corners of the world just to get my fancy title revealed alot of interesting little places. Like a secluded beach with a spear in the ground and a small tent, and a skeleton not to far off, for no immediate quest reason, as far as I could tell.

I ended up finding a bunch of things like that, along with really appreciating the world design, which is actually pretty amazing to soak in when you're not travelling purely for a quest goal.

So have you played Morrowind or Oblivion Anthony?

Games I've found exploration for the sake of exploration in:
Morrowind
Gothic
World of Warcraft
Deus Ex

I found myself lost for hours just walking (not even horse riding) through both morrowind and oblivion, just exploring and seeing what cool places I could find. Some of the places were very cool, and others just gorgeous. I love just being left to look at my surroundings.

WindWaker, Endless Ocean come to mind.

Here is the thing, I know I'm gonna get torn apart immediately. Assassin's Creed. Yeah, yeah, shit game, whatever. Question is HOW did you play it. Did you follow the proverbial breadcrumbs shoved under your nose to finish it within 8 hours or did you explore?

I say this because I played Assassin's Creed in exactly the opposite way I'm sure people reviewing it did. I turned off the HUD and then I explored. I know each of the three cities intimately because I didn't rush from sidequest to sidequest. Those perches? Sure, they filled in a map I had disabled but they were more for MY lay of the land, so to speak. I explored Assassin's Creed and learned every nook, cranny, and turn. I could navigate the city effortlessly by the time I finally ended it.

So yeah, I suggest you give Assassins Creed another try without the HUD and embrace the world they created.

Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3. I feel Bethesda is one of the few companies that get it right.

Here's the issue with this rant: You're largely discussing your own motivations for exploring and how you feel like the journey was less worthwhile because there was a reward at the end in games like metroidvanias. Now, in Shadow Complex, I'd agree that there wasn't much of a sense that you wanted to see the environment, but in the Metroid series, especially Super and the Primes, there were many moments where you just felt the world come alive because you see more of it. There is probably a missle expansion at the end of the path, sure, but the paths themselves are fantastic and really tell you quite a bit about the environment. It's simply not a flaw, in my experience and opinion, to use game mechanics to encourage exploration. Maybe you have to play too many games as your job and don't give yourself the time to breath in a game where the world is populated with game mechanics, but that's kind of a shame.

MMOs also give that feeling, as many have mentioned, and of the two I played, FFXI was much better at it than WoW, partially because it took effort to see the coolness. WoW delivers a lot of awesome but with flying mounts to make it easy to get to. When you want to see a cool view of Attohwa Chasm and the gigantic flying bird, you have to climb a mountain on a confusing path that leaves little room for error. It's cool once you get there partially because you meaningfully went up to see it (ok, there is something for a mission and for a "raid" up there, but I went up for its own sake a few times.)

When I was playing spider, (and still am, I want to get every achievement), I explored for the reason of finding all the bugs.

didn't feel strange or forced for me, if anything it was consistent with the character's motivation.

It's a spider, spiders like eating bugs, eating bugs is the goal, eat all the bugs!

Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion always felt like exploring to me. I dunno... I see where you're coming from for sure though.

neat rant, though i'm not really in agreement on metroidvania exploration (but i can get where you're coming from - but i have a lot of rather fond memories of non-item related exploration in Super Metroid and SOTN). oh, about that, Anthony - do you view Aquaria as being better, in this regard? i know it's a metroidvania sorta game, but item collection isnt very important in that one, so there's naturally a lot of exploration for the sake of exploration.

if you can find them, Anthony, i'd recommend Aquanaut's Holiday, and Tail of the Sun, both for the original playstation... they're largely forgotten games, but were *completely* about exploration (of the sea, the former, of a prehistoric world, the latter). they were great games that were largely shat upon at the time by people with no attention span :7

also, i'm curious - have you played Yume Nikki ("Dream Diary"), Anthony? it's another little-known game, this one an independent, free game that you can download. it was made with rpgmaker, though it's not an rpg - it's a japanese game that's just about wandering around in the dreams of a very solitary woman. the game is oozing with atmosphere, and for something made with snes-level technology, it both looks and sounds extremely good. anyway, if you're interested, i'll make another message with info on how to get the game (and how to play it - as it's a japanese game, it's a slightly awkward process to play it, but it's rather worth it imo).

(i'll second/third/fourth/etc the mention of Bethesda games, but say no more since everyone else is on about that).

Warning, here comes a wall of text.

When I saw that the subject of this video was going to be exploration, I immediately thought of Shadow of the Colossus. See, prior to two weeks ago, I had never played the game. Hell, I never had a PS2. I'm sure a ton of you will scream blasphemy, but it wasn't a fanboy thing, I just didn't have the funds.

A few years ago, on Destructoid, I read something by Burch that referenced SotC and from what he said, I knew I wanted to play the game. Anthony, I can't thank you enough for instilling that seed of curiousity about SotC and what I might be missing. The game is beautiful and one of the best mainstream examples I can think of for games as art. The exploration aspect of the game was something I ignored for the first few colossi. I was eager to see how the colossi would change and get more difficult. When I finally began deviating on my paths to each encounter, I discovered a world unlike any other I've seen in gaming. The sheer vastness and care put into each vista and section of the Forbidden Lands was breathtaking.

2 years ago, I would have disagreed with you about Bioshock. I enjoyed the game but flew through it and didn't look back. About a year later, I played through it again and really took Rapture in. I got so much more about the story than I had previously and I'm not talking about audio diaries.

I'm talking about history of the main character and the indiscretions of Andrew Ryan. Blew me away.

Good rant, you were rambling, but I feel ya brother.

Every good exploration game should have a look button.

In Fallout 3, I loved exploring all the side areas. There were some really interesting quests and random encounters. I was kind of disappointed at the low number of completely optional, completely unrelated to the main story side quests in the game.

Oblivion, to me, seemed like the opposite. There were tons of places to visit across the gigantic world and a lot of people to help, but none of the quests were terribly interesting. I remember in particular one quest had me searching endlessly to kill some fish to get the scales, and it was definitely not worth it. Finding the Giant Slaughterfish, though, despite there being no tangible reward, was awesome.

I explored a lot in the GTA series. In GTA4 I loved looking through the very different-looking parts of the city and finding the tallest buildings. I loved GTA:SA even more, exploring the boonies and the desert and whatnot. Damn, I need to play that game again.

So yeah, those are the games that I explored solely for exploration's sake. And I loved 'em.

World of Warcraft and Fallout 3 are the games i always enjoy exploring. Just because there is always something interesting beyond the next hill.

@LoopholeJumper:
That was rather antagonistic....

<3

It hurts me to see WoW described as the apex of exploration when it's nowhere near the greatest example even in the MMO genre. Asheron's Call 2, Lord of the Rings: Online, even Warhammer had a huge amount of detail and lore hidden in every corner of the world. Even bad games like Dark and Light and Tabula Rasa are more rewarding than WoW when it comes to exploration.

The less combat-centric a game's theme the better exploration will be, well, most of the time. MMOs do a decent job or varying their content to keep people constantly distracted, which is what exploration is all about isn't it?