Games

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.

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.

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)

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.

Journey (in steam)

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).

Stray (in steam)

And talking of those games another that comes to mind as really absorving is Firewatch. Less action, more adventure style but so pretty.

Firewatch (in steam)

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.

Dishonored and BioShock come to mind.

They've likely already been mentioned.

Control and the Alan Wakes

Elder Scrolls games are the obvious pick, but they’re obvious for a reason. This is basically their whole deal. I found Skyrim to be especially good at this, even though I’d consider Oblivion to be the better game. I have about 5600 hours in Skyrim and less than 1000 in Oblivion despite preferring Oblivion, so that should say something about how easy it is to get lost in the world of Skyrim.

Fallout games will be similar to Elder Scrolls in that regard. Bethesda really is just good at that.

Elden Ring for sure, especially if you’re good at the game. I usually suck at video games but I’m surprisingly decent at soulslikes for some reason, and I just found hanging out in the world of Elden Ring and especially its DLC to be super immersive. If you keep dying over and over it might not be as engaging though.

Project Zomboid, easily.

Elden Ring.

I played the original PC98 eroge/hentai game A Girl Who Chants Love At the Bound of This World YU-NO, and despite a very small amount of the content being the sex scenes which are totally skippable, with a few being pretty disgusting to me IMO, the rest of the game was phenomenal. If you can look past the bad parts, the good parts are so good. It took me 80 hours to beat the game without a guide, and I loved nearly every second of it. The remake ruined the art style though.

Now for some games I consider the opposite, just for a fun mention:

Starfield. The game having dialogue options that are basically all variants of "you say yes" on some dialogues or "you say no" on others kept taking me out of the immersion. It felt like I wasnt playing my own character, but one the quest writers wanted me to play. The game had plenty of other reasons that kept me out of the immersion to. I like parts of the game, but its not one I can recommend.

Need For Speed Unbound. I bought this game for $5 USD on sale and tried to refund the game after an hour. The NPCs just do not shut up in that first hour I played. They cannot stop yapping in my ear about how "police and politicians are so oppressive to us street racers." Listen, I love cars. I love racing games. When I play a racing game, I just want it to be me and the car. I don't want to be hearing anything about social politics in my racing game. I have to hear enough about it in real life, I don't wanna be hearing more in my relax time. Not to mention they are illegal street racers that literally cause thousands in damages to property and usually multiple fatalities in the races. I still feel robbed. Underground 2 still holds the crown. No talking in my ear when I am driving except to tell me about where more races are, or if I unlocked something. Just the way racing games should be.

Gravity Rush.

OMG I could float for hours in this game and I HATE TRAVERSAL. Like, literally traversing long distances is one of the main reasons I never play open world games.

Gravity Rush is one of a kind though.

Sekiro

Lies of P

Hollow Knight & Silksong

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.

The first game that came to mind after reading your post is Subnautica, such a great game!

I'm going to recommend 3 smaller games that I found to be very atmospheric.

The Invincible: A scifi walking simulator based on an iconic novel. The music and the graphics suck you in and the voice acting helps keeping you interested. I recently replayed it and loved it again.

Gris: A small platformer on the easier side with beautiful hand-drawn graphics and (IMO) great music. It tells a sad story without words, so good.

Oxenfree: A scifi thriller in the form of a side-scrolling platformer. I played it years ago so I don't remember much of it (my memory is crap like that) but I know it left a very good impression, especially its atmosphere.

Honorable mention to Valheim, which I see mentioned in the thread ore than once. Great atmosphere and gameplay loop, although for me it lost some of its charm in the later biomes they released afterwards.

I hope you find any of these to your liking.

Caves of Qud has a pretty substantial learning curve, unfortunately. But if you can get through it, the story and world are deeply engrossing. I think they even won a few writing awards a while back.

Edit: Also, Hyper Light Drifter has immaculate vibes.

A bit retro:

• Myst
• Another World
• Sentinel

I've been getting into Avowed and having more fun than I expected. The dialogue is a bit bland though so I'm glad you can speed read and skip.

The biggest mistake everyone makes is that they watch videos about how to play first. It's fine to watch a bit to see if you'd even be interested but once you make the call, if you want to be immersed in a game just play it and experience it yourself!

I noticed you mentioned games with strong stories. I tend to play more open ended games but my first suggestion has a stronger narrative and that is The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human.

The rest are games that sucked up way too much of my time lol:

• Mount & Blade Bannerlord
• Vintage Story
• Dinkum
• Mad Max
• Hardspace Shipbreaker
• Terra Invicta
• Astroneer

I realize this may be irresponsible of me to mention, but Skyrim* in VR has had me forget IRL hours by the dozens —often several per session. I'd pop in for a quick game, and finally close out to find it's been dark for hours. 🫨

*modded to your taste, ofc

Kenshi.

Perhaps not so much for the atmosphere (although it is special), as because you have just spend 3 hours trying to lockpick your way out of your slavecage.

Nier Replicant and Nier Automata

This is Breath Of The Wild or Death Stranding. Both got me through COVID lockdown.

X3 or X4 anyone?