I feel like Subnautica was such a good exploration game that I don't know if anything else will ever really compare.
Actually, from what I watched of my partner playing Breath of the Wild, that looked pretty dang solid too.
The big thing that both of these had was the sensation that if you just picked a direction and started moving, you'd run into *something* new and interesting.
@starkatt minecraft has a bit of that, especially if you add some worldgen mods, but it's not the same thing
@Felthry Minecraft exploration is like 3/4th of the way there for me, but that last fourth is pretty important. The problem is it was hard to try and collect resources in any sort of non-local or directed way.
@Felthry Minecraft is in the category of "games I really wanted to like, but fell flat"
@starkatt we've found it's quite enjoyable if you add a ridiculous amount of mods
@Felthry yeah that makes sense but the base game didn't tease me enough that figuring out a mod stack felt worth the effort.
I guess what I really wanted was actual industrial supply chains and more localized resources. Which I'm aware that mods do, but eh.
I should maybe pick up Factorio though.
@Felthry Ironically enough, the actual *mining* was boring as fuck since ores were randomly distributed, not localized into followable veins or anything. So the efficient mining was just algorithmic volume-removal.
@starkatt Anyway, back to the original topic, if you want a game where you can just pick a direction and find something, we have to recommend Morrowind
@Felthry AHHHH morrowind was so dang good when I played it as a teenager.
@starkatt it's still so dang good today! Borderline one-of-the-best-games-ever material. Would definitely be such if not for the clunky interface.
@starkatt there are mods for that too!