Look, I'm not trying to evangelize Elden Ring here. I think it's an amazing game, but I want to make it clear that this list is not a tirade against all other open-world games and a demand that they all be more exactly like Elden Ring.

I like variety as much as the next guy, and I want games that don't just feel like copies of one another. That being said, some fundamental parts of exploration in Elden Ring make it so special that I think other open-world games and game makers could learn a thing or two from it.

3 The game world should draw my eye, not map icons

Show, don't tell.

For some context, I've played more than 500 hours of Elden Ring. It's easily one of my favorite games from the last decade, maybe ever, and I swear this is one of the reasons why it holds up over hundreds of hours of play. Instead of looking at the map before I go anywhere, I'm looking out on the horizon of the game world and figuring out where to go next based on what catches my eye.

Points of interest shouldn't have to be called out on a map, even as a question mark icon. I don't need to know something interesting is over there; I should want to find it myself because I looked out, saw it, and wondered what was over there. So many of my best memories with Elden Ring began with a part of the skyline catching my eye and wanting to see what could be over there. Not every adventure ended with stunning amazement, but the ones that did were all the more memorable because I decided to go there myself.

I know I was still led there by how the world of the Lands Between was designed, but I was led there in a way that didn't take me out of the game world and into a menu or anything else that took me out of the very important exploring I was doing. Making exploration a genuinely enticing part of the gameplay is key to what makes a good open-world game, and as demonstrated in Elden Ring, one way to do that is to design a world that looks like it would be interesting to explore.

2 More artistically drawn and detailed maps, less icons

Get rid of the clutter and make way for the art.

I know I just talked about how I want to look at the map less, but looking at the map in an open-world game is inevitable and necessary to orient yourself with where you're going. That doesn't mean it has to look bad or nothing like the game world. That also doesn't mean it has to be cluttered with various icons telling me what everything is before or after I've been somewhere and officially discovered that place.

Admittedly, I wish Elden Ring's map was even less cluttered than it is by the end of the game. My ideal would be no icons beyond the fast-travel points, with the names of those points telling me where I'm going if I can't already remember or distinguish where I'm going based on how it's drawn on the map. It's another extension of my above point. I love that I can look at the map in Elden Ring, see something that looks like some ruins based on how it was drawn, or a castle, or a forest area that could be hiding something for me to find, go there, and have that be part of my adventure and exploration.

That whole sequence makes looking at the map a more engaging experience, and it's precisely the kind of thing I wish more open-world games did. Flipping through menus and going back and forth from the map could honestly probably account for a not-so-small percentage of the time spent in any modern open-world game. I'd love to spend that time looking at a map that feels like an extension of the art on display while exploring the game world instead of feeling like I've jumped from looking at a work of art to an organizational screen.

1 Keep the surprises coming

I don't need to find something around every corner, but I should always feel like I need to check.

This may be a hot take, but I don't think open-world games need surprises around every corner. That feels a bit unrealistic to me because there's got to be a point where whatever is waiting for you around the corner stops being surprising because you know something is waiting for you. That said, my point is that I shouldn't be experiencing long stretches of nothing between corner-turn surprises.

There should be enough of them that I always want to check each nook and cranny, whether I find something or not. Part of this also comes down to the kind of open-world game Elden Ring is and what players know to expect in a FromSoftware game. Plenty of studios would put an item for players to find behind a waterfall, but FromSoftware fans know to expect something behind a waterfall, corner, curtain, some boxes, and pretty much anything else that's at least knee-high and potentially keeping a chest from your sight.

Surprises here are also more than just an item or a piece of gear to loot. They're a new enemy encounter, a new cave or dungeon, and often, in the case of Elden Ring, a new enemy to fight. But it's the balance and pacing between finding nothing and finding something that I think Elden Ring does so well and is a big part of what makes exploring the interior and exterior spaces in open-world games all the more interesting.

In so many ways, it all comes down to trust.

As I said at the top, Elden Ring isn't the only open-world game where you can find all three of these aspects. It doesn't even do one of them as well as I would like. But the list of games that demonstrate these same exploration principles is far, far shorter than the list of games that don't. It's why open-world games released in a post-Elden Ring can struggle to live up to the experience tens of millions of players already had with FromSoftware's biggest game to date.

The combat, RPG elements, storytelling, and everything else that makes Elden Ring special are a whole other conversation. And again, I'm not trying to ask that open-world games copy those aspects of Elden Ring. What I want is for open-world games to learn these principles of what makes exploration in an open-world game an interesting prospect hours after I've already dug through everything a game has to offer. Open-world games that genuinely trust the player to explore the world presented to them and don't just try to hold their hand through it all.