Best games with open world exploration.

[darkewaffle]

If you have a dreamcast/gamecube/wii, then Skies of Arcadia.

 

[aigomorla]

prototype is open map as well.

 

[skace]

Gothic series was a lot of fun to explore as was the original STALKER (more so than it's sequel items). I give the nod to those suggestions. Personally, I liked exploring URU Live (Myst Online) - for completely different reasons than most 'open world' games.

However, Everquest was my personal favorite of exploration, ever rewarding and incredibly risky. Very few people knew most dungeons inside and out.

 

[Schadenfreude]

But you could install the whole game and not have to swap.

It's still a pain in the original BG to travel halfway across the entire gameworld just to complete some random-ass'd fetch quest for a measly nothing. If I remember correctly, BGII corrected a lot of those issues.

 

[Via]

It's still a pain in the original BG to travel halfway across the entire gameworld just to complete some random-ass'd fetch quest for a measly nothing. If I remember correctly, BGII corrected a lot of those issues.

I liked it; really got immersed in BG. The fechit stuff didn't bother me.

BG is the first truly open-ended game I ever played.

Kivan was my favorite character, and I found him by luck on my first playthrough randomly exploring a tile and evading skeletons that were too powerful for my party.

Or I remember running into the Red Wizards for the first time and getting decimated in 8 seconds. Or stumbling across the huge bridge.
It was random go anywhere, do anything non-plot stuff like that that I really missed in BG 2. I was restricted to the tiles the game allowed to go to, and the game just wasn't the same for me when I couldn't head off in any direction and explore stuff. But maybe I'm in the minority.

I also felt BG was balanced much better than BG 2. In my playthrough on BG2 it was almost like Dungeon Siege for the second half of the game, and Irenicus was lame as a final battle compared to Sarevok.