The worlds we bring into our TV screens have exploded in size over the past few decades, with the ability to explore growing alongside video games themselves.
It had to be a random summer night in 2003. I was out with my dad while he was running errands, a fairly normal occurrence when I was off from school, and we made what was then a pretty typical stop inside Circuit City, located right around the nearby Home Depot and Walmart.
I was no stranger to asking for a video game when we went into any electronics store, and this time was certainly no different. Maybe I had seen it on the internet before, or had seen it referenced inside the case for one of the multiple Crash Bandicoot games we had at that point. Regardless, I was deeply intrigued in the Spyro series and was eager to try it out for myself.
So my dad bought the game for me – and instead of going home to unwrap and play it immediately, I simply put it in the drawer where all of my other video games were and forgot about it. Perhaps the Cubs were on that night, or I just did what I normally did and got engrossed into whatever I could find on my computer at that time.
A few months went by, and I began to forgot that my dad ever bought Spyro: Year of the Dragon for me – until one day shuffling through that very same drawer also acted as a reminder of the untapped potential I had in the living roomt the entire time. After loading up the game just once, I was immediately addicted.
Upon spawning in the game for the first time, you’re greeted with everything that makes the Spyro series such a fun set of games to revisit. A tranquil, serene spring morning with blue skies and a nearby pond alongside an upbeat Stewart Copeland composition isn’t how most people envision video games beginning – but Spyro: Year of the Dragon did just that, merely setting a precedent for the incredible journey the game had in store for players.
There was so much to love about Spyro, which felt even more apparent to me as I played the original trilogy in reverse order – starting off with what was the most expansive of the three titles. Yet nothing drew me to Spyro more than the incredible level of exploration the games offered their players.
Sure, the sandbox environment isn’t new at this point, and I had played Super Mario 64 already at this point and similarly loved the ability to move around a level in a nonlinear manner. But Spyro felt different in a lot of ways. The homeworlds and levels rewarded exploration at an equal level, with the task of collecting gems, though tedious to many, standing out as a way to force players to look around.
To me, this is what was so intoxicating about the game. Growing up in a sterile suburb in a subdivision where every house looks the same, my childlike imagination and fascination of the world in general made me want to explore just about everything in real life that I wasn’t seeing on a daily basis.
Having the opportunity to explore a new world on my own at such a young age (I was around 7 when I started playing Spyro) hooked me into the idea that video games are more than just something to pass the time or a linear damsel-in-distress journey – and I’d have hordes more to learn in the years that followed.
It was just around a year later when Tales of Symphonia was released in North America, and it had made its debut in my family’s living room by August 2004. After a friend initially brought the game over, I was hooked just about instantly and found myself glued to the game within a few weeks.
As I’ve written about at length before, Tales of Symphonia is just about my favorite video game of all-time for a litany of reasons. Serving as my introduction to Japanese RPGs, the plot, character development and battle system all served as factors that had me racing back to my GameCube every opportunity I could.
Even beyond those traits that sucked me in, the title’s exploration is what perhaps subconsciously made me fall in love with the game more than anything else.
I know it feels at least a little weird to praise Tales of Symphonia for the two open-world maps the game has when Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City had already redefined exploration for gamers by 2004, but I think it’s easy to note that as an 8-year-old, I was not playing those games at this time.
Though ToS wasn’t open-world in the sense that there was a seamless transition between village, dungeon and overworld, the massive size and scope of all three settings throughout the game truly made Sylvarant and Tethe’alla feel like up-to-scale worlds to the mind of a third-grader.
Between Spyro, ToS and the true introduction I received via Super Mario 64, I was fully absorbed into the idea of exploring being the main priority when it comes to a video game, even if I had no idea of that at the time.
It would be several years until I found a new outlet for this specific interest within video games. I had phases of being immersed into games of several different genres, ranging from Guitar Hero to Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and the Super Smash Bros. series. Then, for a solid chunk of time, video games just took a backseat for me.
My high school years were marked by heavy involvement in extracurricular activities and a turbulent life at home that didn’t exactly leave me wanting to sit around and play games all day. By the time I got to college, my lifelong obsession with sports took precedent, with only phases of Super Smash Bros. appearing to interrupt.
The fascination behind exploring worlds with nothing more than a controller, console and TV screen found new definition during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, which essentially forced everybody to get inside and play video games. No sports to watch, nowhere to go out to, only the ability to entertain oneself with what is already inside the house.
As I alluded to earlier this week, this is where The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim comes into play. Sure, I was an embarrassing nine years late to the party on this one when I began playing in 2020, with my perception of the game in the years prior being something like, “Wow! That game looks really addicting. I’m sure I’d be hooked to it,” and leaving it at that.
After I finally buckled and bought the game for the PC, it was only a matter of time until we had the game on four separate consoles, with my wife and I both holding the title as among our favorites of all-time.
As if that wasn’t enough, the constantly updated space exploration game No Man’s Sky also took my wife and I by storm, offering a literally infinite world of procedurally generated planets with the ability to do whatever you want.
It’s that last part that really makes me love these games today. You can do whatever you want.
As someone who can feel easily bored when taking on a long-winded level or mission in a more linear game, having the ability to postpone or outright abandon the game’s main storyline feels like a gift made specifically for me.
I have easily spent a couple hundred hours playing Skyrim over the past six years, and I haven’t even come remotely close to beating the main storyline. The option to just level up, explore and make your way through dungeons at your own pace is a preferred style of play to me – and it can and does coexist with people who play these games in a more linear way that was intended in at least some aspect by the game’s development team.
No Man’s Sky is much more of the same. Sure, there’s a main storyline that one could follow that will unlock many items of convenience down the line, but players can also reach milestones and drastically improve their character and starship without ever diving too deep on a quest related to the game’s primary plot.
I’ve written at length on this website about my lifelong passion for gaming and how that has manifested itself in different ways through different games. The Super Mario series is always going to be how it all began. Crash Team Racing is always going to stand out as my favorite kart racer. Super Smash Bros. Melee will always be responsible for some of my most fun memories ever while gaming.
But when it comes to wanting a video game to feel therapeutic and offer an escape that can only be experienced in this medium, the ability to limitlessly explore offers an oasis unlike any other on the media landscape.
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