I had exactly the same experience. I played Ghosts of Tsushima after Elden Ring and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, I was surprised how shallow the mainstream open world games are. I don't hate them, but the gameplay really boils down to:

• Walk slowly while characters talk to eachother for 5 minutes

• Open the map, click on where you need to go, then walk in a straight line to your objective

• Trail an enemy without being seen

• Liberate an enemy camp (kill the same 3 enemies and collect the 5000 twinkly useless items in the area)

The Elden Ring withdrawal is really hitting me. Most AAA games are trying so hard to be cinematic and movie-like that it's boring me to tears.

I may be in the minority, but I kinda enjoy hearing Aloy muttering to herself throughout the game. Partly because I catch myself doing it all the time, so I don't feel alone in the practice.

But also because I know the voice actress for Aloy (Ashly Burch) as Ash in the YouTube series, Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? and to this day, it's still amazing to me to hear her speaking so deadpan seriously. I'm used to her Ash character basically being an animated, loudmouthed wildcard, not this dramatic, serious character. And I kind of enjoy knowing that Ashly has a bit of range to her acting; she's not some kid who repeats the same YouTube personality she became famous for; she can actually act.

I had a similar experience of first finishing the DLC and then going into God of War (2018). While not open world, it's the same type of AAA soup you get from most big studios. There are so many baffling design decisions, I cannot fathom why people love the game so much - the constant barrage of stories and small talk is the most engaging thing in there.

The combat is utterly boring. Increasing the difficulty only results in spongy enemies. Their move sets are boring at best and annoying at worst. They are all but helpless if you just keep them at a distance and throw your axe.

Even worse, your godly powers are cutscene only. If you don't want to make your game challanging, at least make a fun power fantasy and Kratos is perfect for that. He kills giant enemies, tears the very ground asunder and moves the heaviest objects imaginable. He even has super healing. None of which are tied to actual combat mechanics.

Upgrades are meaningless. Early on, you unlock a smith. I got my axe from 5 to 40 damage. Guess what? The very next enemy took the same amount of hits as the same type of enemy did before.

Traversing is mechanically boring. Climbing just means you gotta follow the yellow markings - press in the right direction or do the indicated button press. You literally cannot fall. Everything else is just walking from combat area to combat area.

The game throws an endless barrage of puzzles at you, none of which are engaging. They are so watered down, there's barely much more thinking involved than in climbing.

Even worse, major upgrades are placed in "puzzle" chests. The puzzle? Well, just walk around and rotate your camera for several minutes until you've found all three runes.

The game basically just feels like a very long cutscene with a lot of padding so you can press some buttons. You can play it just fine, but they removed everything that could make any one system interesting in favor of having nothing in there a player could be stuck at. I like the characters, but I'm better served just watching a cutscene compilation for the second one.

Just bought Forza Horizons 4 on Steam, which meant none of my 100+ hours of progress on the Windows Store version carried over. Apparently in those many hours I forgot how absolutely grueling the beginning of the game is.

I'm two hours in, and after basically everything I do, down to even opening the menu, I get the controls yanked away from me, and a plucky zoomer talks at me for 30 seconds about shit I absolutely don't need explained. One of those was literally, not even joking, to explain to me how to buy items, and that adding multiple items to my cart would equal a higher total price.

It's like they expect their players to have absolutely no agency or intuition. All I want is to boot a game up, customize a car, and chuck it around. At most I'd be fine with a quick blurb saying "here are the different types of events, here's your home base. Now go explore."

I've not played Forbidden West, but I've played all of Zero Dawn. I'll just say, as much as I like the game (I do, quite a bit), it's bad at being open-world.

Most narrow paths are only related to quests, and if you try exploring them before you need to go there the game punishes you by making it a chore to go and to leave for no gain. Also, the terrible message "you're out of bound, turn back now or we reset to your last save" is one of the worst failure at world design ever. It pops up constantly if you're just trying to explore.

And yes, I tried playing HUD-free for a bit (I had a great experience doing that on Breath of the Wild). As you said it's almost impossible, the environment, while looking good, is way too messy to spot the small details you're supposed to... Unless you turn on the magic compass and GPS.

In other games, paths and important items are highlighted with lighting and clear and functional visual cues. Beside the infamous yellow paint, HZD does almost none of that efficiently.

I recommend checking out Dread Delusion. It's an indie open world game inspired by Morrowind.

They made Aloy worse in the sequel. She literally gives away puzzles and ruins things and won't shut up. I swear she wasn't as bad in the first game. I lost interest quickly in the sequel.

It's when games aren't talented enough to give you the info you need from environmental story telling, so they just tell you what's happening

Zelda and ER open world does feel like a separate genre from the Ubisoft style open world we see even in non Ubisoft games like Horizon. That said, I enjoyed my time in Days Gone even if it's similar to the formula. Facing your first horde in the game was truly spectacular. Also it being connected to Syphon Filter helps too lol.