10 Insanely Long Open-World Games That ARE Worth Finishing

FromSoft couldn't just make any old open-world game. Nope, they decided to make one of the biggest open worlds in the history of gaming, and then jam-pack every inch of that world with things that want to - and very likely will - kill you.

That can prove daunting to even veterans of the franchise. At least with Dark Souls, you knew the skeleton army was in the cemetery, so in order to avoid being murdered by skeletons, you could simply not go into the cemetery. Not so with Elden Ring, as big burly bastards can derail your entire playthrough because you two happened to cross paths at random.

And yet, like the Souls games before it, Elden Ring has a way of getting its hooks into you and never letting go. The lore definitely helps, with FromSoft teaming up with the other king of the beautifully bleak fantasy story George R. R. Martin. The Lands Between is one of the most compellingly horrific worlds in gaming, with every village, forest, and cave offering a different look at how The Shattering has broken the land and its people. A village of dancing girls revealing themselves to be insane cannibals, a castle built atop the towering corpse of a great king, and men who blind themselves out of a mad need to escape the horrors.

But the way the lore adds to the greater story of the tarnished and their journey to find some way to return some humanity to this once glorious place is what truly makes this game worth playing to the end. It's a bleak, horrible world, says Elden Ring, but it's still worth saving.