10 Action Games Where the World Feels Bigger the More You Learn About It

Some games feature expansive maps with enormous worlds for us to jump, hack, and slash our way around, but the best worlds aren't always the ones with the biggest maps. Many an open-world RPG has a vast, spacious map filled with icons and collectibles that somehow only manages to make the world feel smaller.

Sometimes, the biggest worlds come in smaller packages you can discover piece by piece. These action games don't rely purely on a gigantic map to create a sense of scale or wonder. These action games reward our curiosity by expanding the world through lore, secrets, and discoveries that tell stories about a world much larger than we can see.

10 Prey (2017)

The Human Element

Set entirely on Talos I, a space station orbiting the Moon, Prey seems like it has a fairly straightforward setting that isn't particularly deep. You're on a space station, there are aliens, you have to survive. It has all the components of a simple, easy action game where the main focus is on killing aliens in an action-packed romp to the end.

But actually, Prey has a much deeper human element that makes Talos I feel like a real place with a past and a living history. As we move through the station, we discover emails from crew members revealing secrets and personal relationships, offices and apartments are dripping with human stories, and audio logs give literal voice to the station's inhabitants. The story relies heavily on optional exploration, without which the station feels much smaller. With it, Talos I feels like a genuine community with its own history rather than a simple series of video game challenges.

9 Dishonored

Small Space, Big Story

Dishonored is a compelling stealth-action game built around exploring Dunwall, a single plague-infested city in a pretty dystopian setting. The world itself is a single city on an island. It's objectively quite small.

But throughout the game we learn much more about the city's political corruption, class division, and the interference of eldritch supernatural forces with an agenda. The world expands as we uncover documents, overhear secrets, and learn more about the world outside. Dunwall feels internally larger when we learn more about its conflicts and groups, but the tantalizing glimpses we get of the outside world give it a whole new context, and make our minds wander beyond Dunwall's shores.

8 NieR: Automata

Starts Weird, Gets Weirder

NieR: Automata is a masterpiece of weird storytelling. When I first played it, I had no idea what I was getting into, but that didn't matter because I was locked in. The gameplay was fun and engaging, and I was along for the ride.

I spent the entire game getting answers to questions that only made me ask more questions. Every answered question came with an "Okay, but..." The narrative scope just kept expanding, with new philosophical questions and answers that change the meaning of the world and the characters' place in it. Repeated playthroughs and new routes add new perspectives, too, which makes the world and the conflicts inside it feel much bigger.

7 Horizon Zero Dawn

Secret After Secret Widens The Scope

Horizon Zero Dawn immediately drops us into a world that obviously has a lot of questions to answer. We understand right from the start that something weird has gone on, but we're not quite sure what that is. There are machine creatures, tribal societies, and a clearly apocalyptic setting that makes us feel like we already understand exactly what's going on because we've seen it before.

But as we explore the game's ruined bunkers, watch recordings, and learn the deeper lore, our discoveries fundamentally change how we perceive the modern-day setting. These ruins and structures aren't just relics of a world long gone, but part of the unfolding story happening around us as we play. The game's layered reveals gradually expand the scope of the world far beyond Aloy's immediate concerns and make it feel alive. Ironically, given that half the setting's inhabitants are robots.

6 Alan Wake 2

There's So Much More Going On Than We Realize

Alan Wake 2 is a fantastic example of why a bigger setting isn't the same thing as a bigger world. At first, we don't understand the weird supernatural rules at play in Alan Wake 2; figuring them out is basically the point. It's a survival horror that's basically about learning the rules of reality itself.

But as we explore case files, investigations, and manuscript pages, we learn more about how the world works and about what's going on. And there's a lot going on. Whenever we learn something new, the world expands not literally, but metaphorically, because each piece of information hints at something more — including links to other Remedy Entertainment games — that make Alan Wake 2 feel like part of something bigger and ineffable.

5 Metroid Prime Remastered

Knowledge Expands The World

Metroid Prime (and its remake, Metroid Prime Remastered) is a pretty good example of how discovery and exploration can make a world feel bigger without actually expanding the map at all. The game is built around historical as well as physical exploration (okay, and shooting beams at enemies).

The game's Scan Visor is an essential gameplay tool, but it also expands the world by offering historical lore, environmental data, and other neat little pieces that make Tallon IV feel like a real place with its own history. The Scan Visor means you're not just running through a map, but learning about a place, and that makes the entire setting feel larger.

4 Hollow Knight

Uncovering the Past Recontextualizes the Present

Hollow Knight makes its locations feel like archaeological puzzles rather than simple locations on a game map. Going back to them feels genuinely rewarding. They're all evidence of something that happened long before we got on the scene, and the world feels larger as we uncover the stories surrounding the kingdom's collapse and the state of the world as we find it.

Its fragmented and symbolic storytelling gives Hollow Knight a kind of mythic appeal that gives it an enduring presence. We reconstruct the story of the kingdom as we play the game, and in doing so, reveal the ashes of a civilization far grander than we first assumed.

3 Dark Souls Remastered

Knowledge Changes the Experience

When you're playing Dark Souls, it's easy to get lost in the gameplay. Soulslikes are difficult enough for a lot of us gamers that sometimes, the larger world gets a bit out of focus. It doesn't help that Dark Souls is built around intentionally fragmentary lore that needs interpretation to be understood.

Item descriptions, environmental storytelling, and scattered pieces of lore quietly expand the world. Even years later, fans are recontextualizing game moments and information that leads to deeper, broader, and even completely different conceptualizations of aspects of the game world. The world as presented is deep and wide enough for many fans, but the more you learn — and the more you connect the pieces together — the larger the world gets, with different shades of meaning.

2 Control

Bigger On The Inside

Control is an action-adventure game set in the same universe as Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2. Set inside the Oldest House, a building dedicated to the fictional Federal Bureau of Control, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world of Control is very small indeed. Except the inside is bigger than the outside, and the inside is filled with secrets and hidden areas. Featuring Metroidvania-like gameplay, various supernatural powers, and action combat, Control has literal world expansions that provide new areas to explore.

The true reason for inclusion on this list is that its world continuously expands every time you pick up little bits of lore, research reports, and learn more about the paranormal research performed at the Bureau. Some lore — and even some powers — are completely optional, meaning that the experience varies significantly depending on how much exploration and knowledge you pick up on the way. When you do pick it up, though, you realize that the game's world expands far beyond the somewhat indescribable borders of the Oldest House and even brushes up against other Remedy Entertainment games.

1 Bloodborne

The Mystery Unfolds a Much Deeper World

Bloodborne has all the hallmarks of a simple action game; you could easily think it's just a Soulslike with tough combat and a straightforward story about surviving a plague-ridden city, but nothing more. Except the more you play, the more you discover. Item descriptions, NPC dialogues, and hidden locations expose deeper themes and influences that give extra weight to the world.

Bloodborne's Yharnam transforms from a bog-standard Gothic horror setting into one dripping in hidden history that feels far stranger than it seems on the surface. Unraveling the mystery makes Bloodborne's world feel deeper and wider. It's a little less cryptic about its world building and lore than other FromSoftware games, but that just gives space for a broader understanding of the world.