I'm looking for games that make me feel small and insignificant
Pretty much, I'm looking for a game where I'm not the hero, I'm not the protagonist, I'm just a pawn in the big picture.
Preferably a game with a big open world too, one that feels real and isn't just a predetermined path for my player.
I also like games where you aren't clearly stronger than all your opponents like you're some sort of God so they actually feel intimidating and there is a fear of dying
Perhaps Outer Wilds? You zoom around in a small space ship in a solar system and when you approach different phenomenas and see how big they get it gets pretty amazing.
Kingdom Come: Deliverence. Heard so much good about this game. Open world, you need to train to actually become decent or good at anything at all. Might be a perfect fit.
You start out as a medieval bum, and you are as good at life as a medieval bum would be. Even if you are a god at the combat system, you ain't winning fights against tough opponents until your character gets skilled. You start out illiterate as well, and have to learn to read, just like a medieval bum
You’re a small and insignificant creature in a dangerous and unforgiving ecosystem. You’re not saving the world. Even the enemies are playing by the rules. Evading enemies is often the safest option, but sometimes you must do a risky confrontation. It’s rare you even take down an enemy at all. Deaths are punishing. It’s open world, but the random placement of enemies often dictate the path you’re taking.
It has also one of the most intricate AI systems in any game. There’s YouTube videos describing it in detail, but I recommend to not watch them and go into the game clean.
I second Rain World, this game is letter for letter what you are describing, and best experienced COMPLETELY blind. I really hope you decide to give it a try, because I've spent countless hours enjoying the world.
Just keep at it. It doesn't hold your hand at all, and you might get frustrated. Just give it time. If it clicks for you, you'll experience one of the best gaming experiences of your life.
Elite Dangerous is like that. You're small in a literal sense, it has a 1:1 recreation of the entire Milky Way galaxy. You can land on a planet and walk into any direction for hours and see nothing but rocks. In terms of gameplay it fits your description as well, there is no predetermined path, you're just one pilot and you can try different professions and make a fortune, but you will not change the history of the galaxy.
As your ship gets closer to ground, there should be a marker at some point, you press whatever button it is and it auto lands. Try to slow down as you lower the ship
Landing on planets used to require the Horizons expansion. Since 2020 it's included in the standard edition. Maybe you tried it a long time ago without the expansion ?
Nowadays getting out of vehicles to walk around requires the Odyssey expansion.
Seconded elite dangerous, especially if you have VR. If you also have the joysticks for 6DOF control it is super super super fun docking at stations and having dogfights.
Rain World. You are a little slugcat in a hostile ecosystem. You can fight but the predators will brutally kill you most of the time so evading combat is often better. The locations you visit are beautiful and it's easy to get lost, and the other creatures keep interacting even if you aren't there
Another different: NaissanceE. You explore incredible vast locations in a lonely monochromatic world. It's a mix of puzzle with platformer that will make you feel really small with structures that appear to repeat to the infinity. It's free on Steam.
Should have also mentioned Mount & Blade, Warband is the old but gold with lots of great mods (Prophecy of Pendor is excellent if you want some low fantasy) but M&B2: Bannerlord is coming along.
And don't look up ANYTHING! No googling whatsoever. The only barrier and enjoyment is knowledge.
If really stuck, ask for help in a community. The one on the old site is very good.
X3: Terran Conflict - Ignoring the story plot and just playing sandbox ("custom game") makes you nothing more than a citizen in a universe that doesn't care if you succeed and success is a long, hard road to the top of whatever avenue you pursue. One of the best space games there is. It's also moddable and there are some awesome mods out there to make the game even better.
Mount & Blade: Bannerlord - Basically the same as above; but in a medieval wargame/RPG... It's pretty unique in gameplay so I'm not sure what to really call it. You start off as just a dude and can work your way up to becoming a king and conquering the entire country. The combat is part large-scale strategy, part 4X and part action sim as you move units around a world map for positioning and getting to cities and outposts, and battles put you in control of your singular dude swinging your weapon with some nice mouse controls, while also able to command your literal thousands of men in moment to moment tactical decisions.
Dwarf Fortress - Specifically Adventure mode in the pre-Steam version (since Adventure mode is not yet in the Steam version). You're literally whatever character you create living in a fantasy world. It's a simulation more than any other kind of genre. You can basically do whatever you can think of. You can be whatever you want up to and including a literal god if you work hard enough. There is no story other than the history of the world, which the game records and even after you die and make a new character in the same world, any mark that previous character left continues to exist and can affect others. Like say you steal from a guy, get into a fight and end up killing him. His son might seek revenge on your character, succeed and then fall into a depression. It's kind of a mad lib of sorts so you have to have some imagination, but it's the most complex game that exists right now.
Kenshi - Nobody likes you, you own nothing, you're weak as shit, the world is massive, and you can also basically do anything if you work at it. Command huge armies. Become a robot and forego the need to eat. Build cities. Conquer the planet. Not only is the game play incredibly fun and rewarding, it has a super interesting world with plenty of cool lore. Plays kind of like an ARTS and has complexity that comes close to Dwarf Fortress's.
I eventually became a cyborg and destroyed every settlement in the game with an army of the undead. It made me feel like God. But it was hard as shit and took many hours of being beaten and forced into slavery.
Every game I mentioned is like this. Kenshi just straight up uses it as a descriptor on the store page lol
Space Engine. It's not quite a game, but rather an accurate simulation of the known universe. Anything beyond what we know is procedurally generated. The first time I played it it made me feel so small.
I started at Earth and flew around the solar system, then picked a star and flew towards it. You have to increase your speed by multiples of the speed if light to get them to move. The stars started moving and then moving past, me, but the star I chose wasn't moving. I realised it was actually different galaxy, so increased my speed by many many multiples of the speed of light until eventually it dwarves to move. I flee over to it, and then slowed and explored a few star systems there, I found a binary star system, that was really cool.
Then I had a realisation. If I didn't use the search function, and I just flew around trying to find my way back to Earth, I just never would. I could play it for the rest of my life and be certain that I wouldn't find it. The odds are that small. That thought scared the shit our of me and I closed the game and couldn't okay it again for a few days.
Don't know if that's what you're looking for but I do recommend the experience!
I think you'd like the Souls series by FromSoft.
I only have played Elden Ring, but I think it fits your description really well. And from what I've heard, the rest of the Souls games would fit
Kingdom Come Deliverance: open world medieval game with a moderate emphasis on realism. You start out as a peasant who knows how to use a sword and finish the game being not much more than that.
Dark Souls 1, 2, 3: these games make you feel pretty unimportant, unlike other FromSoft games like Bloodborne or Elden Ring. The bosses and environments will certainly make you feel challenged and powerless all the time.
Seconding the Souls games. Even though you’re on a quest to do something important and big, the game does absolutely everything it can to make you feel worthless. I saw a good quote, something around the lines of “most games ask you to beat them. They’re designed to be beaten. Dark Souls tells you it’s impossible and dares you to try” which sounds like what OP is wanting
That just paints DS as dishonest, since it's designed to be beaten too. There are entire genres of games far less fair and forgiving than DS, such as roguelikes, where death means starting over from scratch and bad RNG can screw you over in a heartbeat no matter how well you play.
Yet that doesn't matter much as the two endings of the game are that you either refuse to link the fire and walk away, leaving the world to die, or you do link it to keep it going for a little bit longer but in the end it won't matter much as it will die down eventually.
I would say anything multiplayer that dumps you into a cruel world of 10-year veterans of incomparable skill and/or wealth. Persistent survival especially for avoiding matchmaking in favor of unfair encounters.
Eve - huge space game has a reputation. Something something nullsec, space pirates.
Foxhole - you're a grunt in a huge war machine. Good luck surviving the grenade spam, artillery, tanks, machine guns, and that bayonet guy who can dodge bullets.
Rust (also Tarkov, DayZ, etc) - you're too poor to afford decent guns and armor, but you have to risk it anyway to stand a chance in the PvP hellhole of players who shoot on sight. They're better shots than you. They see you first. And they brought more friends.
Ark: Survival Evolved - try the persistent official servers, face Kaiju ultra-dinosaurs that have been bred to perfection since launch. Try PvP clusters, and clans speed run to the cheesiest endgame content then wipe your base on day 2. I'm a gaming masochist and this game was too much for me.
The weird thing is that there are hero players. The ones who win 1v3s without a sweat. They're just not you. You're fighting them. You won't be them until you've dedicated 2000 hours to git gud.
It’s a game where you’re a protagonist, but whether you’re a hero or not is a different story - and I can’t say any more without major, major spoilers.
There's an interesting little game called Insignificant I've been keeping an eye on for a while that does a similar thing if not as graphically-rich. There's also Smalland and Moss.
Hear me out on this one, but Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order created that feeling for me.
You might think, "jballs, you're crazy! You play as a Jedi who hacks through hundreds of bad guys with a lightsaber, all while growing your power to incredible levels where you become nearly unstoppable. How is that a game where you're insignificant?"
And I would respond, "I don't know how to use Lemmy spoiler tags. So you're just gonna have to trust me on this one."
EVE Online makes you feel very small, literally and figuratively. You can do whatever you want but it usually doesn't really matter because you're just one ship in a vast galaxy of unknown danger and player-led mega corps.
So, I just looked this up and found two versions: a regular version and a Unity GOG Cut. I assume the highly modded version you mention is the latter of the two?
Pretty much, I'm looking for a game where I'm not the hero, I'm not the protagonist, I'm just a pawn in the big picture.
You're just one of the many undead who try but eventually fail. One of the first characters you meet makes sure you know this. :)
Preferably a game with a big open world too, one that feels real and isn't just a predetermined path for my player.
DS1 isn't very large, but there's no predetermined path at all, especially if you get the master key. DS2 isn't as open, but you still have multiple choice of routes. DS3 is limited in this regard, though.
I also like games where you aren't clearly stronger than all your opponents like you're some sort of God so they actually feel intimidating and there is a fear of dying
That's the hallmark of the Soulsbourne series as a whole.
Elite:Dangerous star map size is staggering, it is roughly the size of our galaxy, after you make acquaintance with such scale if it happens that you look out of the night sky IRL and see some nice stars think again, for some of the celestial bodies you see and think they are stars might be instead, for many are indeed, other galaxies entirely, as big as our or even larger, but so far out in the universe that we can perceive their light from here just as a pin of light.
Came in to say Elite as well. Unfortunately I personally find the gameplay to be way too grindy and uninteresting to "progress". But in a way progress is somewhat irrelevant in Elite. I found a carrier hosting a tour of the galaxy and had an amazing time in my crappy little ship just looking at things. Few games do scale better then Elite.
Outward is really good for this. You aren't the chosen one, you aren't special, you're just a person trying to get by and the game really makes sure you know it haha
Absolutely. For me it was waay too much old school. No fast travel, unforgiving combat and lack of real map or meaningful ways of navigating the world was a turn off for me.
You know I haven't played that game in many years. I had forgotten that it never made you out to be like the nations hero or anything. You just were like some person out here doin stuff and that's it.
World of Warcraft Classic. You start as a no one. Everybody around you seems to know what to do. Your items are shit. You look like a peasant. The silliest enemies force you to rest and are able to kill you.
It‘s challenging but so rewarding. It makes you feel grateful for every single lvlup, item and skill you can get.
Even after spending literal days of your life, there always will be people who are better than you. Everything is said and done. Still this game manages to pull me back in from time to time. It’s so much fun.
probably rain world
you are the protag in that game, but you're also just one part in this huge procedurally simulated ecosystem
not to mention, the game is really hard
NaissanceE is really good at providing this feeling in the Eldritch sense, I don't know if it's up your alley as it's a pretty linear game about walking through a mega structure that looks like the eastern bloc itself went on an acid trip, but I came away with my time from it feeling like an ant on the sidewalk
Rimworld and Kenshi. You are a part of the world, not some foretold hero. You can lose everyone in those games and it feels like the world won't even notice.
Haven't played, but I've heard Tyranny has this feel. Though it's a very different style of game, and you're essentially playing as the bad guy instead of the hero.
Or there's always the Dark Souls games, where you have to claw your way through each encounter.
Wandersong. The whole plot is about the protagonist being a nobody and having no chances to change anything. It's not an action game or anything but I loved it, it was beautiful.
I get this feeling when playing older god of war games. although you're literally a god, you come across some ginormous enemies or landscapes that make you feel tiny. make sure not to miss the origins collection too
Daggerfall Unity fits this almost perfectly. You can become hilariously OP if you want to, but exercising some self-restraint on the custom class and enchantment screens can lead to a very challenging experience.
Running with Rifles, Ravenfield, Arma/Operation Flashpoint, Foxhole, This War of Mine, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Intravenous, Rimworld etc are ones I can think of. I hope you find what you're looking for!
I don't know what the full story of Baldur's Gate 3 is at the moment, and don't tell me if you do, but I'm pretty sure we're heroes, or something special. Most RPGs you're at least a little more special than average, if not much more.
try Champions of Regnum. Easily 20+v20+v20+ RvR open pvp. You do feel somewhat like a small cog in a big war machine, but with still opportunity to shine if you can perceive it.