We do have different expectations now that saves are universal and score banished, but we still only see 20-30% of players reaching the end of the main campaign.
This is a real tricky aspect to get right in these games that prioritize the aesthetic of exploration. As you note, random generation doesn’t feel quite satisfying because we experience the real world as a mixture of organic happenstance and strongly directed human creation, even if we are unaware of its purpose or context.
In a game, everything is constructed with great expense and so it is very hard to justify it supporting a world outside the player’s goals.
Some studios have approached this through breadth. Morrowind and Daggerfall, and Breath of the Wild are at a scale that it is unreasonable to expect thorough exploration. Wherever you go, well, there you are, and there’s something new over that next hill. Unfortunately their core RPG progression systems are still pushing you to feed on everything in the world, so there’s this tension between wanting to touch everything and the angst of knowing you’re just spreading time at any activity.
Shadow of the Colossus gets very close by removing those progression elements and carefully romanticizing the terrain. It’s clear that this land was built for a series of interesting shots but in deliberately not using it for functional game terms they cause the player to view it as existing for its own sake. It doesn’t feel purposeless because there is that light hand of a designer shaping the world, expressed through curated pathways, sprinkled ruins, and quiet ponds. I was never happier than when I was exploring an underground temple devoid of any context or reason – that I was sequence breaking and later returned for a proper colossus fight there only weakened my experience.
There are other approaches to meaningful exploration. Through abstraction, Proteus works as a memory trap; its shifting compositions of color and trees and flowers and musical effects trigger waves of memories of places and views I’ve seen but never painted. It’s not a world in its own right but a link back to very personal spaces.
Echo builds and suggests and infinity of gilded halls – Versailles across an entire planet, in context of a humanity stretching across an infinite universe. They constrain the player’s path like most linear levels but suggest that even if you could explore you would have nowhere to discover. It explores that edge of pointless randomly-generated noise and angst over a near-infinite universe of gorgeous but empty planets and stars and what infinite life could justify.
