I would like recommendations for open world games where the player has abundant ways to interact with the world, be it with the NPCs or buildings, and does not have to worry about survival aspects of the character or spending time exploring a static world. I would not mind if it comes at the cost of a smaller sized world, as long as it remains an open world game.
By interaction, I am not just talking about side missions or the main story. I wish for the ability to perform actions that affect the NPCs directly or make them react to it, like combat or conversations. I also wish to interact with the outside objects and buildings, like sitting on a bench, driving a random parked vehicle, or entering a building to observe or interact with its interiors. I am not keen on base building nor caring for hunger/thirst/shelter.
A great example of this could be the Watchdogs franchise. I have never seen the level of interaction with the world in any other game the way Watchdogs provides. From the streets to the vehicles to the individual people, there are so many ways to how I can mess up with the city, meanwhile the game does not bother me to eat or sleep. Overall I think of it as GTA but better. Another example could be the first Assassin's Creed game (since it's the only one I've played so far) where the interaction comes in the form of stealthily killing enemies, hiding and blending with the environment and parkouring through the rooftops of the various cities. Maybe another example of such a game could be Skyrim. Though it does contain a great amount of exploration and villages are small and scarce in the world, there is surprisingly a lot of interactive elements in the villages themselves. Plus the different types of loots when raiding a dungeon of fighting a monster with your own arsenal of weapons, this partially qualifies as a match for me.
I am sure there is some genre or a category that perfectly encapsulates what I am looking for and it is just at the tip of my tongue. Please provide me with any game titles that match my requirements as stated above. I would understand if I am asking for too much.
Check out other Assassin's Creed games! I agree that Red Dead Redemption is anther good suggestion. I suggest the first one as well. Maybe Fable? The second one was my favorite, but people rave about the first one as well. I didn't play the first one until I didn't have as much time to game.
This might be a miss, but the Sims can be insane with mods. You can cheat their needs and not worry about those. Sims 3 is open world and the best of the series, but I'm not as familiar with the mods available for it. There are Sims 4 mods that introduce murder (guns and knives provided of course), drugs and gangs, zombies, prostitution, murderous toddlers, and much more that I can't think of right now.
Modders are fucking lunatics when it comes to the Sims. Someone made a mod for Sims 3 where you could grill and eat a baby. EA stepped in to shut that down...
I agree with the other Assassins creed games. At least with Odyssey, that's what I played most. You can explore all of ancient Greece and there are lots of really good and fun side quests. Just don't think of it as a pure stealth game, like the first game was, more like an action adventure with stealth elements, or you might be a bit disappointed.