Open worlds when just used to select a mission suck. Modern ones are built like themeparks so you have plenty of activities/distractions along the way, but it's still just activity selection.Elden Ring does have plenty of things in the middle. There's even boss fights in the middle of nowhere. Random NPCs.
There have been true open world games. Rain World and Death Stranding both use traversal as gameplay for example. Minecraft like games would count too imo.
I personally think Skyrim's open world is good (even if it's not good for Kitler).
Elden Ring is like the antithesis of Skyrim's open world in a ton of different ways.
