Mafia II (2010)
Mafia II might have had an open word, but the story told you where you could and couldn’t go. Almost all of Empire Bay (read: New York) was really just window dressing designed to tell a believable story that spanned several years in the life of a discharged WWII soldier turned mobster.
Despite an arresting setting infused with period touches, critics questioned why the traditional open world staples – side missions, quests, random NPCs – had been left on the cutting room floor. The idea of a big city sans padding was seen as overly restrictive. That it was in service to a great story didn’t matter. Mafia II received a succession of lukewarm reviews, underselling what was a faithful follow-up to the original, and a beautiful tale of crime and corruption in its own right.
As we learned in Mafia III some years later, having lots of stuff to do on its own doesn’t make your game good by definition.