Games that grant you the most freedom?

[Retrology]

So what I mean by this isn’t necessarily games that let you move anywhere or give you so many things, but rather approach it in a wide variety of ways.

Classic Sonic Games These ones are obvious. Sonic 2 and Sonic 3&K in particular do a great job at giving you the freedom to explore multiple paths or speed run through a level. Sonic 3 in particular gets this down to a science with huge, well designed levels and unique paths for Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles.

Super Mario 64 The game allows you to complete any challenge in a level at any time regardless of order (with exceptions)

Breath of the Wild Another obvious one. Solving everything by doing whatever the hell you want and playing the bosses at any order gives the player endless freedom.

Resident Evil 4 Though pretty linear, this game gets strategy elements down brilliantly by letting you choose which weapons to take with you. The limit on weapons actually allows you to approach enemies and scenarios in a variety of ways, and the leveling up system for weapon upgrades is really cool.

Chrono Trigger You can fight the final boss at any point you want. Enough said.

Let’s hear your thoughts!

[TheEagleXIII]

Interesting topic and some great choices!

I always appreciated games that let you go all guns blazing or use stealth and it actually make a difference. Some stealth games try to make it sound like their games just become harder if you don't use stealth - where I'd say they actually punish you and impede your progress until you play it correctly, which makes them unsatisfying if you had that illusion of choice. Vice versa for some games too where stealth makes no difference. Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness did this where being stealthy made zero difference because of the poor AI.

It's probably why I still enjoy the original Syphon Filter trilogy to this day. As basic as the game is, you can go with either approach and still enjoy the game. Often certain levels force you to do one or the other - but if you decide to run and gun on the levels without these restrictions it doesn't punish you, it just becomes more action-oriented.

I'm sure there's other games appropriate for this topic but that's all I can think of off the top of my head right now.

[Luigi & Peach]

In regards to the freedom of stealth vs. guns blazing, I thought the Hitman series did a great job of this.