I'm fucking sick of large open worlds that looks like shit and have barely anything in them. I feel like Ubisoft is to blame for this.
I want games to go back to not necessarily being open world, but having large, open-ended maps with loads of stuff to do in them. Deus ex and Thief come to mind.
I played most of the Assassin's Creed games. I loved them for their history and tolerated autistic storytelling in order to "live" in time periods I was interested in. AC:3 was my favorite because of that. I love the history behind the American Revolution, and sure the story is absolutely not historically accurate, it was still cool to "be there."
That being said, I absolutely cannot remember a single place in the open world. Neither in Black Flag or any of the others. They were just places I went through to go from one mission to the next.
I think open world games exhibit the problem that you're not actually there. A beautiful sunset or storm in RDR2 is gorgeous the first few times you see it, but you eventually lose interest. Or the alien beauty of Morrowind; you're not actually there, so the ambience of it will eventually lose its charm.
That's why I think VR really will be the future of open world games. I'm on the waiting list for a Valve Index, because I played modded Skyrim on a buddy's Vive. It feels different on VR, even for a jank Bethesda game from ten years ago. We live in a world where my night sky in my yard is shit, but the one in a modded Skyrim is jaw dropping. Same for mist-ringed mountains. Simply looking at it, where your reptilian brain thinks it's real, is a lot different than seeing it on a flat screen. The simple act of tricking your brain into thinking you're in these gorgeous places is a game in of itself.
I liken it to riding a motorcycle. Riding through a gorgeous park or a beautiful neighborhood feels different on a bike than in a car. In a car, you're looking out a window with blinders on. On a bike, you're actually out there and there's nothing inhibiting your view.