Sophocles

Command and Conquer perhaps? CC Tiberium Wars came out around 2007. Starcraft is also a similar RTS; Starcraft 2 came out in 2010

These come to mind where you can kill enemies, be a girl, and are or are similar to an rpg:

Middle Earth: Shadow of War: main character is a guy but in one of the expansions you can play the story as Galadriel. Killing monsters and game mechanics are peak

Skyrim Mods: ik you mentioned Skyrim, but The Wheels of Lull, The Tools of Kagrenac, and The Forgotten City are game sized mods in of themselves and are very good

Elder Scrolls III Morrowind and IV Oblivion: both as good as Skyrim, but in different ways. Go in with an open mind and you will be amazed

Star Wars KOTOR I & II: my favorite games of all time, very much games where you can choose how your character acts and who they become. Great story too, as a fan of star wars or not

I tend to agree, open world is becoming just a box to tick off for AAA developers, which means it just gets put in as filler basically. Halo Infinite is the worst example I can think of. However I do think there are 2 ways open world can be justified: if the world is just packed so full of interesting stuff that the game just gets huge, or if the way of traversing that world is fun.

Category 1 would be games like Morrowind, Skyrim , Fallout 4, or even Mass Effect on a smaller scale. There’s just so much to do that it becomes an open world on its own. Category 2 would be games like the Arkham series , Assassins Creed, or Forza Horizon, where getting from point A to point B is fun on its own.

Open world is great when it’s done right, but since when has Ubisoft or EA made a good game in the past 10 years?