In other words, open-world games are Yahwist simulators.
Please explain how open-world games are 'Yahwist simulators'.
I had a crisis during my teenage years, when I was depressed that video games weren't giving me the satisfaction that they used to when I was a child. So I turned to the "open-world" genre in the hopes that it would be the best way to "perfect" the flaws in the games that I was playing by creating a more "complete" world, in contrast to the older games which (I felt) could not create the "complete" fictional worlds that I was looking for due to the hardware limitations.
Most open world games are complete at launch. You complete the story (pre and post end credits), you do all the side quests, and then you turn off the game and play something else (unless there's New Game Plus, where which you repeat the above two steps with your character data from your first playthrough or new features in the second).
The only thing is, I quickly realized that "completeness" could never be achieved with open-world games because the entire concept is making the worlds more expansive and realistic as the hardware improves (Western evaluation of game quality is also centered around this theme, with each new game being evaluated based on how much the graphics have improved compared to the last generation, as opposed to evaluating the games relative to a fixed ideal).
Only triple-A GUILD (Greed, Uninspiredness, Ineptitude/Incompetence/Incapability, Laziness, Dishonesty) syndrome companies do that, and the gaming community hates them for it. Just look at Dunkey's video on Assassin's Creed. Just look at any of the latest critique videos about Far Cry, Watch Dogs, Anthem, No Man's Sky (this game actually made a recovery but it's still grindy and repetitive), or Cyberpunk 2077. Just look at Yahtzee Croshaw's assessment of the traditional open world formula as the 'Jiminy Cóckthroat'. You speak ill of open world games like you're the only person in the world who hates open world games. You aren't.
The games themselves (such as BoTw) also have no purpose other than exploration, which is reflected in the game's lackluster storyline (which in effect means it has no purpose at all, since there is no completion point).
Again, only triple-A companies make the kind of open world game you're describing. And Breath of the Wild does have a completion point; it's theorized that the collection sidequests are there to mock the player for wasting time collecting worthless items. But to be fair, you at least have to agree to the fact the one of the hallmarks of gaming is discovery. Whether you find a hidden room in a dungeon or a dungeon itself hidden, people like discovery, not just in games, but in real life.
In contrast, at least non open-world 3D games such as Mario have a completion point such as getting x amount of stars to complete the game. The latter was what appealed to me as a child.
It should be noted that only a handful of games that you're describing are endless, and some games are situated in a way where you can, as I mentioned earlier, begin a second/third/etc. playthrough whilst retaining your character data (this is why you can usually traverse the open world after you've completed the story). The hallmark of a good videogame its its replay value.
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