Evocative Spaces: Tamriel Rebuilt is a mod for Morrowind which builds out an entire continent. It has relatively few quests, but a lot of painstakingly built out medieval towns and unusual settings with evocative details sprinkled throughout. It’s a genre-specific place to exist in.
Enacting Stories: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic explicitly has you enact a new Star Wars story, and play through a predetermined broad narrative while making your own choices at a local, micro-level.
Embedded Narrative: Gone Home is entirely about creating a home with all the family’s stories scattered throughout it.
Emergent Narrative: My favorite example of this is Necesse; it combines dungeon-delving and exploration with colony management. You collect colonists on your adventures, which gives them built-in associations, and then watch them interact with one another, develop ‘personalities’ and build stories around your base.
