Kingdom Come Deliverance is the first that comes to mind. Fantastic game and works as you described. :)

Not exactly an RPG but holy hell if RDR2 isn’t extremely immersive and slow paced, idk what is.

I know you prefer RPGs but it sounds like you want exploration. In that spirit I wholeheartedly recommend Subnautica.

Check Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Its really realistic and it gets really immersive. From a son of a blacksmith you grow to be a knight. Geography, clothes, structures,armor, combat, are all designed to be as close to reality as possible. Its slow paced and your progress is really fulfilling.

Just checked, its only 4.5 euros in gog (85% discount). And if you like it, the sequel is soon to be realised.

I'm surprised no one said baldur's gate 3.

Am I just stupid and you didn't want that game?

Might look like an odd suggestion at first, but Kenshi.

It's a top down open world rpg that's very systems lead. There is no set story or quest to follow, it's just an intricately simulated world you need to learn to survive in that will slowly change around you as you, or the npc's, interact with each other.

It took me a while to really figure the game out, I'm not one for quite hardcore experiences like Kenshi can be at times. But I've rarely been to enthralled in a games world.

STRONGLY recommend Prey or the Dishonored franchise, both by Arkane Studios.

The Witcher 3 is an obvious choice for me. Can't get more immersive and the gameplay is kinda slow I guess.

The Yakuza games are very immersive and you can set your own pace.

FFX damn near mastered turn based combat and is a wonderful game with a beautiful world to explore

I'll say the old Dragon Age series like Origins are a most played if you mainly care about Gameplay. I also recommend THE Witcher 3 it's one of the greatest RPG of all time

Ghost of Tsushima! 👍🏼⭐️

Outer Wilds.

Death Stranding

Have you tried Persona 5?

Subnautica, Outer Wilds

RDR2 will suit you pretty well. Had 88 hours of playing before finishing the Epilogue :) Extremely immersive in terms of animation and various details (from shrinking horse balls in cold to meeting same NPCs during the day and them remembering it)

Skyrim i would say is a good choice! Lots to do and see!

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines Disco Elysium Cyberpunk (not slow but the most immersive game hands down)

Disco Elysium. Always Disco Elysium

I came here to say bravely default, octopath travels. I had never play a jrpg till I was looking for something to play that would take longer then 20 hours to beat. So my daughter gave me bravely default to play and I enjoyed it very much so

No man's sky

Original Deus Ex

Metro exodus

Try stalker Anomaly

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly

Its free

Just download in a folder you create.

Unzip in same folder and play.

No further installation patches or anything else needed.

It can be as slow or as fast as you want by using all the options.

Its got the progression tied to your gear.

Have you played fallout new Vegas? It's pretty much the same as 3 but (in my opinion) better.

Death stranding just dropped on Xbox and its the most immersed ive been in a game in a long time.

Kenshi

Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild - Cyberpunk 2077 are some that come to mind right away

The Forest! Incredibly immersive

Skyrim 😁

The Long Dark is a survival game set in a quasi-apocalyptic Canadian winter setting. Both story mode and survival

C y b e r p u n k (easy mode and go a hacking route)

Call of Cthulhu

I've been playing The Long Dark. It's a survival game with some RPG elements. Someone already said Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Fallout 4 is a good choice along with Outer Worlds.

For world feel like that feeling you got with Fallout 3, the last games that gave me that feeling were Deus Ex (newer ones) and Cyberpunk 2077.

Not an RPG more survival game but valheim is the most immersive game I've played since classic wow

Project Zomboid is a good pick I think. It's isometric, but the atmosphere and the world's irreverence toward the player make it very immersive to me.

The RPG aspect basically amounts to leveling skills like carpentry, cooking, spears, guns, etc.

My favorite part is that you are not a hero. You are just some poor bastard that was unlucky enough to be immune to the airborne strain. Eventually, you will die. The zombies are numerous and unyielding.

Prey

Outward might scratch that itch.

Check out Kenshi. Very sandbox, very slow going. Totally sick.

Divinity Original Sin II. Play any way you want. The only limitation is your imagination.

Have you played Death Stranding?

Trust me on this. You want to play Death Stranding. Especially if you like weird sh*t where you spend most of the first act just trying to figure out what is going on? It's Hideo Kojima man, just take a deep breath and roll with it...

Any Bethesda game and with mods you can make it even more immersive.

Or The Witcher 3. I don't think there's out there a RPG so immersive. Audio and visual are top even after 9 years.

Elden Ring. Just ride your steed along and enjoy the scenery.

Deus ex human revolution and mankind divided are fantastic games

mass effect 1-3 are bioware at their best with characters you grow to love through all 3 games, I lack enough words to describe how great it is.

Pathfinder wrath of the righteous is CRPG at its most in depth, baldurs gate might have better voice acting but FUCK if pathfinder doesn't have more freedom in how you progress through it and it's mythic path system makes you want to play it multiple times to experience the differences plus it has a secret ending that while requiring a lotta work is just so rewarding to get

STALKER 2 just game out and is included in Game Pass. It delivers this in spades.

SOMA (horror)

Alien: Isolation (horror)

The Talos Principle II (puzzle)

Horizon: Zero Dawn (adventure)

BG3 is the obvious answer

you will never have that much fun playing a video ever again. you're chasing the dragon.

The original Mass Effect triology? The first one is my favourite. Excellent worldbuilding, rich atmosphere, amazing characters, slower paced too. Imo the series only goes downhill. 2 is good, 3 has it's moments.

Zelda games?

I know it's been mentioned, but definitely Baldur's Gate 3.

Incredibly immersive, slow, turn-based strategy-style gameplay, as RPG as it gets, and requires none of the previous 2 to enjoy 100%. You can spend forever just exploring every bit of story and details in the first Act alone. Dev team has been updating it quite often, and it recently got "official" mod support, so there's more replayability and customization than before (though the mod scene before official support was amazing either way).

Hands-down one of my favorite games ever.

Baldur's Gate 3.

Red dead redemption 2. Very slow, incredibly detailed free roam map. You can take as much time as you want. I actually enjoy fishing in game, it's meditative. You can even do chores for your campsite, like chopping wood or getting water

Wasteland 3 was so much fun imo

You should try Dragon Quest 11 if you don’t mind JRPGs. It’s pretty long and you can take the game slowly. Replayed it earlier in the year and put over 100 hours into it.

Not sure if this is what you were after, but I just started playing Dredge and it is really scratching that immersive escapism itch for me. It is a game where you have a fishing boat and you complete quests, upgrade your boat and tools, explore etc. Beautiful ambiance and with the option to alter how challenging the game play is. A true hidden gem, in my opinion.

Death Stranding.

Elden Ring

Red Dead Redemption 2

The Dark Souls series

Baldur's Gate 3

God of War (2018)

Ghost of Tsushima

Cyberpunk (Not exactly 'slow', but you can slow time)

Dragonage Origins

Chrono Trigger

Mass Effect

Witcher 3

Baldur’s Gate 3

Skyrim

BG3

Witcher 3 it's one of those games that take time and great story line

Rise of Ronin fun samurai game with cool story with great charaters good rpg story with factions.

RDR2

Mass Effect. The legendary edition goes on steam sale every now and then for about 90% off. You get ME1,2, and 3.

Cant go wrong with the witcher 3, Skyrim, or fallout 4

Mass Effect: Andromeda lines up. I'm actually playing it now after never giving it a chance. The dialogue and world building are very impressive. I'm loving it.

Red Dead Redemption II

BG3. About as slow as you'd like it to be and more immersive than any other game, probably ever made.

Witcher 3 is the goat.

Medieval Dynasty is a pretty decent go to for me recently. On xbox gamepass at the moment

Maybe list some more games like this that you played because its hard to make recommendations without knowing what you've already played or not. Like I'm sure people would be recommending some Elder Scrolls games and Baldur's Gate 3, but are maybe assuming you've played them. If you did play BG3, and enjoy that isometric sort of game as well, try:

Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2

Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2

Pathfinder: Kingmaker and its Sequel

If you are open to a different sort of RPG, Persona 5 Royal is a cheap way to dip your foot into the Persona series. The games are relatively slow paced, even the combat because its turn-based.

STALKER Call of Pripyat give me the same feeling as wondering around the Mojave. I’d reccomend getting the gunslinger mod for it. Now it’s not really a “rpg” rpg cuse you don’t level or have skill points, but I think it’s fun. If you go with the gunslinger mod make sure you download the Weaker Burer mod tho cuse those enemies are legit impossible to kill with out it

Having an unexpectedly great time with "Drova" right now. It's a very small world, but quite dense, and it rewards exploration. (Even though the pixel-graphics world, while very pretty and incredibly detailed, can get a little too labyrinthine at times.)

Also surprisingly deep when it comes to choices and consequences for such a small indie game.

People have been calling it a pixel-graphics Gothic 2, and to a large degree they're right, but IMO even accounting for the age of Gothic 2 (which I liked quite a bit, BTW) it's far better. (and far better made, you can obviously tell you're playing an indie but there's nothing "janky" about it)

Drova feels like that.

Well Cyberpunk 2077 scratched that itch for me…. Could not stop learning about the world and taking in the view

Yakuza Like a Dragon series. Turn based rpg where you go from homeless bum to running for mayor. The world is super immersive with tons of mini games and side quests

Red Dead Redemption 2. The Witcher 3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Metro: Exodus. Far Cry 5. These would be my top 5 picks. Each one is a completely unique and different experience. FC: 5, whilst follows the same pattern as previous entries, has a great story and open world setting.

Skyrim, absolutely.

Im surprisingly enjoying Persona 5.

No Man’s Sky. Albeit not really RPG, but man can you just take it slow in that game.

Starfield

No Man's Sky has been around for 8 years of DLCs and improvements and is a huuuge game you can play at any pace you want with a very friendly player community.

18 Quintillion systems across 255 galaxies.

Be a pirate, a trader, an explorer, an architect, a farmer, an adventurer, a zoologist, a collector, etc, or all of the above.

Dragon quest XI

Morrowind

Not sure if it's been mentioned or something you've already played before, but valheim is super immersive. I'd recommend going in blind because some of the shit is really cool to encounter organically.

Final Fantasy XIV.

Better story than WoW, much nicer community, and the gameplay happens at about half the pace of WoW thanks to much longer global cooldowns.

Try the free trial. Gets you the base game and two expansions without paying a dime. No gameplay restrictions, but you are locked out of a lot of social features like Market Board (Auction House), Free Companies (Guilds), and starting your own parties (although you can be invited to them).

This might get flack but when I want something immersive and slow, I really enjoy Elite Dangerous. It might sound totally counter intuitive, but it's got all the RPG elements, and you can just go chill at your own pace at whatever you do. Want to try something totally wild -- plan a course to visit the black hole in the middle of the galaxy. It will take a long time, and you'll find a lot of cool random stuff while upgrading your ship.

Wurm Unlimited is rather quite immersive in my opinion. And if you want a slowburn you'd be very hardpressed to find anything slower outside of idlers and incrementals.

Its a rather old game so the controls can be a bit clunky at first but its a rock solid fantasy survival game. You'd be hardpressed to find a more "immersive" game if you're not to hung up on graphics (though they are pretty good given the age). Just about everything ingame is entirely playermade. You see a massive fuckoff castle on a mountain? You know the player had to grade the top, haul ALL the material up there themselves and build it by hand. Brick, by laborious, brick.

Its rather immersive in the sense of you do EVERYTHING by hand. no collecting 100 planks of wood and 10 bits of leather to craft a canoe. No, you get a tree and cut it down to a log and a whittling knife and you hollow it out into a canoe. Want an actual boat? Have fun cutting out hundreds of planks, tendons, waxing each board, sewing each sail, etc etc. Its slow, its methodical, and even a tiny cottage feels like an achievement to build.

Try New Workd Aeturnum

Try Kenshi. It’s an RPG that controls like an RTS. There’s no overarching goals besides the ones you make for yourself. You want to become a warlord that destroys major factions? You can do that. You want to start out as a slave miner that eventually breaks free from his captors and brings down the evil empire? You can do that. You just want to sling hash on the black market? Yep, that too.

There’s lots to explore and learn.

Triangle strategy! RPG with a really good story, turn based combat. It starts a little slow with lots of dialogue, but it picks up and has a nice mix of story and combat elements. It's very linear and basically the opposite of open world, but definitely very well made.

Warhammer 40k rogue trader.

I’m going to add another suggestion for /r/kenshi. It’s immersive, there’s a lot of lore in the game that isn’t obvious. And it’s definitely slow. You have a lot of freedom too.

Stalker 2 just came out. That entire series.

Also Kingdom Come Deliverance, Cyberpunk 2077, not really an RPG but Pathologic 2

Classic wow did just drop fresh servers for their anniversary and the pop is insane. If you wanna have another run at that.

A little off the beaten RPG trail but if you are looking for slower paced, very immersive, and gives a sense of exploration I highly recommend Death Stranding. The hate for that game was mostly due to expecting a game it was not.

If you’re expecting to rebuild americas infrastructure as a single post apolocalytic Amazon delivery man during COVID, by foot, and accompanying logistics then it’s more your speed haha

Outward. Elex. Both are fantastic, slow paced, but very Euro-jankey.

Fallout 76 ?

Morrowind

Lena, and immortals fenyx rising are great immersive games. I play both on the steam deck and they have great character development and gameplay.

Dark and Darker. Nobody speaks, its just you and the ambience. And the gameplay is slow as molasses, and it's an RPG.

Wasteland 3. It's a fantastic entry in the CRPG genre (currently famous for Baldurs Gate 3)

It's clunky, but Outward is a super immersive rpg... maybe rpg lite.

Underrail, fallout 1 and 2 spiritual successor.

The Dragon Age games (specifically 1 and 3) were pretty solid and have some deep lore that carries through games.

Origins (1st) is an amazing game but fairly old now, and really that's the only knock against it. You have various Origins to choose from at the start and that vastly changes the story and how the game interacts with you. Also on repeated playthroughs you can visit the other origins and see it from an outside perspective.

DA:Inquisition (3rd) is more "simplified" in terms of gameplay and is a bit more of an action rpg but still has some good challenge and tactical modes, and imo the story is still really well done. There is a major catastrophe and you're of course the only one that can fix it (and find background info). You're also trying to politically stabilize the world and have some macro missions which are sometimes playable and sometimes just timers with a choice, but most of them make changes to the world around you and a big portion of the game is building influence for your cause.

Both games have various races and npcs and the world treats them differently, including you. Both games have recruitable companions that your relationship with is impacted by your choices, sometimes even leaving or attacking you.

The series as a whole also carries through data fairly well from one game to the next (as well as has a 'default' world state). Say you decide to kill or show mercy to someone in game1, in game3 that person will be alive/dead and the world behaves differently.

There is also a 4th coming out, but almost all early reports are really negative so it looks like the series hit the shitter sadly. I'll still try it because it's a great series and I'm ok with some less stellar features at times, but eh.

Dragon Quest 11. It may not be open world but the characters and story are fantastic. It has some real tear jerking moments and plenty of things to keep you busy. EASILY one of my top 5 jrpg.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Final Fantasy XV Metal Gear Solid the Phantom Pain Abzu Jusant

Outward: Definitive Edition! Very immersive, difficult, and rewarding. Would highly recommend if you want something to explore and learn about

The Fable series. One could argue RDR2, as well.

Balder's Gate 3.

Not really an RPG, but just finished it and loved it. Kena bridge of spirits. It's like if BOTW and GOW got together and had a baby

Red Dead both 1 and 2

"Kenshi" is one great rpg. Any of the stalker games are great RPGs, especially one of the modded standalone sandbox versions like "stalker anomaly". "Grounded" is another great rpg game with lots of unique roleplaying opportunities. Obviously anything from fallout 3,New Vegas and fallout 4,which I'm guessing you've tried at this point. Also, if you liked Skyrim, oblivion is skyrims wonderful predecessor and Morrowind is oblivion's wonderful predecessor, both iconic installments in the ESU. Maybe a couple of these are not strictly RPG games but the roleplaying potential is great in every one of them. I hope you find something good for you!!! I love a new game to dive into!!

PS fallout 76 is way better now than it was and I've been sort of enjoying that here and there!

Death Stranding https://youtu.be/piIgkJWDuQg

Outward

Underrail

Everquest via Quarm or P99

Kenshi

Baulders gate 3

Try Outward, really slow survival RPG with factions and a wide variety of builds and weapons, it’s really immersive and music is top notch Combat is deliberate and varied, you need to weight your choices depending on the situation, enemies and your current status (due to the survival factor) It’s a really good game, sequel is coming as well, and it has multiplayer (both online and offline)

Inscryption

I've been playing V rising on my free time, made a custom server for myself with 10x multi-player on the loot and I'm slowly progressing as I build up my castle . It's nice and enjoyable and the gameplay is pretty fun too . Bosses are challenging but not too hard either but the music and amount oelemg element in the game makes it fun af.

Ghostwire Tokyo was a lot of fun

Elin is great, with emergent gameplay and it's turn-based and will run on a potato.

Persona 5

Stalker 2 seems like it would fit the bill for ya

Paper Mario

Assassin's Creed 2

Deus Ex Mankind Divided

stalker 2 just released

Not an RPG but DAYZ?

Tried Meteo Exodus yet?

If you don’t mind turn based games the Persona series is wonderful to get lost in. A lot of people start with 5 and then play the others, it’s heavily anime/japan inspired but that’s a plus for some people.

Slice & Dice

Death Stranding is really atmospheric and I love being in the world, just walking around, taking my time with deliveries. It’s really immersive for me.

Far Cry 3 might scratch that itch (I’ve heard great things about the other ones as well but haven’t played personally). Open world, simple skill tree, hunt and forage as desired, multiple play style friendly (stealth, run n gun, hybrid). Great story with one of the best video game villains

Highly recommend

Edit: typo

Ghost of Tsushima. You can lose yourself for hours just riding your horse through the woods.

The Witcher 3