Games where you can "be a citizen" of the world.

It baffles me how, in the Far Cry games for example, everything and everyone wants to kill you, and somehow they know exactly who you are even when you're driving by in a window-tinted pickup truck.

I'm looking for the opposite of that. A return to something reminiscent of George Stobbart's adventures, or JC Denton/Adam Jensen's in-between-mission life, where the world around you doesn't exist only to serve you, the protag. The people of the world have their own lives to live, and to them, you're just some guy who might be willing to buy something at their shop and never see again.

I'm looking for suggestions of games of any era, that allow you to live as an average joe in the game when you're not doing a story mission. Now, we all know the obvious ones, including the Elder Scrolls, but I'm not only looking for RPGs.

Any genre works, and from any era. What games have you played that made you feel you were partaking in a living world that didn't revolve around you?

Grand Theft Auto comes to mind. I mean you really only get chased after when you A.) break the law and cops come at you, or B.) encounter some gang member/enemy. Otherwise, you are free to roam the game world as an ordinary citizen, shop at stores, drive-fly-boat around the world, and so forth.

Kingdom Come Deliverance comes to mind

Arma 3 Life - a role playing mod, where you can be anything you want

I was just reading this www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/14/gaming-made-me-ultima-vii article on Ultima 7 which is like that. Also Baldurs Gate to an extent. Also Ultima 4.

There is a man in Ultima 4 who think his job is to make the sun rise every morning and everyone is just generally doing their thing, usually dancing on the spot next to a fire or running around some poison squares. Some of them are drunk and they are universally weird and give you bad poetry sometimes.

You can try romance of the three kongdoms

Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley or The Sims.

I think you need to kill people at a couple of points at least but you can be mostly pacifist I believe

@with_teeth26: Just started and 3 hours in and loving it. Even though not seemed to have played much yet the story and music and acting is top notch.

Star Citizen, it's literally in the name :) Still a ways off from completion but the Alpha is coming along nicely (don't listen to the haters) and you can get a nice wee starting ship package (all you'll ever need in the final game) for $54 with no need to spend a penny more.

Starcraft ;)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms series is always good.

Well, there are many such games like Destiny 2, Call of Duty World War, Batman, Spiderman etc. But I think we already have enough with super hero games. Now they seem to be old school games. One should go for games like Destiny 2. In this game, the player assumes the role of Guardian, protectors of the earth's last safe city. Even Call of Duty World War is a nice game. Recently my friend had buy Call of Duty World War 2 from www.instant-gaming.com/en/ and its story is also nice.

It's been a long, long time since I played it.....the game was released back in 1999:

Omikron: The Nomad Soul

in fallouts 3 and 4 you "could" rp as a local of a town/city just to spice things up if you are board, I tend to do that a lot and its kinda funish :P

for the win