A friend once said that the best way to have fun in an open-world game - the best way to see if an open-world game was likely to be fun in the first place - was to pick the first story marker and run in the absolute opposite direction as fast as possible.
Out of the cave in Skyrim? Head wherever the game isn't telling you to go. Boots down in Just Cause? Ignore that first invitation to chat with a resistance leader. Emerging from the ramp in Crackdown? Actually, Crackdown never really tells you what to do anyway. Point made.
I've followed this advice while playing a demo build of Tchia over the last few days. Here's the thing, though: I didn't follow it on purpose. Reader, I was compelled to. Tchia is an open-world game set in a sun-dappled archipelago inspired by New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific Ocean. You play as a child exploring and gadding about the islands, and I'm pretty sure there's a bit of narrative in the build I played - a quest that leads to another quest maybe, a cut-scene, a gradual introduction to the powers at my disposal.