Secular_Strateg

I would take "fake" to mean that this area is not accessible to any regular player like you or me, by ordinary or even extraordinary means.

And that's what I think this is. The secret room is not really in the game. If it is, players could use tools like Cheat Engine to warp the character or camera beyond the "door" to see it. I've had to do that in a game after I accidentally sequence broke myself out of a locked room and had already overwritten the save.

I think games like Witcher 3, Outer Wilds, and Elden Ring have done a lot to reshape how we think an open world game can work, particularly in terms of player freedom and depth of quest experience/narrative. For contrast, my most prevalent memories of Skyrim involve hundreds of side quests where I went up to the waypoint and pressed the use key. The simplest mistake Bethesda can make would be to think that they can stick to iterating on the same old formula that the series has been using for several decades.

Me, for the past 15 years: "Please give us a modern remake of Riven."

Cyan, every 3 years: "What's that you say? Another Myst remake? Don't mind if we do!"

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter for exploration and stunning vistas.

Aporia: Beyond The Valley checks all of the boxes, though I remember the puzzles being a bit unsatisfying.