God of War was so good at this, though it was a bigger world, obviously. It was dense with stuff, from small buckets you could hit that were hanging from a ceiling and contained hacksilver, to alternate paths that could lead to chests or even a whole new quest, to spots you could find on a map that looked and were able to be explored, to puzzle staring you right in the face that you knew you could come back for.
Doing this in a sandbox like Control has seems like a ton of fun.