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The Best Open World Games?


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This became a topic in the Switch thread but I think its worth having its own thread.

Open World games are my current favorite type of game to play. I've been gaming for 30 years and I go through waves on what I am playing. Sometimes I just crave sports games, other times fighting games, but for the last five years or so I generally have been gravitating towards open world games. For the sake of my own preferences, I have a pretty wide range of what I consider open world, to me it is any game that has a big ass map that I am free to explore and do missions as I see fit with limited restrictions. I'll list a bunch to get the party started but I know there are many more.

Of the Fallout series, Fallout 3 is my favorite. I played New Vegas pretty early and of course it was broken in places. I do not know if that impacted my enjoyment, I still loved the game but it didn't have that fresh/original feel that I got from Fallout 3 and that is something that matters to me. Fallout 4 felt... weirdly empty and I didn't like the main storyline, I still beat it but never went back and played the DLC, again I played it early on before it was patched. Fallout 3 I played after patches which may have helped.

I never was as high on Red Dead as many on this forum. I thought that the Mexico portion dragged and it was completely illogical that my character would be playing along and doing those missions instead of focusing on his own story. I beat it once, but when I tried replaying it a few years later I never got past Mexico. I still consider it a good game, but it doesn't touch Fallout, Zelda, or Borderlands to me.

Speaking of Borderlands, I absolutely loved Borderlands 2. I loved the art, the story, the characters, the gameplay, everything. I never played the original, and I thought the "Pre-Sequel" had too many holes, but playing Borderlands 2 co-op with my brother is one of my most enjoyable video game experiences ever.

I also enjoy the Far Cry series but it peaked with me with Far Cry 3, wasn't as much into 4 or Primal. Curious to see where 5 goes.

I think Zelda is great, it had its issues as it went at times a bit too hard at being "realistic" (like the rain), and I thought the Beasts were too similar. But I think it combined elements from other open world games while putting its own unique spin on it. Probably my second favorite Zelda game as while I thought it was great at times it did feel a bit like a grind.

Horizon Zero Dawn was one of my favorite games of 2017. Thought the story was great and pretty original, characters were solid and it felt like a fresh experience. I highly recommend it to anyone that hasn't tried it.

Assassin's Creed as a series is A+ but so many of their games when I think back on them blend together and its hard for me to really pick them apart. But Black Flag was great, I haven't played the new one yet but I've read good things. 

I absolutely loved the chief/ranking setup of Shadow of Mordor,  it felt really original and the gameplay was smooth. From gaming for so long I just have extra appreciation for games that do something different, and do it very well. No Man Sky did something very different but very poorly, its key to get both things right. Shadow of War feels significantly less original but still enjoyable.

I've only played Skyrim of the Elder Scrolls series, at the time I'd have ranked it as my #1 but on a replay (and since new games have come out) it has slipped a bit in my ranking. Still, I probably put the most hours in Skyrim, lots going on with it and the side missions generally hooked me in. I probably spent 40 hours just creating shit to wear which I normally don't do in games.

If I had to rank the Open World Games I've played of the last ten years or so, and this of course is only games I've played, I'd rank my Top 5 as:

1. Fallout 3
2. Borderlands 2
3. Horizon Zero Dawn
4. Zelda
5. Shadow of Mordor

Always interested in other opinions of course, I think its a great genre and I am always interested in seeing what new aspects game developers come up with. For the sake of my list I am not including the Mass Effect or Dark Souls games as while they are at times open-world ish I don't think that's their primary genre, but if others want to include them I won't be offended.

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I played a ton of Borderlands games but don't really see them as part of this kind of genre. I would consider Dark Souls far more of an open world game, at least as I interpret the term.

As for Skyrim... I reached a point down the mod rabbit hole where I just banned myself from ever playing again so I could get on with my life, so that says something. I actually prefer unmodded Morrowind to unmodded Skyrim, but the mod kit (as it is for lots of games now) isn't an add-on, it's an actual full-fledged promoted feature that is really part of the core experience with Skyrim.

Terraria should absolutely be mentioned. If Zelda and minecraft had a baby, it would be Terraria and although I haven't played it in some time now it was excellent. Also, in a rarity in modern gaming, I actually found my experiences with the online community to be pleasant. It seemed to attract a certain kind of player a lot of games just don't anymore. They are still doing content updates and there's a ton of stuff in that game I've never even seen, and it's really a game where I felt you could play it literally any way you wanted and have fun.

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7 minutes ago, Death From Above said:

I played a ton of Borderlands games but don't really see them as part of this kind of genre. I would consider Dark Souls far more of an open world game, at least as I interpret the term.

I can see that and wouldn't argue the point if someone didn't agree and left it off their list. In the terms purest form it probably isn't open world but it allowed for enough world exploration and side mission branches that in my brain it counts since that was one of the elements of the game I liked. I left off GTA completely but its open world too, I think to a degree there is some flexibility for interpretation.

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As I say often, it's Red Dead all day for me, but partially for personal non gaming reasons. 

I was playing the game when I turned 40 and part of my vacation/present was a trip to Monument Valley. So I went from seeing the virtual Two Mittens to seeing the real thing up close and personal. 

Plus, being a Mark for Westerns and John Ford and Leone and such, more so than any GTA gangster/gangsta or military or sci fi setting. 

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With very very very little thought put in

1 - Red Dead Redemption

2 - Fallout 3

3 - Skyrim

4 - Saints Row 2 or 3 (I am torn between which one I would put here)

5 - GTA 3

 

Skyrim would probably be #1 if I ever actually finished. GTA V - I never came close to finishing the story and honestly you can't really factor the online part in since that is basically it's own game (never played San Andreas, played IV for like 3 minutes and hated it)

I don't consider Borderlands or the Bioware games (Mass Effect and Dragon Age) as "Open-World". If you describing it as "sandbox" then we have a different story

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I have been on this horse since I played it, but I would take Sleeping Dogs over Saints Row 3 or GTA IV without any hesitation at all. People brought up that it actually ended up having to cut stuff before release, but the result for me is that almost none of the side activities felt like pointless time-padding (and it's still a huge game). Everything just feels well done with the only exception being the two gambling dens are a complete waste of time. Even with having to drive on the left side of the road like some kinda WEIRDO couldn't dissuade me. It also carried on a common open world/crime game trend: all the GTA style games have better combat than the GTA games. Shit, the Godfather on Fat Old XBox has a better melee system than any GTA game has even attempted. I keep meaning to replay Sleeping Dogs but I just have so many games on my plate that I can't find time to get back to it yet.

Saints Row 3 was a lot of fun even if it's basically "GTA San Andreas without having to eat" (which to be honest was a correct and accurate step), I think my favourite thing was those side missions where you had to go to a spot and play basically tower defense vs waves of crap for X minutes without dying.

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I made a fairly advanced argument for Fallout: New Vegas. Red Dead Redemption is also up there. 

There are generally a few things that I think really matter for open world games:

  • Complexity of quests (multiple steps, variation in quest types, options to complete quests)
  • Traversal (is it interesting or fun, basically)
  • Narrative strength and world-building (does the world feel "real" or as though it could exist, and of course, is the narrative interesting in theme and plot)
  • Combat (is it interesting or fun, basically)

The best open-world games that I can think of do about two of those really well: Fallout 2, Wasteland, Saints Row 2. Fallout: New Vegas, Red Dead, Horizon. Sometimes, it's enough to have just ONE of those if it is good enough (think traversal in Spiderman 2, Ultimate Spiderman, Crackdown, inFamous: Second Son). Having one of those doesn't make a game a great open-world game, IMO, but it makes it interesting enough to play.

Fallout: New Vegas is fantastic at two of those (quests, narrative strength and world-building) and good enough at one of them (combat). I would say about the same for Redemption. I don't know if any game that I've played has nailed all four of those at once. 

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Fallout 2 is the one older game I'd actually like to revisit for this. I only played through it once a few years ago (whenever GOG gave it away), I was really impressed as far as those old isometric RPGs go. It was just so much fun to play through that world. If someone had been into it when it was new and they told me they thought Fallout 2 was the best game ever made, I wouldn't agree but I'd understand why they thought so. Fallout 1 is good but 2 is basically bigger, more refined, and better in every meaningful way. Since it's also not a style of game that is done much anymore, in a way that also helps it stand out.

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My listing is probably weird

 

1. Fallout: New Vegas

2. Skyrim

3. GTA V

4. GTA San Andreas

5. Red Dead Redemption

Honorable Mention: Bully, GTA: Vice City

New Vegas is just video gaming perfection to me. Took everything Fallout 3 did, did it better, then took everything didn't do hugely great and did it amazing. Yes, it's slightly broken. No, that isn't changing my view on the best Fallout game ever created. 

Skyrim is just simply addicting as shit. No real details needed.

GTA V I'm actuall yranking this high due to in large part to GTA Online. the single player is fun, but I can't say it's the best GTA game if it were not for the online

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...I still haven't played Skyrim.

As far as Bethesda games go, I don't give a fuck about jank if the jank is there because you threw a bunch of awesome systems on top of one another and then let me go nuts fucking around in that world with those systems doing whatever I want. This is why New Vegas is my favorite game ever made.

I usually don't play fantasy-genre games, but yeah, I am just waiting to get Skyrim on Switch for $40 or less in order to finally play it. 

@Death From Above Have you played Pillars of Eternity yet? It's an open-world isometric RPG. It's one of the few fantasy-genre games that I've played, and for good reason. It captures the Fallout 2 magic to some degree. 

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I haven't played it because it's from Paradox Interactive and I am still ignoring them between their Fist of a Thousand DLC policy on CK II and that incident last year where they spiked the prices on all their products then put them on "sale" at the original price before backtracking.

I'm sure it's a lovely game, I am just old and petty.

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Skyrim and New Vegas pretty much own this category for me.  GTA5 was good, and I didn't get into any of the other GTA games the way I did 5.  I'll also second Sleeping Dogs, as I found that much more time-sinky than GTA5, but that was probably due to me liking the melee system over the shooting.  I'd also count Arkham City in, as it's techincally open world even if the side stuff doesn't have the depth that Skyrim and the Fallout series have.

 

Now I also want to replay New Vegas soon, as I haven't touched it in a while.

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I have not played Fallout 3 yet.  I plan to right that wrong sometime this fall.

My rankings:

  1. Skyrim
  2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  3. Fallout 2
  4. Saints Row 2
  5. GTA 5
  6. Red Dead Redemption
  7. Saints Row:  The Third
  8. GTA 4
  9. GTA:  Vice City
  10. GTA 3
  11. GTA: San Andreas

 

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Hmmm...

I own, but have not played, most of the Just Cause & Far Cry series, and I suspect those probably could earn themselves a spot if I ever played them. And I've never played any of the Rockstar games, aside from about 10 hours of LA Noire, which made me want to never play it again.

For my own rankings, given the other stuff that's on here...do we count Tomb Raider? I suppose I wouldn't, since it's not strictly open (where you can go where you want from the beginning), but it probably blows a lot of these out of the water as a gaming experience.

Otherwise, there are a lot of factors that go into how I feel about these things, and no one game has them all - not even close, really. So I'll just mention the 'winners' for each of those feelings and why they're successful.

- "Pick up, put down, lather rinse repeat" - Fallout 3. By the end game, it's fantastically broken, but man, sometimes it's just fun to go to some location you haven't seen before, blow some shit up, own a Deathclaw or 5, and move on. It has replayability and ease and fun by the bucketloads. And the story is better than 4.

- "I think I know it, and then I find I don't know it" - Skyrim. I have probably 1600 hours in this and about 12 different characters, but each and every single time I play it, I learn something I didn't know on the prior playthrough. The last time it was learning the non-violent option for solving the Gildergreen quest. Always something.

- "I wish I could be in this world" - LoZ: Breath of the Wild. As much as I've dumped on it in the other thread, it just feels...inviting. Like when you glide into some empty area and just look at everything around you, there's a sensation of peace to it all. I'm not sure too many games outside of the LoZ series could pull this off. Ocarina of Time might actually be better at this, but feels more restricted and restricting.

- "This owns my soul" - Morrowind. Forget the bugs, forget the worst combat system in the history of combat or systems, forget the lack of voice acting, forget the age of it. This did deep horror better than any other game I've seen, especially given the plotlines of both Oblivion & Skyrim since. Vvardenfell is such a massively creepy, unsettling, weird fucking place, and when you do totally basic stuff like PICK UP A BOOK AND READ there are just more and more layers of weird and insane and mind-warping waiting for you. There's a huge part of me that wants to set aside the awfulness of the way the game handles to play it again...and then the part of me that's scared shitless of every square inch of that island says, "No."

Anything that puts most or all of these into one container would probably be my favorite game of all time.

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22 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

This became a topic in the Switch thread but I think its worth having its own thread.

Open World games are my current favorite type of game to play. I've been gaming for 30 years and I go through waves on what I am playing. Sometimes I just crave sports games, other times fighting games, but for the last five years or so I generally have been gravitating towards open world games. For the sake of my own preferences, I have a pretty wide range of what I consider open world, to me it is any game that has a big ass map that I am free to explore and do missions as I see fit with limited restrictions. I'll list a bunch to get the party started but I know there are many more.

I never was as high on Red Dead as many on this forum. I thought that the Mexico portion dragged and it was completely illogical that my character would be playing along and doing those missions instead of focusing on his own story. I beat it once, but when I tried replaying it a few years later I never got past Mexico. I still consider it a good game, but it doesn't touch Fallout, Zelda, or Borderlands to me.

I'm with you on Red Dead Redemption and Mexico. Haven't got through it, a grind.

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You guys all need more Yakuza 0 in your lives.  I said 0 not Kiwami.  You'll probably need more Yakuza 6 in your lives in a couple months, too.

I don't think an open world game is a good open world game (it can be a good game, it's just not good at being an open world game) unless the world feels alive as fuck and there's actual diversions to what you can do that aren't just quests and shit.

Right now of what I'd played, I'd probably go:

Red Dead Redemption (while it's less alive than GTA V's world due to it not being in a big city, I think the way you can split wanted levels between areas adds a bit

GTA V single player (bar none the most alive/nuanced open world in existance as far as NPC behavior).  I do feel like to truly appreciate how much they did with this you have to be pretty familiar with LA/Socal life and how much they fucking nailed everything.

Sleeping Dogs (pretty much everyone here knows how great this game is.  It just needed more diversions and varied NPC behavior).

Watch Dogs 2 (seriously play it this game rules)

Yakuza 0 (amount of diversions makes up for less NPC interaction)  Maps aren't that big in this, but you also do everything on foot.  The combat is great.

Yes, I've played all the Bethesda open world games.  I think they suck at making a world feel alive even though I love the games.  The Saints Row games are horrible at that too, as much as I love Saints Row 2.  The exclusion of these games makes sense when you look at my criteria.

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My first thought came to GTA 5. It's crazy for this game to keep improving on it's world with each iteration, but it has. The game came out forever ago and people still mess around with single player. 

Saints Row the Third is another open world game I think is fun. I mainly come to open world games looking to do an absurd amount of crazy shit and SRtT has made that their brand.

Honorable mention to Just Cause 2. That has a lot of crazy shit you can do. Other honorable mentions for Red Faction: Guerilla (while not as open world-y as other games, I remember it still being fairly open and you can destroy so much shit) and, I have to say it, No Man's Sky. NMS has gotten so much better, it's crazy. It's a completely different game than the piece of shit that was initially released. If Hello Games delayed NMS for another year to include everything they threw in over the course of its first year, then it would have been a GotY contender.

Now some questions...

I haven't jumped into any of the Witcher games yet, but how do they rank? I know people who swear that Witcher 2 or 3 is better than Skyrim and is a great open world game, but it also looks fairly linear based on other things I've read.

Similarly, would any of the Far Cry games count?

BTW, I wanted to throw the Fallout games in my list above, but they're all broken and clunky as fuck. Seriously, it's time to fix this series. I kept running into game breaking shit in New Vegas and I quit 4 after completing the quest where you help the robots and their airship. That's still the funniest moment I've ever seen in a game and it may be some of the best writing I've ever seen, but man is that game clunky.

 

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I couldn't play Witcher 1, the combat was so bad, so they're not wrong. And I say this having gone to bat for Morrowind a few posts up. I suppose I should at least give 2 a try, since the story is relevant to 3...but I'm expecting more of the same.

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Yeah, I really dug Watch Dogs 2 and Sleeping Dogs.

I love the mythology of the Elder Scrolls games, but they have a lot to learn about item balance. 

In Morrowind and Oblivion, it got to the point where I could travel around the continent in the blink of an eye and assassinate people almost at will.  It will take you months to do everything possible in the game, but you will end up a demigod if you indulge your OCD.

Skyrim defeated my aspirations of becoming a world class killer for hire by making the Dark Brotherhood the worst collection of assholes on the planet.

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