The Best Top 21 Open World Games
Use while some golden period from open world games, relaxing sandboxes anywhere player selection practices in special else. Surely, there are stories, quests, missions, and goals, but players are liberal to complete them at their own pace. Of fantasy kingdoms to simulated galaxies, from modern cities to post-apocalyptic wastelands, the best open world games give players the liberty to settle on their own path—to do what they need, once they want—and provide a stimulating and rewarding setting for his or her self-guided adventures.
Here are the Best Open World Games on the PC.
1. Death Stranding
Released: 2020 | Developer: Kojima Productions
Kojima’s first game after leaving Konami, Death Stranding is about during a post-death reality where the concept of the afterlife has been blown open. Your goal as Sam Porter Bridges is to rebuild America by walking across the country and linking up cities, preppers, and waystations to, uh, the Time Internet? It makes next to no sense, but that’s OK. Death Stranding is an indulgent mood piece first and a superb hiking and delivery game second.
Andy Kelly puts it nicely in his review: “Some jobs seem impossible. Standing at the foot of a mountain, snow whipping at its peaks, fragile cargo stuck to each inch of your suit, you wonder how you’ll ever recover from it. But you power on, one step at a time, patiently placing ladders and climbing ropes, edging closer to your destination. Along the way, you would possibly need to slip into Metal Gear mode and sneak past BTs or affect extreme weather like disorientating blizzards. you would possibly even get knocked out by terrorists and have your cargo stolen, forcing you to sneak into their camp and take it back. But in any case, you create it, and it feels incredible.”
2. Red Dead Redemption 2
Released: 2019 | Developer: Rockstar Games
Rockstar’s historical open World Series finally hit the PC with Red Dead Redemption 2, a monumental ode to the fading American frontier. RDR2 is rife with detail, overstuffed with little touches: animal corpses persist and decay, the protagonist Arthur features a commentary for nearly every location and character, and random world events make the planet feel lived-in, be it sucking on a man’s snakebite wound or getting ambushed by hillbillies.
It’s all layered into a superb story that’ll take you as long because the complete Deadwood series to urge through, and that is if you’re rushing. And on top of it all, Red Dead Online brings a DayZ next feature to the open world, invoking everything from serious roleplay to ridiculous, surreal shenanigans. it is also one among the prettiest games you’ll play on the PC today. With the mods rolling in quickly, RDR2 is sure to be a PC game we mention for years and years to return.
3. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Released: 2018 | Developer: Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was a landmark for the series, altering an excellent deal of what Assassin’s Creed is understood for and reworking itself into a real RPG. At an equivalent time, it carried on the tradition of providing a huge, intricately detailed open world filled with beautiful scenery and colorful quests.
“Normally size doesn’t matter, but the sheer scale of Odyssey’s ancient Greece is to its benefit, especially because each area feels so distinct and detailed,” Steven wrote in his glowing review. I would love to search, this amazing big world that and all zone features a subtle aesthetic that creates it unique, from the arid badlands of Crete to the verdant plains of Arkadia. this is not just Ubisoft’s biggest game ever, it is also it’s most beautiful.”
4. Subnautica
Released: 2018 | Developer: Unknown Worlds Entertainment
Subnautica’s vast ocean environment and therefore the diverse underwater biomes provide one among the foremost striking, gorgeous, and terrifying open worlds in PC gaming. Games are rarely—and literally—so sublime.
Reviewer Phillipa explains her fascination so: “I adore the way the lighting and therefore the art create the sense of every biome as being a definite underwater creation, both alien and familiar. I actually like watching the beings about—even the more competitive ones—and will happily crawl my way into a curious labyrinthine cave system without remembering to get a path of glowing markers so I can revisit out.”
The simulation is fairly surface level, but Subnautica’s accolades are best reserved for a way it creates the illusion of an ecosystem. big shot eat the small ones, and their respective physical and behavioral attributes add up for where you discover them. It doesn’t hurt that the majority of them look quite nice against the darkness of the deep ocean blue. And between all the exploration at the behest of natural curiosity, a story kind of just happens to you. to mention anything more would spoil a superb sci-fi mystery.
5. Grand Theft Auto 5
Released: 2015 | Developer: Rockstar Games
This is what money is for: creating a sort of pastiche of a real-world location that’s so staggeringly accurate in atmosphere and details that it’s actually better than being within the real McCoy. Los Santos represents the meticulous approach Rockstar gave to the compact Liberty City in GTA 4 and brought it to the size of 2004’s San Andreas—and the result’s an open world of such a high standard that it’ll only likely be topped by Rockstar itself. Between GTA 5’s strong multi-protagonist campaign and therefore the mad playground of GTA Online, there are overflow 100 hours of chases and gunfights across the land, air, and sea for those that want it here.
GTA 5 is additionally highly moddable. Here’s our list of the best mods for grand larceny Auto 5.
6. Forza Horizon 3
Released: 2016 | Developer: Playground Games
Forza Horizon 3 may be a racing game, but it isn’t only a racing game. it is a huge, sprawling, beautiful sandbox filled with city streets, pristine beaches, lush forests, and dusty deserts representing a condensed but still sizable slice of Australia’s Outback. Its vast and varied terrain gives us lots to do: races, challenges, stunt jumps, collectible hunts, to not mention many cars to play with. Forza Horizon 3 is that the better of an already excellent series in terms of size, scope, variety, and delight.
7. Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl
Released: 2007 | Developer: GSC Game World
In Stalker, the open world is your enemy. Gamma pockets, anomalies, and radioactive storms can end you in times. Any building can hide scavengers or horrifying mutated creatures. Ammo and armor are scarce, and you’ve lost during a wasteland so bleak on be almost completely alienating. But because the Stalkers know, the Zone features a strange allure. Explore the blasted husks of Ukrainian factories and apartment blocks, and check out to not be too unnerved by the lifeless quiet. After a short time, Stalker’s desolation becomes beautiful.
8. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Released: 2015 | Developer: CD Projekt RED
An outstanding technological achievement, The Witcher 3 is that the vanguard of a replacement wave of open-world games ready to leverage the facility of recent gaming systems to making environments of extraordinary detail and scope. The bogs of Velen are a moody aperitif that primes you for the bustle of Novigrad and therefore the sweeping forests of the nordic Skellige region—one of the foremost beautiful game locations ever.
You can spend hours sailing around those islands, stumbling upon quests, breaking curses, killing monsters, and playing Gwent with rowdy locals. The Witcher 3’s towns are noisy, bustling places that make other open world towns seem lifeless by comparison. It’s a pleasure to easily pick a direction and walk—the hallmark of an excellent open world.
9. Elite: Dangerous
Released: 2014 | Developer: Frontier Developments
Few open world games areas open, and vast, like that of Elite: Dangerous. Fly your spaceship through everything of the simulated Milky Way, battling pirates (or becoming one), mining asteroids, transporting and trading goods, or just exploring undiscovered stars, planets, and systems. Whether you select to play solo or join a connected online galaxy with other players, you’re bound to find adventure among Elite’s 400 billion star systems. you would possibly even run into a couple of aliens.
10. Assassin’s Creed 4: pirate flag
Released: 2013 | Developer: Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed’s jauntiest outing since 2, pirate flag masterfully combines toe-to-toe swashbuckling with sailing during a luminous Caribbean archipelago. Tiny islands, whales, forts, and colonial armadas provide the variability on the ocean, and therefore the sizeable islands host traditional free-running Assassin’s Creed action. After a poor third entry within the series, the pirate flag was a salty lungful of fresh air.
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The cities are smaller and therefore the plot is nonsense, but few games can match the thrill of smashing a port. You crack the walls open from the ocean with artillery fire before seamlessly freerunning through the shattered battlements, hunting the commander with a brace of loaded pistols. It’s precisely the kind of action that open worlds do brilliantly. Top storms, too.
11. Metal Gear Solid 5
Released: 2015 | Developer: Kojima Productions
Metal Gear Solid 5 only truly comes into its own as an open world games once you stop using the helicopter to urge to each mission and work your way through each of the 2 massive landscapes (Afghanistan, and therefore the Angola-Zaire border) picking off Side Ops like an RPG. Kojima Productions’ stealth action game supports true freedom of approach, and its series systems correctly reward the player, too. you begin by head shotting enemies with a rubbish pistol and end by dragging enemies towards you with a magic robot hand, sticking tanks on balloons, and calling in airstrikes on bears. Great game or greatest game?
12. Starbound
Released: 2016 | Developer: Chucklefish
With quests, combat, boss fights, exploration, survival, mining, crafting, building, and region travel, Starbound packs plenty of things to try to into its charming 2D pixelated universe. Whether you’re digging deep into a planet’s surface, jetting off to get new solar systems, or constructing a quiet little town and populating it with friendly NPCs, you will find Starbound’s world—worlds—an inviting and interesting place to spend countless hours.
Check out our list of the best mods for Starbound.
13. Just Cause 2
Released: 2010 | Developer: Avalanche Studios
Not precisely the deepest of the games on this list, but one among the foremost empowering, exciting, and silly. Rarely has such an enormous and delightful open world games felt sort of a true playground, and with a grapnel and infinite parachutes to swiftly navigate the luxurious and tropical island, it is often playtime. Your boots will barely touch the bottom before you’re careening through the air again, zipping from place to put amid chaos and destruction. Just Cause 3’s world may are bigger, but this one is certainly better.
14. Mad Max
Released: 2015 | Developer: Avalanche Studios
There’s a certain dismal beauty to a destroyed and decaying world, and therefore the wasteland of Mad Max is crammed with horrible, yet still somehow lovely sights. From blasted industrial landscapes to desolate deserts to lakes of toxic sludge, the planet may be a dangerous and atmospheric place to explore. Plus, you get to drive through it beat a souped-up car, spike-covered as you battle roving gangs of War Boys, Buzzards, and other psychopathic speedfreaks. While Mad Max gets a touch repetitive, and it isn’t the maximum amount fun once you need to get out of your car and fight on foot, its open world games still provides hours of high-octane fun.
15. Saints Row 4
Released: 2013 | Developer: Deep Silver
A delightfully silly satire on games, don’t let Saints Row 4’s slightly dull city put you off. Powers like superhuman speed, Hulk-like jumps, and a variety of comedy guns and wrestling moves mean this is often the closest thing to Crackdown you’ll find on PC, except it’s better because it’s jokes. It also has an inflator-ray that puffs up enemies until they pop, and a Dubstep gun that changes firing pattern counting on the costume you provides it. supported this information, you’ve probably already decided whether to offer it a try or not.
16. Westerado: Double Barreled
Released: 2015 | Developer: Ostrich Banditos
Don’t let its looks fool you: Westerado is an open world games and one that permits more freedom than simply about the other ever made. The story is usually the same—you’re checking out the desperado who murdered your family—but the identity of this outlaw changes whenever you play. As you explore the dusty Western world, checking out your target, you’ll go where you wish and do what you would like, including accusing anyone, at any time, of being the killer. you’ll even draw your gun and shoot any NPC you meet, even within the middle of a conversation. Be a hero, or a scoundrel, or something in between. the selection is entirely yours.
17. Fallout 4
Released: 2015 | Developer: Bethesda
A brown post-nuclear wasteland needs to be boring, but the decades Bethesda has spent refining an equivalent open world formula pay off in Fallout 4. While not as groundbreaking as its predecessors, the absorbing world is a battleground for Boston’s warring NPCs. Diamond City defenders fight running battles through the outskirts of the town, while within the wilderness raiders bully settlers, and therefore the mutated wildlife attacks anything it thinks it can eat.
With the exception of Minecraft, this is often the sole game on the list that provides players some control over the landscape. Liberate settlements and you’ll melt their possessions to create towns with luxuries like running water and turret systems to stay the wastelanders out. Because it’s supported a complicated version of the Creation engine that powered Skyrim and Oblivion, it’s a modder’s paradise.
Of course, it’s even better with mods. Here’s our list of the best mods for Fallout 4.
18. Sunless Sea
Released: 2015 | Developer: Failbetter Games
It’s easy to equate open world games with absolute freedom and carefree fun—an assumption that Sunless Sea leaves shipwrecked on the jagged rocks surrounding its oppressive eponymous ocean. An intriguing narrative and difficult (sometimes cruel) gameplay end in a lesson in humility and character-building rarely seen within the other games on this list. More eldritch than escapist, it’s a preference and not for those that don’t like (lots of) reading—but with an undersea expansion pack, there’s always something tugging you back to its darkly humorous, moodily scintillating seascape.
19. Far Cry 4
Released: 2014 | Developer: Ubisoft
Since Far Cry 2, the series has encouraged gunfights across sprawling open world games locations, from Africa to the tropics, and therefore the Himalayas. Far Cry 2’s setting, systems-driven approach to action sequences, and therefore the interesting pairing made it a critic’s darling. It’s still great, but Far Cry’s stealth systems have improved since then, and therefore the addition of co-op and a few spectacular mountainous terrains in Far Cry 4 earns it an area on this list.
The series has become more refined with each entry, and three and 4 have wisely focused on giving players a generous scattering of outposts to overcome. These open-ended challenges offer you a license to improvise with a varied armory or chain together stealth kills in close combat. Like its predecessors, Far Cry 4 has a number of the best dynamic fire in any game also. That only adds to the carnage when things inevitably fail.
20. Minecraft
Released: 2011 | Developer: Mojang
What if an open world wasn’t just a challenge to be survived, but a bedrock on which to create a world of your own? Many games have tried to emulate Minecraft over the years. Some, like Terraria and Starbound, has done an excellent job, but the first may be a generation-defining work that’s still growing with every update. As a survival game, it’s relatively crude, but it’s a fantastic building game, and players have used Minecraft’s creator tools to create extraordinary things. Minecraft isn’t just an excellent open world games, it’s a cultural phenomenon.
21. Mount & Blade: Warband
Released: 2010 | Developer: TaleWorlds Entertainment
It may not be the prettiest world, but the sheer amount of freedom in Mount & Blade: Warband makes up for the shortage of production value. Crisscross a map dotted with medieval villages, towns, and castles, and assemble armies of allies (or go it alone) as you are doing battle on foot or horseback. The combat is a few of the foremost enjoyable and intense on PC, and you’ll truly choose your own path. Complete quests, side with any faction you would like, and become ruler of 1 and acquire vassals—or just romp around trying to find trouble.
