12 of the Best Open World Games with the most Expansive Worlds you can play right now

Over the last decade, gaming has gone from being a niche hobby limited to a certain section of people to a worldwide multi-billion dollar industry. As per the website statisa.com, the global gaming industry is worth around 140 billion dollars. With such a huge market, game developers do their best to push out quality games at frequent intervals. One of the most popular game modes that have emerged over the past few years has been the concept of Open-World games. 

What are Open World Games?

Essentially, Open World games are a type of games where players have a very big map to explore. Or in simple words, you can visit every place in the world that you can look at. For eg. The Witcher 3 is one of the largest and most expansive open-world games ever made. If you stand on top of a mountain in Witcher 3 and look out at all, every place you can see on the map is reachable and can be explored.

Similarly in GTA 5, players are playing in a city called Los Santos and they can explore each and every inch of the city with their characters. Often open-world games have an element of RPG games as well. While these games are fun to play, they can often take up to 100 GB or more space on your computer or console, given the vast amount of details contained in them. So let's take a look at the best open-world games that are available to play, at the time of writing this article, in no particular order. 

Best Open World Games 

Death Stranding 

Death Stranding is a game by the super well-known game designer Hideo Kojima. Reviewers have described this game as a 'Fever dream in form of a game'. This game is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape, where you play the character of Norman Reedus travelling across the beautiful but deadly landscape, dealing with creepy looking enemies. The reason the game is called Death Stranding is that every time you die, you have to find your strand of life in an ocean to come back to life.

No Man's Sky 

This game takes the concept of open-world games to the next level. This is more of an open universe sort of game where you have a ship and you can explore and travel to different planets. Each planet has its own characteristics and the game is super detailed. You will feel like an astronaut who out exploring the universe. 

Over time, the developers have been adding a lot of updates to the game and making it better with each new iteration.  The game is actually as vast as the universe in scope and you can spend your entire life playing this game and still not completely explore everything No Man's Sky has to offer. 

Fallout 4 

Fallout 4 is an immersive post-apocalyptic game where you have to play as a futuristic hunter-gatherer. Your character has to collect weapons, upgrades, and scavenge for tools and resources in order to deal with hoards of enemies. While the game is a few years, there is still so much to do, so many missions to finish and a dangerous map to explore. If you're looking for quality open-world games you should definitely check out Fallout 4.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 

Skyrim is a game almost everyone who is into gaming has heard of. Elder Scrolls V was the first major open-world game ever made. At the time of its release, the game was called the best game of all time, by millions of fans and hundreds of critical. Even after more than a decade of its release, this remains one of the best games of all time. Skyrim to this day remains one of the most immersive and enjoyable games to play. This has inspired hundreds of open-world games that came after it. 

Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA 5) 

GTA 5 is perhaps one of the most popular games in the world and has remained so over the past 8 or so years ever since it came out. The game was recently made free to play for all, so now it's one of the only free open world games you can play without spending a penny. The game is set in the beautiful city of Los Santos, where you can explore to your heart's content. It has a lot of exciting missions that you can spend hours playing. It's a must-play game for all gaming enthusiasts.

Red Dead Redemption 

Red Dead Redemption has been made by Rockstar Games, the creators of GTA V. It is a highly detailed expansive that set in the past when American Cowboys existed. You play as Arthur Morgan, a wanted outlaw in the Old Wild West. The landscape is absolutely and each character and animal is expertly crafted. Nothing feels amiss in this game. You can visit multiple towns and interact with the people there. 

Batman Arkham Knight

Batman Arkham Knight is one of the best games to have come out in recent years. At the time of its release, the game was quite buggy, but since then it has improved a lot. You play as the iconic character of DC Comic's superhero Batman, who travels around Gotham City Solving crimes. Gotham City has been designed quite beautifully and you can really appreciate the flawless architecture as you swing around the city in your cape or race around the town in your Batmobile catching dangerous criminals. The game has an amazing storyline and great gameplay. 

Assasin's Creed Odyssey 

Assasin's Creed is one of the most famous game franchises of all time. AC Odyssey is the first Assasin's Creed game to be made in multiplayer. The gameplay is quite familiar to the older games but the new open-world is beautifully creating, transporting you to an era of the past. The game is set in Ancient Greece and the players can really feel the essence of the greek world as they explore the beautifully designed cities. The open-world in this game is quite massive, yet Ubisoft has packed a lot of detail in each and every corner of the map. 

Watch Dogs 2 

Watch Dogs is a game quite similar to GTA 5 but even more expansive and detailed. While, the actions you can perform in GTA 5 are limited to exploring, Watch Dogs 2 turns up the interaction with the world up 11. You can hack computers, talk to every NPC, enter buildings and hotels. You play as a hacker who is a part of the DedSac group on a mission to hack the world. The hacking mechanics in the game are highly developed and the city has been made gorgeously. 

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

This game is another entry from the Assasin's Creed franchise. In AC Valhalla you play an assassin in the Viking ages England. You are transported to a world of the past. Each of the cities that are part of the game has been designed in a historically accurate manner, meaning every time you travel across a city you can get a feel of how the city looked like in real life in England's past. As is the tradition with AC games, the gameplay is phenomenal and smooth and built very realistically. You will get to play like you are a real-life Viking conducting missions in a forgotten time. 

Borderlands 2 

If you're looking for an open world with a whole lot of action, you can never go wrong with Borderlands 2. Borderlands 2 has nonstop action that never lets up from the beginning to the end of the story. This game is best suited for FPS enthusiasts who want to explore an open-world game but need constant guns and shootouts. Everywhere you go in Borderlands 2 you will find something or someone to shoot at. The Borderlands 2 world is a wasteland with robots, mutants and humans with powers, all out to hunt you down. 

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 

The Witcher 3 is possibly the most popular and well-known game in the world at this point. When the game originally came out, it was highly praised by critics and fans alike, calling it a trendsetter game ahead of its time. Even today, after more than 3 years after release, The Witcher 3 remains one of the most beautiful and engaging games of all time.

The game doesn't just have one open-world, but multiple small countries with their own environments and ecosystems. It is quite expansive and would take around a month for a casual player to complete, even if they play for around 4 hours a day. The game also has 2 expansion packs that add to the brilliant quality of the game and provide an engaging story never seen before in any game. 

Honourable Mentions:

• Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain 
• Far Cry 5 
• Ghost of Tsushima
• Horizon Zero Dawn 
• The Legend of Zelda: Breathe of the Wild

Image Source: Still from The Witcher 3