Whether it’s sailing the open seas or being a superhero, there’s no shortage of options amongst all these games, plus one or two surprises that you probably forgot all about.Ī couple of qualifiers before we start: we are only including one game per franchise for the sake of variety (who wants seven different GTA games?) and we’re also excluding Early Access games because there are nine million of them that just dump you into a bland expanse with only a stick and your flapping genitalia for comfort.

With everyone and your grandparents getting in on the act, it’s time to take a look at some of the best open world games around right now, whether they belong to this generation, the last, or even further back than that.

Sometimes the open world doesn’t have to be that big to qualify, as you will see throughout this list. So what makes something qualify as an open world game? Well, the definition is usually played with pretty fast and loose, but an open world is typically a large expanse that you can jump into without many restrictions on where you can go and what you can do. That said, there are plenty of the best open world games for you to dive into. Popularised by the likes of GTA, taking your franchise out into the open isn’t as big an innovation as it used to be with big names like Metal Gear Solid, Ghost Recon, and Mafia all going down the well-trodden route but with mixed results. If there’s one genre of video games that’s really exploded over the course of the eighth generation of consoles, it’s the open world.

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