Best Open-World Games That Capture the True Spirit of Freedom and Exploration

When designing an open world experience, balancing is a tricky concept. Players don’t want huge, empty vistas that are a chore to travel between, or they’ll simply take to fast-traveling between every objective and there might as well not be an enormous world at all. Dynamic events, side quests popping up, and collectibles to acquire are some valuable ways to keep things interesting as we explore. There’s nothing like eradicating an enemy stronghold and making the land as a whole just that bit safer.

A world bustling with cities and towns is a world that’s lived in, and this is the sort of feeling that these titles strive to convey. At the same time, if it’s also filled with mysterious cave systems and areas that may well conceal valuable loot, that’s all the better. A lot of those who enjoy open-world games are looking for the joint concepts of freedom and exploration, and these games offer both in spades.

7

Immortals: Fenyx Rising

Become An Ancient Greek Legend

One of the most beloved open world games, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, revolves around the concept of tangling with monsters and puzzles in a fantasy world. If you’re looking for that same core concept but in a less bleak and foreboding package, Ubisoft’s 2020 adventure Immortals: Fenyx Rising is a solid recommendation. Many passed this title by on its release, and it’s worthy of a second look.

There are a lot of excellent games inspired by Greek mythology, and in this one, Fenyx is a seemingly-mortal warrior tasked with shattering Typhon’s hold over the Olympian Gods and restoring the Golden Isle to its former glory. Needless to say, the Golden Isle is an enormous realm characterized by different biomes, Vaults of Tartaros to investigate (think Breath of the Wild’s shrines), collectibles to locate, and enemies to battle. Those Vaults may be puzzle or combat focused, and the Far Sight mechanic (through which Fenyx must ‘detect’ some hidden spots on the map before they can be used as waypoints) keeps you exploring the world rather than just marking checkpoints on a map. The differently-themed areas, designed after the Olympian who dwells there, keep the adventure varied as it progresses, and Fenyx’s limited ability to fly via the Wings of Daidalos give movement an exhilarating feeling.

6

Ghost Of Yotei

A Desperate Journey Through A Stunning Part Of Japan

Like predecessor Ghost of Tsushima (fans are still divided as to whether Jin could beat Atsu), Sucker Punch’s latest open-world hit avoids the lure of fantasy and instead opts for realism. Atsu’s grueling journey of survival and revenge is set in Ezo, to the north of Japan, and as she travels through the different regions housing the Yotei Six, the scenery switches from harsh shorelines to wide open fields and mountains covered in a thick blanket of snow. The latter area introduces a survival mechanic, whereby Atsu begins to freeze when away from a heat source and her maximum health is cut to emulate her condition. Scrabbling down muddy slopes (and NPC companions join you in doing so on several occasions) also highlights the challenge that the elements pose, without interrupting the player’s experience too much.

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Additional survival elements such as cooking are also incorporated more lightly, and while not all players enjoyed the DualSense implementation for lighting a fire and so on, it was another way to emphasize that Atsu is living off the land and connected to it. The tiny details are unparalelled: If you open the map while it’s raining, you’ll see tiny drops falling on it as though Atsu’s physically holding it. The acts of scoping out locations using the Spyglass and placing Isaburo’s Traveler’s Maps onto your own to determine the location keep things engaging, also giving the sense that the player is manually learning more about the world and putting in the effort to do so. It’s a pleasure to explore this harsh yet stunning world.

5

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

A Unique New Way To Explore Hyrule

The latest The Legend of Zelda titles, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, are so similar in some ways yet so different in others. With the former, the focus is similar to that of Ghost of Yotei: Finding your place in a vast world, gathering food to cook for certain buffs, and piecing together map information as you go. These elements aren’t absent from Tears of the Kingdom‘s take on Hyrule, but there’s an incredibly liberating sort of creative freedom that’s quite unique among open worlds of its type.

If you can see an area, you can often devise a way to get there. Whether underground, through the floating islands, or by creating some manner of absurd vehicle, Hyrule is as much a playground here as it is an open world to explore. There’s a variety of terrain and a verticality that Breath of the Wild can’t match, by virtue of its design. Fans continue to debate the virtues of one game over the other in that regard, but Tears of the Kingdom perhaps takes its freedom in a different direction. Zonai devices were a fantastic addition.

The Wonders Of Skyrim

Now, it’s true that Skyrim launched way back in November 2011. Quite understandably, then, the vanilla experience is more than a little dated today, and the flourishing modding community is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting to keep the title more palatable for today’s tastes (and to minimize the impact of some of the game’s more unfortunate bugs and issues). Even so, this huge slice of Tamriel is still absolutely awe-inspiring in its own way. It was the game that gave so many their first taste of open-world adventuring.

What an opening. You’re given a brief opportunity to choose your character’s race and some other characteristics. A devastating yet timely dragon attack prevents your execution. You then escape from the blighted Helgen, where you can largely then explore as you please. You get the sense right from the start that this is a game that’s going to be full of drama, that’s going to let you make your own choices, and it more than lives up to that promise on both counts throughout. From battling skeletal enemies in eerie caves to shouting foes clear off clifftops on one of the highest peaks in the land, there’s nothing quite like your first journey through Skyrim. Building a character with the exact proficiencies you favor, point by point, allows for wonderful customization.

3

Elden Ring

You May Need To Git Gud

Of course, in any Soulsborne game, there’s an important caveat: To see all the content the game has to offer, you’re going to have to content with some formidable Soulsborne bosses. Elden Ring was the game that unleashed fans on the Lands Between, a true open world rather than the series of huge, often interconnected zones they were typically used to with Soulsborne games. Mounting Torrent and setting off through this new realm was exhilarating, because much of the time you truly didn’t know what you might find, or, even more importantly, whether you were ready to meet it when you did.

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The enigmatic nature of FromSoftware’s games works in Elden Ring‘s favor, perhaps, allowing you to very slowly piece together more and more of the world’s lore and history as you go on. As ever, those who take the time to inspect the seemingly-insignificant things they pick up and read descriptions will really benefit from doing so. You really do feel like you’re exploring the Lands Between as you go, particularly as, unlike a lot of open world titles, there isn’t a neatly-arranged quest journal pointing you from objective to objective.

2

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag

“It’s A Fine Day For Any Kind Of Mischief”

There’s something about the storybook image of pirates that just screams exploration and freedom. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies, too, seem to tell us that those two concepts were absolutely central to the pirate’s life. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag goes to considerable lengths to explore them, with its historical moments starting in 1715 in the Caribbean Sea. It’s a huge area, open in the truest sense of the word, and Edward Kenway and his Jackdaw are free to roam much of it as they wish.

While the controls for ship-to-ship battles could be finnicky, it was quite a creative awy to keep the action dynamic, with particularly types of attacks (from broadsides to dropping flaming barrels) being more practical as the relative positions of the two ships differed. Hunting other ships in the waters for resources or to bolster your crew meant there was often a reason to actually do so, and the chance to board other vessels lent some exciting variety to proceedings. Those who already loved Assassin’s Creed for that iconic feeling of hopping from rooftop to rooftop and nabbing collectibles were well-served too, but a lot of the joy of Black Flag is in jumping off the boat to seek treasure on a small island, or traveling a long stretch of sea as your crew sings a pirate shanty. The atmosphere is unparalleled, and meeting so many legendary pirates through the game’s story only added to that.

1

Terraria

A Tiny But Mighty World

Terraria is a rather different beast. It doesn’t boast a grand, stunningly-realized world like Elden Ring or Ghost of Yotei. It’s easy to underestimate it based on one look at its pixelated style. Still, it has a lot in common with these titles and, in its way, captures the spirit of everything a good open-world experience should be just as well.

As with Elden Ring, you aren’t guided by a front-and-center quest log, and can see as much of the world as your combat ability allows (there are some pesky bosses to topple). Procedural generation means that, even if you’ve played before, this new world will probably be entirely different. On top of that, if you like developing your character and getting stronger throughout, Terraria might hit you in a way that Minecraft didn’t quite manage. Even so, you’re still free to build some impressive structures, and the impetus to do so is that NPC need homes. There’s a wonderful feeling of freedom and bonding that comes with not only crafting things for the sake of it, but developing homes for residents. It has that Stardew Valley quality of tackling multiple different genres and letting players do a bit of everything.

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