There are plenty of enormous open world games. But âenormousâ and âgoodâ are not the same thing.
The best open worlds become something greater than the sum of their parts. The landscape, characters, systems, story, sound and even the way you move through them all reinforce each other until simply spending time there feels rewarding.
In no particular order, these are our 15 favourite open worlds to explore right now.
Red Dead Redemption 2
A rare open world where travelling across the map can be just as memorable as whatever you were travelling there to do.
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One (playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S)
Set out to complete one mission in Red Dead Redemption 2 and thereâs a good chance something will derail you before you get there. You might get ambushed, stop to help a stranger, spot something odd in the woods or simply decide that whatever was on your map can wait.
The story isnât designed around a dozen radically different playthroughs, but it doesnât need to be.
Its slower pace wonât suit everyone, but it gives the wildlife, changing weather, towns and random encounters time to really have weight and significance.
And the main story is just as willing to take its time. Arthurâs arc gets darker and more personal as the story progresses, and Rockstar commits to consequences that a lot of open world games avoid. It also connects beautifully to the first Red Dead Redemption, giving familiar characters and events even more gravity.Â
Elden Ring
Elden Ring barely explains itself, and somehow that makes exploring and experiencing the wonder of it even better.
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2
The story comes in scraps, NPCs speak in riddles and half the time youâre carrying something called a Larval Tear without being entirely sure why it matters. Then you spot something ridiculous on the horizon and immediately abandon whatever you were supposed to be doing.
Almost anything interesting-looking in Elden Ring is worth investigating, and then dying to.
Sometimes thereâs a brilliant weapon waiting. Sometimes itâs a whole hidden region. Sometimes itâs just a very large creature that kills you. The fact you rarely know which one youâre getting is a huge part of the fun.
Forza Horizon 6
You thought this was going to be all RPGs, didnât you?
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S
The genius of Forza Horizon 6 is that driving to the next thing is usually just as much fun as actually doing the thing, and Japan might be the best map Playground has built for that. Tokyo, quiet country roads, mountain passes and completely different stretches of scenery give you every excuse to keep pulling another car out of the garage.
You donât really need a mission when getting there is this much fun between them.
But there are missions too. Lots of them, and theyâre really good. Horizon has always understood that an open world racing game lives or dies by the roads between its events, and 6 might be the seriesâ best argument for taking the long way around.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt â Remastered
The Witcher 3 was already an open world classic, and 2026âs Remastered upgrade makes this an unusually good time to discover it.
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2
Geraltâs search for Ciri takes him across a huge, war-torn fantasy world, but what still separates The Witcher 3 from countless RPGs it inspired is the quality of what you find between the major story beats. Its side quests have actual characters, consequences and surprises, whether Geralt is tracking a monster or helping with something hilariously mundane.
Following a distraction rarely feels like settling for the lesser content.
Remastered freshens up the visuals, performance and gameplay while bundling in both Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, but the important part was already there. This is a fantasy world where wandering away from the main story can lead to some of its best writing, strangest characters and most memorable stories.
Cyberpunk 2077
Night City is one of the few open world cities that feels as interesting vertically as it does street to street.
Platforms: PC, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2
Alleys lead beneath highways, staircases disappear between buildings and rooftops or elevated walkways can turn a short trip into an excuse to poke around somewhere you probably werenât meant to go.
One of gamingâs ugliest launches has turned into one of the best RPGs you can play today.
Nearly six years after Cyberpunk 2077 launched, CD Projekt Red is somehow still adding substantial new stuff. Update 2.5, the Edgerunners 2 Update, just brought another round of additions including dual wielding, more customisation, new Edgerunners content and cross-platform mod support.
Night City also absolutely nails a very specific kind of sci-fi fantasy. If neon-soaked megacities, rain-slick streets, body mods, seedy clubs and morally bankrupt megacorps are your thing, there still isnât much else like it. Driving through the city at night can be enough to remind you why people wanted this game to work so badly in the first place.
Thankfully, the game around the city is now worthy of it. Vâs story, their increasingly complicated relationship with Johnny Silverhand and the excellent cast around them keep finding ways to surprise you, while Phantom Liberty only raises the bar. Between different builds, choices and endings, itâs the kind of RPG that can have you thinking about another playthrough before the credits have been gone very long.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Breath of the Wild laid the groundwork, but Tears of the Kingdom is the version weâd recommend if you only want one modern open world Zelda, at least to begin with.
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2
BOTWâs Hyrule has a beautiful simplicity that Tears sometimes sacrifices, so this isnât an easy call. What tips it for us is how much more freedom Link has to interact with the world. Ultrahand lets you move and stick objects together, Recall rewinds their movement and Ascend lets Link pass upwards through ceilings and terrain. Between them, problems that would have one obvious solution in another game suddenly have dozens.
Underneath all the homemade vehicles and physics experiments, this is still a huge, beautifully strange Zelda adventure.
Hyrule has been torn apart by the Upheaval, Zelda has disappeared and Linkâs search now stretches from floating islands above the kingdom to the enormous Depths beneath it. Build a flying machine, glue together a bridge, launch yourself into the sky or find some solution nobody sane would have tried first. For an open world list, that extra layer of player creativity gives Tears the edge.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II turns the inconvenient parts of medieval life into some of its best RPG systems.
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Youâre still playing Henry, an ordinary blacksmithâs son trying to survive a very grounded version of medieval Bohemia. Most RPGs quietly remove everyday inconveniences. Kingdom Come doubles down on them. Henry gets hungry, clothes get filthy, people notice how youâre dressed, and picking a fight with three armed men is usually exactly as bad an idea as it sounds.
What sounds miserable on paper becomes incredibly absorbing once all those systems start interacting.
Getting cleaned up before talking your way past a noble or limping home after a terrible decision can be just as memorable as the quest you were trying to finish. The sequel keeps the weird, demanding stuff that made Kingdom Come special without asking you to tolerate quite as much jank, either.
Youâll get more context from playing the first game, but you donât need to do 80 hours of homework before jumping into one of the most reactive RPG worlds around. Unless you want to, of course.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
Oblivion Remastered is the best kind of remaster.
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2
It looks modern now, but underneath it still has all the weirdness of an early Xbox 360 RPG. Youâre roaming Cyrodiil, closing demonic Oblivion Gates and getting dragged into the sort of bizarre side quests Bethesda seemed especially good at dreaming up in 2006. The awkward conversations, strange NPCs and classic Bethesda jank are still completely intact.
And honestly, thatâs the good stuff.
Weâre giving Oblivion the nod over Skyrim because its quests and characters are stranger, more playful and generally less predictable. Skyrim arguably has the stronger wilderness and a smoother overall design, but Cyrodiil has a personality all its own. The remaster makes it much easier to appreciate now without sanding away the parts that made the original memorable in the first place.
Ghost of YĹtei
Ghost of YĹtei takes Tsushimaâs sword fights and cinematic beauty to a new part of Japan, then gives you more freedom to explore it your own way.
Platforms: PS5
Atsu is a mercenary hunting the six outlaws who murdered her family, and her search takes you across 1600s Ezo with surprisingly little insistence on which lead you should follow next. You can chase members of the YĹtei Six, collect bounties, seek out weapon masters or simply ride towards whatever catches your attention.
YĹtei isnât just gorgeous. It actually uses that beauty to help you explore.
Fields of flowers, distant smoke trails and unusual patches of landscape arenât always there just for the screenshot. Sucker Punch repeatedly uses visual details to catch your eye and suggest that something might be worth investigating nearby. Not every repeated activity has disappeared, but YĹtei makes exploration feel much less like clearing a checklist than Tsushima did. Thatâs enough to give the sequel the edge here.
Marvelâs Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man 2 has one of those open worlds where fast travel feels almost rude.
Platforms: PC, PS5
Peter Parker and Miles Morales share the spotlight this time, with a Venom story unfolding across a much larger version of New York that now includes Brooklyn and Queens alongside Manhattan. There are plenty of crimes, side stories and collectibles dotted around it, and all of it is simply ridiculously fun.
But the bigger map is less important than how much better it feels to cross it.
Web swinging is faster, Peter and Miles can launch themselves across huge distances and the new Web Wings let you glide between skyscrapers and ride wind tunnels across the city. Insomniac has basically spent three games making traversal so enjoyable that seeing something interesting on the other side of New York feels like a bonus rather than a chore.
No Manâs Sky
Most open world games give you a country or a city. No Manâs Sky gives you an entire universe.
Platforms: PC, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2
It still feels slightly ridiculous to take off from a planet, fly straight through the atmosphere and know that almost every blinking glimmer ahead represents somewhere else you can actually go.
And somehow, that enormous universe is only the starting point now.
No Manâs Sky had one of the most notorious launches in gaming history, but Hello Games never really stopped working on it. Ten years and more than 40 major updates later, thereâs base building, multiplayer, settlements, expeditions, mechs, pets, custom ships and a frankly silly amount more layered on top of the original exploration loop. Even space itself was overhauled for 2026.
At this point, the comeback is old news. The impressive part is that Hello Games still seems nowhere near finished.
Fallout: New Vegas
New Vegas has aged badly in all the obvious ways and brilliantly in most of the ones that actually matter.
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S (via backwards compatibility)
The Mojave can send you down wildly different paths depending on who you help, betray or decide you canât stand. The NCR, Caesarâs Legion, Mr. House and dozens of smaller factions overlap in ways that make each playthrough feel genuinely different, right through to an ending that reflects a huge number of decisions along the way.
Sixteen years later, people are still making new quests, overhauls and entire locations for New Vegas.
Nexus alone now hosts more than 42,000 mods, and the four DLC campaigns add some of the gameâs strangest and most memorable material. Thereâs a reason this endearingly slightly broken RPG refuses to disappear.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Most open worlds make you feel powerful. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 makes you nervous about walking through an empty field.
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
The Zone has a way of turning an ordinary trip across the map into a fight for your life. An anomaly can block your route, mutants can appear where you least want them, and an emission can suddenly make finding shelter more important than whatever mission you were supposed to be doing.
Even when nothing is happening, the Zone rarely feels safe.
That constant tension gives exploring a completely different rhythm from most open world games, and 2026âs huge 2.0 update makes the world feel more unpredictable and alive than ever.
Crimson Desert
Crimson Desert is the open world equivalent of opening a junk drawer and finding a grappling hook, a dragon and somehow an entire mech inside.
Platforms: PC, Mac, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
At its core, this is a third-person fantasy action-adventure following Kliff across the huge continent of Pywel, with melee combat, bows, grappling, climbing, gliding and some wonderfully over-the-top boss fights. Pearl Abyss has crammed an almost comical number of ideas into the world, and the fun is never being entirely sure what kind of game youâre about to be playing next.
Itâs chaotic in a way most modern open worlds are too carefully designed to allow.
Its story and UI can struggle under the weight of everything Pearl Abyss has crammed into Pywel, but the game is often at its best when you ignore the obvious route and go see what strange fight, landmark or completely unexpected system you can poke at next. Itâs messy, but that lack of restraint is also a huge part of the appeal.
Grand Theft Auto IV
GTA V has more of almost everything, but weâd still argue GTA IV is the better game, and now is the best time to play it.
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S (via backwards compatibility)
GTA V is bigger, prettier, smoother and packed with more things to do. GTA IV canât really compete with any of that. What it does have is Niko, arguably the seriesâ best story, a brilliantly grimy Liberty City and physics that give its cars, crashes and random street chaos a sense of weight that GTA V largely smoothed away.
Itâs an older, rougher game, but the things GTA IV does well havenât really been replaced.
The two excellent expansions only make the case stronger, and thereâs never been a better time to revisit it on PC. FusionFix fixes a huge number of problems with the notoriously messy port and makes playing it on modern hardware much less of an ordeal.