Your favourite open world?

[endtherapture]

Thread in the title.

What's the best videogame open world you've been in.

Is it the first ever time you stepped out of Links cottage in A Link to The Past? Maybe Skyrim is special to you because of the sheer size of the world, or Baldur's Gate because of all the hidden quests and secrets. A lot of people I know love the labyrinthine caverns and keeps of Dark Souls.

For me I suppose, Oblivion feels special. I don't know why as I know it's the most boring and generic of the TES settings but I just really liked the quaintness of the world. It was marvellous on your first step out of the prison being able to go anywhere. The mountains at the west of the map felt perilously high and the entire place just felt full of secrets and mystery and full of history despite being a rather generic and boring temperature European setting.

 

[shrekfan246]

Sleeping Dogs.

Somehow it made all the difference in the world that the game was set in Hong Kong rather than another boring, generic American city, and it was a damn fine looking city too. Maybe not the most expansive in terms of things to find and do, but it's one of the few open-world games that have kept me interested long enough to finish the story, and the only one where I was constantly marveling the environment around me as I was traveling. Skyrim looked nice, but it all got samey after a while. Dark Souls is fantastic, but once you've completed Anor Londo it actually feels a bit constricting comparatively. Though Ash Lake was a crowning moment of awesome for the game's environments.

EDIT: What I will say for The Elder Scrolls series is that Morrowind has a world I'd love to explore, if only it weren't tied to such horrible combat mechanics.

 

[spartandude]

Vvardenfell in Morrowind for me, out of most of the fantasy games ive played, especially when it comes to the Elder Scrolls series it feels like it makes more sense to me. Not every place between towns is monster infested, youve got forts which are actually manned, mines which people work in (to be fair so did Skyrim) and for the most part the main roads werent over run with nasty monsters.
And while the combat mechanics suck i think it helps in the same sort of pretentious explantion of why Silent Hill 2 is amazing. Being week early on and barely being able to take down a group of rats also helps to explain why average civillians cant just go and take care of the bandits them selves. Not to mention the world has the most depth any elder scrolls game has had plus its very creative and alien so its not just something youve seen before ala Cyrodill.

 

[sanquin]

It's sad that the Witcher 2's world isn't open world, or that would be my number one. Luckily Witcher 3 will have it.

As for current open worlds, probably the Dark Souls one. Yes it's mostly paths that you have to follow. But you're basically free to pick what path to take. So I do consider it open world.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I like Shadow of the Colossus a lot. It may seem like there isn't a whole lot to do in it but there're the smaller shrines to unlock, white lizards to hunt for stamina and that weird fruit to find for health. Plus the world always felt huge and gaping and like it had once been alive. Whenever I play I always think I'll discover something new. There may not be a whole lot of activities to do but it's the world I love exploring the most.

 

[josemlopes]

GTA V, GTA San Andreas and Saints Row 2.

GTA V is just so packed with contents and cool things to see that its insane.
GTA San Andreas does the three different cities really well, travelling from one to another (while not that far) does feel like going on a trip (especially since the cities are so different by being replicas of LA, San Fransisco and Las Vegas).
Saints Row 2 mixed both nostalgia of Saints Row 1 and some very new cool improvements overall, every part of the city had a purpose and most urban enviorments were included.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I rather liked crackdown 2's open world. It wasn't very graphically impressive just being the world from crackdown 1 with some rubble, but it had a very cool day and night cycle where the sun would go down and the streets would fill with mutant zombies from the sewers. The gameplay of night and day was as different as night and day. I would like to see something like that done again.

I also like prototype's open world because it went through a rather big transformation. It starts just very normal realistic version of NY.(If you ignore the fidelity issues) Then as the game progresses it gets crazier and crazier till by the end it's practically unrecognizable. I found that very impressive.

The aether mod from minecraft is another one I really liked. This time because it did look good. The nice warm color pallet and the fact that it was a really different world then the main game. Only shame is that it didn't get updated to stay compatible.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Skyrim of course, it's both open and a world. Ticks both the boxes.

 

[stormeris]

The Elder Scrolls 3 and 5 (Morrowind and Skyrim)
Didn't really like Oblivion, but it was k.

Other than that, well, i remember liking GTA 3 a lot

 

[Rose and Thorn]

I guess Ocarina of Time. I remember as a kid how big the world seemed, and how it felt like I could go to so many different places. I am sure it isn't as open as it felt, but you can kind of do what quest you want, when you want and all the little places you could go. I remember trying to get past a few temples and failing, so I would move on and try to beat another.

I really want to beat that game one day.

I like Shadow of the Colossus a lot.

I love this one too. The beautifully empty land was part of the charm, and I actually got lost a few times. Running into Colossi felt so natural too. You could tell there was a lot of history and story to these lands, but no one was left to tell it, just ruins, lots of ruins.

 

[Cabisco]

I suspect many on here will mention their first open world as one of their favourites. For me that was Morrowind, that first moment you realise you can just pick a direction and just go was an incredible feeling and I've craved in every open world game since. Incidentally my first adventure involved running from a mudcrab only to then have a man fall from the heavens in front of me, I suspect those that know what I'm talking about also know what inevitably happened to me next...

I think an honourable mention should go to Minecraft though, the fact the world random and personal makes it that little bit more special as it is you who is exploring everything for the first time and building a home in that world.

 

[Headsprouter]

Any Elder Scrolls game that I've played. What can I say, they always do it right. You can go any point of the world map, at any time, from any point. Sure, sometimes you have to walk around a mountain, or get a quest to gain entry to a certain dungeon, but that doesn't matter to me, that's minor. As long as I can tolerate the gameplay (and I'm very patient when it comes to this) and I feel unbound.

I'm very cautious when it comes to so-called "open world games". Considering what I've played of the first Witcher game, i don't trust Witcher 3 to be open world unless it wants to greatly distance itself from its roots. And that's rare. Everything the Witcher 1 has had(of what I have seen so far) is mission-based or pointless. So I expect the third installment to be "Sure, you can run around the overworld, but if you want to enter this dungeon, get the quest first. As for the rest of the overworld? Do the story."

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I like Shadow of the Colossus a lot.

I love this one too. The beautifully empty land was part of the charm, and I actually got lost a few times. Running into Colossi felt so natural too. You could tell there was a lot of history and story to these lands, but no one was left to tell it, just ruins, lots of ruins.

I have a theory that it's somehow related to the Tower of Babel myth. "Dormin" spells "Nimrod" backwards, the name of the king who ordered the construction of the tower (which would be the Shrine of Worship). The civilization was somehow punished for its divine pretension of life over death, so that mankind left the land - much like mankind spread following the Babel confusion - and Dormin/Nimrod ascended as the god of the henceforth known as Forbidden Lands. Who or what punished Dormin and his kingdom, and exactly how so, are what puzzle me.

 

[2HF]

Anyone who says anything other than Just Cause 2 either hasn't played it or is wrong! (Chill out, that's clearly a joke. It makes me sad that I have to explain that.

The world is fucking massive, it's diverse, well populated, the variety of vehicles you can use to traverse it is phenomenal, it's gorgeous, and that hookshot/ass-chute combo never get old.

There are also easter eggs to find, things to blow up, natives with hats to ramp your motorcycle off of. It's just the best.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

The open world presented in Just Cause 2 followed closely by Saints Row 2's Steelport and, Crackdown's The City. Just Cause 2 wins out overall though because it's huge, it's varied, you can get around in anything from a Jet to a tug boat and, you can spectacularly blow up a ton of the scenery. Saint's Row 2 is also large and easily explored but not nearly as varied or destructable. The City from Crackdown is a lot like Steelport and you can't really destroy buildings but you can climb extremely high and kill things by tossing them off of said high-places.

 

[Grace_Omega]

Vampire the Masquerade. Sure, it's much smaller than many modern examples, but damn did that place have character and atmosphere.

Also Skyrim and The Cursed Land from Shadow of The Colossus, but those are easy go-to answers. I'm also really loving Eorzea from Final Fantasy 14.

 

[Jusey1]

The Elder Scrolls series are the best.

Morrowind is the most unique game world I've ever explored and loved it to death. Skyrim also did a good job too.

Oblivion was alright but too 'pretty/colorful' at times.

Daggerfall still have the largest game world ever (Holding that record) and I highly believe it will never be beaten due to newer graphics and such.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Not to mention the world has the most depth any elder scrolls game has had plus its very creative and alien so its not just something youve seen before ala Cyrodill.

I agree wholeheartedly.

What really sucked me in was getting to Ald'ruun and discovering that after the previous settlements had been Medieval-ish and Egyptian-ish that the houses were made from giant crab shells. Then the Mushrooms villages that were distinctly unlike any kind of elf mushroom village I'd seen before, all overgrown and alien looking. It made the world feel extremely different to the average fantasy type setting.

Although, I'd rate the Zone in STALKER slightly higher, the way the factions get on with fighting each other regardless of your presence is brilliant.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'd say the Bionis/Mechonis from Xenoblade Chronicles. The game did a great job of capturing a massive scale without feeling too cumbersome. Few worlds have ever given me the same sense of wonder that that world could give, and it is easily the most fun I've had just exploring a world while not really caring about much else. Of course, linking the whole world through the massive character tree and through the Colony 6 mission really helped bring it all together into a place I cared about unlike any other in gaming. This is also one of the few games where I went out of my way to drag it out as long as possible, simply because I didn't want to leave the world and its characters behind.

A close second would be The Zone from STALKER. Very few worlds feel as alive as that one, and it does the absolute best job I've seen of capturing a bleak atmosphere. I can still appreciate other bleak atmospheres from the post-apocalypse genre (Fallout, Metro, etc.) and elsewhere (The Witcher), but they will always get compared to this, and I just can't find the same charm in those as I did in The Zone.

If we're going with more "pure" open world rather than open, interconnected levels, then I'd go with Oblivion. It wasn't the first one I experienced (not by a long shot), but it is the only game that can really compete with the above two in capturing a sense of awe and making me excited to explore. I still love jumping into that game, even if there is very little of the world I haven't seen already. It's just that enjoyable to be in.

 

[Isra]

If we were talking strictly environments, I would say FFXI. The environments were beautifully designed with an attention to detail I haven't seen matched yet. The graphics are dated as hell and the world is still gorgeous.

For single player games and actual content, I'd go with Fallout 3 I think.
Although I like the elder scrolls series more than the fallout series, there was just a lot weird and wonderful stuff in Fallout 3 and it was a pleasure to explore. Finding rivet city at night time by complete accident was awesome.