What is your favourite open world game?

Well in Outer Wilds you can explore several entire planets, so I guess it qualifies. And if Brittle Hollow isn't an open world, then I don't know what is

Yeah exactly. The constant street crime missions were a pain to repeat as well. I went to New York last year. Didn’t get mugged once. Would be nice to have them used a bit more sparingly.

Rote though they have now become, I found the feeling of sailing around in Assassin's Creed: Black Flag incredible. Not the missions, just cruising about taking it all in. It reminded me of holidays on the coast, leaning against iron railings watching the sea churn and soaking in that sea-breeze. The verisimilitude of the feelings I get playing that game was bizarre, especially as regular trips to Porthleven, Cornwall typically involved fewer ship-to-ship combats and rousing sea-shanties. It's like taking something I've never actually experienced for real, and making me feel like I have, via the tiniest specks of reality.

I'd also second Shenmue as the progenitors of Open World, even though the world in question there isn't huge and does have 'zones'. But they felt alive, and so weirdly mundane they struck a real feeling of trying to capture that Warren Spector city block of incredible detail (at the time). I'd specifically shout out the section of Shenmue 2 set in Kowloon Walled City, which is so bizarre and fascinating a space to navigate through, even more knowing this it was a real thing.

I'm still playing RDR2. I put that down to originally losing track of the story simply because I kept wandering off and spending hours just exploring. Had it at launch with a new One X and now have replayed up to around 80% of the story on PC. Still beautiful even with an old GTX 1070. Having an Ultrawide screen makes the world even more impressive and cinematic.

Might wait to finish it once I've convinced myself a new 40 series GPU and PC is really really needed (I'm on the brink of a wallet damaging event horizon at the moment).

Other open worlds have been covered but I also have very warm memories of:

Mad Max - the world was beautifully realised, desolation never looked so good.

FO3 - again, the sense of place was amazing


Old skool - Damocles (ST) and Mercenary (64). Nowt much in them but still felt like pretty open 'worlds' to me back then

I mean, you get plenty of massive open worlds that just kind of feel a bit lifeless. I much favour smaller areas which provide more of a sense of place, which is key to what I'm looking for in those types of games.

I've yet to play RDR2, which I hear great things about on that front, so that may provide the best of both breadth and density. I'm also hoping I'll feel similar from Breath of the Wild, if that ever becomes something close to affordable.

Breath of the Wild's glory is all in the physics and sense of exploration. It's pretty desolate though, as it's post-calamity.
It does traversal and adventure better than any other open world game IMO, but it does go for scale rather than density.

The game is on sale now

Probably depends on platform, but I’ve definitely seen the PS and Xbox Ultimate Editions for about $30 several times. Rockstar games go on sale pretty frequently.

Ahh yeah. My bad. Nintendos rarely ever go on decent sales. Which is crazy, because they usually do some great sales for third parties and indie titles on eShop.

FO4 wasn't terrible by any means but I lost interest in it well before the end. I thought it repeated FO3 too closely and technically was a bit disappointing given it was generation later. It was competent but it felt like it lacked the intrigue and variety of the others. FO3 was incredible at the time. It felt novel and I wanted to find every point of interest and explore every vault. Every vault had a story.
They nailed the atmosphere. I really liked finding post nuclear Washington landmarks. I spent 200hrs odd including dlc.

In F04 I hit a point around 40hrs in where it felt like if it was going to surprise me, it would have already done so. Everything I find was fine but largely more of the same. I just sort of stopped playing due to lack of motivation.

Subnautica below zero had a similar issue of over familiarity, though not to same extent. I did finish that one as the narrative and gameplay changes pulled me through. Still, didn't have quite the same pull as the first.

Outer wilds is indeed the time loop one. Brilliant game and I'd categorise it as open world because you can go everywhere and there are no linear 'levels' as such.

I tried Outer Worlds and abandoned it after 10 or so hours at the second 'world'. Again, too familiar, narrative didn't grab me and I just couldn't be bothered.

TLDR - I play open world games for exploration and discovery tied to an interesting mystery or narrative. We've had so many of them over the years that it's a pretty high bar just to get my interest these days.

The story was barebones in BotW, but that’s also not really what the series is known for. Skyward Sword, which was remastered on Switch, probably has the most story, though A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess have some pretty interesting stories as well. But yeah, it’s very minimalist in Breath of the Wild, no question. If that’s what you were looking for, I understand being disappointed. But again, that’s not the series calling card, that’d the gameplay and dungeons, and BotW was disappointing on that latter point as well.

I say, even having it as my all-time best open world game.

Source of the infamous “Jaguars no longer fly” patch note.

My current favourite Zelda is the first one, because it evokes that feeling of stepping out of front door and just going on an adventure out and about. So I'm hoping BOTW conjurs a similar feeling, if I ever get to play it!