While open-world games aren’t the be-all and end-all of modern triple-A video games anymore, there’s still something great about a massive world that you can explore to your heart’s content, full of activities, challenges, and random encounters to keep you busy for hours on end.
Of course, bigger doesn’t always mean better. Games like Elden Ring, The Witcher 3, and Breath of the Wild aren’t big enough to even scratch the bottom end of this list, despite being some of the best sandbox games ever made. Still, there’s a great thrill of standing at the top of a mountain, looking out at the unending vista before you, and knowing that you can explore every inch of it.
We’ve put this list together of the biggest open world games to see the limits of what video games can offer at the moment. Note, we’re not counting procedurally generated worlds here. No Man’s Sky and Minecraft are theoretically infinite in size, but that’s because the worlds are entirely determined by complex algorithms rather than manual design work.
This realistic military simulator is a game that much of its player base takes extremely seriously. The island of Altis needs to provide a variety of interesting tactical scenarios for squads to participate in, so it’s no surprise that it resulted in such a massive map. There are built-up towns, marshlands, jungle, and just about everything in between for all your mil-sim needs.
While it’s possible that 2022’s Xenoblade Chronicles 3 actually has a slightly bigger world than this game, we don’t have any concrete information on its size, so the Wii U-exclusive Xenoblade X still takes the crown. As you’ll be exploring the world of Mira partly with the game’s giant mechs, there needed to be plenty of terrain for you to fly over.
When your core gameplay is “go very fast”, you need plenty of road to go fast on. Burnout Paradise took this to the extreme a little, with the city of Paradise having a seemingly endless series of winding roads, with events that you could start at almost every intersection in the city. Despite that, the game still manages to give you a sense of familiarity with the map, as each race ends in one of a small handful of locations.
It’s a game all about walking from place to place, avoiding hostile terrain, so volume was very much the name of the game when creating Death Stranding’s world. The world is purposely left quite empty, which can make it a bit of a drag to explore, but hey, all we’re worrying about here is quantity.
A game that has been mostly forgotten by history thanks to GTA’s dominance, True Crime: Streets of LA is a lot like GTA 3, which was released two years prior. The main difference is that you play as a cop, rather than a criminal. Staying within the law is clearly less fun, even if you do have a massive version of LA to play around in.
The great thing about Just Cause 4’s massive world is that the whole point is for you to blow it up. The Just Cause games are some of the best for simply messing about and making your own fun in a big beautiful world, and those worlds just keep getting bigger. Plus, with the wingsuit letting you essentially fly wherever you want, whenever you want, all this terrain makes traversal feel great.
MMOs naturally have pretty big maps, although they’re often chopped up and segmented, which in our books, disqualifies them. Asheron’s Call managed to do it properly though, stretched out at an estimated 500 square miles. There are even some that claim the world was as big as 800 square miles, but we’re taking the more conservative estimate. While this game, unfortunately, shut down in 2016, it should still be remembered to this day.
Final Fantasy XV is a little strange because, despite having this huge world, it never really feels like it – not to mention that halfway through the story you completely abandon it until the postgame. We would gripe about the little things in this game all day, but one positive thing that can be said is that the world is utterly beautiful, with vibrant colors and incredible sites everywhere you look.
Auroa in Ghost Recon Breakpoint has a map designed quite similar to Arma 3, only much bigger and full of all the usual Ubisoft trimmings to keep you occupied. It’s the kind of map that you’ll never truly know all of, forcing you to study the terrain for each mission to formulate successful plans.
The Crew and its sequel decided to fit all of the USA into its game world (Alaska and Hawaii notwithstanding), which was no small undertaking. Still, the results are quite impressive. While certain regions have been shrunk into non-existence, the major landmarks that any non-American would be familiar with are all there. Plus with the huge selection of cars and the ability to team up with friends, it may just be the ultimate road trip game.
