That’s another one I haven’t played yet (actually still need to finish Human Revolution), but since it’s got a sci-fi setting, I wouldn’t even dream putting it in the same category as the games above. Am curious about how they portrayed it though…
Yeah I might do that… But I’d rather just clean up and utilize my present disk(s) 
I’ll make the space one way or another. Actually, if it wasn’t for those damn ETs, I would’ve just uninstalled H3 until Ambrose arrives 
Long post incoming! But short version: I like cars very much! 
I assume you all already knew what I am talking about, but just in case you don’t… Cars! But more specifically, I usually prefer two genre, action-adventure and arcade racing. These two are similar yet massively different, and I feel like talking about it.
As I mentioned in the previous thread, action-adventure’s inclusion of vehicles is all about authenticity and immersion. Time and places are important, and sometimes specific types of cars may reflect a culture that the game tries to present. Different locations may allow you to see different type of cars too like business district or poor residential area.
Arcade racing is a different type of beast because of the variations of cars you can drive. Whether it has fictionalized ones like Burnout: Paradise or licensed ones like Forza Horizon, it’s usually all about including vehicles that are popular among gearheads and car communities, So whether it fits into the world the game sets in become not as much important.
While I am here talking about cars, let’s discuss about GTA Online and the next GTA. We knew R* would continuously release new cars in pretty much every update for Online cause that’s what contributes most to their shark card sells. And I have to admit, being a car fan I found myself being well catered with so many varieties added to the game. Well, without thinking about all the military and sci-fi stuff they added.
However at the same time, I feel like the authenticity and immersion were not as strong as the game’s initial release in 2013, even though Los Angeles in real life having many rare and expansive cars is somewhat believable. R* also had the chance to update the game traffic with some additional vehicles that would make sense in the expanded and enhanced version, but why would they if that takes effort and they can still make money without improving it.
In the end, it won’t matter where the next GTA sets in, the varieties of cars will definitely not be as much as Online and it’s probably a good idea. They will add more after the initial release of it just like GTA V for its online portion. So before that eventually takes place, I am gonna enjoy the immersion as much as I can.
You may try “The Crew”, the first installment was better.
I couldn’t agree more! Even though the 2nd game boasts a even stronger car list, I find it a little lost in terms of game direction, like it wants to become everything and offers as much as it can. I absolutely adore the 1st one for its massive map and inclusion of major sceneries in the U.S. Highways, city alleys, off-road trails etc. I am kind of glad Ubisoft no longer updates the game though, so it can stay true to its street racing root, well as long as the servers don’t die. 
One of my backup profile pictures for last Christmas (without you breaking my heart):
I’m probably going to wind up stretching the definition of an “open world” I’m sure, but I’ll talk about some that come to me.
Sonic Adventure has 3 “action fields”, which serves as hubs inbetween the actual stages. Pretty unimpressive even by PS3 standards nowadays, but honestly, they have alot of charm. Nice to take a breather and explore, and use fast characters. Sonic Adventure is a game not that bothered about using invisible walls to restrict characters, so it is quite fun to see how much you can get away using Sonic at full speed to see how far you can go.
(I might as well also bring up Sonic '06. Sonic '06 is not a good game. Like Sonic Adventure, it uses open world hubs inbetween the stages. Just fascinating how badly designed they are, how much empty space there is for nothing. Some interesting design, “Soleena” is actually heavily based on Venice. It’s like a weird Final Fantasy world almost. Probably the worst aspect though, is that in the story, you’ll usually play as Sonic, Shadow, or Silver. Silver, for whatever reason, runs at like half the speed of Sonic and Shadow. And the hub clearly wasn’t designed for him. So it takes Silver what feels like forever to get from one place to another. If you ever play and beat Sonic '06, you won’t forget it the tedium of its open world.)
Sonic Frontiers is meant to be the first true open world Sonic game. Will be interesting to see how that turns out.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution, loved Detroit and Hong Kong, loved Prague in Mankind Divided. Just love crawling in vents, hacking keypads and the like. Really want Deus Ex 5.
Infamous’s version of New York City, I think called Empire City there too is very fun to traverse since in that game parkour is possible and you can actually climb buildings. I know GTA IV has a good atmosphere but I’m just not sure a city like New York is ever a good idea in a video game since it means skyscrapers that you can’t really do much with in terms of gameplay. Infamous 2 had New Orleans and that was fun. Still need to play the last Infamous game, Second Son.
Burnout Paradise is fun to traverse, especially the first couple hours when you just run amok finding as many buildboards to smash as possible.
GTA V’s world is fun. Considering GTA V was a PS3 game, I really can’t help but wonder what sortof leap GTA VI will be. I mean, whenever Rockstar get around to actually making it.
I think Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 have great open worlds. I actually loved the fact that in 3, DC has been destroyed so badly that you have use the subway system just to enter the city. It’s got such a nice creepy atmosphere to it. I like New Vegas world but I don’t think it’s that interesting to explore. Especially the whole bunch of nothing that surrounds New Vegas itself. Although I do like the fact that NV has far more towns and stores to interact with. Sad Bethesda seems bored by the idea of having towns and NPCs, culminating in Fallout 76, which I still need to play.
Dying Light is a fun time, again parkour adds so much, and I love running around that city it provides. Great game especially in co-op. Will get the sequel at some point.
I’ve always found that the Assassin’s Creed series had pretty good open worlds for their time, exploring Constantinople or chasing down my target in the lush forests of the Caribbean!
But the game that always took the top for me was actually one people probably didn’t think first:Egypt
This location is so diverse and interesting to explore, even though I’ve completed the game like 5 times, with it’s massive (and i mean massive) deserts and wity the Imensne heat you may see something you won’t expect: the heat can really get to Bayek.
You may find yourself tangled up in a fortress from time to time, taking out the Order of the Ancients or maybe your gathering some clues qnd going on a treasure hunt in the vast mountins of Crate, there is always something to do and always someone to kill.
So overall i, at the very start, was super duper overwhelmed about all of the side activities, but the story does a good hob at nudging you to try out some side missions or explore an ancient tomb, yeah forgot to mention them!
Even after the story i found myself lost in this Egyptian world, and if your lucky the season pass usually goes on sale often for about 10 quid or what not and it is very musch worth it: your can travel to mythological lands like the Duat or maybe the field of reeds.
It is also on gamepass so on PC or Xbox you can pick it up for free.
Damn dude, there are other games out there in the wild that wait to be played…
After Origins I don’t ever want to touch a new Ubi game as long as I live
It is really hard to search for a game with that name, could you please link something about this game?
EDIT: Oh you mean AC Origins? Okay, then forget what I’ve said
I have spent a lot of time playing the main line 3D Grand Theft Auto games and I enjoyed all of them, especially for their open worlds. If I have to pick a favourite, I would probably choose Vice City for its colourful 80s vibe, the sunny beaches and the cool cars and music 
Apart from that I really loved Red Dead Redemption 2. It has so many diverse and detailed biomes with a gorgeous landscape. I spent a lot of time just riding around and hunting animals on my own.
The final game on my list would be Skyrim. I loved exploring the map, discovering hidden places and caves, having chance encounters, raiding places and discovering tresaures.
Ha, my mistakes, i was writing that on a phone when i just got up, my language used wasn’t perfect, sorry bout that!
buckle up, buckaroos; it’s a long one.
in the words of samuel taylor coleridge, being a sailor back in the day “fucking sucked” [citation needed].
they were isolated for extended periods of time in a flimsy and vulnerable floating coffin. they were tasked with traversing a terrifying and fickle alien environ that may or may not hide any number of unknowable and fatal dangers. that’s not taking into account getting lost, dwindling food and water supplies, deadly personal disagreements, shattered morale, the whims of weather…
sunless sea does - i imagine - an incredible job of quantifying those feelings within its freewheeling, surrealistic, alt-victorian steampunk setting, primarily through its punishing, rogue-like mechanics.
putt-putt-putting around slowly on your rickety vessel, death from starvation, madness, engine failure, fuel loss, cannibalism or mountain-sized ships composed entirely of eyeball gobbling spiders are an inevitability. with each death the locations around the sea shift just enough for you to need to relearn the map. thus you are always on the backfoot, always exploring the unknown, and never atop the food chain. it’s one of the few open world games where traversal is never short of nerve wracking.
while the graphics are beautifully rendered and dread-inducing, it’s the whimsically nightmarish writing that sells the space. it feels like anything can happen here and it would make perfect sense: malignant artificial suns; getting caught smuggling crates of souls; mummified colonists bursting open to unleash monstrous moths; stuck on an island mediating a war between rats and guinea pigs - you name it, it makes sense.
sunless sea is easily one of my favourite worlds to inhabit and i implore everyone who likes a good read to give it a go. it is endlessly fascinating.
i’m going to try to put my opinions about cdpr’s shitty business practices aside for a moment.
while i remain unconvinced that there is a good ‘game’ to be found here (or in any cdpr release i’ve tried so far), night city is undoubtedly a phenomenal achievement in physical world building.
what i mean is, its environmental design and architecture have a verisimilitude only rivalled by later rockstar games, and a sense of urban scale completely unmatched in the gaming space. just looking at one of those monolithic mega-corp skyscrapers from a ghetto hidden beneath a bypass creates an existential class horror in me that’s hard to find in other games.
if only the world didn’t hold the player at arms length, refusing to engage with them. if only its content didn’t feel so shallow and superficial, constantly reminding us of its gameness; it feels less like a space to inhabit and more like a pretty display behind inch thick glass, remote and untouchable; a city built and maintained on money made from selling junk to the larger old gen userbase, a userbase they would happily discard after the bare minimum effort.
(what? i only said i’d try)
rockstar - for all their really really shitty business practices and static design choices - make the best open worlds, imo, and there is no better a realised open world than in cowboy-sim-meets-cowboy-movie epic, rdr2.
there is, of course, the gorgeous fidelity the world is rendered in. i don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that everywhere you look is a feast for the eyeballs: valentine feels lived in and jaggedly imperfect; the teeth of industry jut into the skies over saint denis, vast plains realistically give way to oppressive, fog-ridden swamps. it’s a technical marvel, especially given it works perfectly fine on old gen hardware.
i never fast-travelled in this game. traversal never felt like a chore to me. travelling on horseback (christ, the horses in this game are phenomenal) was as much a part of the gameplay experience as hitting my marks during the set pieces or being surprised by a cougar - those damn meat-seeking missiles - while picking berries. i found simple, unrewarded pleasure in walking through a dense forest, leading my horse by the reigns, and soaking up the atmosphere.
besides the abundant beauty, it’s the realness that hooks me. the way arthur is affected by the elements and his realistic reactions to them sell the world as real, as inhabitable.
equally, systemic events in the game world trigger and complete without your input, creating the illusion of a world that isn’t built just for the player; a trick a lot of games (coughcyberpunkcough) fail to replicate convincingly.
(shut yer face hole, it counts)
for all of cyberpunk’s unmatched scale, rdr2’s wide-open realness, and sunless sea’s whimsy-tempered dread, this little district in revachol - the focus of disco elysium - is my favourite open world (shhh).
okay, so the map is pretty cramped. there’s only 3(ish) main areas. it takes only a few minutes to cross its entire length and a full 3 in-game days for the whole map to open up. there’s not much to directly interact with outside some bins you can kick to shit. sure it doesn’t even tick all the boxes to be considered ‘technically’ open world, but it is open world and i will brook no further dissent so stop going on because i want to goddamn write about it, okay?
okay.
please understand: disco elysium isn’t only the story of an investigation into the murder of a hanged man, or a personality test style piecing together of one’s psyche after an alcho-pocalyptic spiritual suicide, or the beauty found in carrying on in the face of abject and total failure.
it’s about investigating the murder of a whole city.
unlike the other games i listed, this open world is an active participant in the game. martinaise has a distinct character, one as fractured as the protagonist, chained to a 4,000 year old backstory and innumerable dreams of dead futures.
every part of it can be uncovered by exploring it’s derelict buildings, picking through its detritus, and speaking to its well-drawn (but ultimately broken) denizens. hell, if you build your character just right, martinaise speaks to you in the only way a city can: through the wind, through the feel of the road beneath your feet, through the bullet-holes in the walls and the footprints etched in frozen mud.
martinaise is beautiful too. not in the same way rdr2 is, of course; this isn’t a photo-realistic world and nor does it aspire to be one. it is a painterly one where lines are blurred and colours merge. blood and dirt are sweeping brushstrokes of colour. architectural lines bleed into the textures. the music is the icing on this deliciously sad cake; at once mournful and triumphant, embedding us comfortably in a world absent of comfort.
so while it doesn’t have realistic physics or a stunning sense of scale or a great traversal system, to me, no other open world (shut up!) has such a vertiginous and dizzying sense of time and place to it.
Brilliant 20cougarambushes
