Open-world games are some of the most popular because of how many hours you can spend on them! These are the most immersive.
Occasionally, a game comes out that players just want to cozy up to for hours on end. Open-world games can be riveting, or they can be frustrating and tedious. The scale of an open-world game can be both its strong and weak suit. On one side of the spectrum, some games have enormous maps that are time-consuming to traverse.
With focused gameplay, however, open-world games can provide immersive experiences that have immense replay value. The realism of these maps is awe-inspiring. Love or hate the following titles, they are some of the highest-selling in gaming. Let’s take a look at the most immersive open-world games.
Hogwarts Legacy
Avalanche’s Hogwarts Legacy rode the hype train all the way to a wildly successful launch. Harry Potter games are nothing new, but great ones are rare; in many ways, the 2023 release is the first title to properly take advantage of the franchise’s gaming potential.
Regardless of someone’s feelings for Harry’s story, Harry Potter‘s universe is generally regarded as fantastic, and Hogwarts Legacy enables fans to immerse themselves in a world filled with magic, mystery, and charm. Even if its story is nothing to write home about, the game absolutely nails its aesthetic, and players can spend dozens of hours living out their Wizarding World fantasies.
Death Stranding
Many fans were heartbroken to hear that masterclass game developer Hideo Kojima wouldn’t be working on the critically acclaimed Metal Gear Solid series any longer but were quickly placated to learn the iconic creator was opening his own studio. His first foray into the world of video games as an untethered designer was Death Stranding.
Although it’s a bit avant-garde for some, the world that Kojima created is nothing short of spectacular, especially from an immersion standpoint. Players get to control Sam, a “futuristic delivery man” portrayed by the talented Norman Reedus of Walking Dead fame. Although the game itself is superbly strange, it’s also incredibly enthralling (although some may find it hard to enjoy its quirky gameplay). It’s definitely worth a look if just to appreciate its open world.
Prey
Prey is not an open-world game in the sense that players can immediately explore the entire map, but they will be able to return to previous areas. Essentially, Arkane created a 3D Metroidvania and a fantastic one at that. Prey is an immersive sim set within Talos 1, a quite large space station that has been taken over by an alien threat.
Talos 1 is a masterclass of world design, with each area telling a story through its environment. The map is interconnected, not only in terms of exploration but also in consistency. Even though the campaign mainly takes place after the station has become a wasteland, it is easy to buy Talos 1 as a real place.
Shenmue
Before Shenmue arrived for the Sega Dreamcast back in 1999, the concept of open-world games was still very much in its infancy. While most other developers were still trying to figure out how to make the leap from 2D to 3D though, Yu Suzuki was instead focused on creating one of the most immersive and realistic video game worlds of all time; and boy, did he succeed.
Set in the late eighties, the game allows players to explore parts of Yokosuka; a small city in Tokyo’s Kanagawa prefecture. All the NPCs that they’ll encounter are fully voiced and have their own well-fleshed-out identities and daily routines. The game even utilizes historic geographical data to ensure that the in-game weather matches that of the period in which the story takes place.
Ghost Of Tsushima
Where Shenmue serves as a window into life in 1980s Japan and, in its sequel, 1980s Hong Kong, Ghost of Tsushima instead takes players back quite a bit further. Set on the island of Tsushima during Japan’s Kamakura period, Sucker Punch Productions’ epic action adventure tells the story of a samurai named Jin and is one of the best-looking games of the PS4 era.
What makes Ghost of Tsushima all the more impressive is that it was developed by a Western studio. Indeed, Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi once described the game as an amazing achievement and also expressed his surprise at how historically accurate the title really is. The attention to detail paid throughout the game really is astounding and really helps to draw players into its beautiful open world.
What are your favorite open-world games that you like to play?
I played Shenmue a few years ago as part of its respective two-game collection on the PlayStation 4, but I’ll admit I wasn’t really blown away, and it hasn’t aged very well, especially graphically. I did like some open-world games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Biomutant, even more so than “masterpieces” like Breath of the Wild.