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The best open world games put you in an area that is bustling with life and has a ton of things to do. Plus, they excel in the other areas where games are rated, such as gameplay mechanics and presentation.



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Over the years, many games have ticked all those boxes, be it action-adventure titles, RPGs, or creative sandbox games. And if you have Xbox Game Pass, you already have access to some of the best. After all, the subscription service has a load of engaging open-world experiences. The following are the best it has to offer.

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8 Watch Dogs 2

The San Francisco Bay area is the setting for Watch Dogs 2 – albeit a fictionalized version of it. And you get a free hand to roam the place between missions.

The city is filled with all kinds of shops to visit and races to enter. In fact, it is one of the best non-racing games to add racing as the titles offer many different types from sailboat events to drone circuits. The map also features a lot of technology to mess around with as you play as a hacker trying to take down a big tech company called Blume.


7 Far cry 5

The Far Cry games usually take place in very exotic locations. The fifth game doesn’t quite follow that trend, as the story is set in a fictional region of Montana. Nevertheless, the environment is beautiful anyway. And the map contains a lot of things to occupy your time. There are collectibles, side quests and outposts for you to discover.

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However, it is also a treacherous country. For starters, there are dangerous animals in abundance in the wild and they will attack you as soon as you see them. In addition, at the start of the game, the entire region is controlled by the evil Seed family, led by cult leader Joseph Seed. The aim of the game is to stop them.


Skyrim’s main quest is about the customizable Dragonborn stopping a dragon prophesied to destroy the world. However, it can take a long time to get there as the world is full of things to do.

You can spend many hours traveling around the giant map and discovering new locations. Plus, there are a ton of items to find and side missions to complete. You can also roam the map in search of resources. Few open worlds are as large or contain as much content as those in Skyrim.

5 Assassin’s Creed Origins

Origins has one of the largest maps in Assassin’s Creed history. It is a beautiful re-creation of ancient Egypt. Therefore, it contains all the famous landmarks such as the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. And since this is Assassin’s Creed, you can do more than just visit them – you can climb over the buildings.

They are not the only places worth visiting as there are many more fascinating locations on the map. You shouldn’t spend all your time exploring though, as the main sequence is also worth doing. It tells an interesting story about a Medjay named Bayek, who tries to avenge the death of his son.

4 Minecraft

It is fair to say that Minecraft is one of the most famous video games of all time. Every new game in this survival title juggernaut starts spawning in a randomly generated world. As such, everyone gets a different place to explore, but they all have similarities. For example, each world contains the same mobs and similar types of resources.

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You can build whatever you want with the resources listed. After all, this game is all about giving you complete freedom to experience it the way you want. There is technically a conclusion, which you activate by defeating the Ender Dragon. Still, you can avoid all that and just stick with farming if you want.

3 Batman: Arkham Knight

In Arkham Knight, the iconic villain Scarecrow threatens to attack Gotham City. So the citizens panic and flee. Not everyone goes though as there are still a bunch of villains in town as well as some innocent victims.

As Batman, there are several ways to move around the big city, such as using your grappling hook or controlling the batmobile. As you travel around you can track down and arrest some of the villains. You’ll also need to travel around Gotham for the main missions as you try to stop Scarecrow and a new enemy, the Arkham Knight.


2 Fallout New Vegas

Fallout New Vegas doesn’t offer you a tropical paradise or stylish city to roam. The open world you get is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. So it’s not easy on the eye, but it still contains plenty of fascinating areas. And you are not alone in this hellscape, because there are other people too.

You can talk to some people to learn more about them and get side missions. The future of these people and the wasteland as a whole will be heavily influenced by your actions in the main questline. But it all starts with a revenge mission as you try to find the man who tried to kill you.


1 Yakuza 0

Yakuza 0 is a multiplayer game where you control both Kiryu and Majima. The two characters are each given their own Japanese cities to explore. Kiryu mainly spends his time in Kamurocho while Majima is a Sotenbori man. While neither is the largest open world you’ll ever see, they’re compact.

Each place has a whole host of activities to get involved in, from pool to karaoke. In addition, the cities are full of people who offer you side missions. However, the main place in the game does not contain people or activities. Instead, it’s empty territory within Kamurocho. This is because the whole main story revolves around his property.

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