The one thing that tends to matter most in open-world games is whether or not they offer a world you simply want to lose yourself in. While that has sometimes been the case, there are some older or smaller open-world titles that showcase the ways a singular creative vision can often feel bigger than even the technically biggest open worlds. Conventional wisdom once told us that open-world games would only get better as technology improved and the size of those worlds grew. “Variations” is certainly a word worth keeping in mind when you’re thinking about the history of open-world games and what separates the good ones from the bad ones and great ones. Now, you find variations of that concept in many of the best modern blockbuster titles. The idea of being left to your own devices in a massive digital world where nearly anything was possible was one of those things we used to only be able to dream about.
Even during the open-world genre’s earliest days when developers were forced to rely on smoke and mirrors to make their visions come to life, the very concept of open-world gaming always felt like the future of the medium.
