Highlights
- Sea of Thieves: A sailing adventure that improved over time, offering plenty of activities in an open world without a large city.
- Days Gone: A zombie outbreak destroys the city, leaving players with small towns and settlements to explore in this open-world game.
- Terraria: A side-scroller open-world game where players can explore freely, build their own town, but no actual cities exist.
Open-world games allow players to explore wonderful worlds set across all kinds of themes. While many fantasy or modern exploration titles set in an open world tend to have at least one large city for players to visit, this isn't always the case. Some players may wish to find an open world to explore that hasn't progressed far enough to have full-fledged cities or simply doesn't contain many people at all.
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Open-world games are inescapable, but which are the best titles that also have third-person shooter gameplay?
What makes these games even better is that, even without the pull of a large, bustling city to explore, the open world still feels full of life and things to do. That's why these are by far the best open-world games that don't have a single city.
6 Sea Of Thieves
Metascore: 69
Sea of Thieves
- Platform(s)
- Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Xbox One , PC
- Released
- March 20, 2018
- Developer(s)
- Rare
- Genre(s)
- Adventure
Sea of Thieves, when it first released in 2018 for the Xbox One, was seen as having a very empty world. However, the team behind this sailing adventure kept to their game and improved it to the point that many players now love the experience.
There are plenty of activities for players and their friends to do together, from PvP ship battles to searching for buried treasure. One thing that players will never find in this open world, however, is a large city. Instead, players encounter various outposts that they must return to if they hope to sell what they have found or stolen.
5 Days Gone
Metascore: 71
Days Gone is a title that does start with a medium-sized city which players find themselves trapped in. However, due to the sudden zombie outbreak, the city that was once known as Farewell ends up destroyed early in the campaign of Days Gone.
After this point, players are unable to find any large cities of any kind, only overrun small towns, or the occasional settlement where players are likely to find other survivors living. Naturally, these places aren't very big, as there are only a few survivors to be found after that initial moment.
4 Terraria
Metascore: 81
Terraria is an interesting option, as some players may not realize that the side-scroller title is also an open-world game. Players can freely explore as far right and left as they see fit, as well as adventure deep underground. While players may encounter various structures while on their travels, one place they will never visit is a city.
10 Best Open World Games Without Fast Travel
Fast travel is often a crutch that people lean on in open-world games, but what of those titles that don't have such a feature?
Instead, players are tasked with creating their own town to house various vendors and other folks who are looking for a safe place to stay. While it is possible to build a place so large it could be deemed a city, many players are likely to situate everyone in a large hotel-like structure instead.
3 Minecraft
Metascore: 82
Deemed as one of the greatest open-world sandbox games ever made, it's no surprise to see Minecraft as one of the best open-world games that has no cities. While players are able to find the occasional village or temple, players will be left creating their own cities with the resources they have collected, or simply by making their own in Creative Mode.
While some players may argue that Minecraft does have a city, as the recent updates included the creation of the Ancient City biome, some players will likely never stumble onto this place while they explore, since it's not only deep underground but also incredibly rare, with only one being included in each randomized seed. Not to mention that the city itself, while long, doesn't contain the usual large city buildings.
2 Lego Fortnite
Metascore: TBD
Fortnite has had many popular collaborations over the past few years, but one of the most recent ones created an entirely new game mode that players have completely fallen in love with. LEGO Fortnite is no longer a battle royale, but instead it's an open-world survival crafting title.
Players will be left to build and upgrade their own village, though they are unlikely to find any large cities as they explore this new Lego world. There is still plenty to discover, such as deadly foes to defeat, resources to collect, and a village to protect at night.
1 No Man's Sky
Metascore: 83
No Man's Sky
- Platform(s)
- Switch , PC , Xbox One , Xbox Series S , Xbox Series X , PS4 , PS5
- Released
- August 9, 2016
- Developer(s)
- Hello Games
No Man's Sky is another open-world title that leaves players to explore at their own pace. Although the game does have its own story for players to follow, many may instead opt to explore the various planets and create a settlement of their own.
Game Franchises That Should Try Open World
There are a lot of great game franchises out there that have yet to enter the open-world space.
While the game includes huge space stations and the occasional alien facility, No Man's Sky doesn't include any actual cities that can be found on its nearly infinite planets. Even without these sorts of locations, players have still praised No Man's Sky in recent years for the amount of new content that has been included to turn its poor start into something greater.
