The open-world genre is a fascinating one that constantly pushes the limits of how large and free a game can truly be. It is fascinating for players to explore the enormity of worlds that they can traverse freely and in any fashion they choose, but some games have begun to focus more on trying to closely replicate real-world environments.

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Best Open-World Games, Ranked

Open-world games give players a ton of freedom to work with. These titles have stood out the most over the years.

While some open-world games take place in fantastical or futuristic worlds, some have attempted to recreate many of the real geographical features of Earth for players as they traverse wide-open maps. The challenges associated with this make for an interesting study in game design.

8 Starfield

Scientific Exploration

The most recent huge RPG release in the world of gaming, Starfield has been polarizing players with the open-world style it presents across a thousand fully-explorable planets. While there is a lot of realism about the game in many aspects, the science-fiction nature makes it hard to have accurate geological systems.

Nevertheless, Starfield has to be acknowledged for its variety of geological representation, and it does include many accurate geological aspects of planets within the sphere of modern science. The Milky Way is incredibly well-designed, and planets include many of the geological features seen on the real-life counterparts of nearby planets, as well as providing plenty of fascinating lore to discover.

7 Red Dead Redemption 2

Relaxing Journeys

One of the best open-world games for carving out some sort of life for the player’s character, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best Western games of all time and also has some of the best representations of various geological features of all time in gaming.

From fishing to hunting, there are a variety of activities in an accurate fashion that players can engage in throughout Red Dead Redemption 2. For this reason, the world had to have a lot of accuracy and the finished product gives players a beautiful and immersive world to explore, as well as plenty of great towns to visit. In particular, the way that marsh land transitions into forest which transitions into taiga and hinterland biomes is very true to life.

6 TheHunter: Call Of The Wild

Realistic Hunting Trips

There are many games about hunting, and some of them are based more on reality than others. TheHunter: Call Of The Wild attempts to create the most realistic hunting experience available, setting itself on various islands based on real-world locations.

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Realistic combat works perfectly for these great open-world games, adding to the immersion and challenge players can find within.

The open-world style helps to make TheHunter as realistic as possible. Target animals can consistently be found in the same geological environments that they would inhabit in real life, which helps to create a sense of realism deeper than most modern simulation games manage to achieve.

5 Ghost Of Tsushima

Rebuilding An Island Realistically

There are some ways in which Ghost of Tsushima doesn’t fully represent the geology and geography of Tsushima itself. First, the island in Japan is much larger than the game world represents it, but even so, the scale of the open-world presented is impressive.

Secondly, it is difficult to accurately represent all the various terrains of Tsushima, although Ghost of Tsushima also did this very well for a video game. The geological systems are nonetheless beautifully represented in all their glory, from the fields to the coasts to the forests and mountains, creating one of the best translations of a real location to a game world. All of this is just part of what makes Ghost of Tsushima so impressive.

4 Sons Of The Forest

Accurate Survival Horror

The recently released sequel survival game has a beautiful and fascinating open-world which is four times larger than the original game’s map. It also comes with a lot of accuracy to the geological systems, paying a lot of attention to how real rivers and lakes work, as well as mountainous areas.

The intricate crafting system which is such a big part of The Forest and Sons of the Forest means that the geology behind the games has to be accurate as well. Even the trees and forests themselves work beautifully, sometimes falling down when explosives are set off near them and crashing into each other. Not to mention that the seasons change in this game, which is rarely done as well as it is here.

3 Subnautica

Underwater Biomes

Underwater geology on an alien planet doesn’t sound like it should go hand-in-hand with accuracy, and this is a pretty weird game, but Subnautica brings an impressive level of accuracy to the style as players journey through a variety of underwater biomes that work in very realistic ways.

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These open-world games are even more enjoyable for players who know how to flex their creative muscles.

Considering that Subnautica is a game about healing a planet and the many creatures who reside there, it perhaps isn’t all that surprising that the many minerals, plants, and indigenous lifeforms live within certain biomes and operate linearly dependent upon their AI. This makes it much easier to search for materials, and players will also get to see a variety of realistic oceanic geology and geography.

2 Sea Of Thieves

Realistic Oceans

One of the most ambitiously beautiful open-world games available today, much has been made about how Sea of Thieves doesn’t necessarily make for the most accurate sailing simulator. But the actual geology and geography of the map, including the many highly impressive islands that can be visited, make for a wonderful world to explore.

This includes the ocean, which is the most impressive part of Sea of Thieves both graphically and geologically. The accuracy of the waveforms and the speed at which the ocean moves objects is wondrous and accurate to the real world.

1 Death Stranding

Incredible Accuracy

The most impressive game in terms of geological features and accuracy is certainly Death Stranding. Not only does this game come with some incredible social aspects that have begun the threads of a new gaming genre, but it also manages to showcase a futuristic world with some incredible geography behind it from the varying incline of a mountainside to the frigid, snowy winds at its peak.

This game with dangerous, time-altering rain and other features that have come from the emergence of BTs is incredibly detailed. Death Stranding presents a fantastic world that is completely unlike anything players have seen before, proving incredible attention to detail can result in massive success.

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