Open-world games offer a sense of freedom sometimes unavailable in other genres, with some examples presenting seemingly endless exploration and adventure. Although they come in various sizes and lengths, the best open-world games tend to feature a lot of worthwhile content and immersive details, ensuring that they keep players coming back for a very long time.
Longest Open-World Games
Even the most sophisticated gamer will be bewildered by the sheer scale of these games. These are the open-world games that take the longest to beat.
This article explores open-world games that can be played for months, varying in genre from fantasy and adventure to RPGs and survival simulators. Some of the games take a certain number of hours to complete the main story, while others are open-ended, offering endless hours of immersion in expansive worlds.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
11 Horizon Zero Dawn
Post-Apocalyptic Combat And Exploration
Horizon Zero Dawn
- Released
- February 28, 2017
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Guerrilla Games
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
- Main Story Length: ~20-30 hours
- Completionist Length: ~60-70 Hours
This stunning post-apocalyptic game has a brilliant mixture of exploration, combat, and questing. Recently remastered, the visuals in Horizon Zero Dawn are truly stunning, full of vivid colors and crisp details, an environment that is sure to draw players in.
Horizon Zero Dawn follows a young woman named Aloy as she ventures out into a landscape ruled by machines. Players have the option to play with a variety of weapons in attempts to defeat these machines, including bows and arrows, tripwires, and explosive devices.
Horizon Forbidden West also fits.
10 Valheim
Intense Viking Survival Co-Op
Valheim
- Released
- February 2, 2021
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Iron Gate AB
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Platform(s)
- Linux, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
- Genre(s)
- Sandbox, Survival
- Main Progression Length: ~70-100 hours
- Completionist Length: 130+ hours
This Norse-mythology-inspired survival game is set in an expansive underworld full of monsters to be defeated, the place Vikings go before they are granted access to Valhalla. Players can craft, build, and fight in sandbox worlds, each of which features multiple fascinating biomes full of unique features.
While Valheim can be explored in single-player mode, the developers suggest it's more fun to play with friends, and the co-op mode allows for up to 10 players. Although you can somewhat follow a story, Valheim is primarily a survival game that challenges you to thrive in your world, and you can play it indefinitely to an extent.
9 Red Dead Redemption 2
A Sophisticated Story About Outlaws
Red Dead Redemption 2
- Released
- October 26, 2018
WHERE TO PLAY
- Main Story Length: ~50-60 hours
- Completionist Length: ~190 hours
Fans of Red Dead Redemption 2 love it for its intense narrative, great side quests, and cinematic details from the characters to the weaponry. Players can take on high and low-honor adventures, including animal hunting, crime sprees, and bounty hunting.
7 Open-World Games That Mastered The Art Of Slow Exploration
There have been some truly breathtaking open-world games over the years, and these titles let you explore at your own pace.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is set in a fictionalized nineteenth-century United States, with the protagonist and outlaw Arthur Morgan. The open-world setting consists of several unique regions based on real parts of America, which are vast and leave plenty for the player to explore. Just a single playthrough will likely require more than a month, especially if players fully immerse themselves while completing side activities like stranger missions. However, RDR2 lends itself well to a second playthrough that flips Arthur's honor, resulting in a pretty different overall experience.
GTA 5 and GTA Online also, obviously, qualify, especially the latter. We wanted to prioritize games that emphasize single-player (to an extent), so we opted for RDR2.
8 Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Expansive Nordic Open-World Adventure
Assassin's Creed Valhalla
- Released
- November 10, 2020
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft
- Platform(s)
- Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
- Main Story Length: ~55-70 hours
- Completionist Length: 140+ hours
Like other games in the Assassin's Creed universe, Valhalla gives players a sprawling open world to explore, inspired by the countries of North-West Europe. There's also an optional mythical exploration available. Assassin's Creed Valhalla combines accessible combat, the ability to develop settlements, and nautical mechanics that allow for naval raids on enemies in England, creating an inherently time-consuming whole.
Three playstyles illustrate the different skills players can adapt in this choice-based RPG gameplay, as well as an immersive story that involves both the main Viking adventure and the overarching modern narrative about Layla Hassan. While Valhalla arguably threatens to overstay its welcome at times, players who fall in love with Ubisoft's Viking epic will have a long and fruitful relationship.
7 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Loads Of Quests In A Vast Open-World
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Released
- November 11, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
- Main Story Length: ~35 hours
- Completionist Length: 200+ hours
Skyrim is renowned for its brilliant open world, which makes it an easy game for players to sink many, many hours into. This map has 9 regions with varied landscape terrain and over 400 locations of all different kinds. What's more, players can choose how much emphasis they want to place on the main story, exploring the world at their own pace.
If somebody is not remotely interested in Dragonborn's core story, they can just opt to do their own thing in Skyrim, engaging in faction quests, meeting companions, and just exploring to see what treasures they can find. We are not even taking into account Skyrim's absurdly prolific PC community, which has produced everything from graphical upgrades to unique quests and mods that add entirely new areas. People have been playing Skyrim for years.
Morrowind and Oblivion can also keep you busy for months.
6 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Great Storytelling And Deep Lore
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Released
- May 19, 2015
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- CD Projekt Red
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
- Main Story Length: ~50 hours
- Completionist Length: 150+ hours
The third installment in the Witcher game series, Wild Hunt, offers a rich, detailed core narrative alongside best-in-gaming side-quests, which combine to inject constant momentum to ensure that most players will struggle to put the game down once they get started. Despite being more than a decade old by this point, The Witcher 3's world is still widely impressive, both in terms of size and also quality.
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Detailed and fused with environmental storytelling, the setting is dense with personality, content, and challenges. The world of the Witcher games is intricately crafted and designed with Eastern European folklore and culture in mind. What's more, this game also has several great DLCs to enhance gameplay and extend the story and its details even further.
5 Elden Ring
A Massive Open-World Game With Dozens Of Bosses And A Ridiculous Amount Of Optional Content
Elden Ring
- Released
- February 25, 2022
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- From Software
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
- Main Story Length: ~60 hours
- Completionist Length: 130+ hours
FromSoftware's Dark Souls and Bloodborne have kept players busy for years, so Elden Ring's life-consuming nature is hardly surprising. Although not the vastest or prettiest open world, The Lands Between is packed to the brim with enemies, secrets, hidden regions, optional bosses, and build-changing loot. As there is seemingly something around every single corner, most players cannot help but feel compelled to check every square meter of this hellscape, just to make sure they miss nothing.
Even if you streamline the campaign and focus solely on the compulsory bosses, which should never happen in somebody's first playthrough, you are still looking at a couple of weeks of action. A single comprehensive run should last months, but Elden Ring's build freedom encourages multiple playthroughs. Traversing The Lands Between as a Mage or a Sword Fighter leads to wildly different journeys, both of which are worth experiencing (and they are just the tip of the iceberg).
4 Genshin Impact
A Regularly-Updated World Of Quests
Genshin Impact
- Released
- September 28, 2020
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo)
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC, iOS, Android
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Action, Adventure, Gacha, Open-World
- No Completion: The game is updated with new content, but the current max progression sits around ~350+ hours
Genshin Impact's vibrant open-world landscape of Teyvat has nine regions, all drawing inspiration from real-world areas and cultures. Players can dynamically explore this world and interact with the environment to gather collectible items and interact with unique characters.
Genshin Impact Tier List
Here's a Genshin Impact tier list to help players see who's in the meta and who isn't.
Alongside the main story, which follows a traveler searching for their long-lost sibling, there are countless additional quests, unique to each region, as well as multiple daily missions for regular players to complete. The game is regularly updated, regularly adding new content that demands players keep coming back for more. Then we get to the gatcha element, a mechanic that drives longer play sessions as folks try to get the funds to hopefully pull an exciting new character.
3 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (& Tears of the Kingdom)
An Open-World Masterpiece Played At Your Own Pace
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Released
- March 3, 2017
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo EPD
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Wii U, Switch
- Main Story Length: ~50 hours
- Completionist Length: 170+ hours
OK, this might be the most obvious recommendation for this topic, and it is backed by history. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was essentially the Switch's only worthwhile game for months during its first couple of months, and the console still felt like a must-own. A pure sandbox open-world, BOTW drops Link in a post-apocalyptic Hyrule and challenges him to defeat Calamity Ganon. However, that is the only thing he must do, as even freeing the four Divine Beasts is a recommendation rather than a requirement.
After the intro, players are let loose to travel, discover, succeed, and fail on their own. Technically, BOTW can be completed in a day or two if somebody decides to head to Ganon after just a couple of hours, although they will need to be nearly perfect to survive Hyrule Castle and the final boss. In reality, nearly everyone will take their time exploring the vast landscape at their disposal, making memories along the way.
Tears of the Kingdom has even more for players to do than BOTW, but we went with the latter as a representative for Nintendo's series.
2 Minecraft
Endlessly Creative Sandbox
Minecraft
- Released
- November 18, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Mojang
- Platform(s)
- 3DS, Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PS Vita, Xbox One, Xbox 360
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
- Genre(s)
- Sandbox, Survival
- No Completion: dedicated players have logged more than ~1000 hours.
Everybody knows Minecraft, and its popularity and addictiveness are fueled by a few things. It has various equally exciting creative and survival modes, can be played in single-player and co-op, and there's the option to add endless mods. There's also plenty to explore in terms of world seeds and other players' designs, adding even more choice to what players can do in the game.
Not only can players explore and follow the lore of the Minecraft universe, but they can also disregard all rules and design whatever they want to in this infinite, procedurally generated sandbox. Arguably, you are only limited by your own imagination, and as millions of Minecraft players have proven, the sky can be the limit.