Open-World Games That Allow You To Enter Most Of Their Buildings

Open-world video games have become hugely popular in recent years, but there is a lot that goes into them. A big part of it is just making an engaging world. After all, if there is nothing interesting about the world, players will not have much incentive to explore it. Building an exciting open world requires a lot of detail. A lot of work has to go into designing terrain, natural features, different types of environments, characters who may be encountered in specific areas, and of course buildings. Unless the game is about surviving in an extremely remote location, there is likely to be a human presence in the world and, with it, buildings. Many great open worlds will include buildings of all shapes and sizes. They may be houses, castles, lighthouses, skyscrapers, towers, temples, shops, restaurants, and lots of other things. They may be brand new or very old. But buildings of some sort can usually be found.

Related

10 Best Video Games for Train Enthusiasts

Plenty of video games feature trains, but not all of them will appeal to train enthusiasts. Here are some of the best ones that will.

Posts

By  John Alexander Hitchcock

However, whether those buildings can be entered is another question. In many games, buildings exist for decoration and are inaccessible to the player. This was common in a lot of older video games where adding them would take up a lot of storage space, but it still happens today. Sometimes the world is so big, or there are so many buildings, it just isn't feasible for the developers to give each one a unique interior. But some games like to go the extra step of making the open world as open as possible, up to and including trying to make most, if not all, of its buildings accessible in some way.

7 Assassin's Creed: Mirage

Special Mention: Palace of the Green Dome

Assassin's Creed has a history of producing really detailed open worlds. The player can't necessarily enter every building (though they are all fair game for climbing) but generally, a large portion of the buildings included in each map have an interior. This is especially true when it comes to historical landmarks.

Assassin's Creed: Mirage gives players access to Medieval Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate, which comes with a lot of interesting buildings. Of particular note is the opportunity to enter historical landmarks, some of which no longer exist, like the House of Wisdom and the Palace of the Green Dome.

6 Disney Dreamlight Valley

Special Mention: Chez Remy

Gameloft's Disney-themed life simulator is a somewhat unusual example. Technically, every building is accessible. The only caveat is that houses can't be entered while their owners are sleeping. What makes this one stand out is the player also gets to build most of them.

As the titular village grows and more characters arrive, they all need specific buildings constructed, requiring the player to accumulate money and resources to get them made. Once built, the player can not only enter them but also, at least in some cases, perform renovations. Creating buildings can also open up opportunities for specific activities and questlines.

5 Cyberpunk 2077

Special Mention: Heavy Hearts Club

For all its faults, one can't deny that Projekt CDRed put a lot of detail into the world of Cyberpunk 2077. They created an intricate multi-leveled city full of unique locations, and V's story takes her all over the place. So naturally a game like this would have to have a lot of interesting buildings.

Most of them are accessible in some form one way or another, or at least accessed during specific plot points or missions. Many of these buildings offer strange cyberpunk-themed services and contain very interesting characters or encounters.

4 Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

Special Mention: Blue Palace

Bethesda's iconic fantasy RPG boasts a pretty large open world with a lot of detail. Considering the map is large enough to hold several towns, it's impressive that nearly every building is in some way explorable. "Buildings" in Skyrim are also quite varied, and include things like towers, houses, inns, temples, fortresses, ancient ruins, and even an entire wizarding school in Winterhold.

Related

Skyrim: The 42 Best One-Handed Weapons In The Game (& How To Obtain Them)

One-handed weapons tend to be the most popular in Skyrim since they allow dual wielding or the use of a shield. These are the best of them.

Posts

Now granted, not all buildings are easily entered. They may require the player to pick locks, evade detection, find a hidden entrance, or risk prison time if caught; but one way or another they can be explored. Most buildings also include items a more theft-inclined player can steal and some of them have hidden secrets that make the effort worthwhile.

3 Fallout 4

Special Mention: Weatherby Savings and Loan

Bethesda has a pretty good track record for giving the player buildings to explore. Similar to Skyrim above, the Fallout series (especially after 3) allows players to explore just about every building the map has to offer. Sure, some of them may be difficult to enter, and many present further challenges once inside, but nearly everyone has an interior players can explore.

This can be seen throughout Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but Fallout 4 has arguably the largest map and still manages to make most of its buildings accessible to some degree. There are a few interesting buildings that might catch players' attention, some of them very strange.

2 Red Dead Redemption 2

Special Mention: Braithwaite Manor

Unsurprisingly, for a game paying heavy homage to spaghetti westerns, the player will encounter a lot of small frontier towns full of buildings, and even a more urbanized city in St. Denis. Saloons, of course, come up a lot. Some buildings provide services like barbershops and general stores. Some don't even play into the main game but can be entered anyway, like movie theaters.

Seeing as this a game about outlaws, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that there are banks the player gets to rob. The St. Denis section includes some fancy plantation houses that inevitably become stages for gunfights. The developers even threw in some very strange out-of-the-way buildings as Easter eggs.

1 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands

Special Mention: El Sueno's Mausoleum

As a tactical shooter, Ghost Recon Wildlands is designed with the expectation that the player will make use of the environment as much as possible. That includes any buildings they happen to find. Buildings serve a wide variety of roles throughout the game. Sometimes the player is on the defensive and can use a building to provide cover while fighting off their attackers.

Sometimes the objective is located inside a heavily guarded building, requiring the player to strategically find a way to reach it. Either way, just about every building is accessible on some level, though there might be a risk of them already being occupied.

More

7 Best Open-World Games Set In Deserts

On the surface, deserts don't seem very interesting, but a few games have brought beautiful open worlds to arid desert landscapes.

Posts

By  Chris Harkin