16 Essential Open-World Video Games Coming In 2017 & 2018

If there's one major takeaway from the last 10 years of gaming, it's the complete domination of the open-world genre. Where general open-ended design was pioneered in the likes of the original Zelda, Mario 64 and later Ocarina of Time, it was the mighty GTA III that perfected the nature of gameplay existing around a freeform structure.

Flash forward to 2017, and - as you're about to see - nearly every major video game on the horizon (both immediate and into 2018) is either fully open-world, or has some form of open-ended mechanic. And why? Well, as Breath of the Wild proved, many video game quest designs, item progressions and general feelings of immersion work better when the player is allowed to take them in at their leisure.

As such, looking forward you'll be hard-pressed to find a triple-A game that isn't open-world. From driving games to zombie survival, cyberpunk futures and entirely new, mysterious IP, you could totally make the case that open-worlds should be used across the entire industry.

Let us know in the comments what you think of the genre's dominance, and check out every major open-world game coming both soon, in the near future and into 2018.