20 Best Open-World Video Games Of All Time

Talk about your big, all-encompassing genres. Ever since GTA III landed back in 2001, the entire industry shifted. Yes, titles like Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time had dabbled in large, expansive worlds before, but nothing completely shifted our expectations of non-linear narratives quite like Rockstar's masterpiece.

Since then, everything from L.A. Noire to the upcoming Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has "gone open world", seeing their various game mechanics spread out across hugely expansive landscapes of content.

That said, what makes a brilliant open-world game? Is it playing as someone who can dabbling in a main story alongside any number of distractions? An array of customisation options that let you feel like you're 'living' in another realm? Or is it simply the peppering of a world with so many ancillary objectives, you're always darting from one to the next?

In honesty, it's all of the above and more. Let us know what you think is the best open world game of all time in the comments, and see what you think of my ranking below.

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20. Spider-Man 2

If any given open-world provides an opportunity to spend the most time 'living' as a particular character, there are scarcely any titles that let you fully embody someone as Spider-Man 2.

Marking the first time Activision took the Web-Head and gave you all of his abilities in a literal playground version of New York, you were free to do everything from pendulum-swing your way through alleyways, to climb the Empire State Building and admire the view.

Hell, you could even swing between a couple of helicopters and climb the Statue of Liberty - something that was genuinely jaw-dropping at the time as the feature wasn't advertised, only being discoverable once we started exploring.