10 Most Beautiful Open World Video Games You Must Play

7. Grand Theft Auto V

Horizon Zero Dawn
Rockstar

Developed by Rockstar North from 2008, Grand Theft Auto V was released in 2013 and sees players return to Los Santos, a city that featured in GTA: San Andreas, as well as the countryside and rural lands outside of the city.

The bulk of the game's development was spent on making this one of the most vibrant, stacked and alive worlds the players had ever seen, with the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine being revamped to better handle the distance capabilities and two separate pieces of software, Euphoria and Bullet, brought in to power the animations and rendering.

Google Maps and real world tours of Los Angeles and Southern California were conducted by Rockstar employees to ensure a faithful reconstruction of the area, which leaves the game with a real sense of immersion whilst still retaining that typical Grand Theft Auto wackiness.

Los Santos would also receive a heck of a makeover with the game's re-release for the PS4, PC and Xbox One, which brought a whole new generation of power to GTA V's visuals and made it feel even more alive than before.

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Contributor

Horror fan, gamer, all round subpar content creator. Strongly believes that Toad is the real hero of the Mario universe, and that we've probably had enough Batman origin stories.