It can truly be an unforgettable experience. You and your buddies are in a haunted crypt and everything is going well, that is until the dungeon master decides to throw a curveball at you and decides to summon high-level giant French snakes wearing birthday party hats. It can be great fun precisely because of the freedom the players have in the world they create. You and your friends would create adventurers and dungeon crawl, relying heavily on imagination and party dynamics with those you were playing with. Even before Zelda, there were Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, you have classics like the first Legend of Zelda title in which the player controls Link around the wilderness, with the player ultimately deciding where their adventuring takes them. What if I told you that the first modern open-world game came out in the mid-1970s? I believe many gamers were introduced to one of the most famous open worlds, that of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto III in 2001. Unbelievably, open-world games go back a lot farther than you would think. Open world games have often become tied closely with games with literal wide-open worlds like the featured cities in the Grand Theft Auto franchise and the rich world of The Witcher series. This can benefit the player greatly, as they can choose to take on a tough mission when they’ve leveled up, instead of feeling stuck, unable to beat a difficult boss. You can take time to both literally and figuratively go off the beaten path and play the game your way. You move in a straight line until you get to the end, point A to point B.Ĭompare that to the most recent Final Fantasy XV, in which you and your party can tackle main game missions or side quests at your own leisure.

Playing through Final Fantasy X will have you and your party trudge along with the monster-infested Mi’ihen Highroads, battling tough foes all along the way. The open-world doesn’t refer necessarily to a living, breathing game world, but rather a more nonlinear approach to level design and player interaction to the world.

Best free open world games 2016