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Rydygier

The best open world/sandbox PC games out there?

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What you would recommend?

I'm looking for really living, breathing, big, rich world with some ambitious deepness included, where alone player have full freedom apart from any present or not plot devs prepared, and many options to choose from, where your actions influence that world in various, rewarding ways. A world, you can explore long time without beeing bored, full of possibilities. Or anything at least a bit alike. I of course know some most famous of that kind (Arma... :) ), but no title is too obvious nor too niche to mention.

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There are some really good open world games like - Far Cry 3/4 , Just Cause 2 , GTA V (any GTA) , RDR , F:New Vegas or the Assassins Creed Black Flag (sorta)

Edited by RobertHammer

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Off the top of my head, aside from Arma, I'd go for Fallout 3 / New Vegas. I mean, can there be more freedom than blowing up a city with a nuke? Oh, and I've read about a guy somewhere who tried to kill every single NPC and the story somehow still progressed - amazing!

Even though I occasionally play Ubisoft games (Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs) I don't think they're good open world games. Repetetive and dull quest design, questionable influence on the environment, and idiotic gathering / scouting tasks. I feel Ubisoft's open world games are far below of what they could be, especially considering the resources they have.

GTA is a decent sandbox but the player's actions are not really sustainable. Even if you murder dozens of civies and policemen and blow up half of the city everything is reset once you die / get arrested. And there's little to none influence on the storyline. Again a thing that had me disappointed in the latest GTA title.

Another open world title I return to every other week is Elite: Dangerous. Millions of solar systems and complete freedom of what to do. Sadly, there is no real motivation other than gaining enough credits to buy the next ship. Hence it gets boring after a few hours and I take a break of days or weeks until I touch it again. But the flying is fun, the simulation seems solid, and it looks pretty. Aside from that it's quite relaxing. I often watch series or stuff on Youtube on one monitor while shipping cargo with my freighter on the other. The player's actions do have an impact on the overall economy and status of different factions but the presentation sucks. Looking at dull numbers saying that you successfully satisfied a demand of <insert random good> at <insert random space station> is just lame. Fighting, on the other hand, is quite tough and exciting. You really need to practice and get to know your ship before engaging in piracy or head hunting. I recommend to buy a flight stick, it's not necessary but feels better and is more precise. (Good for parking a big ass freighter on a small ass platform. :D)

I've also made good eperiences with the Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim are pretty good RPGs and offer a lot of freedom.

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X3 Terran Conflict,X Rebirth,Witcher 3,F3&New Vegas,GTA IV&V,Red Faction Guerilla,Skyrim,Far Cry 3,Morrowind,Watch Dogs,Mafia 1&2,Age of Pirates 2,Prototype 1&2,Gothic 1&2.In some of them you don't have too much impact on the world so you might not like them.

Some old gems like Omikron The Nomad Soul is also worth mentioning.You can find it on GoG.

You can also try Alpha Protocol,not sandbox but it's insane how many of your choices it takes into account and how story develops based on your actions,very underrated game imo.

Edited by Krycek

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Skyrim which is like Arma in a way but has its own living world, and more detailed imo, you can mod your game to death and do anything you want in it, you can do the main campaign

if you want, join factions if you want, its basically a spitting image of Arma except a medieval world, it has its own climates too and lands, winter and snowy, hot, humid,

desert, jungle, has rivers, lakes, and ocean, icebergs, you can swim in the water, you can pretty much do anything in it, even create mods for it yourself.

Game has dragons as well, giants, many other things.

Check out the mods: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/?

Angry Joe review (interview with dev of game)

Ign review:

==========

Aside that heres video for top 10 open world games:

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Wow I will have to take a look at Age of Pirates, didn't even know that Pirates of the Caribbean had a sequel, loved that game!

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Wow I will have to take a look at Age of Pirates, didn't even know that Pirates of the Caribbean had a sequel, loved that game!

If you're going to get Age of Pirates 2, I feel that this is a must:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/gentlemen-of-fortune

On top of adding a load of content it also fixes some bugs and issues with the game as well.

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Kingdom Come : Deliverance is said to have everything - but we´ve yet to see (have´nt heard anything about them lately).

Wasteland 2 goes as far as stating "chance two players have the same experience: ZERO" in their steam trailer. Being on my 1st playthrough, cannot approve or deny that - but i already faced a couple of decisions where i´m quite unsure about their outcome.

Fallout 1 & 2, the classic RPG´s.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas, both great open world games. New Vegas offers more meaningful choices imho.

Skyrim, same as New Vegas, great game overall.

Maybe too few consequences in your actions, for all three of those.

And then there´s Morrowind. No hand holding, no level-scaling enemies, no real questlog (which is hardcore, i admit).

Even choices like "do i go left or right" could matter in this jewel of a game :)

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OFP fits your description perfectly. :p

You can make almost anything in it if you really want to, despite some engine limitations.

Otherwise there's a lot of open world, sandboxy games out there, as mentioned the likes of TES, GTA, Fallout, Far Cry and so on.

And if you don't have a problem with childish themes, Minecraft and Lego Worlds.

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I've just been looking at the Fallout 4 presentation.

Now I've not played any Fallout games, but I am interested in perhaps playing Fallout 4. Now how big are these worlds to explore ?

Like the OP here, I like large worlds with complete freedom to roam and do pretty much what you want. Seems Fallout is that type of game, but I was just wondering if a comparison to say an Arma world could be given, size wise. That would give me a better idea of what to expect, at least regards the world size.

Appreciate any comparison anyone may have. :)

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Elite: Dangerous,X3 Terran Conflict,X Rebirth

How these three looks like in the mutual comparison? I played only X: TC some time ago.

Assassin's Creed

Never played any title from this series. Only know, there is quite a lot of them. Which is the best and to what extend these are truly open world sanboxes? From what I saw on youtube, it looks like Hitman married with Tomb Raider.

Kingdom Come : Deliverance

One of the few games, I'm really waiting for. Already wondering, what mods will be made for it and how much moddable it will be.

Seems Fallout is that type of game, but I was just wondering if a comparison to say an Arma world could be given, size wise

According to

, in F4 map will be roughly of Skyrim size. So quite small :P :

http://i.imgur.com/9P7dwKA.png (749 kB

I like the Panau map size, but saw some vidos from Just Cause 2 gameplay and frankly it looks very arcadish/casual, so not sure, if worthy of attention.

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I've just been looking at the Fallout 4 presentation.

Now I've not played any Fallout games, but I am interested in perhaps playing Fallout 4. Now how big are these worlds to explore ?

Like the OP here, I like large worlds with complete freedom to roam and do pretty much what you want. Seems Fallout is that type of game, but I was just wondering if a comparison to say an Arma world could be given, size wise. That would give me a better idea of what to expect, at least regards the world size.

Appreciate any comparison anyone may have. :)

Here are some measurements someone made for Skyrim. I'm not sure how that compares to Fallout 4. Compared to sheer size of Altis for example, these maps are tiny but there is something to do on every corner. Bethesda's worlds are packed with things to do.

Now if FO4 will have more interesting quests then "go kill bandit to get shitty enchanted iron dagger" that is another question.

Or if I put it this way, if you want to complete everything in vanilla Skyrim at somewhat normal pace, you are looking at around 200h mark. I imagine FO4 will be something like that if not more. We may know more close to release, which is sometime in November I believe.

You could watch some

or if you have time, playtroughs to get the feel of the size.

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@ Rydygier

So do you mean Fallout looks arcade or Just Cause2 ?

That Panau map is an impressive size for Just Cause2, but if its an arcade style, then I'm not sure really.

@Janez

Another game I've not bothered with is Skyrim, but it does look fun. The map size, as you say, can feel big even though its not, provided there is plenty to do and see.

Anyways thanks for your replies.

Oh, and sorry OP for butting in, but it sort of goes along with the thread.

I know 'Fuel' was huge, but not much to do. I think it holds the record for size, or did at one point.

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So do you mean Fallout looks arcade or Just Cause2 ?

Just Cause 2, Fallout isn't arcadish at all luckilly.

Bethesda's worlds are packed with things to do.

Even too much. It feels ridiculous sometimes - you can't make a few steps without stumbling on some town, interesting place or at least a monster. This generate kinda claustrophobic/surreal feeling. Same for Skyrim and Fallout 3/NV. I don't mind many places of interest, just their maps should be accordingly bigger to make room for some wastelands to cross.

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Just Cause is pretty arcadish but it does have a ton of fun... The different approaches to the missions can be incredibly fun.

Skyrim and its mods are of course amazing but I recently picked up Witcher 3 and it is pretty crazy. The Combat can be a little clunky but CD projekt red is a class act and it has to have the richest story I have ever seen in a game...

Ive sunk 97 hours into that recently and really just scratched the surface....

I thought I read somewhere F4 was going to be 3X the size of skyrim in terms of map size...

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If you're going to get Age of Pirates 2, I feel that this is a must:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/gentlemen-of-fortune

On top of adding a load of content it also fixes some bugs and issues with the game as well.

If age of pirates is anything like Pirates of the Caribbean then I will enjoy it a lot (as soon as I get back from vacation). RPG with good story, trading, naval combat etc.

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Skyrim and its mods are of course amazing but I recently picked up Witcher 3 and it is pretty crazy. The Combat can be a little clunky but CD projekt red is a class act and it has to have the richest story I have ever seen in a game...

Ive sunk 97 hours into that recently and really just scratched the surface....

I read Witcher 3 is pretty awesome. Sadly, a trilogy I've missed so far. Bought both Witcher 1 and 2 on steam sale. I've started Witcher 1 a few weeks ago but it just doesn't motivate me enough to keep going. I always tell myself I want to continue and progress in the (so far) interesting story but then I end up doing things in Arma. Also briefly started Witcher 2 years ago but there were so many references to the first part in the beginning I decided I want to play Witcher 1 before picking up the second part.

Edited by IndeedPete

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Yeah it's really an interesting situation with the Witcher games. To get the most out of them you really have to play the slightly weird first one and you also should read the really awesome books since the games are sequels to those.

Seriously, read the books!

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Never played any title from this series. Only know, there is quite a lot of them. Which is the best and to what extend these are truly open world sanboxes? From what I saw on youtube, it looks like Hitman married with Tomb Raider.

The Assassin's Creed stuff is open world. It's not like Hitman at all in that respect.

Get Assassin's Creed: Black Flag to start. It's an excellent game. There's been two more released since then but from what I hear they aren't as good.

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I kind of feel bad about myself that I can't get into Skyrim at all. Likely the world just doesn't appeal to me and takes all the feeling away from me.

This comes from a guy who spent 600-700h on Oblivion without mods and I quit Skyrim pretty quickly.

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Here's some more games which could be seen as 'true sandboxes' - From Dust, Black & White 2 (first one is better imo), Sim City, Cities: Skylines, Spore.

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If age of pirates is anything like Pirates of the Caribbean then I will enjoy it a lot (as soon as I get back from vacation). RPG with good story, trading, naval combat etc.

Age of Pirates 2 is good but like all Akela games it was a buggy mess(actually this one more than their past titles) especially lots of random ctds.

Also you might need to update the Tages driver because it had that crap drm and it might conflict with Win 7.

Like JdB said get Gentlemen of Fortune mod,besides fixing ton of bugs it also improved the game stability,I wouldn't touch the game without that mod.The moddb link is outdated,the latest full version is GoF 2.0 with patch 1.3(you could try 1.4 too but it's in beta) and you could get them here:

http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/gentlemen-of-fortune-2-0.19345/

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Just bought Skyrim : ES (Legendary Edition) and Fallout 3 (GOTY edition) for 11€...thank you GmG :)

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