Open-world games promise exploration and immersion, but sometimes, bigger isn’t always better. Games just keep getting bigger and bigger today, but in a race to create sprawling maps, many titles forget to actually fill those maps with meaningful content. Instead, you may just get a bunch of trees.
What you’re left with is a gorgeous playground that’s ultimately hollow. Every town and mountain starts to blur together, and the spark of exploration quickly dims. Whether it’s due to weak storytelling or environments that feel like they were built just to be stared at, these games prove that size alone doesn’t equal depth.
When No Man’s Sky was first released, it felt like a proof of concept rather than the giant space epic promised. Sure, the promise of 18 quintillion planets was jaw-dropping, but most of them looked like sad, alien golf courses. Exploration was shallow, wildlife was copy-pasted, and that endless universe somehow felt smaller the longer you played. Needless to say, thelaunch was disastrous.
This game has since improved a lot through updates, but the original release is still a poster child for the “big but empty” problem that’s common in so many open-world games.
Thepost-apocalypticsandbox Fallout 76 promised was looked forward to by many. However, instead, it gave us a sprawling Appalachian wasteland where the only thing more empty than the map was the feeling of loneliness while wandering it. At launch, there were no NPCs, just a few random audio logs. There was no emotional depth or storytelling like the other games in the series had.
Bethesda has added content since, but that first impression still has a huge impact on how the game is seen today. Plus, many players still complain that it’s unbelievably empty.
Rage 2 is what happens when developers build an open world because they feel like they have to, not because the game needs it. The combat is genuinely fun, and the driving is passable. But the world itself is a barren stretch of copy-paste outposts and sand-colored nothingness. It’s a post-apocalyptic map that somehow feels more artificial than any sci-fi landscape.
The side activities attempt to make the world a bit more real, but they feel like filler. There is little incentive to explore. It’s not that the world is ugly; it’s just that it’s deeply uninteresting.
Visually, Mad Max nails the look with dust storms and decaying outposts that just scream post-apocalyptic. However, after a few hours, everything starts to look the same. The game leans hard on checklist design, filling its huge map with repetitive objectives and little variety. It doesn’t take long to realize that you’ve already seen everything the game has to offer.
That said, the combat is very fun. It is buried under hours of rote scavenging in a sadly uninteresting world, though.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint had all the ingredients for a tactical open-world hit. It took place on a massive island with a big emphasis on stealth play. However, the island quickly begins to feel like a copy-paste. Auroa is technically huge, but its zones blend together in a haze of forests, rocks, and sterile military outposts. Instead of feeling like a dynamic battlefield, it feels like a giant multiplayer lobby dressed up as an island.
While it was a game we wanted to love, once you add in the always-online requirement and a ton of microtransactions, it quickly becomes more frustrating than immersive.
Frontiers of Pandora looks stunning. Ubisoft nailed the bioluminescent beauty of Pandora, but there isn’t actually much in the world. Despite the deep lore of the Avatar universe, the world rarely reacts to you, and it just doesn’t feel as full as you expect it to.
The game begs to be explored, but it rarely rewards you for doing so. You can marvel at the beauty of the plant life a couple of times, but that’s really all the world has to offer. It’s more of a theme park than a living planet.
Generation Zero promised one of the most intriguing settings in recent memory, an alternate-history Sweden where killer robots stalk the countryside. While the concept is gold, the execution feels unfinished. The world is plenty moody and atmospheric, but it’s also strangely static. You’ll spend your time wandering through empty towns, where you’ll rarely encounter anything more exciting than the occasional patrol.
It’s an open world full of mystery, but it doesn’t give you much reason to explore deeper. With friends, it can be fun, but if you’re playing solo, it gets repetitive every fast.
You’d think Just Cause 4 would be the ultimate sandbox. After all, it has wingsuits and explosions. What more could you ask for? Sadly, its massive map leaves a lot to be desired. Many of the towns are barebones, and side activities quickly become cookie-cutter. The main quests help a bit, but they quickly become repetitive, too.
Once you’ve grapple-hooked your 50th fuel tank, the novelty fades quickly. It starts out massively fun, but doing the same thing over and over again can only hold your attention for so long.
Metal Gear Survive takes the genius of Metal Gear Solid V’s sandbox and somehow makes it boring. The alternative dimension setting is a slog through lifeless zones of fog and repetitive base-building. Instead of tactical espionage, you’re poking zombies with a stick and managing hunger levels like you’re playing Oregon Trail. It all feels a bit confused and quickly becomes repetitive.
There is little to explore once you find the first few outposts. It’s all the same. In the end, this game feels divorced from the richness we’ve come to expect from the series.
