Summary
Elden Ringis packed with enough content to keep players coming back for well upwards of 50 hours. It may then surprise players to know that, in the grand scheme of things, the open world isn’t all that big. At 30.5 square miles, or 79 square kilometers, it is bigger than the map of someclassic open-world gameslikeSkyrim, but it still falls short of plenty of others. The advantageElden Ringhas over many of those games is how densely packed with stuff it is. Players can explore a single area ofElden Ring’smapand find a cornucopia of new things even after tens of hours of wandering around.
That said, the numbers don’t lie, and there are plenty of games that are much bigger thanElden Ring’s map size. Of course, bigger doesn’t mean better, and not all of these games justify the massive size of the sandbox that players are forced to traverse. So, when players get a chance to check out massive open worlds, they are doubly impressed when these games manage to make the most of these spaces instead of making them feel like filler.
Updated on May 21, 2025, by Mehrdad Khayyat:Elden Ring’s multilayered map is full of surprises that reward explorers like no other game. It’s no exaggeration to say that the exploration in Elden Ring is just as satisfying as the combat.
That said, FromSoftware’s open-world hit is not the only game to feature such an expansive map, where moving from one side to the other could take a significant amount of time, though bigger never means better!
Divided into different sections,Baldur’s Gate 3features a gigantic world for each phase of the game, and when they are put together, they create one big world that easily surpasses that ofElden Ringin size, though players cannot seamlessly move from one region to another in this classic RPG.
The good news aboutBaldur’s Gate 3is that it also features a multilayered map just likeElden Ring. The exploration is always rewarded, as players can find secret dungeons, massive underworlds, and some hidden camps if they wander around the map, though unlocking them might not be easy.
The release ofGrand Theft Auto 5was easily one of the biggest moments in the video game industry, with this long-running open-world series showing just how much Rockstar had perfected the art of video game design. Not only did the title look gorgeous, butGrand Theft Auto 5waslarger than any game in the series, evenSan Andreas.
If the massive open world wasn’t enough of a selling point, then players were also blown away by the fact that players could control more than one protagonist in a first for theGTAseries. Players could switch around at any point in the story, and many missions used character switching in a cinematic manner tomake firefights and other similar set-pieces even more awe-inspiring!
As expected froma modern open-world RPG, to sayThe Witcher 3’sworld is bigwould be an understatement. What’s more, it is arguably as dense asElden Ring’sworld too. While it might not be as full of dungeons or massive bosses, there are still plenty of reasons to explore as much as possible.
The Witcher 3has always had a very alive-feeling world thanks to how the player can get involved with just about everyone’s lives. Even the smallest of villages has a story to tell, and there is quite an expanse that Geralt can explore to his heart’s content. TheBlood & WineDLC adds another massive area for players to explore, with its colorful art style serving as a fresh change of pace from the dark and brooding areas players had explored up to this point.
The Legend of Zeldagames on the Nintendo Switch haverevolutionized open-world gaming for the better. No one expected this franchise to have such a smooth transition into the genre, but history has proven time and time again that underestimating Nintendo is foolish when it comes to video game development.
Breath of the Wildwas already a massive achievement in its own right, and what madeTears of the Kingdomeven more impressive was that itexpanded upon the first gamein ways that no one could’ve imagined. The Sky Islands, the Depths, and the land of Hyrule itself make for a truly massive environment that players can explore as much as they want.
Starting life as a mod forArma 2, the originalDayZmod used the same map as that game, which was extremely expansive in its own right.DayZlooked to fill that map with lots ofsurvival elements for players to hoard and battle over, not to mention the hoards of zombies everywhere.
The standalone modused mostly the same map, altering a few elements, but mostly holding true to the mod. As a survival game, it is a tad more sparse than most maps, but that just adds to the feeling of a desolate world, where there is little life, and most of the remaining life wants to kill everything in sight.
There are many people who still talk aboutBlack Flagwith a ton of passion, considering it to be one of the best games in the series. Edward Kenway is a fairly likable protagonist, and the manner in which he becomes an Assassin is certainly quite interesting. It helps that the refreshing addition of naval combat andtraversal made the game so much more engaging!
Sincethe game is set in the Caribbeanand promotes ship traversal, players can have a great time forming the best pirate crew, roaming the world on a strong, sturdy vessel, and uncovering the many secrets in the game. Sure, a lot of the world may consist of water, but that actually lends a sense of scale to the world and keeps things fresh.
Containing an entire country, made up of many Mediterranean islands was naturally going to be a difficult feat, but the team at Ubisoft pulled it off to an impressive scale. From the highest mountains to the deepest seas,Assassin’s Creed Odysseyis the franchise’s biggest world to date and is the perfect setting for sucha grand adventure, stuffed with secrets.
Housing all the usual trappings of anAssassin’s Creedgame, the world also had to house a war between the Spartans and the Athenians. Each area would be aligned to one of the sides, and players could engage troops there to destabilize and change that side’s allegiance. Add the great sailing gameplay to that, and it’sa massive and varied worldthat players will never stop exploring.
There are many pain points with modern Ubisoft games that need to be addressed as soon as possible, but one particular aspect of their open-world games that continues to impress fans even now is the sheer scale of their worlds.Avatar: Frontiers of Pandorais a great example, with the many diverse biomes being a joy to explore because of how beautiful they are to behold.
With its massive size, the Western Frontier of Pandora makes forone of the largest open-world spacesthat players can lose themselves in. The story may be forgettable and theFar Cry-esque combat is a bit of a lazy decision, but no one can say anything against the sheer beauty of the open world that players will step into here.
A tactical shooter that a lot of people don’t know about,Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Risingis a fun game for players to get into. The gameplay is about as tense as one would expect, but what really throws players for a loop is themassive open world of this game. In a bid to be as authentic as possible, the entire real-life island of Kiska is replicated in the game world.
While some people may argue that this insistence on quantity over quality led to the open world feeling pretty bland, the tense gameplay moments ofDragon Risingmore than make up for these faults. Players must rely on their squad members every step of the way, with a single misstep leading to the player’s demise more often than not.
TheArmagames are famous for being one of the best realistic military games out there, and one of the biggest contributors to that is the careful world design. Despite creating fictional locations, the developers need terrain and distances to be spot-on.
Their largest map to date is the island of Altis inArma 3, whichsits at 112 Square Miles. In it, there’s everything from plains, to swamps, to towns. Whatever operations players are looking to carry out, the island is sure to constantly be throwing new things their way.
