25 Largest Game Worlds Of All Time

With leaps and bounds in technology, it is no wonder that game worlds are getting bigger and bigger with each new video game that comes out. Gamers love open-world games because they can explore and play for hours while developers love them as they allow them to be as creative as the system can allow, so it’s a win-win situation. Here are the 25 largest game worlds of all time that are sure to keep you busy for hours:

 

25. Grand Theft Auto III

Grand Theft Auto III is one of the top games of all time that gave rise to the Rockstar Games’ worldwide fame. This entry into the franchise took a turn for the better by changing the style of gameplay from the top-down perspective of the first two to a 3rd person style.

The developers poured their hearts into creating this game world, and it truly shows because the world is 3.2 square miles in the area. Although compared to the rest of the list, it is relatively small, during its time it was hailed as a gaming landmark of sorts.

 

24. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

You will be seeing a lot of entries from the Elder World series simply because of the sheer size of their environments. For example, Morrowind is stated to cover a huge 10 square miles area. That is a lot of land that has been computed and made traversable by the players.

Not only is the land huge, but this game also packs quite a bit of activity, making it infamous for its never-ending appeal.

 

23. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was Rockstar Games’ most acclaimed, most praised, most successful game (beaten only by GTA V). It featured 3 cities with a huge countryside landscape and wonderful role-playing genre-inspired gameplay.

Players could spend hours just roaming around, stealing cars, killing pedestrians, and having a good time in San Andreas’ large, 13.6 square mile world.

 

22. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Elder Scroll series is known for making some of the largest, first-person role-playing titles ever created by non-Japanese people. This game takes place on Skyrim, a large continent that is roughly 14.2 square miles.

This entry in the series received much praise for its beautiful graphics and of course, its breathtaking dragons.

 

21. Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is a first-person, open-world role-playing game created by the same people who brought us The Elder Scroll series. It lets players travel to a post-apocalyptic world that has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb.

The game features a massive, 15 square-mile world that is inhabited by creatures created from Nuclear Radiation. The game is well-scripted and provides hours of non-stop action.

 

20. Red Dead Redemption

This wild, Wild West-themed 3rd person open-world adventure is set to appeal to the cowboy within all people. The game has you traverse a huge, sandy world that is approximately 15.9 square miles in area.

The game immerses you in the experience and offers a fun experience of being a gunslinger. Although many players complained that the world was too big for the slower modes of transport that the game offered.

 

19. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

This particular Elder Scroll entry is the predecessor to the last one. However, in terms of the game world, it is slightly larger than even Skyrim. Its world is filled with mountains and forests, various goblins and wolves, all created to resemble a bizarre land from another world.

Coming together, that’s a total of 16 square miles of nothing but the engaging continent of Tamriel.

 

18. Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is an action role-playing game, that uses a unique 3D isometric view to show off the glorious 22-square-mile world.

Although there is loading time between the regions, the many features of this game such as the multiple classes and mounts all help to keep the player focused more on the game and its beauty, and less on the negatives.

 

17. Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 is an open-world first-person shooting game that gives players a great feeling of depth and immersion. The game’s beautiful, African-styled landscapes are fully explorable, giving players the option of continuing the game at their own pace.

The deserts, jungles, and savannas all come together to create a world that is about 31 square miles large.

 

16. Grand Theft Auto V

The latest iteration of Rockstar’s iconic series has taken the world by storm. The pre-sales amount alone covered the cost of making a game that took 5 years.

Now when it comes to size, Rockstar themselves claim that this game is larger than any of their previous products. GTA 5’s Los Santos is estimated to be around 31 square miles in total.

 

15. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The recently released action role-playing and the well-received latest iteration of the popular Witcher series allowed gamers to explore a beautiful open world that spanned over a whopping 47 square miles.

Most of this virtual world is free to roam, observe the day and night cycle, and provides 100+ quality hours of gameplay.

 

14. Superman Returns

Superman Returns is a video game loosely based on a movie of the same name. The game is an open-world game that puts you in the boots of the Man of Steel.

What is astounding is that a game of the superhero category has a world that expands to about 80 square kilometers, with fully destructible environments that force you to tame and master Superman’s superpowers.

 

13. World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft, since its inception, was a game that was set on being the largest. It started with two giant continents and since then has gone forth to include 3 more continents and another world!

All of this combined adds to about 80.1 square miles of role-playing mayhem. Even today, this game is being played by millions of people all around the globe, the reason for the huge game world in the first place.

 

12. Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a first-person tactics-based military video game that features a large expansive and living world. Not only is the game approximately 135 square miles in size, but it also features a day and night cycle as well as different weather patterns.

This game was created to give a feel of how modern infantry units operate and many gamers felt that it accomplished its goal very well.

 

11. Star Wars Galaxies

A game of epic proportions, Star Wars Galaxies was initially launched with 10 planets. Each of those ten planets was approximately 200 square miles in area, but disjointed.

Later on, a further two planets were added with the expansion packs, which made the game even larger. Not only that but there were also a total of twelve spaces which were equal to 3400 cubic meters each, making for one, giant galaxy.

 

10. Burnout Paradise

Burnout Paradise was the very first open-world, sandbox-style title in the racing genre and boasted an area that was as large as Star War Galaxies. The game takes place in the fictional city named Paradise City where race events take place by simply parking your vehicle beside any traffic signal.

The game world was intelligently designed and divided into several districts, with each having its twists and turns to ensure the whole world was fit for racing.

 

9. True Crime: Streets of LA

True Crime developers took heavy influences from the Grand Theft Auto series and expanded them carefully to create a huge open world that spanned roughly 240 square miles.

This game allowed you to play from a cop’s point of view to explore a render of the famous Los Angeles, complete with Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. This gave a sense of realism to players that were hard to match.

 

8. Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2 was a highly successful open-world action game that came out in 2010. Part of the game’s success was its innovative and expansive features and part of the game’s success was its huge, 400-square-mile game world, complete with flyovers, highways, gigantic peaks, and everything that made the game stand out.

 

7. Asheron’s Call

Asheron’s Call is an MMO whose developers always knew it had to make room for a lot of people. That is why they went out of their way to create the continent of Dereth, a land that has a size of roughly 500 square miles.

Using a special cluster system, the world was created in such a way that there was no loading time while traveling from one part of the world to another.

 

6. Test Drive Unlimited

Although the Test Drive series has not received the same level of fame as some of the other more famous racing game series, that has not stopped the developers from going out and beautifully recreating the island of Hawaii for racing.

Using satellite images, the game’s version of Hawaii is approximately 618 square miles, complete with accessible underwater and mini island levels.

 

5. Fuel

As the third racing game on this list, Fuel beats all previous competitors by offering a gigantic world that was over 5,556 square miles in area. The world was depicted in a post-apocalyptic style with the weather being beautifully done including the likes of tornadoes, rain, and sandstorms, all of which influenced how races took place.

The gaming community was blown away at how huge racing games could be after this game’s release.

 

4. Guild Wars Nightfall

An action role-playing video game, Guild Wars Nightfall has players roam the continent of Elona that’s 15,000 square miles having various mountains, coasts, and cities, all brimming with life and adventure.

 

3. The Lords of the Rings Online

One of the most famous MMORPGs also had one of the biggest maps in history, with the area of Middle Earth compromising about roughly 30,000 square miles.

Aside from a few areas missing, this game adaptation of Middle Earth faithfully recreated every area from the story, with a special focus on the Shrine to give a beautiful virtual world.

 

2. The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall

This game was a whopping 62,394 square miles in real-world size. There may have been a time when such a number was inconceivable but everything changed with the advent of this game.

Bethesda had designed and released this game since 1996, proving that large maps could be created no matter the period.

 

1. Great Britain in Minecraft

Minecraft allows you to build and create your game worlds, leading to the creation of ‘Great Britain’. This map is so huge, that it is a 1:1 scale representation of the real Great Britain and consists of over 22 billion Minecraft blocks.

In other words, it is roughly 86,000 square miles or 1000 Azeroths from World of Warcraft or 215 times the map size of Just Cause 2.

 

Special Mention: No Man’s Sky

Although No Man’s Sky arguably provides the largest video game world in entire gaming history thanks to its innovative procedural generation approach, given the fact that all other games in this list were handcrafted (as opposed to being algorithmically generated) – we, therefore, decided to mention it as a special case.

Did we miss any of the largest game worlds worth mentioning on our list? Share your knowledge with the community in the comments below!