Some of the biggest franchises in gaming history are open world. Games like Grand Theft Auto And Elder Scrolls dominate the conversation, but for everyone The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,There’s an almost perfect open world game that got buried.
From Dying Light And Mad Max To Gravity Rush 2 And Sunset Overdriveall of the open world games on this list were truly original and deserved a bigger audience than they received. For some it was bad timing, while for others it was platform exclusivity or a studio that folded before anyone noticed what they created that killed them.
Saboteur allows players to liberate Nazi-occupied Paris in black and white
Saboteur – PandemicImage via pandemic
Saboteur (2009) is set in a version of Nazi-occupied Paris rendered almost entirely in black and white. Players scale buildings, blow up Nazi targets, and wage guerilla warfare alone throughout the city. This is all incredibly fun, but the coolest addition to the game occurs whenever the player liberates an area. The entire area suddenly went from completely monochrome to full color.
This meant that the visual design itself was a kind of indicator of progress, and despite the game being in black and white, watching the world turn into color was one of the most striking artistic concepts in open world games. Developer Pandemic Studios had plans for a sequel, but when Australian creative director Morgan Jaffit, hired to helm it, arrived at Pandemic’s Los Angeles offices, he said he “smelled death.”
EA closed the studio on November 17, 2009, laying off 228 employees. Saboteur released three weeks later as a finished game from a dead studio. Saboteur won IGN’s Best Art Design award at E3 that year, but there was no one left to carry on the work.
Mafia II is a linear open world game
Mafia II from 2kImage via 2k
Mafia II has an open world map, players can move freely, but the missions are completely linear and there are practically no side effects. This is a linear, open-world game, and 2K Czech is intentional about this tension. Empire Bay, a fictional amalgam of American cities from the 1940s and ’50s, is not a sandbox but a set built to tell the story of Vito Scaletta’s rise through the mafia.
Critics who wanted freedom in the sandbox called the city empty. But Empire Bay had no need for activity to justify its existence. Mafia II created one of the most compelling historical settings in gaming, with snowy streets, period-correct cars, and a Jazz Age soundtrack. The driving was intentionally rough, the gunplay was deadly and unappealing, and the story didn’t shy away from the consequences.
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is like the shadow of a colossus in the open world
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen from CapcomImage via Capcom
Shadow of the Colossus in 2005 proved that climbing a giant creature and striking its weak points can be one of the most thrilling experiences in gaming. But the team Iko Masterpiece was a minimalist art game with only sixteen bosses, an empty world, and nothing in between. Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma asked the next obvious question: what if this mechanic was surrounded by a full-fledged open-world RPG?
Directed by Hideaki Itsuno, best known Devil May Crycreated a game in which players climbed onto griffins, cyclops, and chimeras in real time as the creatures thrashed, flew, and rolled, then fell back to earth and continued to explore, loot, and level up in a massive fantasy world.
Another innovation was the pawn system. Players created AI companions that learned their fighting style and could be shared online—meaning that a player’s Pawn would return from someone else’s game with new knowledge about enemies and quests. It was asynchronous multiplayer disguised as single-player mechanics. Dragon’s Dogma reviewed with dignity, but was overshadowed Skyrim Capcom’s dominance and inconsistent marketing.
Expanded re-release Dark Risenadded a huge dungeon after the game and became the final version. Over the next decade, the number of cult followers grew, eventually leading to Dragon’s Dogma 2 in 2024.
Sunset Overdrive was Insomniac’s best game before Spider-Man
Sunset Overdrive by InsomniacImage via Insomniac
“Insomnia” games created Sunset Overdrive as a deliberate middle finger to the dark, self-righteous open-world games that dominate the market. The game takes place in Sunset City after an energy drink turns most of the population into monsters. The game was built around a movement system that treated the entire city as a playground where you could grind rails, jump walls, and slide along ziplines.
Standing still was punishing as the game required players to be in the air, turning movement and shooting into a continuous cycle of chaos. The arsenal was absurd: a bowling ball launcher, a gun that shot teddy bears tied to TNT, a sprinkler that spewed acid. Unfortunately, there was one big problem: the game’s platform.
Sunset Overdrive was released as an Xbox One exclusive during the console’s weakest sales period, and Microsoft barely sold it. Insomniac retained the IP, which was unusual for an exclusivity deal, and the game eventually came to PC in 2018, but by then the moment had passed.
Insomniac continued to do Marvel’s Spider-Manin which many of the same crawl ideas were applied to a much larger audience. Players who opened Sdisable overdrive after Spider-Man found a game that was perhaps more inventive, more irreverent, and more willing to let the player tear the world apart.
Dying Light made Nightfall the most terrifying mechanic in an open world game
Dying Light by TechlandImage via Techland
Techland’s Dying Light divided the open world into two games depending on the time of day. During the day, players navigated the quarantined city of Harran using first-person parkour, jumping fences, climbing buildings, and jumping between rooftops with a fluidity that was more determined by Edge of the mirror than any other zombie game before it.
The daily cycle was satisfying: explore, scavenge, craft weapons, complete missions, clear safe zones. Then the sun went down and Dying Light has become a survival horror game. The flying creatures, fast, powerful and light-sensitive predators, appeared at night and hunted players on the streets. Parkour, which seemed empowering during the day, turned into a desperate struggle for some kind of safety at night.
The change of day and night was not just a trick. This fundamentally changed how players interact with the open world. Nighttime provided double experience points, rewarding players who faced danger, but the risk was real. Hitting the bat triggered a chase sequence that really caused panic.
Dying Light launched in the same month as The Witcher 3 And Batman: Arkham Knightand was largely overshadowed despite ultimately selling over 30 million copies. Techland has supported it for years with free content updates and luckily it has sold enough copies to justify Dying light 2.
Mad Max by AvalancheImage via Avalanche
Lavina Studios Mad Max – the best film adaptation of a film franchise that almost no one played. The game captures George Miller’s post-apocalyptic wasteland with astonishing accuracy. The vehicle combat was brutal, vehicle customization was deep, and the Magnum Opus (Max’s upgradeable vehicle) felt like a character in itself.
The game was built around vehicle combat, with storms that could tear the landscape apart as players fought convoys at high speed. Foot combat is perfectly borrowed from Arkham series, but the game lived and died in the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, Mad Max launched on September 1, 2015, the same day as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Painone of the most anticipated games of the decade.
Metal mechanism absorbed all the coverage and consumer attention. Mad Max was bought decently, but was considered unremarkable, which was partly fair, since the walking sections stretched on. However, the vehicular combat and wasteland atmosphere were exceptional. Players who found it later discovered a game that understood Mad Max fantasy understands the source material better than most licensed games.
Gravity Rush 2 will allow players to fly around a floating city
Gravity Rush 2 from a Japanese studioImage via Sony Interactive
Keiichiro Toyama, creator Silent Hill, spent years creating a game about a girl who can change gravity. Original Gravity fever launched on PS Vita in 2012, and the sequel, Gravity Rush 2moved to PS4 and expanded the concept into a full-fledged open-world action game with stunning anime-inspired cel-shading.
The main character Kat does not run, climb or ride, but instead falls in any direction the player chooses. The flying mechanic looked less like he was floating and more like he was flipping his butt through the air, which made him truly disorienting and incredibly interesting to watch. Gravity Rush Three gravity styles—Normal, Lunar, and Jupiter—gave players different movement speeds and combat weights, making movement an ever-evolving system in which the entire city could be played from all angles.
The floating city of Jirga Para Lhao was inspired by the team’s travels throughout Latin America and Asia. Wealthy areas rose above poor communities, making class divisions literally vertical. The art style is based on manga and the work of French comic book artist Jean Giraud.
Gravity Rush 2 launched a few days before Resident Evil 7 And Yakuza 0and it never recovered commercially. Sony closed Japan Studio in 2021, Toyama left to found Bokeh Game Studio, and the IP remained with Sony. A sequel is not in development.