Student loans. Rent payments. The 24 hour news cycle. The real world can be hell to deal with, so why not spend a little time relaxing in another? Granted, we can’t all be as lucky as an isekai anime protagonist whisked away into a fantasy kingdom after a meet-cute with an oncoming truck, but video games offer a less fatal alternative! When it comes to beautiful worlds beyond our own, these ten games feature the best digital destinations the modern era has to offer. Here they are, the 10 best video game worlds of the 21st century – just a button click away.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Redemption 2‘s open world made history as arguably one of the most complex gaming ecosystems ever created. Set in the twilight years of the Old West, the game breathes life into a dying era with the sheer amount of realistic detail that it throws at you. Why complete the main quests when you can go sit by the river and watch an eagle majestically scoop a fish out of the water? Or walk around the bustling city of Saint Denis and eavesdrop on the thousands of separate NPC conversations? Who cares about the plot when you can side quest endlessly – chasing after vampires, robots, UFOs, witches, and even the devil himself in a distant cave. If natural beauty is more you thing, Red Dead Redemption 2 delivers. Why go to a national park when you’ve got gigabytes of digital American splendor to explore? Sweeping deserts, rolling plains, primeval forests, we’ve got purple mountain majesty at home.
The Legend of Zelda: Breathe of The Wild
The poster child for open world games, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild is a decent story couched inside a PHENOMENAL location. 100 years after an a devastating war caused the fall of Hyrule, Link awakens after a century long sleep to find his kingdom changed. The lands are stalked by ancient machines and evil monsters, and humanity manages to eke out a living on the outskirts of the land. The Wild itself is the main character of this game, as Breath of The Wild introduces you to steaming jungles, frozen mountains, and vast deserts – all viewable from the airborne comfort of your paraglider. There’s nothing quite like watching the wind whisper through the grasslands of the Akkala region, the sun rise up over Lake Hylia, or the fire of Death Mountain light of the night sky in a dim, red glow. Achingly beautiful and full of life, Breathe of the Wild feels more real than the world outside your front door.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Arguably the most celebrated open world fantasy game in existence, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim‘s landscape is legendary. After narrowly escaping a dragon attack with your life, you’re sent out on a quest to rid the land of fire breathers (Paarthurnax being the exception). But it’s in-between dragon slaying bouts where the real fun begins. You can join a guild of assassins! Become a vampire! Become a werewolf! Get married! Spelunk through countless dungeons! Hang out with a talking dog! Become a high fantasy detective and take down a serial killer! Daedra knows there’s a bajillion other things to do that I haven’t listed here! Skyrim is kind of like eating at Waffle House – the sides are actually the main course. And the Dark Brotherhood quest line? Jalapeño hashbrowns-tier.
Baldur’s Gate 3
While the top down view of Baldur’s Gate 3 prevents you from truly experiencing the beauty of the game’s natural world, the characters that populate it are what truly makes that world truly great. Baldur’s Gate 3 is absolutely lousy with idiosyncratic side quests, letting you rescue children from swamp-hags, overthrow vampire cults, and talk to shapeshifting oozes masquerading as regular cows. The game benefits from decades Dungeons and Dragons worldbuilding, making the player feel like either a stranger in a strange land or a lore-drenched wizard depending on how much they know. A game teeming with the culture and traditions of dozens of species, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a fully fleshed out world that feels almost as diverse as our own. You don’t have to have gone to Menzoberranzan to know what the Drow’s most major city is like – one conversation with with Minthara will tell you everything you need to know, and why you should never visit.
Grand Theft Auto V
While most of games on this list overwhelm the player with the beauty of their worlds, Grand Theft Auto V beats you over the head with its ugliness. A pastiche of sunny Los Angeles, the city of Los Santos is vapid, superficial and cynical – a Sodom and Gomorrah of human depravity. Everyone is out to get you, the two bit street crooks, the hackysack kicking tech bros, and the desert dwelling meth-heads alike. A grim parody of 2010’s America, there’s not a clothing brand, TV channel, or celebrity safe from Grand Theft Auto‘s satirical crosshairs. It’s hard not to play the game with a wry smile plastered to your face – it’s an ugly world, and you get to be just as ugly in it. Here you can let out your inner demon – the one that wants to rob a bank, crash a car, and die in a shootout, then respawn and do it all over again.
Bloodborne
While the dark fantasy worlds of Dark Souls and Elden Ring are some of the best in gaming, FromSoftware struck solid gold with Bloodborne – creating a world that is entirely one of a kind. The game takes place in the Victorian city of Yharnam, one plagued with a scourge of beasts that stalk below its Gothic architecture. The town is watched over by a religious organization called The Healing Church – which is basically Catholicism if it worshipped alien gods. Tricked out in leather while carrying instruments of torture, you cut a swath through terrestrial and cosmic horrors – slowly transforming into a nightmare yourself. Hallucinatory, horrifying, and eerily beautiful, Bloodborne‘s world unfolds with all the grandeur of a dark dream.
Mass Effect 2
What Mass Effect 2 lacks in “open” it makes up for in “world.” Worlds, plural. Set in our Milky Way, this stunning sequel builds upon the sci-fi foundations of the first game – fleshing out the galaxy and the many intelligent life forms that populate it. Turians, Krogans, Asari, Batarians, each extraterestrial species has its own unique culture and history, informed by their differing physiologies, life cycles and *ahem* reproductive habits. While Commander Shepard’s overarching battle with the alien-trafficking Collectors is a thing of space opera beauty, it’s the side missions that really give this galaxy its drama. As you explore your companions’ checkered pasts, you journey to the worlds that created them – some more friendly than others. And if ever you’re lost, a quick perusal of the game’s Codex will tell you everything you need to know about the extraterrestrial currently pointing a hi-tech battle rifle in your face.
Minecraft
In the early days of Minecraft, the complexity of its world came from its simplicity. Upon pressing start, you’re dropped into an infinite cubic world and given one objective: survive. You scratch down a tree with your bare hands and craft tools and shelter from the wood. Better equipped the next day, you set out to harvest stone. Your shelter and your tools become stronger, allowing you harvest iron. Your wooden shack becomes a cobblestone place. Your rural surroundings soon turn into a small town. A city. A metropolis complete with mine cart railroads, self-sustaining farms, and even portals to other dimensions! While the building blocks are simple, they allow you to craft creations that are limited only by your imagination. Every Minecraft player starts as the victim of their world, and eventually becomes a god of it. A god that still has to watch out for Creepers, those things will get you no matter how powerful you become.
Cyberpunk 2077
While Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t create its world hi-tech/lowlife world from scratch (you can credit author William Gibson with that), it brought that world to digital life. Despite being famously buggy upon initial release, Cyberpunk 2077 improved upon its early flaws and matured into one of the most immersive open world games ever created. While the game is famous for its adrenaline junkie action, one of the most fun things you can do is go for a walk through the city and enjoy the neon lights. Wandering its nocturnal open world gives the same feeling as taking a real life night drive downtown while listening to the synthwave – a relaxing, vibey affair. Does the real world encourage you to hop out of the car and use your cybernetically enhanced body commit crime? No. Does Cyberpunk 2077? You bet, and thank Gibson for that.
Nier: Automata
While I debated adding Fallout: New Vegas for its immersion or The Last of Us for its beauty, I ultimately chose to include the post-apocalyptic world of Nier: Automata for the complicated, one of a kind way it makes me feel. Set tens of thousands of years in Earth’s future, the game follows a battalion of androids fighting against an extraterrestrial machines made by an alien race. While an action game on the surface, Nier: Automata is an exercise in existentialism beneath, and nothing makes this fact clearer than a wander through its desolate world. Abandoned shopping malls, ruined carnivals, vast deserts where ancient machine parts are buried – the game has a way of making you feel small, irrelevant, and fragile. There’s a dock by a derelict factory in the City Ruins section of the map with a pier that juts out into the ocean – puffy, lonely clouds on the horizon. More than any other location in any other game on this list, I find myself thinking of that solitary pier. Moved by the utter loneliness, silence, and stark beauty – that place gives me a feeling I can’t name, and one I’ll never forget.
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