The 10 Best Open World PS5 Games

What are the best open-world PS5 games?

We love great open-world games, especially those that are filled with interesting things to discover and rich environmental storytelling.

Unfortunately, just because a game is open doesn’t mean that it can deliver a great gameplay experience.

So, we’ve decided to round up all of our favorite open-world PS5 games into a single list! Keep reading to see if your favorites made the cut!

The 10 Best Open World PS5 Games

The games we’ve selected aren’t just based on our personal preferences. Instead, we’ve considered a ton of reviews from other players.

We wanted to ensure that every game on our list was the best based on its gameplay, design, and overall popularity.

So, if you’re ready for adventure, here’s our list of the 10 best open-world PS5 games:

10. Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V has been going strong since 2013, and it stands out as one of the best GTA games for the PS5.

This game allows you to play as a young street hustler, a former bank robber, and a psychopathic career criminal.

Each character has his own backstory and motivation, and they are all incredibly fun to run around with across the huge Los Santos map.

Seriously, the map in this game is so huge that fixed-wing aircraft were added to make getting around easier!

The development team has even said that working on the open world of GTA V was the most technically demanding aspect of the game’s creation.

This game has the biggest map in the entire franchise, and it has a total area of 75.85 square kilometers, 48.15 of which is land.

While this isn’t the largest map on the list, it does put into perspective how much there is to do and see in this wonderfully over-the-top game!

9. Dying Light 2

Now, Dying Light 2 only has a map size of roughly 7 square kilometers, but it’s the things inside this space that make it feel huge.

The level design in this game is extremely intuitive, and it really feels like a walled-in post-apocalyptic world where every move you make counts.

Because the gameplay focuses on parkour and staying off the ground for survival, a lot more focus was put on narrow streets and rooftops rather than sprawling highways.

While there are larger open streets, they’re few and far between, with players being encouraged to explore up high or inside buildings when night falls.

The world has also been designed to facilitate moving between roofs easily, but care was taken to ensure nothing felt repetitive.

Developers were also keen to ensure that every facet of the map was utilized in some way, so that exploring felt rewarding for players.

We certainly have to say that they did an incredible job, and this game isn’t finished receiving content either.

It has been teased that players can look forward to a Dying Light/ Walking Dead crossover in the near future, complete with cosmetics and weapons!

8. No Man’s Sky

No Man’s Sky is one of the best PS5 survival games, but it’s also arguably the largest open-world game ever created!

You see, while the huge GTA V is 75.85 square kilometers, No Man’s Sky is a staggering 31,7000,000,000,000,000,000,000 square kilometers.

No, that isn’t a typo; there are over 18 quintillion planets in this game, a great number of which haven’t been explored by any players!

Even if you could visit one planet every second, it would still take you almost 600 billion years to see them all!

So, with literally billions of years worth of content to explore, it’s safe to say that No Man’s Sky is one hell of an open-world experience.

Each of the planets you see in this game has been procedurally generated, and even their scale is absolutely massive.

In No Man’s Sky, even when you land on a planet, it can take you days of real-time to walk around it instead of mere minutes.

This game is definitely something to play if you’re someone with a huge sense of adventure who has often dreamed about going to the stars.

We may never see space travel like this in our lifetimes, but we can certainly pretend while playing this game!

Plus, by the time humanity actually discovers space travel like this, you can bet there will still be undiscovered planets in No Man’s Sky!

7. Death Stranding Director’s Cut

We’re not going to lie, Death Stranding is a really weird game. However, this doesn’t stop it from being ridiculously enjoyable, if a bit hard to understand at times.

Set in post-apocalyptic America, the open world in this game is roughly 370 square kilometers of desolate and hostile terrain.

What we especially love about this game is that it solves a major glaring issue that many open-world games suffer from, and that is straight lines.

You see, in almost any other open-world game, players can more or less wander in a relatively straight line from point A to point B.

Hell, if you have a horse in Skyrim, you can literally climb over mountains without any effort if they end up in your way!

Death Stranding changes things by forcing you to have to set up routes and take into consideration your carry load, timefall, and what could potentially knock you over.

Even a slow-moving stream could be a major obstacle for Sam, since players literally have to work hard to keep him upright!

Plus, because the world is semi-shared, players can build new roads, bridges, and ziplines for others and themselves to make getting around easier.

This community-building aspect adds a whole new layer to the open world of Death Stranding that easily makes it one of the best on the PS5.

6. Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 had a rough start, but now its Phantom Liberty expansion is set to overhaul the entire game!  

Set in the open world of Night City, the map in this game is about 100-110 square kilometers, including the less populated outskirts and Badlands.

The city itself is separated into six districts, each of which is self-sufficient with its own fast-travel points, vendors, and services.

Each part of the city has also been filled with unique things to do, factions to interact with, and unique design elements that help make them distinct.

What’s more is that developers intentionally split the world into two design themes, one being the open areas and the other being quest locations.

In the open areas, care has been taken to make things believable and immersive so that players will want to spend time taking in the sights.

On the flip side, quest locates were designed to be both beautiful and coherent for exploration or combat, depending on what the mission calls for.

Tying it all together is a mixture of neo-kitsch, entropic, and neo-military styles that have coalesced to form a gritty and distinctive Cyberpunk aesthetic.

Despite getting off on the wrong foot with many gamers, Cyberpunk 2077 has cleaned up nicely to easily become one of the best open-world games on the PS5!

5. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has one of the biggest open-world maps in video game history, spanning around 142 square kilometers.

To create this world where monsters run rampant, developers researched many real-world European locations, particularly those in Poland.

For example, Novigrad is heavily inspired by the Polish city of Gdánsk, where the crane on the docks bears a striking resemblance to the one in the game!

While the huge world has many stunning visuals, it is also extremely dynamic, and encounters have been created in ways that make sense.

Herbs have been placed in areas where it makes sense for them to grow, while monsters like Nekkers are always found in forests.

The open world in this game also lends itself to quests that are much more open and filled with different opportunities that can impact their outcome.

Witcher 3 balances the open-world exploration very well with its quests so that, while players have freedom, they don’t have to turn over every rock for clues!

4. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Now, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is easily one of the best PS5 exclusive games, but it also does open-world adventure right.

As with its predecessor, the map in this game is a 1/4 scale of Manhattan Island in New York, and it’s roughly 11.9 square kilometers.

Not only is this map absolutely huge, but it’s also packed with things to do, crimes to stop, and pigeon facts to learn!

What we really love is that this game encourages you to spend time exploring the city, and it has a unique way of doing this.

For instance, while swinging around, you’ll often be informed about nearby crimes, causing you to explore further to find where they are.

This takes players deep into the world and to places they might not have seen otherwise. Plus, it really reinforces Miles’s role as a crime fighter!

Furthermore, this game is simply gorgeous to look at, and no matter where you go in the city, you will find sights to take your breath away.

3. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla has a massive world that spans parts of Norway, England, Ireland, France, Vinland, the Isle of Skye, and three mythical realms.

Simply put, this game is absolutely packed with things to do and places to see, and the map of England alone is around 120 square kilometers!

This is even larger than the impressive Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey map, which previously had been the biggest in the franchise.

It seems like no matter where you go, there is a new location to discover, a world event to complete, or a new piece of armor and wealth to unlock.

Because this game is so sprawling and filled with historical references, it should come as no surprise that the world-building process was anything but simple.

In fact, data from Google Earth was originally used as a rough draft for the world, which was later recreated from scratch.

Distinct seasons were also added to give the maps more flavor, from the lush south in Mantunscire to the frozen hills surrounding Jorvik.

Furthermore, if you really want to explore without handholding, you can change the exploration difficulty, with Pathfinder leaving everything up to you.

In this difficulty, there are absolutely no mission map markers, so you’ll have to pay attention to your surroundings!

2. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut

While Ghost of Tsushima has a comparatively small map size of around 28.5 square kilometers, this is still an absolutely huge open-world map!

For reference, this makes it only slightly smaller than the map in Skyrim, which is roughly 37 square kilometers.

However, what it lacks in overall space, it makes up for in aesthetics, bold designs, and engaging gameplay.

Instead of obtrusive map markers, players can use gusts of wind to lead them where they need to be or spend time exploring on their own.

This was inspired by Shadow of the Colossus, which has a mechanic that allows players to see objectives when holding up their swords.

Each area of this world was also created to have a unique identity to make them visually distinct from one another.

Developers even used bold colors to artistically decorate the landscape with gold and red trees breaking up the verdant green of adjacent forests.

That said, Ghost of Tsushima was also inspired by the Japanese use of negative space, with an emphasis on minimalism and simplicity.

Suffice it to say that the world of this game is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and you can easily spend hours ignoring the main story and just exploring!

1. Elden Ring

Taking our number one spot is Elden Ring, a game with an open-world map that spans 79 square kilometers.

Set in the Lands Between, this open-world Soulslike game has 10 distinct regions that players can explore at their leisure.

What we really love about the world in this game is that it subverts a lot of the tropes that other open-world games fall into.

For instance, Elden Ring really drives home that less can, in fact, be more if what you do have is worthwhile.

This game is the very epitome of quality versus quantity in that it’s not filled with fetch quests and meaningless tasks to force the world to feel large.

While it isn’t lacking in content, it also ensures that every quest you do take on feels deep and rewarding and not repetitive or thrown together. 

We also love that it doesn’t grab you by the hand and explicitly tell you where to go next, instead leaving it up to players to create their own routes.

Want to spend hours hunting down the best talismans in Elden Ring? You can do that! Or, you can absolutely rush through the main story!

Elden Ring gives players control of how they progress, which is something that even some of the largest open-world games lack!

Summary

We hope you’ve enjoyed our list of the 10 best open-world PS5 games and found a few that you haven’t checked out yet!

While there are a lot of open-world games on the PS5, in our opinion, these are the ones that really highlight what makes the genre great.

It can be hard to build an engaging and dynamic virtual world, but all of the titles featured here have set the bar high for any future open-world games!

Here’s a quick recap of the 10 best open-world PS5 games:

1. Elden Ring
2. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut
3. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
4. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
5. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
6. Cyberpunk 2077
7. Death Stranding Director’s Cut
8. No Man’s Sky
9. Dying Light 2
10. Grand Theft Auto V

What’s you’re favorite open-world PS5 game? Leave a comment below.