{"id":88913,"date":"2026-09-04T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=88913"},"modified":"2026-09-04T13:37:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:37:34","slug":"30-open-world-masterpieces-you-need-to-play-ign30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=88913","title":{"rendered":"30 Open World Masterpieces You Need to Play &#8211; IGN30"},"content":{"rendered":"<section data-transform=\"mobile-ad-break\">\n<p>Open-world games. Arguably, no other genre has defined modern gaming more than the expansive, experimental, and exciting places this one has taken us to. Over the past 30 years, we\u2019ve gone from grey, empty streets begging to be torn up in a blocky muscle car to glorious, colourful fantasy lands full of adventure and opportunity. But what are the games that have stood out the most, pushed the form forward, and ultimately led to GTA 6\u2019s moment? <\/p>\n<p>As part of IGN 30, I\u2019m going to try to answer that question by walking you through five distinct flavours of open-world game before deciding on the greatest of them all. From web-swinging superheroes and sword-swinging monster hunters to bank heists and shrine raids, here are the 30 masterpieces of open-world game design.<\/p>\n<section data-transform=\"ignvideo\" data-slug=\"gta-6-grand-theft-auto-6-official-extended-gameplay\" data-loop=\"\"><strong>City Living<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>GTA. There are really no other three letters to start with than Rockstar\u2019s industry-changing creation, especially when it comes to city settings. What started as a top-down, level-based car-stealing simulation in 1997 was fun, but limited by the confines of the technology of the time. It would take another four years, and the creation of the PS2 and its DVD storage capabilities, for the series to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Open-world games. Arguably, no other genre has defined modern gaming more than the expansive, experimental, and exciting places this one has taken us to. Over the past 30 years, we\u2019ve gone from grey, empty streets begging to be torn up in a blocky muscle car to glorious, colourful fantasy lands full of adventure and opportunity&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":88915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88913"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88917,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88913\/revisions\/88917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/88915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}