10 Largest Open-World Video Game Maps, Ranked

Highlights

• Ubisoft’s open worlds are next-level, with maps like Assassin’s Creed spanning vast areas.
• Final Fantasy 15’s map is rich, covering 780 square miles of diverse biomes.
• No Man’s Sky boasts an infinite open-world map with 256 galaxies, offering endless exploration.

Whether you’re partial to linear gameplay or open-world exploration, there’s no denying how impressive large-scale game maps are. The sheer scope of, sometimes, an entire universe at your fingertips takes immersion to a whole new level and keeps you engaged with your favorite title for longer.

There will always be pockets of the gaming demographic that steer clear of never-ending titles, claiming Elden Ring is too long, for example, but there’s still a healthy number of players invested in the long haul who put Christopher Columbus to shame with their exploration. To celebrate the vast digital expanses of video games, here are 10 of the largest open-world maps to become acquainted with.

10 Final Fantasy 15

Logged Over 150 hours For 100% Completion – Excluding Exploration

• Area: 780 Square Miles (2020 Square Kilometers)
• Setting: Eos (Fictional Earth-like world)

Eos is a rich world to experience in the Final Fantasy series, with an approximate 780-square-mile map contested primarily by the MMORPG Final Fantasy 14. 2023’s Final Fantasy 16 technically beat the 15th main installment in map size, but the medieval-styled title was not an open world, unlike Eos.

From stretching deserts and the tropical Galdin Quay to lush forests, Final Fantasy 15 offers a mix of biomes for fans to traverse with Noctis’ party on foot or through the Regalia’s slick road trips. Decorated with fierce mountains on the horizon, this fantastical map is a hefty one to kickstart our ranking.

9 The Crew

A 40-minute Drive From Miami To Los Angeles

• Area:1900 Square Miles (4921 Square Kilometers)
• Setting: Scaled-down United States

The online-only racing game provides a map vaguely resembling the USA’s layout. Split into five sections – East Coast, Midwest, The South, Mountain States, and the West Coast – the racer’s map offers a host of real-life locations to discover and explore, from mountainous terrain to dusty Nevada.

The Crew’s map is more than double the size of Final Fantasy 15’s and brings the great American stretch to life instead of promoting a fictional landscape. Even though the racer’s map is bigger, we still think the Regalia would give the cars in The Crew a run for their money.

8 Fuel

Pedal To The Metal Through This Map In Under Eight Hours

• Area: 5560 Square Miles (14,400 Square Kilometers)
• Setting: Post-Apocalyptic United States

Fuel is an open-world racing game with a post-apocalyptic setting as your backdrop – Mad Max style. The grungy aesthetic is a joy to ride through, and the map features exhilarating races through 19 zones, including the hazy Dustbowl City, windmill galore at Pinwheels Ridge, and the stunning views at Big Cauldron’s Edge.

Fuel’s map is nearly three times the size of The Crew’s, making this game the superior racer when it comes to exploration. This open-world map has also gone down the traditional design route, showing the topography of each zone without clear sections, which makes planning your route more realistic.

7 Guild Wars Nightfall

Get Lost In Elona With 100 Hours Of Story Content

• Area:15,000 Square Miles (38,850 Square Kilometers)
• Setting: The fictional continent of Elona

This fantasy action RPG uses a map that’s small to the eye but boasts around 15,000 square miles of open-world adventure. Made up of the main regions of Kourna, Vabbi, and The Desolation alongside the island of Istan, Guild Wars Nightfall is one of the biggest maps in the open-world RPG genre, and that accolade is also held by the series’ main MMORPG entry.

More than doubling the square miles in Fuel’s map, Guild Wars Nightfall is the second RPG to grace this list and covers a lot more ground than the post-apocalyptic racer. The 20-year-old game has often been compared to World of Warcraft, but this map dwarfs the size of Azeroth.

6 Atlas

Devs Claim 30 Hours To Sail From End To End

• Area:17,400 Square Miles (45,066 Square Kilometers)
• Setting: Pirate World

This survival MMO and ultimate pirate experience delivers a gargantuan open-world map to sail around until your heart’s content. Hosting thousands of players on their nautical adventure, Atlas flaunts 700 unique landmasses consisting of 225 regions and a whopping 568 islands to discover, explore, and colonize.

Atlas’ map only takes the lead over Guild Wars Nightfall by a few thousand square miles, but the pirate life dangles an extra 567 islands over the RPG’s Istan region. Even though the fine details of your in-game schooner are captivating enough, the Atlas map guarantees months or possibly even years of bewitching exploration.

Bethesda Claimed Daggerfall’s Map Was “The Size Of Great Britain”

• Area: 80,823 Square Miles (209,331 Square Kilometers)
• Setting: Fictional Lliac Bay

Existing as the second entry in the greater The Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall is the second-largest game in the franchise, beaten only by The Elder Scrolls: Arena. With over 80,000 square miles to play with, the area of High Rock and Hammerfell is populated with over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons.

Adding to Daggerfall’s built-up areas, there are over 750,000 non-player characters to interact with, which is a staggering amount compared to Morrowind and Oblivion’s 1000 NPC roster. Atlas’ map has nothing over Daggerfall’s, allowing Bethesda’s action-RPG to reign superior in the ranking.

4 Microsoft Flight Simulator

1100 Hours For Completionists But Flying From Country To Country Is Limitless

• Area: 197 Million Square Miles (510 Million Square Kilometers)
• Setting: Planet Earth

Since the map in Microsoft Flight Simulator emulates planet Earth, you can gauge that this open-world map is fourth-place material. With 2 million cities and towns, 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees, and 37,000 real-world airports to visit, the simulator’s game map is a mirror image of the world we live in.

197 million square miles is a mammoth number to get your head around, but it’s the reality of this pristine simulator and a clear winner over Daggerfall’s nearly 90,000 square miles. No human could entertain a marathon and fly to every airport in one sitting, so we’ll let that idea do the talking to justify fourth place.

3 Minecraft

It Would Take Approximately 80 Days To Reach The World Blocker

• Area:1.5 Billion Square Miles (3.9 Billion Square Kilometers)
• Setting: Alternative Earth

Yes, you read that correctly. Minecraft is approximately 1.5 billion square miles, which would explain why the game never comes to a close. With roughly 1500 square miles assigned to each player, you have more than enough room to construct your city within the greater, blocky domain.

The endless stretch of Minecraft’s map certainly puts the realistic Microsoft Flight Simulator to shame, making the Earth seem like the size of a pea by existing eight times larger. The best-selling sandbox title is, therefore, the proud owner of the largest open-world game map not set in space.

2 Elite Dangerous

As Of January 10, 2023, Only 0.059% Of The Galaxy Has Been Explored

• Area: 400 Billion Star Systems
• Setting: Space

Forget a copy of planet Earth, how about an accurate 1:1 scale replica of the Milky Way galaxy? That’s exactly what Elite Dangerous, the online space flight simulation game, did within its interstellar map based on real scientific data, star catalogs, and theories. Included in the 400 billion star systems are Sol and Alpha Centauri – the latter of which has been used in several space-themed films and television shows.

In addition to the star systems, Elite Dangerous also offers cosmic phenomena to witness, like black holes, moons, and ring systems, and there are also 42 galactic regions, 9 major galactic arms, and the galactic plane to explore, making this space game a worthy second place trumping Minecraft.

1 No Man’s Sky

Devs Gauge 5 Billion Years To Explore Every Planet

• Area: 256 Galaxies
• Setting: Space

The map in No Man’s Sky is pretty much infinite because no one can visit all galaxies in one lifetime. Each galaxy is made up of several regions and star systems, and each star system has around 1–6 planets, several moons, and a space station. Furthermore, there are four types of galaxies you’ll encounter: Balance, Lush, Vicious, and Abandoned.

Most players report visiting around 10–20 galaxies in their playthrough, with more hardcore fans reaching the 100 mark, and these numbers prove the survival adventure is one of the most replayable games. Since No Man’s Sky has reached infinity, it’s safe to say this is the largest open-world game map to exist.