Best Open World Games PS5

The PS5 has more open world games than any console in history, which means most of them are forgettable. The hardware can render a massive map, but rendering a massive map and filling it with things worth doing are two completely different problems. At Choost Games, where we build titles like Granny's Rampage and Granny's Gambit, we spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a space feel alive versus what makes it feel like a to-do list spread across geography.

These are the PS5 open worlds that actually solved the problem.

Elden Ring

FromSoftware took the Souls formula and poured it into a world designed by Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin, and somehow the open world didn't dilute the difficulty. The Lands Between works because exploration is always optional but always rewarding. You can bash your head against Margit for three hours, or you can ride Torrent south and come back ten levels stronger with a weapon you found in a cave nobody told you about.

The trick is that Elden Ring never marks the cave on your map with an icon. Discovery is genuine. You see a ruin on the horizon, you ride to it, something tries to kill you, and the reward is real. That loop never gets old across a hundred hours because the game trusts you to find your own path. If you want more in this vein, our best soulslike games roundup covers the broader family.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Yes, it's a Switch game running on PS5 via... no, it's not. But if you're reading this list because you want the best open worlds on current hardware and you also own a Switch, Tears of the Kingdom belongs in the conversation even though it's not technically PS5. Skip this entry if you're strictly Sony-only.

What Tears of the Kingdom does better than almost any open world game on any platform is give you tools and let you solve problems your own way. The Ultrahand system turns every encounter into a creative sandbox. The Depths add a genuinely terrifying second world underneath the one you already knew. It's the rare sequel that makes its predecessor feel like a proof of concept.

Horizon Forbidden West

Guerrilla Games built one of the most visually stunning open worlds ever rendered, and then filled it with enough systemic combat depth to justify the scale. The machine fights are where Forbidden West earns its place. Each robot has components you can tear off, weaknesses to specific damage types, and behavioral patterns that change based on what you've already broken. Fighting a Thunderjaw is a twelve-step puzzle that happens to be trying to kill you.

The story takes itself very seriously, which lands for some people and bounces off others. But the combat and the world design carry it regardless.

Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut

Sucker Punch made a samurai game where the wind is your waypoint marker. That single design decision tells you everything about Ghost of Tsushima's philosophy: strip the UI, trust the environment to guide the player. The result is an open world that you actually look at instead of staring at a minimap.

The combat walks a line between approachable and demanding. Standoffs are cinematic. Stealth is viable but never mandatory. And Iki Island in the Director's Cut adds a tighter, more personal story that arguably surpasses the main campaign. If you appreciate games that nail a specific aesthetic, this is one of the best examples on the platform.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Insomniac finally cracked the traversal problem that plagues most open world games: getting from point A to point B should be the most fun part, not the least. Web-swinging through Manhattan at full speed with the wing suit transitions is the single best movement system in any open world game on PS5. The city itself is dense enough that you're constantly interrupted by something worth stopping for.

The story juggles Peter and Miles across two arcs that intersect without tripping over each other. The Venom sequences are genuinely unsettling. And the combat builds on the first game's foundation with enough new tools to stay fresh through the back half.

Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition

CD Projekt Red's redemption arc is complete. The PS5 native version of Cyberpunk with the Phantom Liberty expansion is a fundamentally different game from what launched in 2020. Night City is the most atmospheric open world on PS5, full stop. The neon, the density, the vertical design where missions happen on rooftops and in basements and in the crawl spaces between megabuildings.

Phantom Liberty added a tighter spy thriller storyline that plays to the game's strengths better than the base campaign's sprawl. If you bounced off Cyberpunk at launch, the current state of it deserves a second look.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar's western epic came out on PS4 but runs on PS5 with faster loads and stable framerates, and the open world holds up better than anything else on this list. The Heartlands feel lived-in. NPCs have schedules. Weather changes how encounters play out. Arthur Morgan's story is one of the few in gaming that earns its length.

The pace is deliberate, which is a polite way of saying it's slow. If you want constant action, this isn't it. If you want a world that feels like a place rather than a game level, nothing else comes close.

Final Fantasy XVI

Square Enix traded the traditional JRPG open world for something more focused, with large explorable zones connected by a world map rather than one continuous landmass. It's a controversial choice, but it means every zone is dense with content instead of padded with empty terrain. The Eikon battles are spectacle on a scale the PS5 was built for.

The combat system owes more to Devil May Cry than to Final Fantasy, which will either sell you instantly or put you off entirely. There's no middle ground.

Hogwarts Legacy

The open world here isn't the biggest or the most mechanically complex, but it's one of the most lovingly crafted. Hogwarts itself is the star. The castle is enormous, interconnected, and packed with secrets that reward players who actually explore the corridors instead of fast-traveling between quest markers. The Room of Requirement customization system gives you a reason to keep collecting and crafting long after the story fades.

The combat is serviceable. The story is fine. You play this for the world, and the world delivers.

Death Stranding: Director's Cut

Hideo Kojima made a game about walking, and somehow it's one of the most compelling open world experiences on PS5. The terrain is the enemy. Every delivery is a logistics puzzle where you're managing weight, balance, stamina, and weather. The social strand system where other players' structures appear in your world turns isolation into quiet cooperation.

It's not for everyone. It's barely for most people. But if it clicks, nothing else on this list scratches the same itch.

What Makes a PS5 Open World Work

The pattern across these games is restraint. The best open worlds on PS5 aren't the biggest. They're the ones that give you a reason to engage with the space beyond checking icons off a map. Elden Ring hides its content. Ghost of Tsushima replaces the minimap with wind. Death Stranding makes the terrain itself the challenge. The PS5 has the power to render anything. The question is whether the designers had something worth rendering.

At Choost, we think about this on a smaller scale when building games like Granny's Rampage. Every screen should have a reason to exist. That principle scales from a bullet heaven arena all the way up to a 100-hour open world. For more platform-specific picks, our posts on the best retro games and best DS games cover what earlier hardware got right with far less to work with.