20 Best PS4 Open World Games

Far Cry 4 takes the series to Kyrat, a made-up country below the snowcapped Himalayas. The team first planned a direct sequel to Far Cry 3, then scrapped the idea and built a new setting and story. Parts of it were inspired by the Nepalese Civil War, and Troy Baker plays the villain, Pagan Min. You start in South Kyrat and can explore it almost straight away, while North Kyrat only opens up over the course of the story.

The map is the reason to go. You can scout enemy territory from a gyrocopter and drop back down in a wingsuit, or climb aboard the back of a six-ton elephant and point it at an outpost. Critics praised the open-world design and the wealth of content, though some found it too similar to Far Cry 3. Fair enough, but Far Cry 3 did not have vicious honey badgers. It sold over 10 million units by March 2020.

Inquisition is the third major Dragon Age game, and BioWare made it as an answer to Dragon Age II. Players had lamented the loss of the complexity of Dragon Age: Origins, so the plan was to combine the elements of the first two games. You lead the Inquisition across Ferelden and Orlais, and your hero can be a dwarf, elf, human or Qunari. It came out in November 2014 on both PlayStation generations.

The Frostbite 3 engine created many development challenges, and the team had to crunch extensively to finish. The game is huge anyway. Critics praised the exploration and the characters, and they also pointed at the filler content, which mostly lives in the early areas. It was one of the most successful games released by BioWare, and story DLC kept it going after launch. The series came back with The Veilguard in October 2024.

Watch Dogs is set in a Chicago where one computer network, ctOS, controls almost all of the city's technology. You play a hacker named Aiden, and the whole idea is using the city as your weapon. Ubisoft worked on it for over five years. The developers visited Chicago for field research, and the hacking features were created in consultation with the security company Kaspersky Lab.

It broke the record for the biggest first-day sales of any Ubisoft game. Brian Reitzell wrote the score and infused it with krautrock, a strange and very good choice for a game about phones. The landmarks only resemble the real ones, since paying for the artistic rights would have tripled the budget. The series continued with Watch Dogs 2 in November 2016 and Watch Dogs: Legion in October 2020.

FromSoftware wanted to create an open-world game based on Dark Souls, and Elden Ring is that game. Hidetaka Miyazaki directed it, with world-building contributions from novelist George R. R. Martin. It came out on February 25, 2022, on PS4 as well as PS5. You play one of the Tarnished, crossing the Lands Between to restore the Elden Ring and become the Elden Lord.

The bosses are as hard as you have heard. The difference from Dark Souls is the more open-ended structure: when a fight is too much, you can ride off, explore somewhere else and come back stronger. Critics praised the open world above all, and it won several Game of the Year awards. It has sold over 30 million copies, and an expansion in June 2024 sold over ten million copies on its own.

Arkham Knight is the final installment in Rocksteady's Arkham series, a direct sequel to Arkham City that took four years to make. Scarecrow unites Gotham's criminals to destroy Batman, and a new villain called the Arkham Knight helps him. The key addition is the Batmobile, which you drive through the city and use in fights. Batman can still glide all over Gotham with his cape, and the grapnel now lets him switch directions during a glide.

The PS4 version was in far better shape than the PC one, which Warner Bros. temporarily pulled from sale. Critics called it a satisfying end to the series, with complaints about the Batmobile's combat and the requirement for 100% completion to see the full ending. It was the fastest-selling game of 2015. John Noble voiced Scarecrow, and he is very good at sounding like a man who wants to gas a city.

Shadow of Mordor fills the 60-year gap between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. You play Talion, an ordinary man who loses everything, including his mortal life. Monolith based the combat on the Batman: Arkham series, and the developers consulted Tolkien scholars from Warner Bros, as well as Peter Jackson, to stay true to the books.

People still talk about it because of the Nemesis system. Every orc has his own name and rank. If one survives a fight with you, he will remember the player and change his tactics and what he says the next time you meet. Warner Bros. patented the system, and it has never been used in any other game except the sequel, Shadow of War. Critics gave most of their praise to the combat and the Nemesis System, and it won Game of the Year awards.

Techland started Dying Light in early 2012, after it finished Dead Island. It is a first-person survival game in a city overrun by a vicious outbreak. During the day you scavenge for supplies and craft weapons. At night the infected become aggressive, and the predators that only appear after sundown come looking for you. The PS3 version was cancelled due to hardware limitations, so this one needed the PS4.

Critics praised the combat and the day and night cycle, and found the story weak. Players did not care much. It broke the record for first-month sales of a new survival horror series and sold 20 million units by April 2022. Techland kept supporting it for years, starting with The Following expansion in February 2016. Players call it a solid pick, and the four-player co-op is the best way to play it.

Death Stranding is the first game from Kojima Productions after the split from Konami in 2015. Norman Reedus plays Sam Porter Bridges, a courier delivering supplies to isolated colonies across a post-apocalyptic United States and linking them to a wireless network. Mads Mikkelsen and Léa Seydoux are in it too, and Guillermo del Toro lends his likeness to a supporting character.

Kojima calls it the first "strand game", a new genre built on social elements. You never meet other players, but the things they build can turn up in your world, and finding a stranger's help on a hard route is a lovely surprise. Critics praised the voice acting and the soundtrack, with more mixed opinions on the gameplay and story. It came out on PS4 in November 2019, and a sequel followed in June 2025.

Final Fantasy XV began in 2006 as a PlayStation 3 spin-off called Final Fantasy Versus XIII, with Tetsuya Nomura directing. After six years it became the next main game, Hajime Tabata replaced Nomura as director, and it moved to the new consoles. It finally came out in November 2016. You play Noctis, the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Lucis, on a road trip with his closest friends to take back his homeland.

Each friend has a skill that levels up with use. Gladiolus gets better at survival the farther the party travels in a day. Ignis cooks meals from what you buy or find, and his meals grant stat boosts to the party. Critics praised the gameplay and the soundtrack and were mixed on the story. DLC kept arriving until 2019, and it has sold ten million units, one of the best-selling Final Fantasy games of all time.

No Man's Sky was made over three years by a small team at Hello Games, with publishing help from Sony. Its universe holds over 18 quintillion planets, all procedurally generated. You explore star systems, gather resources and trade with alien species, while a story about a mysterious entity called the Atlas pulls you toward the centre of the galaxy.

The 2016 launch went badly. Features people expected were missing, multiplayer most of all, and Hello Games went quiet for months. Then the studio kept working on it. Free updates have added multiplayer and base building, and later virtual reality support too. The game on the PS4 today is far bigger than the one that came out. Players recommend it to anyone who wants to explore at their own pace.

Fallout 4 came out on November 10, 2015. You are the sole survivor of Vault 111, stepping into a world destroyed by nuclear war. It is the first Fallout with a fully voiced protagonist. The world mixes 1940s and 1950s American style, diners and drive-in theaters included, with technology that went where people of that era imagined it would.

The big new idea is settlements. You scavenge materials from the world and use them to build and furnish towns or upgrade your weapons and armor. The game does not end once the main story is complete. It shipped 12 million units, which made US$750 million within the first 24 hours. Critics praised the player freedom, while fans of the older games found the role-playing simplified. Far Harbor and Nuka-World are the expansions to get.

Days Gone was Bend Studio's first open-world project and its first original series since Syphon Filter in 1999. You play Deacon St. John, a drifter and bounty hunter in Oregon two years after a pandemic turned a large part of humanity into Freakers. Deacon's motorcycle is everything. You upgrade it and ride it across a map full of enemy camps and dynamic events.

Reviews were mixed. Critics disliked the mission design and the technical issues, and they praised the graphics, the AI and Sam Witwer's performance as Deacon. Many players say they enjoyed it a lot anyway. It sold 7.32 million units by February 2022. The team pitched a sequel to Sony, and Sony said no. A remastered version came to PS5 in April 2025.

The Phantom Pain was Hideo Kojima's final work at Konami. It replaces the linear corridors of the older Metal Gear games with large open world environments, and you pick your own way into each base. A day and night cycle and the weather change what the guards can see and hear. You can carry enemy soldiers off the battlefield to your headquarters, Mother Base, and they become your army.

It came out on September 1, 2015. Critics praised the gameplay and the open world, and it is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. The story divided critics, and so did the character Quiet. A companion app let you manage Mother Base from your phone, which felt like the future at the time. The Definitive Experience bundle with Ground Zeroes followed in October 2016.

Second Son is a standalone sequel to Infamous 2. You play Delsin Rowe in a locked-down Seattle, where the Department of Unified Protection hunts down and cages superhumans. Delsin can take the powers of other Conduits, so the way you get around the city keeps changing. Sucker Punch set it in its hometown and drew on its own experiences of Seattle for the open world.

The studio was very involved with the PS4 hardware itself and gave Sony feedback on what it wanted. It runs at 1080p and 30 frames per second. Critics praised the combat and the visuals, though some found the morality system dated and binary and the side missions repetitive. It sold over a million units within nine days and six million by June 2019.

GTA V reached the PS4 in November 2014, a year after the PS3 version. You roam Los Santos, a city based on Los Angeles, plus the countryside of San Andreas, on foot or by vehicle, in third or first person. The big change is three lead protagonists, and outside of missions you can switch between them at will. Team members did field research around California to get the map right.

It broke industry sales records and earned $1 billion in its first three days, the fastest-selling entertainment product in history. Critics praised the multiple-protagonist design and the open world. It has been on sale for so long that people bought it on three generations of PlayStation. Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled for November 2026, and until then this is still the one to play.

Sucker Punch wanted to move on from Infamous and make a game with a heavy emphasis on melee combat. You play Jin Sakai, a samurai protecting Tsushima Island during the first Mongol invasion of Japan. The team visited the island twice and was heavily inspired by samurai cinema, particularly the films of Akira Kurosawa. You can face enemies directly with Jin's katana or use stealth to take them out one at a time.

It came out on PS4 in July 2020, near the end of the console's life, and the Director's Cut with the Iki Island expansion followed in August 2021. Critics praised the melee combat and the music and were less sure about the stealth. It had sold over 13 million units by September 2024. Players put it on their PS4 must-play lists right next to Spider-Man and God of War.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a prequel to the 2010 game Red Dead Redemption. You play Arthur Morgan of the Van der Linde gang, on the run across America at the dawn of the modern age. Development lasted over eight years, and Rockstar put all of its studios onto one large team. It was Rockstar's first game built specifically for eighth-generation consoles, after the studio tested the hardware by porting GTA V.

Rockstar wanted you to feel like you are living in a world rather than playing missions. Critics praised the level of detail, and some disliked the controls and the emphasis on realism over player freedom. It made US$725 million in its opening weekend and won more than 175 Game of the Year awards. For a lot of players it is the obvious answer when someone asks what to play on PS4.

Marvel's Spider-Man was the first licensed game in Insomniac's then-22-year history, and it took about four years to make. It tells an original story, and the team skipped the origin since they figured everyone already knew it. Peter Parker, voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, is a 23-year-old research assistant when Mister Negative threatens to release a deadly virus on the city.

The web-swinging is the reason it sits this high. Critics praised it along with the combat and the music. The team designed the game to be as much Peter's story as Spider-Man's, and his civilian life is never far from the fights. Doctor Octopus turns up too. A remaster came to PS5 in November 2020 alongside the Miles Morales spin-off, and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 followed in October 2023.

Horizon Zero Dawn was Guerrilla Games' first new series since Killzone in 2004, and director Mathijs de Jonge considered it the riskiest of the ideas pitched. It is set in a post-apocalyptic United States where large robotic machines dominate the Earth and humans live in primitive tribes. You play Aloy, a young machine hunter, trying to work out how the world ended up like this.

Guerrilla consulted anthropologists on how the old world should decay and robotics experts on the machine designs. It came out in February 2017. Some critics found the role-playing mechanics thin, and it still won a British Academy Games Award and sold over 24 million units. The Frozen Wilds expansion arrived in November 2017, and the sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, followed in February 2022.

The Witcher 3 is the third game in the series, an open-world action RPG from CD Projekt Red. You play Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter searching for his adopted daughter, Ciri, while wars and worse go on around him. The world is based on Slavic folklore, with Central and Northern European cultures behind it. Development lasted three and a half years, and it came out on PS4 in May 2015.

Your choices branch the story, and the side quests get as much care as the main one. Its two expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, were acclaimed on their own. It holds more than 200 game of the year awards and has sold over 65 million units. When players are asked to name one PS4 game, this is the one they reach for first.