Summary
A plethora of open-world video games are available on the Xbox One. As such, it can be difficult to narrow down which game to play next, as the sub-genre of gaming is being flooded with new titles across a multitude of genres due to its rapidly increasing popularity and presence at the top of gaming sales charts.
But which one of these games has the biggest world to be explored? From the frozen plains ofSkyrimto the wastes of post-apocalyptic West Virginia, there are manylarge open-world maps available on Xbox One.
Updated on July 06, 2025, by Mehrdad Khayyat:Being an open-world game is not just about creating a massive map and scaling things up pointlessly. It always comes with a bigger responsibility for the developers to not only add details to every corner of the map but also reward players for exploring it.
Maps in video games, however, have sometimes gone too big, which makes exploring every bit of it almost impossible, though that also promises a non-repetitive experience to enrich the explorations. However, that’s not always required.
WhereasElden RingandForza Horizon 5are still fairly recent,Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Painhit stores back in September 2015. Despite releasing so early in the Xbox One’s lifecycle, the game offers a visually stunning open world that is a joy to simply ride across on a horse, provided no enemies get in the way.
Many people were skeptical as to how wellthe iconic stealth serieswould adapt to modern open-world game design, though the development team did a fantastic job of blending the two inherently opposing genres.
27L.A. Noire
8 Square Miles
Rockstar’s open-world detective simulator was one of the greatest hits when it launched globally on PC and the seventh generation of consoles, and hopefully, it did reserve enough value for the studio to deliver a remaster on Xbox One and PS4 later on.
The map size inL.A. Noiremight not be as big as that ofGrand Theft Auto 5, but it was indeed big enough to roam around and find street crimes in. This expansive map had multiple districts representing different cultures and styles of living. That being said, the exploration inL.A. Noirewas not as rewarding as that of the laterGrand Theft Autotitles.
The first entry in theWatch Dogsseries brought the darkest and most intense story as well. Although the series might have been paused by Ubisoft at the moment, Aiden Pearce still remains a memorable character.
Watch Dogswas one of the few games that let go of the highly canonized cities in the US, like Los Angeles or New York, and built its world based on Chicago. The game did a great job in recreating Chicago’s metropolitan area, and the map size was also big enough for players to roam around and visit a variety of unique locations.
That being said, the game lacked enough side activities offered in the city, which made roaming around in Chicago almost pointless.
Released in November 2020,Immortals Fenyx Risingis an open-world action-adventure game set in Ancient Greece, where the world has been turned to stone. Mechanically and visually,Immortalsshares a lot in common withThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Coming from the developers ofAssassin’s Creed: Odyssey,it shares quite a bit of its DNA with that series, too. Its open-world environment is huge and a lot of fun to explore, with tons of side quests and content to discover. Thanks to itsMyths of the Eastern RealmDLC,Immortalshas gotten even bigger, with the game taking its players to a new map that features mythological China.
Everybody and their grandma knows aboutThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. It was late 2011, and the world had the pleasure of playing one of the biggest Bethesda games on the planet. This is undoubtedly an aged game, but truth be told, it still holds up.
Skyrimis a detailed game full of random encounters, upgrade options, and missions, making it a real RPG experience for a lot of people. What makes all of this better is the fact that it has one of the biggest open worlds on the Xbox One.
Fallout 76was also developed by Bethesda but stands out for being an online action RPG. This means that the open world can be experienced with friends, family, or strangers, just like real life — well, in a way.
It also needs an exact time and money investment, which makes the experience even more realistic. But, jokes aside, this is a game that will likely keep receiving new content for many years, making its already big open world even more vibrant with time.
Fallout 4was a mixed bag for many players. Some people loved the Commonwealth and the addition of a voiced protagonist, while others felt that thestreamlined RPG mechanicsmade the game feel a bit more casual than it should’ve been.
Regardless, the improvements made to theFalloutformula by Bethesda shouldn’t be ignored.Fallout 4can allow for a great time once players let the game breathe and explore the wealth of astounding locations present in the title, and doing so can take a great deal of time.
While some people were initially disappointed that the world of Night City and its outskirts was nowhere near as massive as the open world ofThe Witcher 3,Cyberpunk 2077more than made up for it by letting players explore one of the most dense and jam-packed open-world games of all time. After all the bugs were ironed out and new content was added to the game, players could check out the gloriousness of Night City for themselves without anything standing in the way.
Cyberpunk 2077features a massive urban landscape that players can get lost in for hours on end, with the sheer wealth of things to accomplish in this game is mind-boggling. Players won’t even notice the hours fly by as they progress through the main story, complete numerous side missions, help out Fixers, obtain new vehicles, and find every secret there is to discover in this open world.
The third installment in theMafiaseries delivered the largest map ever in the franchise’s history. Depicting the fictional city of New Bordeaux in the United States, the map featured a good variety of distinct areas. From downtown neighborhoods packed with skyscrapers to swampy regions on the south of New Bordeaux.
Probably the reason whyMafia 3’s map didn’t feel big enough was a lack of density. Although the map size is almost as big as half of Los Santos inGrand Theft Auto 5, it still feels way smaller when the player roams around the city. It is also worth noting that some parts of the map cannot be traveled by a vehicle as the player must proceed on foot. The lack of meaningful non-quest activities that players can do in New Bordeaux, is another reason that makes it feel empty.
Red Dead Redemption 2is one of thegreatest open-world gamesever made. Rockstar Games truly knocked it out of the park with this title, proving to players once again that they still have all the chops of a major AAA studio despite the majority of their efforts going into updatingGTA Online.
The story of Arthur Morgan is a brilliant one, with the world being unbelievably massive. In fact, the areas present in the firstRed Dead Redemptiontitle can’t even be explored until the epilogue, which is just a huge flex from Rockstar.
