Open-World Game History: From Elite and Zelda to GTA and Elden Ring
The history and design of open-world games, from Elite and The Legend of Zelda to GTA III, The Elder Scrolls, Breath of the Wild, and Elden Ring.
An open world is less a genre than a way of structuring a game world. Instead of clearing stages one by one in a set order, it's a design that lets players roam a broad, connected world in whatever order and manner they like. Today many genres use this approach, from action and RPGs to racing and survival games.
In this post, we look at the definition of open world and how it differs from sandbox, early works of the 1980s, the move to 3D in the 1990s, the era of large-scale open worlds after GTA III, and the recent shift toward systems-driven design. We also include a table of key titles and a summary of design challenges.
What Is an Open World?
An open-world game offers a large, nonlinear space with multiple paths to reach its goals. It leaves more room for exploration than a structure made of a series of short levels, and when evaluating one, a key question is whether there are interesting ways to interact with the world even when the player sets the main objective aside.
A similar term is "sandbox," but the meaning is slightly different.
- Open world: Refers to where you can go, that is, freedom of exploration.
- Sandbox: Refers to what you can do, that is, freedom of tools and creation.
For example, a flight simulator lets you fly anywhere on the map, so it's close to an open world, but it has few creative elements, so it isn't called a sandbox. In games that have both qualities, "emergent gameplay" often occurs, where simple rules interlock to create situations even the developers didn't anticipate.
Origins: Open Worlds of the 1980s
There is no agreed answer as to which game was the first open world, since it depends on the definition. Still, a few titles come up often.
The 1976 text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure let players freely wander a cave described in text. Elite, created by David Braben and Ian Bell in 1984, used procedural generation to fit thousands of planets, trading, and combat into a tiny amount of memory, and showed the freedom of drifting through space without a fixed goal.
In Japan, Hydlide (1984) is cited as an action RPG that rewarded exploration, and Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda (1986) as a game of freely exploring a broad, connected world. The Legend of Zelda influenced many later games to adopt open worlds. On the computer side, the Ultima series showed RPGs with wide fields to travel, and Mercenary (1985) is mentioned as an early example of a 3D open-world action-adventure.
The 1990s: Worlds Go 3D
In the 1990s, open spaces became three-dimensional along with 3D graphics.
- The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996, Bethesda): Used procedural generation to create an enormous area and emphasized the freedom to live as whatever character the player wanted.
- Super Mario 64 (1996, Nintendo): Presented the feel of freely roaming 3D space with analog stick and camera controls. Rather than one big world, it consisted of several open courses, but it set the standard for 3D exploration.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, Nintendo): Connected wide fields and dungeons in 3D.
- Shenmue (1999, Sega): Recreated a town with day and night, changing weather, and voiced residents going about their routines, and is regarded as the starting point of the "open city" lineage.
Around the same time, DMA Design (now Rockstar North) launched a crime game about freely roaming a city with the top-down 2D Grand Theft Auto (1997).
After GTA III: The Era of Large Open Worlds
Grand Theft Auto III (2001) is the turning point most often cited in open-world history. It brought together elements of earlier games in a single 3D city, creating the experience of driving around, listening to the radio, and roaming the city regardless of the main missions. The developers named Elite, Ocarina of Time, and Super Mario 64 among their influences. For nearly a decade afterward, many similar "urban open-world" games followed.
Other branches also grew during this period.
- Fantasy RPGs: Bethesda's Morrowind (2002), Oblivion (2006), and Skyrim (2011) defined RPGs in which you could walk anywhere and try anything.
- Historical settings: Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed (2007) used real historical cities as its stage. Its mechanic of climbing tall towers to reveal the surrounding map spread to other Ubisoft series and many other games, earning the nickname "Ubisoft towers."
- Westerns: Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption (2010) was set in the American West.
- Sandbox: Mojang's Minecraft (full release 2011) offered creative freedom to build and break blocks in a procedurally generated, nearly endless world.
The Late 2010s Onward: From Checklists to Systems
By the mid-2010s, fatigue had grown with repetitive designs that had players clearing map icons one by one. Games took several different directions in response.
CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) raised the narrative density of even side quests. Hello Games' No Man's Sky (2016) used procedural generation to create a practically endless universe, but at launch it was criticized for repetitive activities and later added content through updates.
Among developers, Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) was called a turning point in open-world design. Instead of filling the map with tasks, it let players climb almost anything they could see and made physical and chemical rules like fire, wind, and electricity react to each other so players could find their own solutions. Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) offered meticulous world detail, and FromSoftware's Elden Ring (2022) combined a vast world with minimal guidance and high-difficulty combat.
Key Titles by Era at a Glance
| Year | Game | Developer | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Elite | David Braben, Ian Bell | A free universe built with procedural generation |
| 1986 | The Legend of Zelda | Nintendo | A classic of open-world exploration |
| 1996 | The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall | Bethesda | Huge procedural world and freedom of role |
| 1996 | Super Mario 64 | Nintendo | Standard for free 3D movement |
| 1999 | Shenmue | Sega | A living "open city" |
| 2001 | Grand Theft Auto III | DMA Design | Established the 3D urban open world |
| 2007 | Assassin's Creed | Ubisoft Montreal | Historical cities and tower-reveal structure |
| 2011 | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | Bethesda Game Studios | Popularized the fantasy open-world RPG |
| 2011 | Minecraft | Mojang | Sandbox and procedural worlds |
| 2017 | The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild | Nintendo | Systems-driven open world |
| 2022 | Elden Ring | FromSoftware | Low-guidance exploration and tough combat |
Challenges of Open-World Design
Creating a large world is different from simply making the land bigger. Here are challenges developers frequently face.
- Balancing freedom and story: Because you never know when or where players will go, stories are split into mission units or scattered across side quests.
- Guidance: Developers must decide whether to show the whole map from the start, let players discover it themselves from towers or high ground, or lead them naturally with eye-catching landmarks.
- Density: A large empty space is boring, while one packed with icons feels like homework. The spacing of things to see and do matters.
- Technology: For a seamless world without loading screens, games use "level streaming," which preloads data for areas the player approaches. Faster storage has made ever smoother worlds possible.
- Production scale: Filling every area by hand takes a lot of people and time. So teams also combine procedural generation to create some parts automatically with human polishing. With such a broad scope, bugs and rough edges are also more likely, which is another challenge.
Open Worlds Today
Today the open world is treated as something like the default for big-budget games. Not only action-adventures and RPGs but also racing, survival crafting, and online games often feature large worlds. At the same time, rather than simply going bigger, approaches that shrink the size and raise the density, or that generate things to do through interactions between rules as in Breath of the Wild, are drawing attention. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) continued this trend by extending the world into the sky and underground and adding the ability to build contraptions.
Starting from 1980s attempts to fit a universe into tiny amounts of memory, the open world has become a design that entrusts players with "where to go and what to do." Going forward, the key will lie not in size but in how well the world answers the player's curiosity.