Curated playlist

Open-world video games

Assassin's Creed started out as a Prince of Persia sequel, and then the prince was removed from it. Many open-world games changed shape during development. The Elder Scrolls began as a gladiator game about arena tournaments, and side quests slowly took over. Ultima IV dropped the hero-versus-villain plot and sent players after eight virtues. Dragon's Dogma was the first open-world idea ever pitched for a Capcom title, and executives doubted it. Elden Ring had a backstory written by George R. R. Martin. Final Fantasy XV sold five million units in a single day.

Assassin's CreedAssassin's Creed began as a Prince of Persia sequel with the prince cut out.
Assassin's Creed IIIAssassin's Creed III went on sale in North America on the 30th of October 2012 with a secret that its own advertising kept from players. Every promotion showed Connor, a half-Mohawk Assassin. The game itself, however, opened with Haytham…
Red Dead RedemptionRed Dead Redemption is a 2010 Western from Rockstar San Diego, and it opens with a man who has run out of choices. In 1911, federal agents take the wife and son of a former outlaw named John Marston. The price of their freedom is his skill…
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the KingdomIn The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, fusing a rocket to a shield is enough to send Link soaring through the air. That one trick says a great deal about this 2023 action-adventure game for the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo EPD built it…
Grand Theft Auto: San AndreasGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a 2004 action-adventure game from Rockstar North, gave players one of the most repeated lines in gaming. Early in the story, a mission called "Wrong Side of the Tracks" goes badly, and Big Smoke shouts, "All…
Fallout (franchise)In the Fallout franchise, the world ends in a two-hour nuclear exchange on the morning of the 23rd of October 2077, eastern daylight time. Everything in the series grows from the wreckage. Fallout is an American media franchise of…
Grand Theft AutoGrand Theft Auto was voted one of Britain's top 10 designs in 2006. It sat beside Concorde and the Spitfire.
Grand Theft Auto VThree days after Grand Theft Auto V reached stores in September 2013, it had passed one billion dollars in sales. No entertainment product in history had reached that mark faster. The game came from Rockstar North and was published by…
Red Dead Redemption 2Red Dead Redemption 2 is a 2018 action-adventure game from Rockstar Games that puts the player in the boots of Arthur Morgan, an outlaw living in the year 1899. The frontier he knows is closing. Government forces, rival gangs and the march…
Grand Theft Auto: Vice CityGrand Theft Auto: Vice City, a 2002 action-adventure game from Rockstar North, sold more than 500,000 copies within 24 hours of its release. Within two days it had reached 1.4 million, which made it the fastest-selling game in history at…
Assassin's Creed IV: Black FlagAssassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the sixth major installment in its series, hands the player a stolen ship and a Welsh pirate named Edward Kenway. Early in the story, Edward captures a brig called the Jackdaw from a Spanish fleet and makes…
Fallout 3Fallout 3 is a 2008 action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, and it begins with a 19-year-old leaving the shelter where they grew up. Vault 101 is a high-tech fallout shelter, built for survivors of a nuclear war fought 200…
Horizon (video game series)Horizon is a science fiction game series from the Amsterdam studio Guerrilla Games, and by November 2025 it had sold over 40 million units worldwide. That figure places it among Sony's best-selling first-party properties. Its setting is…
Assassin's Creed UnityIn the streets of Assassin's Creed Unity, a single crowd can hold up to 1000 individual characters. Each one acts on its own and reacts to its neighbors and to the player. Ubisoft Montreal built that spectacle for its 2014 entry in the…
Grand Theft Auto IVGrand Theft Auto IV sold more than 3.6 million copies in the first twenty-four hours after its release in 2008. That worked out to roughly 310 million dollars in revenue. The game came from Rockstar North and Rockstar Games, and it centres…
Assassin's Creed IIAssassin's Creed II is a 2009 action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the sequel to the 2007 game Assassin's Creed. Its hero is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young man in Renaissance Italy. His…
The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimA modder made Falskaar for Skyrim as a job application to Bethesda. Bungie hired him instead.
Fallout (video game)Fallout, the 1997 role-playing game from Interplay Productions, opens with a narrator voiced by the actor Ron Perlman. In 2026 he recalled that the job paid "40 dollars and a sandwich." It is a modest origin for a game that players and…
Assassin's Creed (video game)Assassin's Creed, the 2007 action-adventure game from Ubisoft Montreal, almost shipped with only its main assassination missions. About five days before the team was due to send the final version off for mass production, their CEO…
Grand Theft Auto IIIGrand Theft Auto III began with an art director's complaint about the games of his day. Aaron Garbut felt that most of them were "a thing you played". He wanted this one to be "a place you lived in". The core team behind that ambition was…
Yakuza (franchise)By 2024, Sega reported that the Yakuza series, known in Japan as Like a Dragon, had sold a combined 27.7 million units since its debut in 2005. Those buyers were playing games about organized crime. In the same games they could also sing…
Fallout: New VegasFallout: New Vegas, a 2010 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, was built on a schedule that journalists called remarkably short for a major release. Publisher Bethesda Softworks allowed the studio 18 months. The game…
PUBG: BattlegroundsPUBG: Battlegrounds, a battle royale video game from 2017, once had 2,279,084 people playing it on Steam at the same moment. It reached that peak while still officially unfinished, listed as an early access title. The game began as a…
Marvel's Spider-Man (video game)Marvel's Spider-Man, released for the PlayStation 4 on the 7th of September 2018, sold 3.3 million units in its first three days. That figure includes copies bundled with consoles. It made the game the fastest-selling first-party release…
Assassin's Creed OdysseyAssassin's Creed Odyssey, a 2018 action role-playing game from Ubisoft Quebec, begins its family tragedy on the slopes of Mount Taygetos. A Spartan elder is about to throw an infant off the mountain. The Pythia has declared that the child,…
Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth was released on Leap Day, the 29th of February 2024. Square Enix chose that date deliberately.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight PrincessThe Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a 2006 action-adventure game from Nintendo, owes part of its identity to a strange dream. Its director, Eiji Aonuma, dreamed during an overseas business trip that he was a wolf locked inside a cage.…
Final Fantasy XIII-2In Final Fantasy XIII-2, Serah and Noel jump between eras to repair paradoxes in time.
Fallout 4Fallout 4 begins on the 23rd of October 2077, the day the nuclear bombs fall. The 2015 action role-playing game comes from Bethesda Game Studios, and it is the fourth main entry in the Fallout series. Earlier games in the series start long…
Final Fantasy XVFinal Fantasy XV shipped five million units in one day. Square Enix said that covered its development costs.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIIIn Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning has thirteen days to save the world.
Death StrandingDeath Stranding is a 2019 video game in which a courier named Sam Porter Bridges crosses a wrecked United States on foot, carrying a premature baby in a pod. The baby is not cargo. It is a tool, a companion and, as the story unfolds,…
Batman: Arkham CityThe blueprints for Batman: Arkham City were hidden in a secret room inside the warden's office of Batman: Arkham Asylum, the game that came before it. Rocksteady Studios planted those hints in the 2009 original while that game was still…
Horizon Zero DawnIn Horizon Zero Dawn, a 2017 game from Guerrilla Games and Sony, an infant is found before a sealed door inside a sacred mountain. She grows up as Aloy, an outcast of the Nora tribe, raised by a fellow outcast named Rost. Her world is a…
Batman: Arkham KnightBatman: Arkham Knight is a 2015 action-adventure game made by Rocksteady Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It opens on Halloween night, as Gotham City's six million civilians are evacuated. Only criminals…
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom PainMetal Gear Solid V was first announced as an indie game from a fake Swedish studio. Kojima's team made it.
Final Fantasy XIIFinal Fantasy XII lets players program their characters to fight on their own. It drew on American football plays.
The Elder ScrollsThe Elder Scrolls began as a gladiator game about arena tournaments. Side quests grew as the tournaments shrank.
Elden RingGeorge R. R. Martin wrote Elden Ring's backstory, not its in-game story. Some critics found his role unclear.
Grand Theft Auto OnlineGrand Theft Auto Online went live on the 1st of October 2013 and asked its players to start as nobodies in the state of San Andreas. The state is fictional and based on Southern California. Up to 30 players can share its open world at the…
Death Stranding 2: On the BeachHideo Kojima, the director of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, responded to glowing playtest results by tearing up part of his own script. Roughly halfway through development, audiences testing the game liked it a great deal. Kojima told…
Fallout 76Fallout 76 first reached the public through a twenty-four-hour Twitch stream on the 30th of May 2018. The picture never changed. A Vault Boy bobblehead toy sat in front of a monitor showing a “Please Stand By” test pattern, a signature…
MinecraftMinecraft, the 2011 sandbox game from the Swedish company Mojang Studios, tells its only story through a poem of roughly 1,500 words. The End Poem was written by the Irish novelist Julian Gough. It scrolls past in about nine minutes when a…
Assassin's Creed OriginsAssassin's Creed Origins is a 2017 action role-playing game from Ubisoft Montreal, and the tenth major installment in its series. Its setting was a reversal. Ancient Egypt was among the places fans of the series requested most often, and…
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of TimeThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time holds an average score of 99/100 on Metacritic, the highest of any game on that review aggregator. Nintendo developed and published it for the Nintendo 64, and it was the first Zelda game built in three…
Ghost of YōteiGhost of Yōtei, a 2025 action-adventure game from Sucker Punch Productions, begins with its heroine as a girl pinned against a burning ginkgo tree by her own father's katana. Her family has been slaughtered. Her home has been destroyed.…
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had sold 34.51 million copies by March 2025. That made it the bestselling Zelda game and one of the bestselling video games ever. It is a 2017 action-adventure from Nintendo EPD, built for the Wii U…
World of WarcraftVice summed up World of Warcraft in 2019 with a single sentence. "Most people," it wrote, "know someone who's said they were 'addicted' to World of Warcraft." The game came from Blizzard Entertainment, which released it for Windows and…
The Witcher 3: Wild HuntWhen The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched in 2015, Poland's prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, and its president, Bronisław Komorowski, visited the studio behind it. That studio was CD Projekt Red, and the game was an open-world action role-playing…
Marvel's Spider-Man 2Marvel's Spider-Man 2 sold more than 2.5 million copies in its first 24 hours, the fastest start of any game from PlayStation Studios. Insomniac Games made the action-adventure for Sony Interactive Entertainment, and it reached the…