The Longest Running Open-World Game Franchises

Key Takeaways

• The Forza Horizon series evolved from racetrack to urban streets, offering diverse locations and crazy challenges.
• The Driver series stood out with immersive 3D action but faltered in later entries, losing open-world format in 2011.
• The Far Cry franchise pioneered open-world FPS, but formula may be growing stale for some fans despite rich game worlds.

Developers have tried to give players open worlds to roam around in since the arcade days. It has been achieved in multiple ways, from first-person adventures to top-down exploration, be it in 2D or 3D. Some games have pushed the genre ahead through a handful of entries. Others have been doing it for decades, becoming some of the longest-running open-world game franchises.

To determine which franchises have been running the longest, this list comes with some rules. Each series must have five entries minimum (so no Crackdown or Prototype). It also starts with the first open-world game in the series, so the first Far Cry, beings a standard FPS, doesn’t count, but Far Cry 2 does, so its run starts with that game. Then it ends with their most recent game, including confirmed sequels in development.

10

Forza Horizon

Racing Free For 9 Years

• First Game: Forza Horizon (2012).
• Latest Game: Forza Horizon 5 (2021).

Spinning off from the Forza Motorsport series, Forza Horizon took its cars off the racetrack and onto the streets. Players had to contend with traffic and other racers to pull off enough stunts, complete enough activities, and win enough races to get ahead in the Horizon Festival. The more popular they become, the more challenges and events they can unlock, including racing against planes and helicopters.

Since its inception, the series has let players race around all sorts of locations, from fictional recreations of Colorado and Australia to realistic depictions of the French Riviera and Edinburgh, Scotland. All has been quiet since the release of Forza Horizon 5 in 2021, though with its success, it’s hard to imagine the series will be left dormant for long.

9

Driver

Stuck In The Pits After 12 Years Running

• First Game: Driver (1999).
• Latest Game: Driver: Renegade (2011).

Everyone today knows Grand Theft Auto hit it big, but its success wasn’t always guaranteed. Those first two top-down 2D games looked ancient next to Driver. It lets the player drive around recreations of Miami, San Francisco, L.A., and New York (and Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the PC version) freely, pulling off different road-based jobs for one NPC or another. If they got past the surprisingly difficult tutorial, that is.

The action was behind the wheel, upfront, and in full 3D. Driver 2 improved on things by going international, visiting Havana and Rio de Janeiro, and let the player get out of the car to nab other vehicles. However, the series lost its mojo right when the rushed and buggy Driv3r came out, becoming a fiasco instead of a front-runner. Despite its improved follow-ups, they weren’t enough to keep the series going in an open-world format beyond 2011.

8

Far Cry

Doing The Same Thing Over And Over Again For 13 Years

• First Open World Game: Far Cry 2 (2008).
• Latest Game: Far Cry 6 (2021).

The original Far Cry from 2004 was open-ended, though not quite an open world, as it lacked side activities, and its console version, Far Cry: Instincts, was even more linear. So, Far Cry 2 took off the floaties and let players wander all over its African-set game world, giving them plenty of side objectives to complete alongside the main story missions.

It’s since become the premier open world first-person shooter, letting players blast it out from the tropical jungles to the woods of Montana. Though after Far Cry 3 caught on with its gameplay and charming, sociopathic villains, there are a chunk of fans who feel each follow-up has been running the same formula. It might not be broken, though it can get worn out, and those fans are getting more tired out by this series.

7

Saints Row

From Gangster To Goofy In 16 Years

• First Game: Saints Row (2006).
• Latest Game: Saints Row (2022).

As the opening to Saints Row 4 suggests, Volition’s series was seen as a “pretender to the throne”. The first game, Saints Row, was seen as a decent GTA clone that could keep players occupied until the real GTA came to the then-next generation of consoles. Then, when some of them didn’t like GTA 4’s dour narrative direction, the wilder, more wacky Saints Row 2 was there to take them back. Then Volition turned up the crazy dial in Saints Row the Third.

The game traded out the gangster edge and creative options for murder-based gameshows and suspiciously shaped bats. Saint’s Row 4 went even further by throwing in superpowers, aliens, and dubstep guns into the mix. The 2022 reboot tried to ground the series again, but without the edge or the craziness, it ended up being a bland experience at best, and an annoying one at worst, thanks to its dull characters. It’s a sad note for the series to go out on.

6

Assassin’s Creed

18 Years Of Assassinations

• First Game: Assassin’s Creed (2007).
• Latest Game: Assassin’s Creed: Shadows (delayed to February 2025).

If Far Cry is the definitive open-world FPS, and Forza Horizon the main open-world racer, the Assassin’s Creed games are the definitive historical open-world series. It does have an overarching plot involving the present, shady corporations, and futuristic sci-fi tech, though they’re background dressing compared to the series’ main settings.

Whether players are controlling Altair, Ezio, Edward Kenway, or others, the games have always been about sneaking past foes and parkouring over obstacles to assassinate key targets or complete other objectives. The Assassin’s Creed games have replicated the likes of Renaissance Italy and Dark Ages England in rich detail, making them as much a joy to explore as the gameplay itself. The next game, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, aims to do the same with Sengoku-era Japan via its new leads, Yasuke and Naoe.

5

Dead Rising

18 Years Of Undead Fun

• First Game: Dead Rising (2006).
• Latest Game: Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster (2024).

If the Deluxe Remaster hadn’t come out, the Dead Rising series would be 8 years shorter. The original game tempered the player’s temptations to race around Williamette Mall, slaughtering zombies with makeshift weapons, by giving them tight time management-based objectives and survivors to rescue. If they didn’t complete them on time, they’d end up with one of the game’s bad endings.

The sequels changed settings and protagonists, like Dead Rising 2’s Chuck Greene and Dead Rising 3’s Nick Ramos. However, it was Dead Rising 4’s return to Frank West and Williamette that finished the series off, as its faltering sales put an end to its developers, Capcom Vancouver. The Deluxe Remaster now seeks to bring the series back to life with some quality-of-life improvements, and judging by the reception, it’s working out well.

4

Yakuza/Like A Dragon

Going From Strength To Strength Over 20 Years

• First Game: Yakuza (2005).
• Latest Game: Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (February 2025).

The Yakuza/Like a Dragon series has had an interesting life. It spent half its life as a success in Japan, but as a cult classic in the West, where it was barely holding on sales-wise for Sega to bother localizing the series. Yakuza 5 took three years to reach the West, and even then, it was a digital-only release.

Then Yakuza 0 was released, with Atlus localizing the proceedings, and the series suddenly became a hit. The older games were re-released, remade, and re-localized for modern systems, producing a new legion of fans that made it a global success in the latter half of its life. The newer mainline games are RPGs, but the brawling, open-world gameplay still lives on in Like A Dragon: IshinA, Like A Dragon Gaiden, and the Judgment games.

3

Grand Theft Auto

A 28-Year Long Joyride

• First Game: Grand Theft Auto (1997).
• Latest Game: Grand Theft Auto 6 (planned for 2025).

Yakuza’s flagging early years weren’t helped by its marketing as a Grand Theft Auto clone in the wake of games like True Crime and Mafia, when it’s more like Shenmue. The reason the GTA clones caught on was because GTA itself practically reinvented the genre in its own image. Players liked roaming around cities causing chaos, and they wanted more of that experience.

That said, it took until GTA 3 for the series to catch on, as it brought the experience to life in full, proper 3D. The first two games offered the same havoc, courting deliberate controversy with its carnage, but they were 2D, top-down, and much more fiddly experiences. In 3D, GTA was much more manageable, and it became the benchmark that other crime-based open-world games were measured against.

32 Years Of Fantasy

• First Game: The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994).
• Latest Game: The Elder Scrolls 6 (planned for 2026).

After 13 years of updating, expanding, and tweaking Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls series will finally move onto its 6th mainline game…eventually. The tentatively named Elders Scrolls 6 is earmarked for a 2026 release, perhaps making it the next eagerly anticipated game after the equally long-awaited GTA 6. However, TES beat GTA to the punch by making Tamriel an open world in its first outing, The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Well, to a degree anyway.

The world was procedurally generated, so players had to use fast travel to go from town to town, otherwise they’d be wandering the wilderness for an eternity. However, they could still play side missions alongside taking on the main dungeons ,and contend with the game’s day/night cycle, where the monsters rise as the sun sets. It was a vast world to explore, and it’s only gotten bigger since then through its many sequels.

1

The Legend Of Zelda

A Legend 38 Years In The Making

• First Game: The Legend of Zelda (1986).
• Latest Game: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (2024).

The Legend of Zelda? Open world? Even before Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom? Well, yes. Even the top-down games let players progress at their own pace, choosing which dungeon they wanted to tackle first, which secrets to seek out, and which quests they wanted to take. It’s been the formula for every game in the series ever since, even the CD-I ones.

If anything, The Legend of Zelda set the template for modern 3D open-world games via Ocarina of Time. From its sidequests and upgrades to its collectibles and minigames, the series’ DNA can be seen in the other entries on this list and beyond. It might also be why it’s endured for so long, appealing to each generation with each step ahead it’s taken.