Most visually impressive Open World game [WARNING: Massive Inlined Image Dumps]

ultragpu

Banned
Since Open World game is the trend these days and many of them look so beautiful that the graphics have reached some of the top looking linear titles if not better. I'd like to see how you would rank them in terms of overall visuals, which can include titles from both the upcoming and currently available. Also preferably with sufficient amount of media, you can't just claim Cyber Punk without a lick of an ingame screenshot :). Also game like Death Stranding is still missing a confirmed game type so best not to include it. Remember it's the most visually impressive so not the biggest, the most open or most interactive.
Here's mine.
1. Horizon Zero Dawn
Everything from its volumetric lighting, cloud sim, insanely dense foliage, giant zoids to the life like animations and attention to details is pure masterfully created. This is to me the new benchmark of Open World game graphics fidelity.
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2. Spiderman
Simply stunning lighting, animation and world density, quite an upgrade from even the linear and already impressive Ratchet & Clank!
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3. The Division PC Ultra
Its sheer geometry density, volumetric lighting and overall consistent visual puts it above a few near 3rd place competitors. The animation in this game could use some work tho.
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Some honorable mentions
* FFXV, really beautiful looking at places but it's largely inconsistent visually, the lows are just too low.
* Far Cry Primal, very beautiful foliage, furry Megafauna and lighting but very limited in variety.
* The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine, beautiful colorful world, lighting seems bit outdated (no volumetric) and terrible animation
* AC Unity, Batman AK and Mirror's Edge Catalyst are all impressive but just not consistently throughout.
* Infamous SS still looks good especially with HDR patch and higher res on the Pro
 
I still think GTAV should be up there with some of those games. I wondered a few times how FFXV would have looked (and played!) using the GTA engine.
 
ROTR is not a true Open World tho, it's sand box based at best. A stunning looking game no less.

There are 3 massive, areas that you can explore non-linearly, and then there's a bunch of other smaller areas.

But what constitutes open-world, then? There can only be a single area? If so, MGS V can't be considered open-world either, since there's Afghanistan, Angola, the Motherbase and other isolated locations like the hospital. And neither is for example Assassin's Creed III, which is also divided into hubs.
 
GTAV while looks pretty dense, still feels last gen ish a lot of the time. No PBR, low poly assets and low res textures just don't cut it for me.
Actually I forgot about two upcoming titles that could potentially be in the top 3 if more is shown. Days Gone and RDR 2 both looked great and the HDR in the former bodes well for visual splendour.
 
There are 3 massive, areas that you can explore non-linearly, and then there's a bunch of other smaller areas.

But what constitutes open-world, then? There can only be a single area? If so, MGS V can't be considered open-world either, since there's Afghanistan, Angola, the Motherbase and other isolated locations like the hospital. And neither is for example Assassin's Creed III, which is also divided into hubs.
That's actually a good question, the lines are certainly blurred more these days as linear sand box game gets more open with hubs and etc. But traditionally an open world for me is like a simulation that consists of real time day and night cycle, weathers, arbitrary AI behaviors, multiple endings, ample amount of freedom and choices. ROTR does some of these things and on a much smaller scale too, it's still highly scripted, with next to no elements of world simulation and the environment is nowhere near as free or vast as some of the native open world games. I don't qualify that as a true open world game, unless someone with more knowledge correct me.
 
Don't forget that in GTA you can fly along at low level in a jet plane. The speed of traversal places requirements on the game that make it difficult to match a game where you creep around on foot!
That's not "most visually impressive" though.

GTA5 on PS4 is still basically a upresed PS3 game IMO. Same low res & noAF textures, same low poly models.
 
Personally I feel that it is overrated in terms of visuals. I am not impressed at all
It's not nearly Uncharted 4 quality but does have some cool moments, I can imagine HDR would make it look much better. A true open world TR would be interesting and I'm surprised no one has done it yet.
 
After playing Uncharted 4 in my mid-end HDR TV with a PS4 Pro, it's so difficult to go back to all that aliasing, shimmering and color banding that those horrible old games had.

Last night I finally got the time and will to go back to playing Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone in my 34" 3440*1440 IPS monitor with everything maxed out using 2* R9 290X Crossfired.
I kept thinking "why the hell does it all look so bad if this is well over 2x more powerful than the PS4 Pro?!".

I got spoiled. Now I only want to play HDR games in the living room. FFXV is ordered, afterwards it should be Horizon Zero Dawn or The Last Guardian.
 
No mention of Dying Light? I thought that looked great...and Far Cry 4 but I see you mentioned Primal so...

Also, not sure about listing games before they're out, until we get it in our hands anything could change - or it could run really badly
 
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That makes it more technically impressive but not visually impressive, which is what the OP is after.

Being able to see large areas of an environment moving past you reasonably seamlessly is most definitely something visual and most definitely impressive. It's literally a visual thing. It's what you can see happening, and be impressed by.

This debate comes up every year, and it always results in games being arbitrarily excluded until we end up with what a particular subset of those impressed by visuals mean, which is best screenshots.

But that removes the context that actually makes the discussion interesting (IMO).
 
I feel that spiderman is totally out of place here. We have seen plenty of gameplay footage of Horizon so we know it'll look roughly like this. But Spiderman ?

Better stick to gameplay footage / pics @ultragpu
 
Being able to see large areas of an environment moving past you reasonably seamlessly is most definitely something visual and most definitely impressive. It's literally a visual thing. It's what you can see happening, and be impressed by.


Ok, can we then change the term to which open-world games are closer to photo-realism? Because (at least to me) that's what @ultragpu meant.

Yes, being able to see large areas is impressive, but in GTA V they're nowhere close to "fooling" anyone.
 
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