Open-world News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Game Pass subscribers have had plenty to celebrate in January. The service saw some heavy hitters arrive in the first half of the month, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and the Resident Evil 2 remake. But it’s not done yet. More games are coming to Game Pass to round out January.

Call of Duty: Warzone players excited to jump into Season 1 Reloaded are running into new issues that are leaving the game almost unplayable.

The Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is likely to be released within the next couple of months, judging by the release schedule of DLC expansions for older FromSoftware games.

In Diablo 4's Season 3, Season of the Constructs, players will have to fight off mechanical monstrosities created by the demon Malphas, who got in control of a machination called the Loom, which was once created by the mighty horadrim Zoltun Kulle. We have learned that the evil constructs will appear not only in seasonal dungeons called Vaults but also during Arcane Tremors — but what exactly are those? Seneschal Companions — New Season Mechanic All Governing and Tuning Stones in Season 3 In Diablo 4 Season 3, Arcane Tremors are seasonal open-world events that will spawn all over Sanctuary. Blizzard's season announcement states that some underground constructs will emerge from their vaults and try to spread terror throughout the overworld:

It looks like the upcoming open-world FPS Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is getting another delay. Originally scheduled to be released in 2022, the shooter now has a tentative release date of September 5, 2024. According to a video by developer GSC Game World announcing the release date, this is the “final” release date.

In October 2023, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and by the end of the year, the latter company’s CEO had departed. Now, this will be the year where we’ll see how Activision Blizzard functions when fully integrated into Microsoft. The most immediate change for those who play games will likely be Activision Blizzard titles coming to Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s subscription service.

Keen to avoid some of the mistakes of Final Fantasy 14’s post-Endwalker content run, Square Enix is ensuring Dawntrail gets the flexible open-world content fans have been missing.

At first glance, Sundelions are a seemingly run-of-the-mill resource in — but as it turns out, they're far more valuable than they appear, and Link should make a conscious effort not to waste them. Of course, being an open-world game just like its predecessor, players are free to tackle the game however they please, and that applies to how items are used. However, for those who want to walk the path of least resistance and beat as effortlessly as possible, Sundelions — and the recipes they're used for — should not be squandered.

Those looking forward to Palworld, a gun-obsessed creature collector open-world game, will soon be able to access it across PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. However, with multiplayer functionality critical to gameplay, the need for crossplay is at the top of the requirement list for prospective players.

Fans of creature-collecting titles will have a new adventure when Palworld releases on Friday, January 19th, 2024. The game boasts a wide range of content on its Steam description outside of just being ‘Pokémon with Guns’. This creature collecting, open-world, dungeon-crawling, multiplayer experience has players catching all sorts of ‘Pals’.

Sand Land, the open-world game developed by Bandai Namco and ILCA based on Akira Toriyama's manga, is launching this April on PC and consoles.

Sand Land launches on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, and PC on April 26, 2024, publisher Bandai Namco has announced.

A Rōnin is a samurai without a master. Unshackled from bonds, these wandering swordsmen are free to carve their own path, and that freedom forms the foundation of Rise of the Ronin. The adventure is Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Nioh developer Team Ninja’s first choice-driven, open-world action game. We recently got another peek at the title during The Game Awards, and we spoke to the game’s lead designers to get some insight and context as to what the adventure entails. 

Because we’re in a “waiting period” for Nintendo to hurry up and announce its next system, we’re going to be hearing all sorts of rumors and speculation about any and all video games that may be coming to the system at launch and close to it. This speculation has already affected The Big N as their stock prices have risen in anticipation of all that’s coming. But we’re talking about all this today because of a rumor concerning the follow-up to Super Mario Odyssey. Most agree it will likely be the launch title for the Switch successor, and one “insider” says it’s way bigger than you think.

After the packed year that was 2023, it feels like 2024 may be a bit more of a bridge year, although there’s still plenty for the action fan to look forward to over the next 12 months. A lot of this year’s action games are going big, with Rise of the Ronin and Star Wars Outlaws being full open world, and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II at the very least being much larger than its predecessor (Ninja Theory hasn’t confirmed whether they’re going outright open-world yet). Certainly, everything on this list is pushing the technical bar hard, whether it be the dizzying action of Stellar Blade or the UE5 visuals of Metal Gear Solid Delta. Here are Wccftech’s top 5 action games you’ll be battling through in 2024.

Creature-collecting open-world survival game Palworld finally has an early access release date, and prospective players on PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S can look forward to diving in from next week.

Palworld, the open-world survival and crafting adventure from developer Pocketpair that looks a lot like Pokémon with guns, is launching into early access on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Game Pass next Friday, 19th January.

Palworld got the gaming world's attention with its promise to give Pokemon the one thing it was always missing: guns. Now its Early Access launch finally has a release date, and it's just over a week away.

For those who haven’t heard of the name Palworld before, this is the game that’s commonly described as ‘Pokémon with guns’ – and now it has an official EA release date of January 19, 2023. Because of this, many may be wondering if it will come to Game Pass.

I talk about this all the time, but I’ve long been searching for the perfect road trip game. Something that captures the calmness of a long drive and the vibes of a late-night Waffle House. One day. One day…

Dragon’s Dogma 2 offers a wide variety of playstyles depending on what Vocation you select. Most of these are the kinds of archetypes you’d expect: melee sword fighter, speedy dagger wielding thief, ranged archer, and spell slinging mage – and some are hybrid Vocations, like Mystic Spearhand and Magick Archer, that combine elements of one Vocation with another for a completely new style of play.

Palworld, the open-world RPG that is often compared to Pokemon, is launching in early access on January 19, just next week. Now, it's been confirmed that it will also be available on Game Pass from this date, joining the subscription service as soon as it goes live on PC and Xbox.

After the customary New Year cooling off period where Steam's release lineup consists almost entirely of experimental indies enjoying the uncommon quiet, one of the biggest genres on PC is about to kick it into high gear. The survival game space is due for a double whammy later this month with Palworld and Enshrouded, both among the most wishlisted survival games on Steam according to SteamDB, now confirmed to be launching less than a week apart.

Pocketpair has announced the date for the Early Access release of Palworld – the legally distinct Pokémon game with guns. It will launch on January 19. Accompanying the announcement is a new trailer.

As you can probably tell from the name, Expeditions: A MudRunner Game is an extension of MudRunner and SnowRunner’s uniquely slow-paced brand of off-road driving simulation. These open-world trucking sims turn their swampy sandboxes into complex puzzles that will suck your hapless trucks into their boggy bowels if you make a bad decision, or overestimate the capabilities of your vehicle. The core of Expeditions is different – shelving the heavy trucking aspect and focusing instead on navigation and exploration – but the spirit is the same. That is, stay upright, don’t get stuck, and if in doubt, winch your way out.

Palworld, the hotly anticipated monster-collecting RPG dubbed “Pokémon with guns”, finally has a release date as well as confirmation it’s coming to Game Pass.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is ditching the dark streets of Gotham for the city of Metropolis, an open-world playground that switches up more than just the colour palate.

In the new year, Rocksteady returns with a fresh addition to the beloved Arkhamverse with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a third-person action shooter launching February 2 on PS5.

An early Horizon Forbidden West PC comparison video was shared online, highlighting the differences with the PlayStation 5 version.

Since the unveiling of GTA 6's official trailer in December, fans have been tirelessly dissecting Rockstar's first glimpse into the highly anticipated game. While the GTA 6 trailer, a major highlight of 2023 for gamers that came after years of anticipation, fueled speculation and excitement, the GTA 6 release date still remains shrouded in mystery, with gamers having to wait until 2025 for the full experience.

Although : and both feature Ganon as the final boss, they do not follow all the conventions associated with ’s iconic villain. Of course, the clashes against Calamity Ganon and Demon King Ganondorf are incredibly memorable parts of these games, the culmination of all Link’s hard work and preparation. However, the circumstances surrounding these fights do arguably lack certain aspects from previous titles featuring Ganon.

NCSOFT has granted the popular Homecoming fan server a license to host City of Heroes, finally bringing the game back in an official capacity.

It's been a long time coming, but the big day is finally here: Daggerfall Unity, the best version of Bethesda's nearly 30-year-old open-world RPG, has now hit version 1.0 and is «considered complete.»

2023 wasn’t necessarily a banner year for either sports of racing games. The various annualized sports franchises largely kept things safe and predictable, although MLB The Show 23 did some interesting things with its new Storylines mode. On the racing front, the new Forza Motorsport was the headliner, although Ubisoft delivered a surprise in the easy-to-get-into new open-world racer The Crew Motorsport. Rev up your engines for Wccftech’s Best Sports and Racing Games of 2023…

Game Pass subscribers have a hearty January ahead of them, with two big games coming to Microsoft’s game subscription service: Capcom’s eminently replayable Resident Evil 2 remake and Ubisoft’s massive, open-world adventure Assassin’s Creed Valhalla join the lineup this month.

The source code for GTA 5 went public this past Christmas Eve, over a year after it was originally obtained by hackers. Modders have already gotten their own custom GTA 5 builds up and running based on that leaked code, and now the whole community is reckoning with what this means for the future of the open-world game.

Yesterday (January 2), it temporarily appeared that Star Wars Outlaws’ vague 2024 release had been narrowed down with an all-new launch window. However, Ubisoft has now stated that this was an error, and the old, incorrect information has already been removed.

Jeff Grubb has shared some follow up speculation to rumors about Metroid Prime 4, in relation to the Nintendo Switch. Or more accurately, its successor.

Update: Earlier today, a Disney Parks blog pointed to Star Wars Outlaws releasing in late 2024, but the term «late» has now been removed from the post so that is now reads just 2024. Ubisoft also confirmed to Kotaku that, «the timing was incorrect and has since been amended.» So, Star Wars Outlaws' release window has moved from late 2024 back to some general time this year.

For a brief period of time earlier today, it looked very much like Ubisoft's open-world heist game Star Wars Outlaws would be out sometime near the end of 2024. The word came by way of a Disney Parks blog post, and while it's not quite a specific date, it's definitely more precise than what we previously knew—that it's expected out sometime in 2024.

Game Pass ended 2023 with a strong lineup that included heavy hitters like Remnant: From the Ashes, Against the Storm, Far Cry 6, and Rise of the Tomb Raider. 2024 will kick off with a handful of big games leaving Microsoft’s subscription service, including Grand Theft Auto 5, Persona 3 Portable, and Persona 4 Golden.

If you were intrigued by Star Wars Outlaws, you might have been waiting on a release date. We knew Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment was working on this next big Star Wars game. However, we didn’t know exactly when the game would arrive. Instead, the developers, alongside Ubisoft, simply offered a generic 2024 launch window. Fortunately, we might have narrowed the release window for the game. However, it’s looking to be later this year, so you’ll have to wait a good while.

The upcoming Star Wars Outlaws open-world adventure from Massive Entertainment is easily one of the most exciting projects on Ubisoft’s upcoming slate, but the French publisher has been somewhat sketchy about when the game may launch. The broad release window we’ve been given in 2024, but recent Ubisoft financial statements hinted an early 2024 release may have been pushed back.

A quickly deleted line buried deep in a Disney Parks blog briefly suggested that Star Wars Outlaws was due to launch in late 2024, but it seems that was posted in error.

Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's upcoming open-world Star Wars game, has enjoyed a vague 2024 release window since it was revealed at an Xbox Showcase last year. However, a recent post on Disney's official park blog has given the game a more specific window. According to the blog, Star Wars Outlaws is releasing late 2024. The blog post, which is a collection of 24 exciting Disney-things happening in 2024 reads, «And for Star Wars fans – Star Wars Outlaws, the open-world Star Wars game is set to release late this year.»

Star Wars Outlaws has quietly received a new, slightly more specific release window of «late» 2024.

Ubisoft’s open-world Star Wars game, Star Wars Outlaws, will be released in late 2024.

2023 was heralded as the biggest year in the history of video games to ever video game a game of videos, and as that incoherent word salad would suggest, it was a busy year. That said, 2024 is shaping up to have quite a few big releases to keep you from finishing that massive backlog you piled up last year because you were so busy tormenting Koroks and trying to get to second base with Shadowheart.

There is one major change in ’s Gen 10 open-world games that could make the titles even better, whenever they arrive. Currently, the classic Nintendo franchise is in the early stages of Gen 9, with the release of inaugurating the current Generation in November 2022. The core games completed their first anniversary and have seen the release of two expansions via the DLC pack. At the moment, it is unknown when Gen 10 games will arrive, though predictions point toward late 2025 – and Nintendo has yet to release the rumored Gen 5 remakes before Gen 10 arrives.

With the success of, there are several core games that could follow in its wake. The game that wrapped up Generation 8 titles was released to critical acclaim, offering a new type of gameplay and open-world exploration that was, until then, unknown to the classic Nintendo franchise. The game is set in Gen 4’s Sinnoh region, but hundreds of years back, when it was still known as Hisui. At that time, humanity was still establishing itself within villages in the region, which made for an interesting story set in ages past, while still maintaining a lot of its connection to present-day Sinnoh.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s director has cited The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as a “baseline” for the upcoming JRPG.

Chinese developer FireWo Games has announced Chinese-style open-world action RPG The Bustling World for PC (Steam). A release date was not announced. A Kickstarter campaign seeking $80,000 in funding was also launched.

Video games run the gamut from silly toys for babies to life-altering works of art, all of which make up an industry that rakes in billions of dollars a year. Of course, the endlessly consumptive nature of the business can’t help but produce controversy, and 2023 had its share of milestones.

On paper, 2023 perhaps wasn’t a landmark year for action games, at least of a more traditional hardcore variety. That said, if you really look at this past year’s release calendar, you’ll find a diverse array of action games both big and small, including the much-anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, big-budget superhero sequel Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and scrappy underdogs like Hi-Fi Rush. Limber up and get ready to battle through Wccftech’s Best Action Games of 2023!

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, says that one of his biggest aspirations for 2024 is for fans of the series to get to see "Aerith's fate unfold".

Grand Theft Auto 5 or GTA 5 is Rockstar Games' open-world action-adventure and is the 7th main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series. Players can carry out a number of nefarious activities such as planning heists, robbing people, and stealing cars, alongside following the main storyline. Due to its massive scale, amazing mechanics, and variety of activities, GTA 5 has become the second best-selling video game of all time, with 175 million copies shipped. In the last few years, several major updates have been rolled out, but they have all focused on GTA Online, the multiplayer mode within GTA 5. However, the recent GTA 5 source code leak has revealed that Rockstar Games initially planned as many as 8 single-player DLCs for the game! However, they were all killed off!

Though they’re wildly different games on the surface, Alan Wake 2 and Spider-Man 2 are sequels representing massive achievements for their respective studios. In an IGN interview, Remedy’s Sam Lake and Insomniac’s John McAdam discuss some of the intricacies of game development, and how they dealt with having two protagonists.

, one of Nintendo's most iconic, flagship series, is almost assuredly going to continue after its most recent outing, 2023's incredibly successful. With no news (or even confirmation of) the next entry, it's impossible to know what it'll look like, whether it iterates on the more recent open-world formula, embraces the series' more traditional trappings once again, or breaks new ground entirely. One thing almost guaranteed, though, is that the next game will feature the series' ever-present hero, Link, and even an innocuous change to the protagonist could pay homage to his past.

From Liberty City to San Andreas, Rockstar has built a rich world of career criminals, lunatics, and thieves, and we’ve loved each and every one. Although over 25 years old, the record-breaking views on the first Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer is proof that Rockstar’s iconic game series remains one of the most popular franchises on the planet.

Earlier this month, the once-highly-anticipated The Day Before launched and quickly crashed and burned in dramatic fashion. As many had begun to suspect, the project was essentially a fake – rather than the open-world zombie MMO promised, developer Fntastic delivered a limited extraction shooter filled with cheap purchased assets and not a lot of fun. Fntastic promptly announced they were shutting their doors, and Steam delisted the game and begun offering refunds to those that asked.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will introduce entirely new cities that weren't in the original 1997 JRPG in order to, in Square Enix's words, "go deeper and create this whole worldview of Rebirth."

There were few moments as iconic, during the birth phase of 3D gaming, as the first time Link stepped onto Hyrule Field in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It was 1998, and games like Virtua Racing, Doom, Descent, and Nintendo’s own Super Mario 64 had already made epochal strides in graphics technology and the possibilities of 3D space. But this was something else.

Having been originally released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and not having received a current generation update, Red Dead Redemption 2 does not support ray tracing, which is a shame, as it would make the game look even more incredible than it already does.

An ex-Rockstar Games developer has explained why GTA 3's protagonist, Claude, never spoke in the game despite being surrounded by very talkative characters.

Deck13, the developer of The Surge series and the recently released Atlas Fallen, is going to develop its next major project codenamed Foxtrot using Unreal Engine 5.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's co-director, Motomu Toriyama, has revealed that the game's side quests were inspired by the ones found in The Witcher 3, which are still held up as some of the genre's best.

A new Starfield mod has gone out of its way to buff the Adoring Fan — the iconic (and rather irritating) companion character first seen in The Elder Scrolls4: Oblivion. 

Needless to say, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has been a major success, but surprisingly, Insomniac hasn’t really revealed what their plans might be for post-launch content. 2018’s Spider-Man had the paid The City That Never Sleeps season pass, but nothing of the sort has been announced for Spider-Man 2.

Bethesda has discussed what’s coming to Fallout 76 in 2024, and confirmed the multiplier-focused post-apocalyptic role-playing game now has more than 17 million players.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is resurrecting the series' staple world map for the first time since Final Fantasy 9, over 23 years ago.

Ark 2 is still on track to release next year in 2024.

Developer Creepy Jar, best known for their open-world survival sim Green Hell, officially revealed their next title as a sci-fi base builder titled StarRupture. Earlier this year Creepy Jar briefly teased the game during the PC Gaming Show though it was codenamed Chimera. In StarRupture, players will build up their base on an alien planet stuck in a catastrophic cycle of destruction by a nearby star.

Just in time for the holidays, Blizzard has unveiled the 2024 roadmaps for WoW and WoW Classic, laying out what players can expect from the upcoming year in all versions of the MMO.

Humans are horrible. You don’t need an allegory about the environment filled with blue aliens to tell you that. However, the joy of James Cameron’s Avatar isn’t in its humans, or the azure Na’vi, it’s in the vibrant, living world of Pandora. From the instant you start Frontiers of Pandora, it’s clear that Ubisoft has done an incredible job bringing this world to life, and while you bathe in the neon glow of its incredible wildlife, you’ll discover a people whose lives and culture you’ll want to protect.

There are only so many ways you can say 2023 was a great year for game releases without sounding like a broken record. So, instead, we’ve decided to collect all of our best-reviewed games from this past year in one place. We’re talking about our Editor’s Choice recipients, the games that have received either a nine or a 10 on our illustrious 10-point scale.

The release of Team Ninja’s upcoming action role-playing game, Rise of the Rōnin, is getting closer and closer, and it’s now been revealed what major Japanese locations players will be able to explore in it. 

The first Ubisoft game to carry a $70 / £70 price tag has been heavily discounted less than two weeks since its release.

If you’re looking forward to playing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, especially to experience its story, your time on the internet just got a little bit harder. Some big plot points have leaked online, and naturally, developer Rocksteady isn’t happy.

Genshin Impact developer Hoyoverse has revealed two new characters coming to the open-world RPG in update 4.4: Pyro user Gaming and Anemo user Xianyun.