I tend to avoid open world games like the plague: they usually have too much pointless tedium creating gulfs of boredom between the actual interesting parts of the game. However, every once in a while, an open world game comes along that makes me reevaluate my feelings on the genre ("wait... do I like open world games?"). These are those games.

Primary criteria for inclusion is such that the moment-to-moment gameplay is compelling in itself, not just the specific story points the game directs you towards. I'm also intentionally excluding games that are collections of several different "open levels" (ex: Hitman World of Assassination), since I consider those more to be sandboxes, not open worlds.

And I'm scoping this list specifically to 3D open world games, since 2D open world games are usually just Metroidvanias in my opinion.