10 biggest video game maps of all time
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Date: 2023-09-25
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Comments and reviews: 19
Bane
NMS absolutely has a FAR larger game map than Elite Dangerous, arbitrarily discounting it because of the method they use to produce graphics in the game is bizarre. I could argue that Pong has the largest map of all time because every other game cheated and didn't create the playable area the same way that Pong did. NMS has a PLAYABLE map area that far exceeds anything else. How interesting that map is on average is a valid consideration, i'd say NMS has a pretty interesting map on average, others are free to disagree. I WILL say that at least so far I think Starfield's map probably has the highest interesting+size factor, with NMS coming in second. Elite Dangerous' map is extremely boring in my opinion. it shines in being absolutely gorgeous and having fantastic combat, but the playable area as a setting is pretty boring.
I suspect that when the modding tools get released for Starfield we are going to discover that the map size is only limited by how many modder created planets people want to download.
map size was only ever consideration because people wanted an idea of how much gameplay they could expect from it. This is a faulty notion of course, Daggerfall is a great example. I love Daggerfall, but it's not the size of the map that gives it so much playability. Procedural Generation will continue to evolve and I am convinced we can expect great things from ProcGen for creating game worlds, but we need to stop using map size as a method of comparing games. A game may be considered a better game when it has a larger map, but if it is a better game it won't be because it has a larger map.
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NMS absolutely has a FAR larger game map than Elite Dangerous, arbitrarily discounting it because of the method they use to produce graphics in the game is bizarre. I could argue that Pong has the largest map of all time because every other game cheated and didn't create the playable area the same way that Pong did. NMS has a PLAYABLE map area that far exceeds anything else. How interesting that map is on average is a valid consideration, i'd say NMS has a pretty interesting map on average, others are free to disagree. I WILL say that at least so far I think Starfield's map probably has the highest interesting+size factor, with NMS coming in second. Elite Dangerous' map is extremely boring in my opinion. it shines in being absolutely gorgeous and having fantastic combat, but the playable area as a setting is pretty boring.
I suspect that when the modding tools get released for Starfield we are going to discover that the map size is only limited by how many modder created planets people want to download.
map size was only ever consideration because people wanted an idea of how much gameplay they could expect from it. This is a faulty notion of course, Daggerfall is a great example. I love Daggerfall, but it's not the size of the map that gives it so much playability. Procedural Generation will continue to evolve and I am convinced we can expect great things from ProcGen for creating game worlds, but we need to stop using map size as a method of comparing games. A game may be considered a better game when it has a larger map, but if it is a better game it won't be because it has a larger map.
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Pixel7209_2
Elite dangerous does map the milky way galaxy and many solar systems. But No Mans Sky is much, much larger. Upon completion of the atlas story line, and reaching a blackhole centre of the galaxy the player may think there done. Until they get hit with the option to travel to 5 other galaxies. Yup 5 and we still don't know if theres more cause upon doing so the campaign is complete and there is no clear indication to the centre of the new galaxy. This has lead to the community setting webs to help each other and bases for anyone to teleport to so they can travel faster. Also it's said to take around 45 hours to walk round a small planet. Then can take hours to fly to another planet unless you engage pulse drive and cut that down to around 2 mins. This just shows how massive the game is, not to mention you can if lucky wind up in someone elses game, or solar system by travelling there as all games are intertwined. Its just madness, and as someone who has spent 200+ hours in the game, played since release, i still have no clue if it has a limit. But guess what, they keep adding new content making maps more intresring and adding new types of solar systems and planets. Not to mention previously explored planets/systems, save all interation there and will be the same when returned to.
IDK games have jus got mental i can just imagine a Starfield No mans Sky merge with even say star citizen and how close it would be to practically real life and may rival all known space.
Games are so big, maybe to big that we may never uncover everything.
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Elite dangerous does map the milky way galaxy and many solar systems. But No Mans Sky is much, much larger. Upon completion of the atlas story line, and reaching a blackhole centre of the galaxy the player may think there done. Until they get hit with the option to travel to 5 other galaxies. Yup 5 and we still don't know if theres more cause upon doing so the campaign is complete and there is no clear indication to the centre of the new galaxy. This has lead to the community setting webs to help each other and bases for anyone to teleport to so they can travel faster. Also it's said to take around 45 hours to walk round a small planet. Then can take hours to fly to another planet unless you engage pulse drive and cut that down to around 2 mins. This just shows how massive the game is, not to mention you can if lucky wind up in someone elses game, or solar system by travelling there as all games are intertwined. Its just madness, and as someone who has spent 200+ hours in the game, played since release, i still have no clue if it has a limit. But guess what, they keep adding new content making maps more intresring and adding new types of solar systems and planets. Not to mention previously explored planets/systems, save all interation there and will be the same when returned to.
IDK games have jus got mental i can just imagine a Starfield No mans Sky merge with even say star citizen and how close it would be to practically real life and may rival all known space.
Games are so big, maybe to big that we may never uncover everything.
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Mistress
Funny at 5: 40 while talking about a racing game. you randomly insert a video clip of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and claim that most open world games instead of building bigger, are building denser. And while that is certainly true, you completely missed Xenoblade Chronicles X which is around 4 times the size of XC3s map and you should have actually placed XCX Map at the Number 7 spot. cuz that Worldmap is Handcrafted, relatively dense, fully explorable and absolutely huge and takes ages to explore if you havent unlocked lategame Mechs and Mechflight. Im pretty sure XCXs Worldmap is somewhere in between of the 2 Racing Games on Slot Number 7 & 6.
And im not counting the surrounding explorable water area in XCX, even if you ignore that and the small secret islands there, it absolutely beats the other games you ranked on place 10 - 7
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Funny at 5: 40 while talking about a racing game. you randomly insert a video clip of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and claim that most open world games instead of building bigger, are building denser. And while that is certainly true, you completely missed Xenoblade Chronicles X which is around 4 times the size of XC3s map and you should have actually placed XCX Map at the Number 7 spot. cuz that Worldmap is Handcrafted, relatively dense, fully explorable and absolutely huge and takes ages to explore if you havent unlocked lategame Mechs and Mechflight. Im pretty sure XCXs Worldmap is somewhere in between of the 2 Racing Games on Slot Number 7 & 6.
And im not counting the surrounding explorable water area in XCX, even if you ignore that and the small secret islands there, it absolutely beats the other games you ranked on place 10 - 7
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DaringFungus
No Man's Sky is the biggest game since everyone plays together. Anywhere you have been or will be is the same for everybody. If you build a base other people could stumble upon it, you could even find your base while playing on a different account. If you are the first to discover a plant, galaxy, etc. Then however you see it will be the way it is for everybody else who has, or ever will play the game. That's the beauty of No Man's Sky and why it's the actual biggest game. It would be like if everybody played on the same Minecraft world but everybody spawned millions of blocks apart. you could in that case travel to where somebody else is or was and it would be the same for you as the other person.
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No Man's Sky is the biggest game since everyone plays together. Anywhere you have been or will be is the same for everybody. If you build a base other people could stumble upon it, you could even find your base while playing on a different account. If you are the first to discover a plant, galaxy, etc. Then however you see it will be the way it is for everybody else who has, or ever will play the game. That's the beauty of No Man's Sky and why it's the actual biggest game. It would be like if everybody played on the same Minecraft world but everybody spawned millions of blocks apart. you could in that case travel to where somebody else is or was and it would be the same for you as the other person.
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Red_Alien
No Man's Sky should definitely count and should be number 1. Followed by Elite & Dangerous.
Argument - The Milky Way Galaxy is huge and would take a very long time trying to map it all out but it is possible. The entire universe on the other hand is unimaginably vast and goes on forever. Our puny little human brains can't even begin to grasp the concept of infinity. So one could argue that the universe itself is procedurally generated and could never be mapped entirely because it goes on forever. It's as big as big can get and given NMS attempt to replicate the entire universe, I'd say the title should be theirs. But what do I know? I'm just some hillbilly from KY.
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No Man's Sky should definitely count and should be number 1. Followed by Elite & Dangerous.
Argument - The Milky Way Galaxy is huge and would take a very long time trying to map it all out but it is possible. The entire universe on the other hand is unimaginably vast and goes on forever. Our puny little human brains can't even begin to grasp the concept of infinity. So one could argue that the universe itself is procedurally generated and could never be mapped entirely because it goes on forever. It's as big as big can get and given NMS attempt to replicate the entire universe, I'd say the title should be theirs. But what do I know? I'm just some hillbilly from KY.
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aldotrioksidi
If procedural generation would count, I think that Minecraft would have theoretically infinite map space. If you walk in to one direction, you will never loop around. Still, size of the map doesn't matter. Just Cause 2 had a massive one but most of it was just empty and only reason to do that is to bloat the game, making it seem bigger than it actually is. Imagine any modern game but just stretch every aspect of each map by a long margin.
It's not the size that matters, it's what you do with it.
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If procedural generation would count, I think that Minecraft would have theoretically infinite map space. If you walk in to one direction, you will never loop around. Still, size of the map doesn't matter. Just Cause 2 had a massive one but most of it was just empty and only reason to do that is to bloat the game, making it seem bigger than it actually is. Imagine any modern game but just stretch every aspect of each map by a long margin.
It's not the size that matters, it's what you do with it.
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scorpios_corz
For the bonus NMS you said planets are not spaced apart enough when looking from the star map, they're not star's btw they are systems and in real space the same happens like our planetary system being in the milky way, so having them randomly near or far is exactly how they would appear in real space, so on that note NMS is bigger; unlike starfield and elite dangerous, 'every' 18 quintillion planets are 'fully' explorable within the 255 galaxies the game has (so that's 255 milky ways)
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For the bonus NMS you said planets are not spaced apart enough when looking from the star map, they're not star's btw they are systems and in real space the same happens like our planetary system being in the milky way, so having them randomly near or far is exactly how they would appear in real space, so on that note NMS is bigger; unlike starfield and elite dangerous, 'every' 18 quintillion planets are 'fully' explorable within the 255 galaxies the game has (so that's 255 milky ways)
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boomer150
If procedurally generated worlds count in this little contest then I think Minecraft would take the gold. No Mans Sky might have theoretically more planets but they are limited by there player base.
With the popularity of Minecraft, across all its platforms it is likely there are over a billion unique Minecraft worlds and a single Minecraft seed is HUGE. If we put all those worlds together the it would be probably the largest playable landscape in the world of video games.
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If procedurally generated worlds count in this little contest then I think Minecraft would take the gold. No Mans Sky might have theoretically more planets but they are limited by there player base.
With the popularity of Minecraft, across all its platforms it is likely there are over a billion unique Minecraft worlds and a single Minecraft seed is HUGE. If we put all those worlds together the it would be probably the largest playable landscape in the world of video games.
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Anthony
I think the perfect balance of size and detail and gameplay/story. i have 2. Red dead redemption 2 and Final fantasy 12. Red dead, no brainer, you havent played it go play it. FF 12 is not many peoples favorite but i loved the gambit system, combined with everything else it was my life for a good year. Love that game. Pretty sure its more linear than open world, cant remember its been like 10 yrs, but whatever, in regards to maps with stuff to do in it, yea.
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I think the perfect balance of size and detail and gameplay/story. i have 2. Red dead redemption 2 and Final fantasy 12. Red dead, no brainer, you havent played it go play it. FF 12 is not many peoples favorite but i loved the gambit system, combined with everything else it was my life for a good year. Love that game. Pretty sure its more linear than open world, cant remember its been like 10 yrs, but whatever, in regards to maps with stuff to do in it, yea.
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Sidney
Question: No Man Sky creates planets as you go, but how it stores it in your PC? Does it stores the topography and wildlife so evertime you visit it's the same? Or it only stores the type of planet and animals and generate something from there? Or simply store only what you build and regenerate everything else? Never played to know that.
I wonder this because if stores everything it generates the game after a year of playing gonna need an HD just for that
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Question: No Man Sky creates planets as you go, but how it stores it in your PC? Does it stores the topography and wildlife so evertime you visit it's the same? Or it only stores the type of planet and animals and generate something from there? Or simply store only what you build and regenerate everything else? Never played to know that.
I wonder this because if stores everything it generates the game after a year of playing gonna need an HD just for that
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coldReactive
If you haven't yet, you should do one for MMOs. I remember the whole deal between FFXI and Ultima Online having a slight competition between who had the biggest MMORPG Map, and I vaguely remember FFXI taking the number one spot for a short time before Ultima Online doubled the map size.
I know Elite will likely be on the top again if you include it, but considering Elite can also be played in offline mode, I'm not sure it should be counted.
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If you haven't yet, you should do one for MMOs. I remember the whole deal between FFXI and Ultima Online having a slight competition between who had the biggest MMORPG Map, and I vaguely remember FFXI taking the number one spot for a short time before Ultima Online doubled the map size.
I know Elite will likely be on the top again if you include it, but considering Elite can also be played in offline mode, I'm not sure it should be counted.
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Jason
No man's sky may be procedurally generated but 18+quintillion planets even at 1sq. mi. each is still 18+quintillion sq. mi. and that doesn't include the space between planets. The planets however are fully explorable and are HUGE. I'd have to say biggest map of all time. Everyone shares the same map and planets so these things, systems and planets, are generated once upon discovery, but they algorithms for generation are locked in ahead of time.
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No man's sky may be procedurally generated but 18+quintillion planets even at 1sq. mi. each is still 18+quintillion sq. mi. and that doesn't include the space between planets. The planets however are fully explorable and are HUGE. I'd have to say biggest map of all time. Everyone shares the same map and planets so these things, systems and planets, are generated once upon discovery, but they algorithms for generation are locked in ahead of time.
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Corey
Replace Starfield with No Man's Sky. Starfield is procedurally generated on the planet's surfaces and you can't traverse a whole planet. You have invisible walls at the limits of each landing area. In my opinion, that negates it from being an actual cohesive map entirely. No Man's Sky you can go from space all the way to the surface and technically walk the circumference of any planet without invisible walls.
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Replace Starfield with No Man's Sky. Starfield is procedurally generated on the planet's surfaces and you can't traverse a whole planet. You have invisible walls at the limits of each landing area. In my opinion, that negates it from being an actual cohesive map entirely. No Man's Sky you can go from space all the way to the surface and technically walk the circumference of any planet without invisible walls.
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flalspspsl
honestly i would not be surprised if starfield is significantly smaller than flight sim. it's fake you can fly 2 feet away from you and the entire generated world will be completely different, I don't think it really counts since it's all procedurally generated, so it's not even statically generated which is what no mans sky is (ubiquitous generation) they did it so lazily
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honestly i would not be surprised if starfield is significantly smaller than flight sim. it's fake you can fly 2 feet away from you and the entire generated world will be completely different, I don't think it really counts since it's all procedurally generated, so it's not even statically generated which is what no mans sky is (ubiquitous generation) they did it so lazily
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rustyshackleferd22
Tf are you talking about starfield being a buggy mess? For the scope of that game it s very polished. I ve been playing 50 plus hours and have only seen a few minor bugs. Do you not understand a game with that scope and that many different systems going on that there will be a few glitches. Jfc people who play games can be some whiny children.
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Tf are you talking about starfield being a buggy mess? For the scope of that game it s very polished. I ve been playing 50 plus hours and have only seen a few minor bugs. Do you not understand a game with that scope and that many different systems going on that there will be a few glitches. Jfc people who play games can be some whiny children.
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Nuance
Silly video when you're counting procedurally generated maps. Then where is No Man's Sky? (It's got 18 quintillion planets) Edit: Just saw that you mentioned it as a bonus. Imo we either count procedurally generated maps, or we don't. It's cheating. There's very little value to it. Compare a randomly generated planet to Elden Ring and you get the point)
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Silly video when you're counting procedurally generated maps. Then where is No Man's Sky? (It's got 18 quintillion planets) Edit: Just saw that you mentioned it as a bonus. Imo we either count procedurally generated maps, or we don't. It's cheating. There's very little value to it. Compare a randomly generated planet to Elden Ring and you get the point)
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Brandon
The fact you put Starfield on this list OVER No Man's Sky is curious. Starfield may have 1000 planets, but you can't fully explore them. You can only go about 1km from the landing spot.
No Man's Sky has more planets, and every one of them can be explored completely. That's even bigger than Elite Dangerous when you add in the space exploration too.
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The fact you put Starfield on this list OVER No Man's Sky is curious. Starfield may have 1000 planets, but you can't fully explore them. You can only go about 1km from the landing spot.
No Man's Sky has more planets, and every one of them can be explored completely. That's even bigger than Elite Dangerous when you add in the space exploration too.
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Monkey
In my Opinion, No Man's Sky takes Starfield easy. Sure, you can't freely roam space. But nor can you in Starfield. But in No Man's Sky you can fly from space onto a planet anf back out to space and to other planets and fully explore all of them WITHOUT loading screens. You can't do that in Starfield. So No Man's Sky knocks out Starfield easy.
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In my Opinion, No Man's Sky takes Starfield easy. Sure, you can't freely roam space. But nor can you in Starfield. But in No Man's Sky you can fly from space onto a planet anf back out to space and to other planets and fully explore all of them WITHOUT loading screens. You can't do that in Starfield. So No Man's Sky knocks out Starfield easy.
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Diego
No Man's Sky should've been instead of Starfield or instead of Elite Dangerous. There's 5 quintillion planets, if you spent a single second on each one it would take generations to explore all planets.
That's way more than Starfield, and Elite Dangerous. And that's ignore travel times, and actual realistic times.
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No Man's Sky should've been instead of Starfield or instead of Elite Dangerous. There's 5 quintillion planets, if you spent a single second on each one it would take generations to explore all planets.
That's way more than Starfield, and Elite Dangerous. And that's ignore travel times, and actual realistic times.
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