Summary
There are few prospects in gaming as tempting as theopen world.Havinga huge map to explorecan give players an almost endless sense of discovery and wonder as they come across new areas of interest, secrets, and new environments. The best open worlds layer these discoveries in dense, interconnected, areas that are as interesting to traverse as they are beautiful to look at.
How players engage with these open worlds often comes down to the character they inhabit. Some games tell deeply personal stories, focusing on a single character and their struggles. These games, however, all use their open worlds to facilitate multiple-character stories. They allow characters' stories to intertwine and interact in a living, breathing world. These are thebest open-world games with multiple playable characters.
Many gamers will remember the marketing leading up toWatch Dogs: Legionand how much was made of the ability to recruit and play as ordinary citizensin the open world. There may not have been as much depth to this system as some imagined, but the game did make good on its promise. The player can recruit any NPC in the game, with certain caveats.
To keep things streamlined in terms of gameplay, the NPCs fit into certain skill archetypes, but there are many different kinds that relate toLegion’s hacking, brawling, stealth, and ranged combat. Players really can recruit anyone and play as them, and there’s even an optional permadeath mode where each character can be permanently lost.
Project Zomboidmight look like just anotheropen-world zombie survival gamefrom the outside, but it’s actually almost totally unique. There is no win state inProject Zomboid,a character’s run will always end in death, eventually. As such, who a character is and the story of their death defines a run.
Creating a character inZomboidmeans more than picking a look. Players need to choose a background, which determines who their character was before the outbreak, and thus what they can do. Players also need to choose several positive and negative traits, quirks like being a smoker or an avid reader.
The choices here are varied, amusing, and give a lot of opportunities for creating roleplay characters with a ton of personality.Project Zomboidgives players as many playable characters as their imagination can conjure.
With the previous games focusing on Kazuma Kiryu’s story,Yakuza 4was the first game in the series to take a multi-protagonist approach. Shun Akiyama, Taiga Saejima, and Masayoshi Tanimura all join Kiryu, with the player taking the role of each of the four protagonists across the game’s chapters.
Each character has a different fighting style, which keeps the third-person brawling interesting throughout. Each character also has access to different side quests and mini-games to pursue. In typicalYakuzafashion, the stories of all four men weave into one grand narrative of underworld greed and corruption.
Yakuza’stake on an open worldhas always been interesting, with relatively small maps densely packed with details and content, as opposed to expansive but empty spaces. The four-protagonist approach ofYakuza 4allowed for some interesting risks and innovations in a series that some felt was starting to become repetitive at the time.
Borderlands 3puts a lot of focus on its Vault Hunters. Each one has their own backstory, unique dialog, and varying tone as players take them through the story. That’s not to mention that, with multiple skill trees to explore, each one plays differently as well.
Four characters become an exponentially larger number of potential builds and play styles when players start to get grips with how each class interacts with the game’s copious loot. The world ofBorderlands 3is the largest of the series, with multiple planets that players can explore, split intoopen mapswith a ton of optional areas and encounters.
Grand Theft Auto 5may not have the most playable characters of any open-world game, but the depth with which each character is portrayed means that the three-protagonist structure goes a long way. Each character has a distinct personality and lifestyle, which is reflected in the way they approach missions and interactions.
Experiencing thevast open world, still one of the best in gaming, with each of these characters has its own feeling, even though the player is technically free to act how they like with any character. The game subtly encourages players to inhabit these characters as they play, reinforcing this with the kind of content players will encounter when playing as each of the trio.
NieR: Automatasurprised many players at the time with its approach to a multi-character story. Players have already “beaten” the game by the time they get to play as 9S, and again before they get to see A2 as a playable character. Yet, any player who has been through the game and seen the true ending knows that it is absolutely worth retreading the story’s events as all three characters.
Each character has their own quirks in battle, like 9S having the power to hack enemy machines. WithNieR: Automata’s tendency to mix up gameplay segments with platforming, shmup-shooting, and more, there’s enough to keep players engaged until they’ve uncovered the full story over multiple playthroughs and several thorough explorations of the map.
Baldur’s Gate 3is a role-player’s dream. Not only are there 7 “Origin” characters with their own unique backstories and interactions during the campaign, but players are also free to create a custom character and play them as they see fit. Companion characters who players recruit to their party are also playable.
Add the number of playable characters here to the number of customization options players have for character classes and specializations, and there are an overwhelming number of options for experimentation. The game facilitates this variety with its story and role-playing aspects as well, giving players a wide canvas of conversation options that span muchmore than a simple choice between good and evil.
