Best Open-World Games That Don’t Take Themselves Seriously

Summary

• Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a dark story but light-hearted quests for players to enjoy.
• Grand Theft Auto 5 pokes fun at serious themes with quirky protagonists and humorous gameplay.
• Open-world games like No More Heroes add mundane tasks for comedic contrast to intense main stories.

Games will often have some feature or minigame to take the edge off their gameplay. Final Fantasy 7 has terrorism, identity crises, and an impending apocalypse, but that isn’t going to stop players from breeding the right Chocobo to win the races at the Gold Saucer. Even Silent Hill 2 could reveal the cursed town’s latent evil was caused by a dog working an old-timey mechanical console.

Open-world games are perhaps even less grave than either RPGs or survival horrors. They let the player treat its cities/lands/oceans, etc. as their own personal sandbox. Even so, the likes of Assassin’s Creed, InFamous, Prototype, and Horizon Zero Dawn are rather heavy games. Compared to them, these open-world games don’t take themselves too seriously, ranked by how ridiculous they can get.

10 The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

The Calamity Can Wait, Link’s Got Seeds To Find!

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild saw Hyrule’s King Rhoam and its Champions get killed off by Calamity Ganon, who turned the land’s Guardians and Divine Beasts against its people. To give Hyrule a chance, Zelda seals herself and Ganon off while Link recovers within the Shrine of Resurrection. Its story can get quite moody and melancholy, so why is it here?

Because it’s not all doom and gloom. Link’s Champion friends may be dead, but they don’t let it get them down, with Revali being as stuck up as a spirit as he was in life. Beyond that, players can go on cheerier quests for the people they meet in Hyrule, cooking delicious meals, racing sand seals, play golf, and collect Korok seeds to get a piece of poop as a reward. Clearly, someone on the dev team had a sense of humor.

9 Grand Theft Auto 5

Bringing Chaos To Los Santos

Grand Theft Auto is perhaps the world’s most famous open-world franchise, and it never really took itself too seriously. Sure, it had torture, murder, conspiracies, betrayals, and other plot twists. But the games always had an arched sense of humor, ripping into gun nuts, the religious right, the police, the Driver series, Driver’s developer Reflections, and more. If anything, it’s hard to determine which game in the series has the most yuks.

Most players give the nod to Grand Theft Auto 5, as it plays up its protagonists’ quirks. Michael’s drama with his family is like a sitcom version of The Sopranos. Trevor is pure chaos wherever he goes, be it on a mission or just shouting at NPCs. That leaves Franklin as the comparative straight man of the group, but even he has his moments, like when he finds GTA‘s most elusive cryptid.

8 Journey To The Savage Planet

Boldly Going To The Weirdest Places

If players only had a synopsis to go on, Journey to the Savage Planet would sound like some gritty exploration sim. It’s their job to explore planet ARY-26, log any flora and fauna, and determine whether the planet is suitable for human colonization. At the very least, it could be more like Star Trek, where it could lead into some dry but intriguing sci-fi plot.

Then they see the screenshots and discover the planet is a colorful world filled with kooky aliens that wouldn’t look out of place in an Oddworld game. Then, the player’s retrofuturistic-looking astronaut can use an intriguing range of equipment, like the “Better” and “Best” Utility Belts, the Precious Stuff magnet, and a Postcard Detector via its Hot Garbage DLC. It’s actually pretty good, so the name is false advertising.

7 A Short Hike

The Lengths People Will Go To For Phone Reception

Open-world games see players do all sorts: expand their criminal empire, save their streets from invading gangs, get wrapped up in conspiracies well over their heads, etc. What if they just wanted to take things at their own pace, like in A Short Hike? Instead of adding drama and trauma, players help Claire, a blackbird, reach the top of Hawke Peak to get cellphone reception.

They can run, swim, jump, and glide over all sorts of obstacles, and complete objectives for the different people who need help around Hawke Peak. In return, they can get new items that’ll make exploration and traversal a bit easier, like a compass to tell the cardinal directions and running shoes. That’ll help them get the most of their stamina, which they can increase with gold feathers.

6 No More Heroes

Can’t Become #1 Without Mowing A Few Lawns

When No More Heroes returned to the open-world formula with NMH3, people hoped it would be better than in the first game. Back on the Wii, players could go anywhere in Santa Destroy, but there wasn’t a lot to see or do. They could go to different spots for upgrades, or for job-based minigames that were mind-numbingly dull compared to the wild action scenes.

It almost felt like a parody of the genre and, given Suda 51’s style of game design, it might be exactly that. Open-world games often give players minigames, substories, etc. for players to earn more XP and do more in the world. Usually, it’s daring stuff like saving people from gangs. NMH1 makes them mow lawns, clean graffiti and do pest control instead. Its mundanity contrasts well with its action stage’s insanity.

5 Untitled Goose Game

Honking Up The Neighborhood

Some games speak for themselves about how seriously they take things. Untitled Goose Game technically has no name since it’s untitled, but offers enough details to tell people that it’s a game. About a goose. Or geese if players are using its multiplayer mode. These waterfowl have a reputation for being foul, and it’s up to players to live up to that by sneaking around an English village and causing all kinds of mischief.

House House was inspired by the Hitman series in how players could come up with different ways to dispatch their targets using the world’s features. So, they made a non-violent equivalent where a goose tries to steal objects, wreck stuff, trick people, and more, using nothing more than their wings, beaks, and incessant honking. It was simple, goofy, and managed to win three DICE awards in 2019.

4 Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

Dungeons & Dragons Gets Twisted And Turned Upside Down

The people behind the Borderlands games considered them more “open-zone” than truly “open-world,” which shows in their spin-off Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Players pick an environment from a cutesy overworld, then they can roam all around it to complete tabletop RPG-style quests via the Borderlands FPS-style gameplay. Players pick one of 6/7 classes, customize their character, and then head on into Tiny Tina’s game.

The player’s character, now known as Fatemaker, after stopping the Dragon Lord in Tiny’s Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, must stop them from rising again. Since it’s essentially Tiny Tina’s D&D campaign, it plays the whole thing tongue-in-cheek, with Tina changing things on the fly as its dungeonmaster. Likewise, many of the characters get meta about their role as characters. Because if any series needed to be more lighthearted, it was Borderlands, apparently.

3 Yakuza 0

Kiryu’s Journey Is Anything But Normal

It’s become a bit of a meme to say the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games are deadly serious, and then bring up their sillier moments. But all the games do indeed offer serious main stories, where criminal conspiracies, dramatic betrayals, and shocking revelations among others get revealed. Players can feel for Kiryu in Yakuza 6 when he’s just sick and tired of Kamurochō after all he’s been through.

It’s also the city where, in Yakuza 0, he taught some poser rock stars how to be badass, protected Miracle Johnson from his zombie extras in a music video, and hired a chicken to manage his real estate empire. His frenemy Goro Majima had similarly wacky adventures in Sotenbori, like foiling a creepy cult, saving the cabaret scene from a Sailor Moon-inspired cabal of clubs, and learning “the hustle” from Mr Libido. Turns out there is room for comedy in the yakuza after all.

2 Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

An 80s-Inspired Dive Into Insanity

The Far Cry games had their moments, but they were largely intense affairs. Particularly Far Cry 3, where Jason Brody had to save his friends from pirates and the deranged inhabitants of the Rook Islands. So, it was the perfect game to spin off into a quirky 1980s action movie spoof. In Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, players get taken to the far-off, post-apocalyptic future year of 2007. Or at least it was far off back in the 80s.

As Sgt. Rex “Power” Colt, they must stop Colonel Sloan, an elite agent gone rogue who aims to reduce humanity to a primitive level with the blood of the Blood Dragons. These beasts aren’t the only threat Rex has to deal with, as there are cyborg sharks, robotic crocodiles, devilish goats, and the Omega Force. But they can’t stop Rex from saving the day, or from collecting VHS tapes and CRT TVs while blasting to the synth-heavy tracks of Power Glove.

1 Saints Row 4

The Saints Head To A Galaxy Far, Far Away From 3rd Street

The original Saints Row was treated like a decent GTA clone to fill the time before the real HD GTA hit consoles. Then, when GTA4’s dour tone turned some players off, they flocked to the lighter, more chaotic Saints Row 2. Finding their niche, Volition turned the goofy dial to 11 in Saints Row the Third, where its murder-based gameshows and hooker assassins couldn’t disguise the reduced gameplay features.

Saints Row 4 twisted the dial right off by making the player fight off aliens in a virtual world with a variety of superpowers and weapons. Whatever they couldn’t blitz with their fireballs and psychic abilities, they could destroy with the Inflato-Ray, Black Hole Launcher, or the Dubstep Gun and its explosive wubs. It’s perhaps the least serious game around, but it had serious consequences for Volition.