Open World games have evolved in many different ways over the years although the one aspect that is usual used as the yard stick of the genre is the map size. Former Ubisoft developers have taken note and want to go one better than the current competition by mapping the entire earth’s surface and digitizing it into their RPG game ReRoll. Although quick comparisons to Minecraft would put the rest to shame with a map size of 3.6 billion km², note that the earth entire surface stands at only 510 million km². Although due to its maps been procedurally generate it excluded it from any such records, which could also put the early Elder Scrolls titles out as well as a sizeable chunk of their maps where created the same way. An honourable mention has to go to Fuel for having the biggest map of any console game. In fact at 14,000 km² it is the largest for any racing game, near equivalent in size to the whole of Northern Ireland. Regardless of the square metres a games world boosts it is what inhabits that space that counts. The immersive quality and attention to detail of the environments helping a game succeed not its pure land surface area.

By Colm O’Sullivan