3. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (2020)
Building upon the previous open-world entries in the franchise, Valhalla feels like a true evolution of Odyssey. Its world is huge, maybe too big, but somehow feels more intimate and meaningful than other open-world action games. A lot of this has to do with the way the game focuses on exploration. Finding quests, puzzles, and secrets is more engaging and interesting than in previous Assassin’s Creed titles and might be some of the best open-world design in a Ubisoft game ever.
The main reasons it doesn’t quite blow past the last two games on our list is mainly down to a world that does still feel a tad too overstuffed, a few too many bugs, and some narrative issues, especially toward the very end of the game. (And it feels even more bloated with its DLC.) Still, this is one of the best open-world games released in years and it deserves to be ranked this high on our list, even if it is (as of this update) the newest game in the franchise.
