Exciting Open Worlds In 2014

2013 isn't even over, but we're already looking forward to next year with GameSpot's Most Anticipated for 2014 series. Which games are our editors most looking forward to over the next 12 months? Yesterday, we looked at Destiny and Titanfall. Today, we're looking at two of the open-world experiences we're most excited to get our hands on in 2014.

Open-world gaming in 2013 belonged to Grand Theft Auto V, a sprawling, violent, confronting crime epic whose huge world was best enjoyed when you set it on fire. Our next two Most Anticipated Games for 2014 offer a different take on the open-world concept. Watch Dogs--the highly anticipated new IP from Ubisoft--lets you approach its world as someone who has the keys to its inner systems, allowing you to control the city and influence the actions of its citizens in new ways. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is the first in the revered series with an open-world structure, with its stealthy approach the antithesis to GTAV's all-out bombast (it could also be the only MGSV experience we're guaranteed of playing this year, given its sequel and companion piece, The Phantom Pain, has no set release date). Read on to see why some of our editors have chosen Watch Dogs and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes as two of GameSpot's Most Anticipated Games for 2014.

What has me most excited about Watch Dogs is the potential for voyeuristic delight.

GameSpot Editor Maxwell McGee

Maxwell McGee

Where will the rising tide of social media carry us in the next 20 years, and how will it impact our society? These questions are at the heart of Watch Dogs, an open-world action game from developer Ubisoft Entertainment. Set in a not-too-distant future version of Chicago, this game lets you weaponize the city itself by hacking traffic lights, security cameras, and even the smartphones in everyone's hands.

This is all well and good, but what has me most excited about Watch Dogs is the potential for voyeuristic delight. In one of Watch Dog's multiplayer modes, you can enter another player's version of Chicago disguised as one of its citizens. You're then supposed to seek out that world's Aiden Pearce and hack into his phone. However, you could hold off on that hack and just watch the other player. The game won't alert the player to your presence until you start the hack, so you can just sit back and observe. And follow. And send the other player a message detailing everything they were doing in the game--you know, totally normal stuff.

Kevin VanOrd

Ubisoft's games distinctly appeal to me. Many of them have a near-future, high-tech buzz, the kind of vibe that makes me think that The Matrix could be more real than the air I breathe and the food I eat. You see that kind of digitized atmosphere in the Tom Clancy games, in Assassin's Creed, and even in Anno 2070.

When it comes to the disturbing, surreptitious, digital future, Watch Dogs looks to be the cream of the crop.

GameSpot Editor Kevin VanOrd

When it comes to the disturbing, surreptitious, digital future, Watch Dogs looks to be the cream of the crop. This isn't just touch-enabled transparent computer screens rising up in front of technicians--this is all-out social warfare, where the most powerful weapons aren't rocket launchers and nukes, but knowledge, access, and control. Knowledge of who and where your target is. Access to her phone, her computer, her vehicle. Control of everyday computer systems that govern our lives and wreak havoc when annihilated. This is the future we fear. And I can't wait to be a part of it.

Check out all our coverage of Watch Dogs here.

It's always refreshing to get suckered into Kojima Productions' crazy trailers, bizarre reveals, and eventual games.

GameSpot Editor Martin Gaston

Martin Gaston

I've had a bit of an up-and-down experience with Metal Gear Solid. I think the odd-numbered ones have been fantastic--few games can hold a candle to Metal Gear Solid 3--and the even-numbered ones have been terrible. By that formula, then, we're due for another hit with number five.

But who knows? When it comes to this series, we could end up with another Metal Gear Solid 2 (no, please no). So, yes, I find Hideo Kojima's oeuvre to be a bit inconsistent. And I can't help but be worried by the lack of longtime Snake voice David Hayter. But at the same time, Metal Gear Solid is a series that feels like it has been authored--that there's a directorial presence lurking behind the scenes, and that's just fantastic in a world where so many games often feel like they're blurring together into some kind of homogeneous action sludge.

It's always refreshing to get suckered into Kojima Productions' crazy trailers, bizarre reveals, and eventual games. Let's not forget that this was a game formally announced by Kojima strutting up onstage at the Game Developers Conference with his face covered in bandages, pretending to be someone named Joakim Mogren. Where else are you going to see something like that?

Peter Brown

Before we're able to properly sink our teeth into Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Konami is whetting our appetites with Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. It's a prologue to the main game that kicks off nine years after the fact, and it'll give us a chance to test the waters of the series' first iteration on open-world design.

Presumably, the expanded environments, vehicles, and nonlinear missions will play well with the series' style of stealth gameplay. Even though Ground Zeroes is but a slice of the wide world that awaits us in The Phantom Pain, it already looks like there will be numerous reasons to play through it again and again, with day-night cycles and unlockable alternate missions to explore.

It's also impressive to see how good the game looks, even on last-gen consoles.

GameSpot Editor Peter Brown

It's also impressive to see how good the game looks, even on last-gen consoles, thanks to the game's Fox engine running things under the hood. I'm also extremely curious to see where the story goes. Based on early trailers, there seems to be a plethora of interesting twists and turns in store for the entire cast--something Kojima Productions does extremely well, even if logic is occasionally thrown out the window in the process.

Check out all our coverage of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes here.

Are you looking forward to Watch Dogs and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes? Or are there other open-world games you think will do it better in 2014? Sound off in the comments below. And make sure to join us tomorrow as we unveil more of our Most Anticipated Games for 2014.