enrageorange on 22 October 2012
Grand Theft Auto revolutionalized the concept of a game being a sandbox to play in. Ocarina of time was hardly a sandbox, despite being open world. The only thing to do in Zelda was do the main quest or do a limited amount of sidequests. I'd be willing to bet GTAIII was one of the first games where a significant portion of players completely ignored developer made quests and did their own thing.
IDK if any game introduced a "do anything" sandbox before GTA, but clearly GTAIII was the first one to do it well considering its success, and how unknown those previous games are.
