What games have what you’d call really good worldbuilding, and what in particular do you like about them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology, and often if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social customs as well as invented languages (often called conlangs) for the world.
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Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead! I kinda love how both wacky and coherent the world is
The Portal games, but mostly Portal 2.
Not sure if it’s my absolute favorite, but Pathologic has fascinated me for years.
There are so many strange and unique aspects to the world (especially the Polyhedron, an impossible tower floating above the town) that already make for excellent world building, but when they come together it creates a feeling I haven’t felt from any other world.
You know how Lovecraftian horror has a very distinct feeling? The world of Pathologic makes me feel something vaguely similar, but completely unique - no horror or aliens, but the feeling of powers existing far beyond our understanding combined with people who somehow do understand small parts, and the consequences of their choices affecting everyone… it’s really hard to put into words, but it feels like it created its own genre.
Apart from Mass Effect, Pillars of Eternity, and Deus Ex as others have already mentioned, I’d like to also add:
Grim Dawn.
The conflicts in its Universe feels reasonable, all the factions have their history and reasons of existence, there are beneficial and selfish, but no clear black and white, and everything interacts. The Lore is very good for an ARPG that focuses on combat, loots and built.
If we’re including fan games for preexisting games, I so far absolutely love Pokemon Empire, the Reborn style difficult fan game set in a region that basically just finished a full-on civil war and you and a friend are finally able to return to the region. Not really spoilers since you are basically told that in the first part of the game.
I am not gonna give away spoilers if possible, but the region feels like it’s divided after the war, which gives it a more real feeling than any official game or basically any fan game. Various NPCs question whether things were better before the war, some want the old monarchy back in power, some are more in favor of the new government, etcetera. It feels less like a typical run through the gyms, defeat evil team, beat elite 4 and champion style game so far with what I have played and how far they are in development.
I like how the writers didn’t just decide to make everyone into a hivemind of “villain team bad!” ( or more than likely just ignore them, like in majority of the official games ) and have people who support them and people who start to question whether or not the villains are in the wrong or not.
I also like how in the tilesets they used, some parts of the region look like they are wartorn to a degree and are a region that is starting the rebuilding process.
I wanna say more things, but then I’d be spoiling stuff and I really don’t wanna spoil things for this game.
The fuck. I’ve never heard of this. Haven’t heard anything that interesting in pokemon since years ago back when I was using smogon university to dig into the meta and play on some online simulator where everyone just locked their pokemon at lv50 and could choose all their IV/EV distribution, natures, and move loadouts for the ultimate meta experiance.
The fun part about this is I didn’t know it existed until maybe a few years back when someone I watch on yt who plays pokemon fan games and ROM hacks ( HeroVoltsy ) played it. And even then, I think I only found out by scrolling through his playlists.
Will say, just like a lot of fan projects like this, the game requires you to join their discord server if you don’t already have the download link. Sadly probably one of the best and worst ways to try and keep the project going while also keeping the corpo lawyers off their back and also being accessible to the majority of people.
Can’t say I know what simulator you are talking about, though. I think the only one I know of is Showdown.
Rainworld
spoiler
All living things are trapped in “The Cycle”, and no one likes it, they all want to die and be free of the burden of living. They called this “The Big Problem”.
To try and find a solution to “The Big Problem”, people* built 3 AI that would constantly be running to try and compute a solution to The Big Problem. This requires a ton of energy, and an ocean’s worth of water to keep them cool. The AIs are generating so much heat that it evaporates oceans worth of water, resulting in periodic violent rainstorms (thus the name of the game). People moved to structures built above the clouds to be safe from the rain.
One day, one of the AI finally solved The Big Problem, notified the other AIs that it was solved…and promptly died before sharing it. The remaining two AI (named “Looks to the Moon” and “Five Pebbles”) continue to iterate on solving the problem, but both have all but given up hope.
You play as a Slugcat, a species specially evolved by the AI to squeeze through pipes and keep their systems clean.
*I said “people”, but I don’t think it’s ever established what planet you’re on or what race of creatures built the AI.
There is a ton of detail I’m skipping…
…but when you start the game, you are merely trying to survive and explore a living ecology full of hostile creatures. The game doesn’t care if you understand any of the lore, it doesn’t care if you “finish” the game, it’s just there to be experienced.
Alan Wake. And on a grander scope almost all of Remedy’s stuff. They put everything together where it feels like there’s more out there. There’s no seam in the metaphorical stitching. It feels like even when you reach the end of something there is more.
From less of a deep standpoint? The 3DS fire emblem games. They do some really cool stuff that connects them together.
Disco Elysium, such interesting and complex world building beneath the drunken detective murder mystery. Shame ZA/UM ruined everything with the devs and we probably won’t get anything else out of it.
I could have listened to the rich lady‘s reality rundown for hours.
Signalis
World of Warcraft; Azeroth (the planet) lore is quite detailed and fleshed out - building upon the foundations of the original RTS trilogy.
It’s a bit of a shame a lot of it gets swept under the rug every major expansion and patch cycle, so it’s hard for new(er) players to catch up.
Even Warcraft 3 was basically a giant retcon of the first 2 games (even as plot light as they were). The series has constantly pulled new stuff out of it’s burr.
Mass Effect completely blew me away when it came out. Loved the overall lore about the Reaper threat and how the different species were connected to each other.
Horizon: Zero Dawn was also great in that regard, and the world felt really well put together, even though the lore wasn’t quite as deep.
Fromsoft and Larian are great at this.
BioWare 20 years ago was guaranteed. We might never get another BioWare game I would purchase.
“Zanzibart, forgive me”.
Nah, Fromsoft has great vibes. But the worldbuilding and story is all deliberately obscured because of Miyazaki’s love of sci-fi he couldn’t properly read. That makes it a trove for obsessives but it can’t really be called good.
It’s definitely good and it is done in a way that can only be done in video games. Too many video games depend on passive exposition instead of finding actual lore in the world.
So your reasoning for saying it isnt good is because you actually have to work to see it instead of it being spoonfed to you? Is that right?
Do you consider it being “spoonfed” to you when you read a book and the plot and everything is just written down?
Do you consider it positive that you have to “work for it” if every fifth word is written in Chinese and you have to translate them?
Making it hard to understand does not make it good. Making it easy does not make it bad. Is there an aspect of it you like that isn’t just that it’s hard to understand? Because that’s all you mentioned.
I hope you don’t mean Baldur‘s Gate when you say Larian and BioWare. edit: downvotes seem to forget that the Forgotten Realms worldbuilding wasn’t done by the licensed games.
Hyper Light Drifter.
Not a word in the entire game. Still a masterpiece of storytelling.
Half-Life 2
Yeah, that is a great classic example. There’s a lot of environmental storytelling so you can get an idea of what’s going on, and what it is is very interesting, but it doesn’t get in the way of the game or its story.
The TES series in general for its massive, expansive lore.
But Morrowind in particular has absolutely incredible world-building with incredible creativity and originality. There is a reason why so many people keep going back to the n’wah simulator and it’s because the world is so rich and fleshed out. So much of the following games was built off Morrowind’s stunning work.
As someone whose first TES was Morrowind, it set the bar so high in terms of worldbuilding, I was honestly a bit disappointed with the later entries into the series. Oblivion (more generic fantasy setting) and Skyrim (nordic with dragons) definitely played better, but the worlds were much less unique and memorable.
Twice now I have tried to make a top level comment and accidentally responded to a thread instead… Anyway…
Instead of leaving this deleted I will agree wholeheartedly that while I personally am not the biggest fan of the TES series they have some of the most deep, complex and (somewhat) organized lore there is.
I just wish they would hire better script writers and weren’t so afraid of locking content behind player choices. Always having every option available just feels a little silly.
Yeah. And Skyrim really needed better VAs. That one guy who voiced Farengar just did not properly understand some of his lines and consequently butchered them.
