Shadowrun - it had a tremendous effect on my actual worldview (as did other cyberpunk works). The near-future cyberpunk setting offers plenty of opportunity for satire, being rooted in this world makes some geography and history relatable and mixing it with fantasy elements does not only make it more colorful and varied, but also prevents unrealistic stuff from breaking my immersion, because it does not pretend to be realistic.
As a young nerd obsessed with RPGs and William Gibson’s work I was outraged at the idea of putting fantasy into cyberpunk. But then I picked up a damaged copy of the Shadowrun rules from a bargain bin and was blown away by the worldbuilding, they really found a way to make it all fit thematically and logically and I ended up running the game for years.
Gothic one and two are really good. In the first game you are dropped into a prison colony and very soon a guard will try to extract protection money from you. In any other game the guard would just kill you, instead you will meet another guy asking you for help. He then lures you to a secluded space, reveals that he was sent by the corrupt guard, and beats you unconscious to steal your money.
Another game I will never stop recommending, because of its worldbuilding, is the excellent Enderal: Forgotten Stories. I really like how it depicts the theocratic society of the continent the story plays out in. The story about what initially seems like a standard fantasy thieves guild but is actually a cult that shuns emotion and try to transcend the physical body, is also really good and ties in with the overarching plot of the game.
Elden Ring has the deepest, most complex worldbuilding of any game ever made, and it’s not even close. For anyone interested in worldbuilding I strongly urge you to watch some Elden Ring lore videos from The Tarnished Archaeologist to learn about the techniques that the Elden Ring devs use to put incredibly deep and subtle worldbuilding into their games. It’s changed the way I think about worldbuilding in any context.
This one is it for me. The game really does so much with so little. The reality of the game is that it is a roughly linear sequence of closed levels (with some hub levels thrown in) that feels like a cohesive, connected world. It’s absolutely incredible!
Yes, I go back and replay the game every few years. Its grittiness is definitely a bit silly to me now, but when I was a kid, I was enchanted by it. While the Jensen games did not have the charm of the OG, the first was still decent, and it’s a shame Square Enix drove it into the ground with the second Jensen title.
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.
343 hired people that hate Halo when they were developing Halo 4. I believe it was Frank O’Connor that said this himself in a video interview around that time. 343 literally could not wait to make Halo into something it was not. They tried for three games and each failed spectacularly. They failed so badly that their studio reputation had become so bad they needed to rebrand as “Halo Studios” to trick consumers into buying their next game.
Now that 343 has destroyed Halo’s future, theyre going to destroy its past. As George Orwell said “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” By remaking Combat Evolved and changing that game, they can distort the playerbase into thinking it was always supposed to be that way.
343 is literally attempting to come in and add new additions to the Mona Lisa painting. Or chiseling new stuff onto the David sculpture. Literal vandalism. The original was already perfect, and only needed a visual upgrade. CE Anniversary did that so badly they need to do it again, but seem convinved it is impossible to make a new Halo game without sprint or other features that mean level geometry and bullet speeds need fundamental redesigns.
In case you couldn’t tell, I have a lot of contempt for 343. They could not have mishandled such a monumental franchise any worse. They ruined one of my favorite franchises, and it was literally so easy for them not to.
In CE Anniversary, they reused a lot of Halo Reach assets and generally destroyed the art style of the original game.
In what they have shown of Campaign Evolved (actually comically stupid name), they have added Sprint (which hilariously their own gameplay showcases that sprint causes the player to miss a music cue that Martin O’Donnell specifically placed), removed Health Packs in favor of recharging health, removed the tree that prevented the Warthog from being used to fight the two hunters completely trivializing the fight, and they reused a lot of assets from Halo Infinite as well, which I really hope are placeholders but I fear they are not. Also the forerunner tech is too clean and shiny.
From just 13 minutes of gameplay, I already see a lot of problems.
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.
Underrated because the game itself was often kind of lacking in terms of solid foundational RPG systems…
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Pretty good attempt at putting a Middle Earth type world ahead a few hundred years in the midst of an Industrial Revolution.
Really thoughtful stuff like the labor exploitation of certain races like orcs, with quests like a half-orc you can help start a labor union or help the shop boss shut down the nascent union.
They write so much shit down in making the games, but the player barely gets to scratch the surface with what they actually present in-game. This is actually really awesome because it lets you piece it all together without straight up telling you every detail.
Anachronox always stood out to me, really underrated game. I’m not sure about particulars since it’s been so many years, but the combination of the graphics style, the script and the humor in it, the characters and the design of the world all fell together really well, along with the great sound design and music. It felt authentic.
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