I’ve only played parts of Synergy and Another Crab’s Treasure. The first was interesting for a city builder, which is usually not a genre I dig into. The latter was a capable Souls-like with a very different vibe. A parody of the grim-dark world of most others while still putting up decent combat mechanics and difficult boss fights.
It is too big when the density of reasons to go there and explore becomes to little.
Personally, I don’t really care for games that have huge maps just to pass through while traveling around. There needs to be a reason in the story for every place to be there.
Every village, town or city needs to be filled with quests and stories, and the space between them as well to a lesser extend. They serve as immersive distractions. They need to be alive.
The map is too big if it cannot be filled with enough stuff to explore and experience. And I don’t mean climbing yet another tower, or doing yet another variation of the same puzzle.
TBH, I am not much of a sandbox game player and the JC 2 and 3 maps looked nice, but didn’t really invite me to stay and explore a single area for a while, because the areas didn’t have much depth. I prefer a much higher density of things to do. Each village should have a couple of hours of content, exploring it and the neighboring area. And larger towns or cities even more.
I want to minimize the ‘just cruising through’ parts of maps.
Cyberpunk as well had too much dead space when it comes to stuff to do in many parts of the city. Some parts of course act as just the background for other parts, which is fine. But other parts where beautifully handcrafted and interesting, but there is not much to interact with or people to talk to there.
To me it is important to have enough content and depth that the player learns to get to know their way around a place, and gets to know characters and develop relationship with each place.
I want to answer Xenogears because of all of its story and storytelling, but the worldbuilding itself is kinda standard, if not for the scope of it. You do end up learning about pretty much everything there is to learn - the world and its history, the characters and what moves them, the politics, the conflicts, the geography, the physics, the religions, the supernatural, the origins of mankind - not to mention a full class on philosophy. And then whatever question you still have left, there’s a book about it in addition to the game.
And you start with a classic amnesiac character in a small village.
I played them when they were released, and they were such great games for their time. Don’t remember much about the story though, some dream sequences, and there was some subway in start of the first game I believe, remember trying the slow-mo from different angles there.
Little Nightmares 1 & 2. Cosmic horror very well executed. No real lore is ever given to you besides what you are shown through your travels and what little environmental storytelling exists.
Everything is vaguely familiar but off. Distorted, but in a way that you’re never quite sure whether everything in the world is supposed to be like that, or if something happened to make it that way. In fact, it’s not even officially cosmic horror. There is no Cthulhu-esque big bad revealed to be behind it all. The visuals of the games could even just be interpreted as on -the-nose allegory and metaphor, with a fairytale like quality, if not for the subtle hints at a prior normality in the background.
Another game with interesting worldbuilding is White or Black (by ZeroCreation).
In that one, humanity nearly destroyed itself after an incredibly devastating WW3. Therefore, to avoid the constant Cycling of Empires, a band of philosophers and religious people tried to make one final civilization that lasts forever, which completed its rise to world domination in the late 21st century. Some interesting tidbits about this final civilization:
The final civilization restricts learning and innovation to things it deems safe to consume. It considers certain works to have a destabilizing effect on people, so it only allows trusted individuals to use them to achieve the civilization’s goals.
The human species in the far future now engages with symbiosis with another species. As far as I can tell, these future humans mainly photosynthesize.
Emotion is considered to be an outright SCP. The final civilization allows some of it, but too much can make areas uninhabitable.
I like the simple messages you get in Quantum Conundrum every time you die. They’re not super serious things, but just things that the main character will never get to experience as they grow older, ranging from mundane things like not getting a drivers license to more realistic teen/immature young adult fantasy of eating a whole can of whipped cream as a meal.
This doesn’t make me super want to play 5, the only game in the main series I haven’t played, but it does make me appreciate the rest, sometimes in ways I’ve recognized, and others not so much. Halo was somewhat unique in the Halo 3 2007 era, where every game was shades of grey and brown, because enemies were still colorful, with distinct designs and silhouettes, and the game at least started in a lush jungle. While certainly waypoints made a difference, I want to say most interactive items were either brightly lit forerunner panels in blue, covenant panels in bright green, or human ones that were just a huge green button. Clearly that design was well thought out and done for good reason, even if it would be reasonable to consider them a little silly in their dramatic design. They stood out, even in halo 3s large setpiece battle areas
Halo 5, ultimately feels like more 4 to me, so I’d say you’re not missing much besides the lore. But yeah, the design is really the worst part here.
Now that you mention the bright colors and standout interactive pieces of the earlier games, that’s definitely the difference I’m noticing between these. Like with the shutter door I mentioned. It really does not look like you can smash through it or interact with it in anyway.
Yeah, and that’s okay, as long as you’ve taught your players to be looking for that. If it’s the fifth game in the series and suddenly shifts to a couple of small, subtle interactibles and occasional pieces of important destructible environment, where those never existed prior, you better be using them all over, and from the start teaching players that they exist. It’s so important to teach players what the game expects of them. Going “what do I do!?” Is such a horrible experience every time, even in otherwise good games
This one was fun with friends. I saw a YouTuber a few years ago play one that also looked interesting but I can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called.
I wouldn’t mind one of these that looks like it’s going to pan out to be a horror game but then just is a regular Late Shift game
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