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.
You must log in or # to comment.
Elden Ring.
Or any of Mitazaki’s games for that matter.
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.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. I don’t think I ever got so invested in figuring out a story than with Elden Ring. I thoroughly enjoyed following each character’s progression as they all head for the tree. I’m still bummed that I stalled out in the DLC because of the stupid commander Gaius fight. Game was cake up until his gatekeeping ass. Fuck that guy… Someday I’ll feel like trying again.
Rimworld
STALKER. The Zone is amazing. Currently replaying Call of Pripyat for my third or fourth time through, a year after playing the shit out of Heart of Chernobyl, and I’m absolutely loving it.
Dang. I wish I could enjoy replaying it, but nothing will capture the magic of the first time. I always love watching others experience my enjoyed titles live for their first time, though.
Hollow Knight.
Absolutely can’t get enough of the world and all the interesting characters and hidden lore.
One detail that held to me the strongest is the characters’ talking patterns. It feels like dialogues were written in another language and then converted to English. The strongest example I think was the lady that gives the Knight flowers for delivering, which also is added to, iirc, being at least implied she is one of the oldest creatures in Hallownest.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - probably the most cliche answer possible, but Troika really did build a game that took you to the world of vampires in LA in the early 2000s.
Arcanum - a fantasy world undergoing industrialization with technology being in direct conflict with magic.
UnderRail - A society stuck underground connected by tunnels between towns/cities and nodes. The writing (quests/characters) is not that great, but the world-building is top notch.
deleted by creator
Outer Wilds, especially with the DLC.
Pillars of Eternity. I really appreciate that they must have had some Anthropology majors on the team, especially for II, because the worlds feel much more exotic than other RPGs. It shows up just how generic Medieval Fantasy most RPGs are.
The tropical Roparu (?) society with its caste system is particularly interesting. The interaction of the various factions is believable. And of course the pantheon is well though out.
The downside is that they can be clumsy about exposition of the world - especially in the first one, you get these enormous lore-dumps.I couldn’t agree more! It’s a fantasy game but it explores some really cool concepts; like colonialism and freedom vs order.
I can’t wait till they add true turn based combat to Pillars of Eternity.
I played about 3-4 hours and the loved setting and the world, but the real time combat did not work for me.
I don’t mind real-time combat, but it has to be in third person.
I also love how reincarnation is a fact of life in that world, and souls are a real, almost physical, thing that can be manipulated and used.
Subnautica and Raft
Having played a lot of raft with my kids, I can say I never would have thought of it for this. But looking back, yeah, there is a good deal of world building going on.
Wait Raft has lore and world building?? I love that game but I never even paid that close attention. Guess I need to go look now.
NetHack
Eh? It has almost none, and what there is is rendered completely inconsistent.
@
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.
it had a tremendous effect on my actual worldview
How so?
Hard to describe. I started to feel the same way about the real world as I did about the world described in the books. Like the high tech, low life concept - just because we have shiny things does not mean we have a good life. And developing a tendency for rather diverse and/or weird friend groups who band together to fight for our place in this world. I mean, the books obviously crank everything up to 11, but the prower structures seem very similar.
I was reading Shadowrun books about evil megacorporations who are mightier than nation states and indigenous liberation movements against them, so I paid a lot of attention to real world politics when I read the news about stuff like NAFTA and the EZLN or the MAI agreement.
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.
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.
Fallout
Dave the Diver
Dragon age
Too bad they never made a sequel to Origins. ;)
2 was better. Fight me.
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.
