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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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.
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.
Hollow Knight.
Absolutely can’t get enough of the world and all the interesting characters and hidden lore.
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.
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.
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.
Subnautica and Raft
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.
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.
Dave the Diver
Fallout
Rimworld
Dragon age
Too bad they never made a sequel to Origins. ;)
2 was better. Fight me.
NetHack
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Eh? It has almost none, and what there is is rendered completely inconsistent.
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.
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.
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.
Anything Warhammer 40k. The universe and the lore are amazing because they absorbed a lot of SciFi elements from literature. The games have often been underwhelming but when they’re good they’re really good.
The Portal games, but mostly Portal 2.
