this is a bit mean but i'm watching a video about video game worldbuilding and it just said "games with great settings like mass effect, cyberpunk, disco elysium and bioshock" and i was immediately like lmao:
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The Randian angle of Bioshock make it interesting and fairly unique in video game narratives, but nothing compared to DE. DE is a massive outlier, tbh. I don't think there's anything you could put it up against that wouldn't be a Coughing Baby.
I think it’d be hard to beat DE, but a few come to mind as at least comparable. Fallouts 1, 2, and NV is probably the best known and def stand as contenders, especially if you start treating them as magic realism. Pathologic draws a lot from the same well as DE and ends up being similarly brilliant.
Fallen London+Sunless Sea are maybe a tier below but at least deserve a mention. And honestly this might just be recency bias on my end but Suzerain does a really good job at making a coherent world space as well.
its interesting, i mean even in lore, no one truly knows what the world looks like, like joice mentions that if it was a planet, it sure isnt anymore, whatever the hell that means, a shattered sphere drifting in an ever expanding fog of nonexistance(maybe) like theres no answer and its fantastic
I once tried to make a little map cobbled together from what boosted Shivers tells you.
The beautiful, terrifying part of that is that once you do all that, you cannot ignore that it's all done in such a way that even that is just a pinprick's worth of a whole breathing world.
I tought that the world of Disco was just ours, but you know, with anacronistic details, like the fact they discovery the combustion engines way earlier than supposed to
Computers, music, clothing and even cars are the vibes of "What if we get new tecnology in the 1600`s"
ME genuinely has a compelling setting, it's everything else about the story that's lacking.
(Huge fan of Bioshock, but those games have great aesthetics not good settings. All worldbuilding very transparently exists to get across the game's message, themes, and big brained twisteroos.)
Lots of comments here obviously very convinced that big set pieces and grandious but poorly fleshed out ideas count as "world building" if they are personally impressed enough. And I think the answer is they haven't played Disco so they're just Saying Words to feel like they're participating...
It’s alright, but it’s not especially imaginative or evocative. All of the species sort of end up as stereotypes with the main cast being minor variations of, and the alliance is basically ‘America in space.’ Hell, I’d so far as to say that Star Trek did a lot of what Mass Effect does a lot better.
i'm not saying mass effect's worldbuilding sucks because it doesn't and that's also not what op is saying. y'all are just getting extremely defensive about it.
Again, it being an _action _ RPG I don’t think you can claim narrative being 100% the main focus.
It can’t be played without combat (no pacifist runs possible).
Combat is a massive part of it.
They had multiplayer that was about the combat, not the narrative.
Cause I'm sparing the game of the embarrassment of 3 whole games endings being boiled down to one of the biggest letdowns next to "it was all a dream" copouts
But the point of this thread is explicitly the perceived quality of the games’ worldbuilding, which doesn’t relate at all to how the games specifically ended, their genres even less so. Where you’re going with this is confusing as a result, because you’re conflating two separate things.
Regarding endings, take Deus Ex for example. A game with renowned worldbuilding, yet its endings aren’t held in the same regard because they reflect nothing of the path you took to get there, and instead the game offers you A, B or C missions.
The only thing that connects those two aspects at all is that someone wrote them. Beyond that, it just feels like grasping at straws.
If more people thought it made sense to think the game’s entire worldbuilding was bad due to how the game ended, Deus Ex wouldn’t be as loved as it still is today.
Bioshock and Mass Effect are great to have in a worldbuilding tutorial because they are perfect examples of what traps you should try to avoid as a series goes on
Mass Effect bounced around a lot from game to game, introducing new things and not fully elaborating or giving satisfying conclusions to things, also the 3rd game was trying to cater very hard to new fans who may not know the story
Bioshock suffered from trying to do the classic “both sides suck” rather than actually pick a side, the third game also introduced multiverse stuff and attempted to tie together stuff that didn’t need tying together
Mass Effect bounced around a lot from game to game, introducing new things and not fully elaborating or giving satisfying conclusions, also the 3rd game was trying to cater very hard to new fans who may not know the story. Like they do all the stuff with companions in 2 and only 5 are relevant
One thing I can think of is Humanity's unique genetic variance that gets brought up in 2, as the OG ending was humans sacrificing themselves by becoming reapers and solving the dark energy problem (However it doesn't really makes sense cus evolution ensures genetic variance so it wouldn't be unique)
A lot of the stuff goes hand in hand. The tone changes, new areas and factions are set up that don’t end up paying off, groups do not remain consistent from game to game, the main way to defeat the enemy is not set up at all and comes out of nowhere in 3
Looking back on the setting it’s obvious they didn’t have a full plan for the plot and that made the world suffer, as is made the world feel less cohesive and more like a collection of things the writer thought was cool, which doesn’t really work in a story driven series with only 3 games
Any praise for BS should be praise for System Shock as it’s a reskinned SS in essentially every way. Audio logs, dilapidated areas, locals gone psychotic.
💯 System Shock.
Not that they tried to hide it, Levine having worked on the original System Shock & seeing how it’s called Bio_shock_.
Point being:
They both have weaker world building when compared to DE.
DE goes deeper.
For every single thing they asked why/how many times over. From politics to music, from fashion to guns.
If x is true, how does it affect y? If x is true why do ppl z?
Over & over & over.
hey in it's defense cyberpunk has "good worldbuilding" in that all it's worldbuilding comes from a the extensive lore docs of an 80s tabletop game mike pondsmith made, it's everything else about that game including the bits of said writing they chose to highlight that sucks ass.
You should check out the original lore then. The game has great aesthetic and vibe. The lore has dogfight arenas of people cybernetically augmented into furries.
So the hydrogen bomb is Cyberpunk because it has extensive lore beyond one game design documents? Or is Disco Elysium because it draws very heavily on important real life themes through a very deep lens?
I think some people missed the lore and history of the world beyond “eastern Europe with the serial numbers filed off” if they didn’t play a high intelligence run bc encyclopedia was doing some work in mine.
The game is pretty decent at avoiding this by having a lot of skills that can give you info about the world regardless of how you build your Harry, but anything is possible
Yeah true. I have 500 hours in the game so all my runs have blurred together at this point. Played it back to back three times to experience all three premade detectives
Yeah, yeah, there's a giant psychic bug and reality is basically collapsing on itself. But you can't deny 99% of the game is walking around a eastern European town and dealing with people and problems that you would find expect to find there. And that serves what the game is trying to do perfectly!
But I wouldn't exactly call it a masterclass in creative worldbuilding that puts it head and shoulders above the rest of the medium. It's all the other parts of the writing that does that
I think you're giving too little credit to the game's fictional cosmology, history, and geopolitics. They're all well-developed enough to feel like you're living in it, a lot more interesting/unique than most fantasy, and serve the game's themes really well.
I mean ultimately it is down to personal taste, but Mass Effect's setting is generally well thought out and well realized. On a more personal note, the sign of good worldbuilding for me is if it captures my imagination enough to imagine stories taking place there beyond what we play.
I’d say it’s alright, good in some places, but I don’t think the setting ever distinguishes itself from the sci-fi media that it’s aping on as much as people think. A lot of it ends up feeling like “Star Trek meets 2000s america.” There’s also quite a few places of weakness, with the Asari
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also I wish more people played Citizen Sleeper
The beautiful, terrifying part of that is that once you do all that, you cannot ignore that it's all done in such a way that even that is just a pinprick's worth of a whole breathing world.
Devs: Best we can do is a map of the tenth of a mile immediately surrounding the Whirling
Computers, music, clothing and even cars are the vibes of "What if we get new tecnology in the 1600`s"
(Huge fan of Bioshock, but those games have great aesthetics not good settings. All worldbuilding very transparently exists to get across the game's message, themes, and big brained twisteroos.)
I still don't like the ad hominem though, media discussion is so hostile nowadays
Comparing Apples to Frag Grenades.
Balance that out with something like Fallout lol
That said, their world building was rather solid. Not mind blowing but def on the better side.
Especially considering that it came out in 2007.
It can’t be played without combat (no pacifist runs possible).
Combat is a massive part of it.
They had multiplayer that was about the combat, not the narrative.
Still a great trilogy though.
If more people thought it made sense to think the game’s entire worldbuilding was bad due to how the game ended, Deus Ex wouldn’t be as loved as it still is today.
💯 System Shock.
Not that they tried to hide it, Levine having worked on the original System Shock & seeing how it’s called Bio_shock_.
SS was a great game, SS2 even better (I really recommend the remake). They are heavy with atmosphere, intense & they told (usually) a solid story.
World building is less strong, apart from Infinite (funnily otherwise not so great).
They both have weaker world building when compared to DE.
DE goes deeper.
For every single thing they asked why/how many times over. From politics to music, from fashion to guns.
If x is true, how does it affect y? If x is true why do ppl z?
Over & over & over.
The depth is immense.
Like you can argue the games thenselves have variable quality compared to Disco Elysium, but the worldbuilding is solid.
Though, a quick Google search says that technically, "Au Claire de la Lune" was the first *intelligible* recording of the human voice.
Not saying you're wrong, I just gotta defend my mid little joke bc i am but a small poster, a tiny fish in a pond of funnier sharks.