RPG world locations

agnes

agnes

agnes

Soldato
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Evening all, I was wondering what RPG's people like based on their world locations.

For example, I liked Dragon Age Inquisition because the worlds were very varied to each other. Each feeling unique in their environment. And to me, a RPG with a lot of varied landscapes can make or break the game.

Take I am Setsuna for example, 90% of it is based in the same landscape, which tires very quickly.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have WoW. An insanely varied landscape ruined in it's later expansions due to the new grouping function and no longer needing people to travel.

What are your thoughts? Do you care about the environment? What games stick out to you for it's varied locations?
 
agnes said:
On the other end of the spectrum, you have WoW. An insanely varied landscape ruined in it's later expansions due to the new grouping function and no longer needing people to travel.
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Off at a tangent slightly, but wanted to comment on this. I always felt sorry in a way for the artists and designers involved in WoW, who went to all the effort of designing such a wonderfully varied and diverse gameworld in WoW and then ended up with much of it being completely ignored through later game design decisions. Always reminds me of a brilliant, convoluted novel, full of terrific scenes and events but then the reader reads the first chapter and the last chapter only :)
 
Tombstone said:
Off at a tangent slightly, but wanted to comment on this. I always felt sorry in a way for the artists and designers involved in WoW, who went to all the effort of designing such a wonderfully varied and diverse gameworld in WoW and then ended up with much of it being completely ignored through later game design decisions. Always reminds me of a brilliant, convoluted novel, full of terrific scenes and events but then the reader reads the first chapter and the last chapter only :)
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Agreed, which is why I loved going on the vanilla private servers, brought you back into the huge world and whilst they didn't have any of the new 'worlds', it felt a million times bigger. It felt so awesome shouting out in a main city for a portal to another city, hoping someone would help me out as I didn't fancy the long ass commute lol. All of that, totally lost. Remember being around Lv40 with your mount, being able to do the Scarlet Monastery, discussing with guildies who is around to do it and then turning up to world PvP madness and hoping you'd all run in on time before someone got ganked? Let along the 30 min journey it sometimes took. Unless you was near a zep. All that, lost, with group finder and instant portaling to the instance. Very sad indeed.

Current players often defend this stating there are collectables in the world to get, fishing, pets, acheivements etc. But that's not what I want from a MMO. I want to sit in Felwood again and have to farm for several days to get Honored status with the Timermaw Hold so I can learn the 1H agility enchantment. In fear of being ganked with passer bys lol. God those were the times. Let alone having to sit in norther Hillsbrad Farms waiting for AV and having big world PvP battles whilst doing so.
 
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I like a good middle ground - playing The Division it gets a bit boring as all the locations feel the same - but I like to be able to immerse in a setting as well so too much variation can be just as bad.
 
Rroff said:
I like a good middle ground - playing The Division it gets a bit boring as all the locations feel the same - but I like to be able to immerse in a setting as well so too much variation can be just as bad.
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Oooo, good shout, I too enjoy the setting of the Division for the same reason, very immersive.
 
I don't think I quite conveyed myself well there - The Division is a bit too much the same - though for awhile it is good for immersion - but eventually you see the same style in everything.

One that was quite good for varied environments while not going overboard was Mafia 2 - shame the WW2 segment wasn't used just a little more through the game though - but nice variation of environments and transition through the seasons while being quite immersive - unfortunately gameplay design approach by 2K kind of ruined your ability to really enjoy it though as they seemed to begrudge the player of any experience they couldn't wring money out of you for with an attitude that you should only play it along the lines of the main story and anything else you should pay for DLC :( such a shame given the fidelity of the environments, etc. (Literally one of the employees had a rant about people finding their own things to do in the game and called anyone bypassing the time limit in the demo stealing - time limited demos pretty much tell you what the developer/publisher attitude it towards their customers anyhow).
 
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The Witcher 3 world was one of the best I've played in recent years, I enjoyed running round the map on the Division as it was something different, GR Wildlands has varying maps between zones some worked really well others felt too open and empty.
 
I really wish that they had done different cities for The Division. It would have been really cool to do some bits in New York, then some bits in Los Angeles, then some in Las Vegas etc.
 
Game gets mentioned everywhere, but Witcher 3.

There are large regions and all feel well detailed and fleshed out, but all them to feel unique. The mainland feels like a bleak place ravaged by war and death is on the doorstep, Novigrad and Oxenfert city locations feel great and unique places themselves. Then you get skielliga which has its own unique enviroment, people and culture, always feel like I stepped into a viking world there. Then with the expansion you get Toussaint, another amazingly well detailed environment where they did things like change the colour palate so everything seems much more brighter and vibrant compare to the mainland. Not to mention the people are very different to the mainland.

Elder scrolls online is another nice one, lots and lots of regions all with their unique landscape and architecture reminiscent of what you got in the main single player games.
 
Tombstone said:
I really wish that they had done different cities for The Division. It would have been really cool to do some bits in New York, then some bits in Los Angeles, then some in Las Vegas etc.
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Yeah it was decent but eventually it all felt the same - a little variation in setting would have gone a long way - even if it was just relatively small sections set elsewhere for specific missions. Not sure if there are some constraints with regard to canon and the background material it is based with the Tom Clancy connection but it seems almost incidental in connection to TC.
 
Gothic 1 and especially Gothic 2 have amazing worldbuilding.

Witcher trilogy goes without saying.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas are great.

Recently I was pretty mindblown by Deus Ex Mankind Divided, its world is small, but incredibly dense and layered with detail. And Prague at night is incredibly atmospheric.
 
For me, an RPG needs at least one decent sized city/hub to act as a focal point for your adventure.

Witcher 3 has Novigrad and Toussant
New Vegas has New Vegas
Oblivion has Imperial City
Pillars of Eternity has Defiance Bay
Skyrim has it's cities which do kind of act in that way.

Without a decent sized city I find it harder to really get in to the world. It is where the Dragon Age games suffer for me, and the latest Mass Effect. DA Origins had Denerim, but tbh it was practically nothing. Mass Effect has The Citadel which got smaller with each iteration and hardly anyone on it.

Witcher 3 Blood and Wine is the pinnacle so far for me. A large city that is the focus, surrounded by a landscape for you to go questing in. It was perfectly executed.
 
Pighardia said:
For me, an RPG needs at least one decent sized city/hub to act as a focal point for your adventure.

Witcher 3 has Novigrad and Toussant
New Vegas has New Vegas
Oblivion has Imperial City
Pillars of Eternity has Defiance Bay
Skyrim has it's cities which do kind of act in that way.

Without a decent sized city I find it harder to really get in to the world. It is where the Dragon Age games suffer for me, and the latest Mass Effect. DA Origins had Denerim, but tbh it was practically nothing. Mass Effect has The Citadel which got smaller with each iteration and hardly anyone on it.

Witcher 3 Blood and Wine is the pinnacle so far for me. A large city that is the focus, surrounded by a landscape for you to go questing in. It was perfectly executed.
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Fantastic shouts on the cities! Specially with Witcher 3, when you come back and catch up with friends, get some beer with them, play some Gwent, repair weapons, sell stuff you've collected, store stuff etc etc. All of this isn't really necessary nor a quest per say. But you feel like it's part of the world, it's a small break from the bleakness outside. After a few beers at the tavern you head back to Dandelion's establishment crawling through the streets where prostitution and public drunken displays are everywhere. Really is a fantastic city to explore outside of question. And you can find some fantastic nuggets.

Side note about Novigrad, my wife is from Gdansk in Poland, where a lot of the games architecture is based upon, we got married in Gdansk, here is the tower:

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Sadly, as we got a boat to the second part of the wedding, it was raining and the camera man didn't get a chance to take a shot with us infront of it as the reception was the otherside of the river to it (awesome!)

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I like to have at least one big city in games, so Novigrad was great for me in Witcher 3. It was huge, and more importantly full of life. Skyrim didn't really have anything like that; its 'big' cities had about 15 people and it just felt rather dead overall. But the winner for me has to be Toussaint from the expansion. The entire map is just beautiful. I would spend hours just walking around doing nothing, just taking it all in. I'd absolutely love to live somewhere like that.
 
G-MAN2004 said:
I like to have at least one big city in games, so Novigrad was great for me in Witcher 3. It was huge, and more importantly full of life. Skyrim didn't really have anything like that; its 'big' cities had about 15 people and it just felt rather dead overall. But the winner for me has to be Toussaint from the expansion. The entire map is just beautiful. I would spend hours just walking around doing nothing, just taking it all in. I'd absolutely love to live somewhere like that.
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I've completed Witcher 3, a while back, it's my #1 game. I've not touched the DLC yet regardless of owning it since it came out. I'm too scared to finish lol. My other fear is that Toussaint is too soft and warm. I like the darkness of the main islands.
 
One game that I played to death was Fallout 3 and that was largely down to location, I loved the fact you could scavenge around the Washington monument one minute travel through the metros fighting ghouls then pop up by the citadel (pentagon) all in a futuristic apocalyptic world
 
agnes said:
I've completed Witcher 3, a while back, it's my #1 game. I've not touched the DLC yet regardless of owning it since it came out. I'm too scared to finish lol. My other fear is that Toussaint is too soft and warm. I like the darkness of the main islands.
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Just play it at night. ;)

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Yeah I know what you mean, I prefer the dark and rainy places myself, but it does have its fair share of gloomy missions tbh. I'd love to be in your position and play it again for the first time!
 
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