Most Interesting World/Settings in Games

[mαrkαsscoρ]

What are some settings in games that you find the most fascinating? Not just individual locations but the overall setting the game takes place in, though the locations can be a factor to why. But I'm thinking about the premise of the setting to be exact.

What brought this in mind is Cocoon and Gran Pulse from Final Fantasy XIII. I just find the idea fascinating of this artificial little high tech world that resides above an actual planet which has gone primordial. It has that whole nature vs tech thing going for it. Even if Cocoon has a few nature-esque spots.

Another one that's obvious coming from me is the Bionis and the Mechonis from Xenoblade. Society thriving on long dead titans sounds sick, and even more so in game when you're working your way up the Bionis. It's fascinated me from my first time playing and still today I find it one of the most interesting game settings.

Pikmin in hindsight is also really cool as it's basically a remnant of our own society but all the characters and enemies are miniature. I always loved in Pikmin 2 seeing the Piklopedia and moving the camera to see the backgrounds, where it's just basically real life nature.

 

[Link Floyd]

This might be a strange answer because of the realism, but I am so fascinated by the world in Red Dead Redemption 2. There is so much to do. I never thought a game set in the old west in America would be that entertaining but it is! I love all the crazy things you can encounter in such a normal looking world...aliens, cannibals, and even a serial killer! Good stuff.

 

[Dio]

Monster Hunter World. I love the beautiful coral Highlands and it was such a shock to find out that below is the rotten vale which contains pools of acid that digest dead animals to feed the coral Highlands above.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

Lordran of course

 

[Turo602]

This might be a strange answer because of the realism, but I am so fascinated by the world in Red Dead Redemption 2. There is so much to do. I never thought a game set in the old west in America would be that entertaining but it is! I love all the crazy things you can encounter in such a normal looking world...aliens, cannibals, and even a serial killer! Good stuff.

This, 100% for me. The world of Red Dead Redemption is so eerie despite looking like a realistic depiction of the wild west on the surface and Red Dead Redemption II in particular took it to the next level with how it brings so many superstitions to life in such interesting ways. But even the more grounded elements can be quite intriguing, disturbing even, and the game is just stuffed with so many unique events that make the world feel so lived in.

Also, Breath of the Wild's Hyrule. I absolutely love how it brought together so many elements, locations, and names from past games as if to say this is the definitive version of Hyrule that every game took place in but just couldn't achieve technically. There's so much history on display but it also begs new questions with its own unaccounted for events that breathes so much new life into Zelda lore.

 

[Fraxinus]

No world in any medium of fiction has moved me as much as the world of Bug Fables has. On the surface level, it's witty takes on bugs living in upside down cardboard boxes and ferrying a wind up toy boat across a puddle in someone's backyard. Deeper, though... it's a post apocalyptic game. The Roaches vanished mysteriously and no one knows why.

The game has a central theme of eternal return. One of my favorite concepts in philosophy as it embodies nature and what nature does, and I find myself on the brink of tears trying to even articulate how meaningfully this was represented with the world of Bug Fables--even the titular Everlasting Sapling is a pun on 'eternal return' in the developers' native language. There is a massively jarring shift of scale toward the late game, where your focus of what the lost civilization is moves a tier higher... the Roaches are not the lost civilization. They simply followed suit as those who came before them; implications being for the same reasons. The parallelism is so intense, I don't know how the goofy artstyle carries this weight like it does.

There's that famous quip about how if humanity were to ever destroy itself, roaches would inherit the earth. But, would they inherit our destructive flaws, too, if given our nature? That's Bug Fables.

 

[Uwu_Oocoo2]

I love the world in final fantasy 7. The city you start off in has a really cool look I can't describe at all, but it's built feeling like the whole world is this giant city. It almost feels subterranean. But the way it exposes you to the giant overworld just completely changes your perspective. All of the settlements are fundamentally similar in style, but the world they're in is vast. It changes how you think about everything, especially how small the area you started in really is.

 

[thePlinko]

Folsense from Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box sticks out to me. There’s just something so eerie yet oddly depressing about a town that’s brightly lit up at night as if it were a bustling city, and yet at the same time it’s so quiet and desolate. Also the plot twist is just wild and makes the town just that much more interesting.