The Best of All Worlds...
Origin, the creators of Ultima and Wing Commander (two of my all-time favorite game series), used to have a motto: "We Create Worlds." That was one of the promises of gaming - virtual worlds so interesting and compelling that you'd happily suspend disbelief for several hours just to live there for a bit.

What does it take? Tons of detail that isn't spilled out in excruciating expository scenes. Good (but not necessarily realistic) graphics that evoke a mood. Quirky and interesting characters. A cohesion and consistency that makes everything seem like it belongs, even in the most bizarre of worlds (hint: If you have barrels full of extremely volitile explosives lying around in a hospital, you've probably blown it). Lots of secrets and optional material for the player to discover --- stuff that makes the player feel like the entire world actually exists even if the player wasn't there. And of course, a really interesting reason (or reasons) for a player to care.

Creating such a world isn't necessarily the be-all, end-all of a game (I don't really care what the world of Tetris is supposed to be like, and I really don't care for the world of Unreal Tournament, though I love playing the game). But a fascinating setting sure pushes a game beyond simple entertainment and more of an experience. Thinking back on them, I remember themas much as places as games.

Here are my favorites:

#1 - The Afterlife of Grim Fandango
Grim Fandango's world was an afterlife based very loosely on the Mexican "day of the dead" traditions. In gaming, it was absolutely unique, mixing the bizarre setting with a hefty dose of Noir and comedy. The characters were quirky, believable, and full of expression, in spite of the fact that almost all were skeletons. The world was crammed to the gills with detail, on which Manny Calavera commented on with dry wit. While the unique culture and mythology might have been a little strange at first, they quickly melted into the background, becoming almost a mundane assumption.

The game's ending was made all the more bittersweet by the realization that not only were you leaving this wonderful world and fascinating bunch of characters behind, but also that there wasn't much room for a sequel - at least not with the same characters.

#2 - The Isles of Monkey Island
I only played the first two and part of the third, as I wasn't sure the later games truly matched the vision of the original. Curse you, Ron Gilbert, for the ending of second adventure. I know you didn't intend to leave it to other people to try and explain it away, but still...

Even in the 16-color graphics of the original, the world of Monkey Island was beautifully illustrated, full of brilliant detail. The characters were offbeat, sometimes stereotypical but never boring. The music, plot, characters, visuals, dialog, and setting combined into something greater than the sum of the parts, and made the whole world come alive. We still make jokes about the used coffin dealer.

#3 - New Orleans of Gabriel Knight
The first Gabriel Knight was the only one I played - but it was fascinating. I even played the version where Tim Curry does his best impression of a Lousianna drawl as Gabriel, and it didn't detract one bit. In fact, his dialog with his grandmother won me over completely to the game. It ditched the cliches in favor of some very interesting characters and relationships. The game was packed with detail about New Orleans history, flavor, and of course, voodoo. Maybe it wasn't all accurate, but it worked for me in bringing the entire game to life.

#4 - The World of Darkness of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Maybe it's because they had such an incredibly rich license to work with, but in spite of the tight confinement of explorable area, the different cities of Bloodlines were rich, believable, and convincing. The whole world seemed worn and lived in, full of visual detail and suggestions of even more background hidden beyond the limits of the game. And of course, every bit of it was dark and angsty, and even the minor characters had their own stories and skeletons in their closet worthy of a Stephen King story. Nobody was completely innocent, and it was up to you to choose the least evil.

#5 - The Great Underground Empire of Zork
Of the old text adventures I played, the Zork series was the one that I remember with the most clarity. Room after room of ultraviolet prose designed to build pictures in your mind to challenge the best graphics the other games of the time had to offer, Zork's world was full of impossibly grand caverns, humorous detail, and of course lurking grues in the shadows.

#6 - Britannia of Ultima
Specifically, the Britannia of Ultima IV and VII, the two installments of the series that I most enjoyed and fulfilled Origin's motto for me. While the games lacked the modern mission-based "quests" of modern games, the worlds were so densely packed that you couldn't go too far before uncovering some new mystery or secret dungeon almost certain to guide you back to the main story line... but only after you'd had some fun with it.

The mysterious symbol of the silver serpent, the moongates, the city that vanished except for certain phases of the moon, the ghost-filled ruins of Skara Brae... and just Lord British's castle... these all invited you to take the world of Brittania as an actual place on its own terms, full of mystery with a life of its own.

#7 - Korea of Falcon 4.0
Hah! A flight sim! Falcon was almost completely devoid of anything resembling actual characters, though most Falcon 4.0 players will sound off on the female air traffic controller, who - due to a bug - would often criticise you for even perfect landings. In spite of the bugs that caused wacky things to happen, what worked with this game was the interactivity of the world - specifically, the enemy forces. Destroy a runway, and as time progressed you'd see it gradually getting repaired until it could launch enemy planes at you again. Pass an armored column on your way to a target, and on the way back you might see them engaged with friendlies in a pitched battle. Though your orders never called for it, the winning strategy for the most difficult Korean campaign was to blow up the bridges to stall the enemy advance until your own forces could build up their strength.

After playing through an entire campaign (or two), you became WAY too familiar with the geography of south Korea from the air. You knew the cities, the landmarks, the airbases --- and the all-important Chinese border. You learned it well enough to find your way home on a clear night with a busted navigation system (something I had to do more than once). What's even more fascinating is that you could use an actual aviation chart of Korea for navigation and radio frequencies.

#8 - Cyrodil of Oblivion
This is a beautiful world with some fairly interesting AI-driven characters. It's fun just to explore for several hours. And there's a lot of interesting historical background to be found if you poke around enough. The biggest problem is the same one that plagues nearly all games, that of the world feeling very static and unchanging (unless you go on a killing spree). Sure, the dungeons and countryside repopulate with new monsters - always around your own skill level - but especially near the end-game everything really feels like more of the same. Still, Oblivion has done a better job than most of making the world seem alive and interesting.

#9 - The Milky Way Galaxy of Frontier (Elite II)
Not many games have every tried to simulate the entire galaxy in a reasonably accurate spaceflight simulation. Frontier, AKA "Elite II," did just this. Frontier was procedural content generation on steroids - back in 1993. The planets were actually planet-sized, and the different objects in space all moved along actual simulated orbital paths. Trying to plot a course to a space station orbiting one of several moons orbiting a planet orbiting a star could get really tricky. While the game suffered from the usual blandness over time that accompany all games with heavy procedural content, the game (which shipped on, IIRC, a single floppy disk) was a two-month-long obsession for me. I swapped trade route information with my neighbor, who was just as hooked. There was a lot to do in this game. At one point I tried just making a living as a gas miner --- taking a ship with the hyperdrive removed but with large storage area, flying down around the upper atmosphere of a gas giant trying to scoop up gasses without getting sucked down the gravity well, and returning to the station to sell off the accumulated gasses for fuel.

I also suffered a misjump at one point and ended up hundreds (thousands?) of light years from civilized space. Lots of planets and stars, but no human settlements that I could find. I tried to make my way home, but my poor spacecraft broke down before I got a quarter of the way back.

Close But No Cigar Department
Some games that had fascinating worlds, but came up wanting (in my imagination):

Wing Commander - The documentation, in particular, for the early Wing Commanders were full of background information that really helped make the universe come alive and be something more than yet-another-generic space shoot 'em up. Unfortunately, too much of this was only in the documentation. There were some tidbits in the dialog - pilot slang and references to past events. There was some stuff to make me feel like there was a real universe out there, but you couldn't actually visit it.

EverQuest - I wanted to include Norrath, but I figured I'd exclude the MMO's, as they enjoy something of an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, as cool as the worlds may be, with extensive backstory, playing in them feels a bit too much like wandering through the rides at Disneyland rather than cutting a bloody swatch Conan-style through a fantasy world.

Daggerfall - While not "Frontier" huge, the world was huge and very, very procedural. Unfortunately, it became bland a bit faster than Frontier for my taste.

Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption - The medieval towns (especially Prague) really hooked me. The ever-present church influencing all elements of culture, the spookiness of the streets of Prague and Vienna at night (especially considering that you were one of the spookiest boogiemen to be found there) - it was all awesome, if constricted. Unfortunately, the modern-day cities lacked the same magic.

Labels: Game Design, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:41 PM (Permalink)