Which game has the "best" world?

[CPA]

This thread topic may have come up before, but I couldn't recall and couldn't find in a quick search.

So, I was wondering which game you guys thought had the "best" world. I'm talking an explorable world. I leave it up to you to determine the criteria used in your choice.

Examples might include:
Skyrim
Morrowind
GTAV
Just Cause 2
Red Faction Guerilla
Fallout: New Vegas
Driver: San Francisco
Saint's Row 1, 2 or 3

You get the drift.

right now, my nomination is Just Cause 2. The world is friggen huge, pretty to look at, cool night/day transitioning and has plenty to do. Some may say the world may be too big with too many small towns to "complete". If there's one thing I wish was better in JC2's world is that everything is destructible. I want to blow up a skyscraper

 

[Dankk]

Just Cause 2 has a huge, gorgeous world, but it's not very "explorable". Fun to go off-road driving through jungles and down snow-capped mountains, but there isn't much to actually "explore". There's some collectables here and there but nothing much.

JC2 is still an awesome game though. So I respect your opinion.

 

[darkewaffle]

FFXI, easy.

 

[tHa ShIzNiT]

probably everquest for me. exploring that world may have been the pinnacle of my gaming life. every zone was large and most had severe consequences for going to the wrong places. making my first trip from Qeynos to Freeport was exhilirating. it was known to be difficult, you went through some crazy places where you could easily die to high level monsters. you had to prepare yourself mentally for it, and then you had to finally make the plunge and start off your journey.

I'll probably never have quite the same experience again.

 

[CPA]

Just Cause 2 has a huge, gorgeous world, but it's not very "explorable". Fun to go off-road driving through jungles and down snow-capped mountains, but there isn't much to actually "explore". There's some collectables here and there but nothing much.

JC2 is still an awesome game though. So I respect your opinion.

My 11 year old goaded me back into it over the weekend. I spent about 7 hours playing yesterday. Playing it on my new 660Ti with everything turned up. Very pretty.

 

[SunnyD]

Ultima 7.

Every AI had a schedule. Every AI interacted with eachother. If you killed a NPC, other NPCs would "notice" down the road that that NPC was missing, and wonder what had happened. AI would congregate around events that happened (non-scripted).

It was really an amazing piece of work for a world as large as it was given the technology of the time (386/486 era where 1MB of ram was "common").

 

[Goothry]

I'm voting Morrowind. I felt that when playing this game one had to actually explore the world as it was before the time of waypoints and fast travel. No short cuts here! Everything a player discovered was just that, a discovery. Want to know where that quest NPC is in the wilderness? Too bad! Go find him! The openness of the game, in combination with its mechanics, allowed for the player to make their own story, and that's what made it the best for me.

However, maybe my perception is skewed a bit, and had a little to much fun on my own quest to murder every essential and non-essental NPC. I mean common, Divayth in the Tower of Tel Fry totally had it comming to him by flaunting that full suit of daedric armor, and that odd minded Archmage always looked at me a bit funny (for those of you who played the game, you know what I mean), they both had to go.

 

[KaOTiK]

probably everquest for me. exploring that world may have been the pinnacle of my gaming life. every zone was large and most had severe consequences for going to the wrong places. making my first trip from Qeynos to Freeport was exhilirating. it was known to be difficult, you went through some crazy places where you could easily die to high level monsters. you had to prepare yourself mentally for it, and then you had to finally make the plunge and start off your journey.

I'll probably never have quite the same experience again.

I remember my first time making that trip. I was by myself, I had patched together all the info I could from people on how to get there. I remember running through the West Karana and just seeing lots of farm land all over following the road. Got off track because of agro and ran like a bitch, by this time it was about night time (and for those who didn't play EQ, nighttime meant it was pitch black pretty much if you didn't have an item/spell to see in the dark or you were a race with night vision). Thankfully I was a half elf so I could see in the dark . I find the river and follow it figuring I'll hit a bridge and hopefully see others. 10-15 mins later come across the bridge that does connect the Karana's. Watch 2 people kill a giant not far from the bridge in awe. Ask them if this is the road to follow for freeport and they confirm and give me some other tips. Make it up the long cliff into Canyon area. It was a freaking maze damn it! After being lost for like 20 mins I figured it out (and never once got lost there ever again in my many other travels lol!). Once you left the canyon area you hit up a Kithcore (sp?) woods iirc and you were home free just going through east/west commons (this was before the update that made Kithicore Woods a death trap at night).

That trip took like an hour and a half 2 hours the first thing and had my heart racing the entire time. Being in a new areas, ones that for the most part that were higher level than you and the whole not knowing what is there with the death penalty makes for an experience gamers today will never be able to have again (Internet takes away so much of it now, google a video/guide and you never have to worry, that stuff was non existent back in EQ, you found player made maps on forums and database sites that gave you a rough idea on where to go for one zone to the next and what the level ranges were, but that was it)

 

[Rhezuss]

Morrowind is still one of my favorite game world. Damn that place was huge and beautifully haunting. There was so many different environments it simply made exploring more fun than actually do quests.

Skyrim has one great and beautiful world to explore if you like snowy mounstains, tundra, raging rivers and the like. Add some mods on it and it become absolutely gorgeous.

Far Cry 3 is one of those place where you can simply stop and enjoy the view but can be killed by austriches and bandits in the process. It's huge, beautiful and a bit repetitive but it's still a lot of fun to explore.

 

[ThinClient]

Just Cause 2 has a huge, gorgeous world, but it's not very "explorable". Fun to go off-road driving through jungles and down snow-capped mountains, but there isn't much to actually "explore". There's some collectables here and there but nothing much.

JC2 is still an awesome game though. So I respect your opinion.

Just like the real world.

You can go from standing on a mountain top to swimming the ocean depths on the opposite side of the map with zero loading time and cross everything from villages to towns to farming fields to industrial zones to upscale neighborhoods to military complexes to downtown night life hotspots and everything else you can think of in between.

...and all of it is absolutely beautifully created.

Absolutely love the JC2 world. It's amazing.

 

[Tweak155]

WoW & FFXI. Ironically the only 2 MMORPG's I took seriously.

I still like the big city and areas in Burnout Paradise. Although small, they did a great job for a racing game.

Also the city in Arkham City was well done. Lots of places to go, and an awesome way to travel it.

 

[Markbnj]

Ultima 7.

Every AI had a schedule. Every AI interacted with eachother. If you killed a NPC, other NPCs would "notice" down the road that that NPC was missing, and wonder what had happened. AI would congregate around events that happened (non-scripted).

It was really an amazing piece of work for a world as large as it was given the technology of the time (386/486 era where 1MB of ram was "common").

I remember in Ultima 6 I had Iolo grab a bunch of grapes from a pedestal in the center of a little town northeast of the castle, and the citizens immediately chased us out of town, whacking at us with sticks. It was awesome.

The "best" will probably be the one that stands out most in your memory, and for me that is also Everquest I. It was my first graphical, open-world RPG, and as mentioned it was a dark and dangerous place. The first time I stepped out of Felwith into the forest of the Faydark it just felt dangerous. I'm sure that experience will never repeat itself.

 

[motsm]

I always liked the Piranha Bytes games, since you can tell they are mostly hand designed, which results in a very believable world with little repetition. Most open world games use far too many boring height map generated landscapes with no real life to them, and then compound the issue by over using prefabricated assets and dungeon tiles to further streamline the design process.

Planescape Torment I give high marks for it's setting, the world itself and the characters it's filled with are really nothing like any other game on the market.

Myst might be my favorite though. The entire series is derived almost completely from having unique and interesting worlds to explore.

 

[Red Storm]

Eve Online because of the player driven aspect of it. Though I don't like the community so I'm no longer in that world.

 

[SunnyD]

Eve Online because of the player driven aspect of it. Though I don't like the community so I'm no longer in that world.

Paradoxical - You dislike what you liked most about it?

I do agree with you in a sense though. EVE was so freewheeling that it was a paradox. You could do what you want, but only if the "community" let you. For example, I wanted to be a carebear, but I felt dirty and shunned because of it. So I had to do it alone, in secret, always with a fear of getting the crap beat out of me because of it. Crap like Hulkageddon was what ultimately made me hang up on the game. I never suffered a loss from it (though I did have a highsec high-value transport loss one time which pissed me off to no end), but given crap like that is rampant and encouraged makes me feel that's what makes it the "worst" game world ever.

 

[tHa ShIzNiT]

I remember my first time making that trip. I was by myself, I had patched together all the info I could from people on how to get there. I remember running through the West Karana and just seeing lots of farm land all over following the road. Got off track because of agro and ran like a bitch, by this time it was about night time (and for those who didn't play EQ, nighttime meant it was pitch black pretty much if you didn't have an item/spell to see in the dark or you were a race with night vision). Thankfully I was a half elf so I could see in the dark . I find the river and follow it figuring I'll hit a bridge and hopefully see others. 10-15 mins later come across the bridge that does connect the Karana's. Watch 2 people kill a giant not far from the bridge in awe. Ask them if this is the road to follow for freeport and they confirm and give me some other tips. Make it up the long cliff into Canyon area. It was a freaking maze damn it! After being lost for like 20 mins I figured it out (and never once got lost there ever again in my many other travels lol!). Once you left the canyon area you hit up a Kithcore (sp?) woods iirc and you were home free just going through east/west commons (this was before the update that made Kithicore Woods a death trap at night).

That trip took like an hour and a half 2 hours the first thing and had my heart racing the entire time. Being in a new areas, ones that for the most part that were higher level than you and the whole not knowing what is there with the death penalty makes for an experience gamers today will never be able to have again (Internet takes away so much of it now, google a video/guide and you never have to worry, that stuff was non existent back in EQ, you found player made maps on forums and database sites that gave you a rough idea on where to go for one zone to the next and what the level ranges were, but that was it)

thats a pretty darn good description of it. And how lucky you are to have shared that same experience I did. Not many people even got to do that, because a lot of them started in Freeport, or one of the elf places, etc. But those of us who started in Qeynos were in for a long journey, because eventually Freeport was the hub you had to get to, to be around the good areas. In fact, when you were in Qeynos you were shut off from everything, you had only the Qeynos people to trade with...no world markets like there are nowadays in every game. No fast travel. You go by foot. And its a long freakin way. Things like that are an inconvenience that today's gamers cant be bothered with, but I wouldn't trade that experience for anything! Gaming is my life, and this was when I had the most fun with it. =)

I have very fond memories of the first gnoll cave by Qeynos too, where people were just learning what a dungeon was, and huge trains resulted.

 

[Red Storm]

Paradoxical - You dislike what you liked most about it?

I do agree with you in a sense though. EVE was so freewheeling that it was a paradox. You could do what you want, but only if the "community" let you. For example, I wanted to be a carebear, but I felt dirty and shunned because of it. So I had to do it alone, in secret, always with a fear of getting the crap beat out of me because of it. Crap like Hulkageddon was what ultimately made me hang up on the game. I never suffered a loss from it (though I did have a highsec high-value transport loss one time which pissed me off to no end), but given crap like that is rampant and encouraged makes me feel that's what makes it the "worst" game world ever.

No, I loved the game world. All the aspects of it being player driven was incredibly cool. What I didn't like was the general player base.

 

[Jeffg010]

Everquest for me so much fun exploring that world.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Metroid 3
Ultima V
GTA 4

 

[SunnyD]

No, I loved the game world. All the aspects of it being player driven was incredibly cool. What I didn't like was the general player base.

Ah, okay. I follow what you're saying. For me, EVE really had no "game world" without the player base, hence the world for all intents was the player base. The two were inextricably inseparable because of everything being player driven. The rest of the game... was... "empty".

But I do understand the way you look at it too.

 

[Annisman*]

The world of the Witcher franchise should be included in some of the best, not saying it IS the best, but it's got to be one of them.

 

[Stringjam]

The Zone (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.). Both beautiful and dark / haunting. The town of Limansk and the swamps in ClearSky come to mind.

I was actually a bit disappointed with JustCause2. Mostly because the architecture is just building props, and a bit generic at that....you can't go into most of it. I got the feeling that it's just a huge environment map with lots of grass, trees, and building shells. I still had a lot of fun with the mechanics of getting around on the island, though. It's really pretty on the surface.....it just didn't have any depth.

Skyrim has a lot of variation to keeps things interesting. Throw some mods on there and it's beautiful to look at. I'll never forget the first time I walked out into Blackreach.....it's not often anymore where I get that sense of awe just standing there and looking around.

FarCry2 had a beautiful / interesting environment.

 

[sandorski]

If I just want to kill some time, SR3 is my preferred world.

 

[Remobz]

ARMA series can have you kill some time

 

[carling220]

You can't do anything inside it, but I loved the atmosphere and quality of the Mafia 2 world to drive through. Looked great.