Which game has the "best" world?

[SphinxnihpS]

ARMA series can have you kill some time

Arma 3 looks to add to that, but Arma 2 is already a beautiful world.

 

[videogames101]

Morrowind

far and away the best game world

some truly beautiful design work

and really, a world shaped by the player

With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed.
Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate,
or persist in the doomed world you have created.

Metaphysics in Morrowind

How Morrowind gets the "tutorial" right

 

[Stringjam]

Arma 3 looks to add to that, but Arma 2 is already a beautiful world.

This is one game I'm genuinely looking forward to. It looks like they've made some definite improvements to the engine.

 

[Childs]

Minecraft. I have spent hours and hours exploring caves or just walking and seeing what the map looked like this time. ARMA 2/DayZ is also interesting to explore the first time you go through the maps. And even though it isnt an open world game, going through the levels is Hl/HL2 is pretty cool.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Here's a related question. What is the best looking city or specific geographic feature inside a game world? I actually like Rabanastre in Final Fantasy XII...for PC, there are some great places in Everquest, but I actually love Alderaan in TOR. Disclaimer: This is not praise for TOR overall.

And while they don't have anything specific that's quite awesome yet I think Planetside 2 may just have something nice when Searhus (lava continent) comes.

 

[Rifter]

Guild wars 2, the game has its issues to be sure but artwork and explorable world are absolutly amazing.

 

[Red Storm]

Minecraft. I have spent hours and hours exploring caves or just walking and seeing what the map looked like this time. ARMA 2/DayZ is also interesting to explore the first time you go through the maps. And even though it isnt an open world game, going through the levels is Hl/HL2 is pretty cool.

I completely forgot about Minecraft! That's my choice, it's a virtual LEGO world and nothing tops that.

 

[buggers]

Wow^ _ ^

 

[Obsoleet]

Easily, the Quest for Glory series. I've been PC gaming since around 1986, and of all the games I've played that had the biggest impact on me as a virtual world. The characters, story, really made an impression on me. The storytelling for me is unmatched by the Elder Scrolls type games, too open ended, and there was something about hand-painted backgrounds that isn't exactly matched by first person POV 3D games. I played most of the games out there, including EQ, WoW, Eve Online, whatever.
#2 would be Kings Quest followed closely by Space Quest.

I would say many others that had better gameplay and story, such as LucasArts Loom or Full Throttle, Maniac Mansion ect.. but the titles above for pure 'world' immersion and love. They had the advantage of tons of sequels though, which further the immersion into the world and characters.

 

[sandorski]

I completely forgot about Minecraft! That's my choice, it's a virtual LEGO world and nothing tops that.

Indeed, I have spent so much time playing MC for the past 2 years.

 

[Chiropteran]

I'm not going to lie, I think Plants vs Zombies has the best game world I've seen in years.

 

[power_hour]

EVE definitely has the best "game" world. It is a living breathing ecosystem of RL players. One game server being run by a series of connected servers. Nothing is instanced and everything is real time (except for time dilation for large fleet battles).

Minecraft is equally awesome but its not really a game world as it is more a sandbox. It doesn't have the economy or ecosystem of EVE. But it does allow more creativity.

For single player its definitely Terraria. What a cool little game. Still waiting for a space version.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Eve Online. Nothing compares. Especially with the merge of DUST into Eve. Massive player built economies, massive territory wars, small piracy gangs, direct support of ground forces to DUST from Eve, every single action is a cascade effect from other actions that other players have done.

Nothing comes even close to the scale Eve online has generated.

 

[Zenoth]

As far back as I can recall when it comes to "explorable" game world, even if it was mostly linear, has to be Super Metroid. But there's plenty others, be it old as well or more "recent". There's the obvious ones like Morrowind and Skyrim. But there's also the Fallout games (not just Fallout 3, but F3 included of course). I would also include Earthworm Jim 1 & 2, along with MDK2 (and the original as well, but to a lesser degree). There's also FarCry 1, 2 and & 3, or the STALKER trilogy. There's also Guild Wars 2 which is so big I have yet to explore all the maps and find all there is to be found (and without the help of YouTube).

And of course I'm not exactly referring to "living, breathing" virtual ecosystems, but merely about the fact that those game's "world" were at the very least "explorable" to some extent, and that in itself distinguishes them from otherwise more commonly linear and very scripted or only story-driven games. It doesn't mean that an explorable game world isn't linear or story-driven though, but it means you can "veer off" track a bit and discover a few things here and there, either related to their back-story(ies), discovering Easter-eggs for the "heck of it" or literally stumbling upon some unknown artifact granting your character or skills new powers. Additionally, I have yet to play it myself but I've often read about Dark Souls being quite explorable (and you can make discoveries by risking to explore, etc), even though that game has never been advertised as being "explorable" or "open-world" (only heard about its difficulty aspects and that's about it).

There's many such games, perhaps way more than we think, because I truly don't believe that "explorable worlds" are only limited to sandbox type games à-la Elder Scrolls or Minecraft. And having "not much to do" in those lesser-explorable worlds isn't the point either. We're simply trying to find about games in which we could explore, regardless of the "usefulness" of doing so. And going by such conditions I believe it greatly increases the number of games we could mention, and many of them could be much older than we'd think of. We could mention older games like Daggerfall as well, or heck I could also name Beyond Oasis (Genesis) or A Link to the Past while I'm at it, or why not Ocarina of Time or Mario 64. All with explorable worlds that you really didn't "need to explore" to complete them. In fact the real challenge in similar (or identical) games was to complete them fully, such as finding all 'x' items, etc.

 

[hawtdawg]

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").

Ultima 7 chugged on 4MB of ram though.

I agree with you otherwise. Ultima 7 was years ahead of its time. Hell, you could argue that few RPG's have really matched it in scope. There was so much stuff in that game. It still baffles me that that much awesome could fit on 8 5.25 floppy's. That was the game that first got me hooked on PC gaming when I was a kid.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

I'm going to say Neverwinter Nights because the community content allowed for near endless possibilities with respect to the worlds you could play.

 

[KidNiki1]

Myst. Graphically not so amazing, although when it first came out it was pretty decent for the times i think. But the world itself was pretty amazing, some of the places you would go were just incredible. I really loved that world. For pure exploration value and amazement when I was playing it, Myst is probably my number one world.

WoW is pretty beautiful in some places and even having played as long as I have, I can always find something new and cool as I am moving about in the world.

SW:TOR has some beautifully designed areas as well. Some of the planets are kinda meh, but I agree that Alderaan was.... i don't know how to describe it other than it is one of the few game places i wish i could actually live in.

Watching others play minecraft, I can see that the minecraft world is pretty cool, and from what I understand, it's pretty huge in relation to other games. I'm just not into that game so that's more of an observers standpoint.

The world in Borderlands/Borderlands 2 is so badass. It really feels like what it is. You can feel the grime and grit and dirt and dust and general run-down-ness of it. It's wild and dangerous. Great detail and immersion.

The world of Portal/portal 2 is just straight up awesome fun. Dunno what it is, but the space overall is probably pretty small compared to other games. and you spend a lot of time inside, but once you get past the first few levels and get into the behind the scenes, there was a lot to see and explore.

And finally, as far as pure beauty goes, even though it's a console game, I have to mention Journey. The MOST amazingly gorgeous game world I have ever ever played in.

(the bioshock world and skyrim worlds seem like they will be amazing to wander through, i just haven't gotten far enough along in either game to give an informed opinion.)

 

[Daverino]

I still have nostalgia for Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Honestly I'm a fan of Fallout 3, New Vegas, Oblivion and Skyrim, they all use some variant of the same engine. They have very large landscapes to explore with highly detailed worlds, the transition between both the landscape/cities, and then cities/indoors (including dungeons) is impressive and believable enough, it creates the illusion of both a vast world but also an appropriately detailed one.

The best seamless world (no loading) I think I've seen is probably GTAIV, they cram a seriously large amount of detail in to the world, although they sacrifice overall landscape size compared to worlds such as Skyrim.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Eve Online. Nothing compares. Especially with the merge of DUST into Eve. Massive player built economies, massive territory wars, small piracy gangs, direct support of ground forces to DUST from Eve, every single action is a cascade effect from other actions that other players have done.

Nothing comes even close to the scale Eve online has generated.

Only in terms of abstracted complexity, while Eve Online is impressive, it's certainly more of a Sim than anything else. I swear that graphics to that game are just a nice extra to have, you could probably play it equally as well without actually rendering anything at all.

In that sense what it benefits in complexity and game mechanics are sacrificed in interesting and unique locations, I don't really consider Eve a world in which you'd explore for the sake of exploring like you would say explore a cave or a forest.

 

[moonbogg]

Far Cry 3 for me. Far Cry 3 is so awesome, it was actually everyone's first choice. Yer'all just confused and forgot

 

[clok1966]

Have to Join the Everquest gang.. and the trip from Freeport to Qynos( yes some went the other way.. if you where a MONK you needed to for the monk quests).. I had no issues except High Keep.. to many GNOLLS (not to mention the orcs at the zone in from commons (or was it Nek? been so long))and it was a mess of mazes. In the early days the ZONELINES where 'safe spots" get to much you ran and zoned.. so anybody else zoning at the same time would get a HUGE surprise.. I was lucky, i got in a ways and died and was lost. But the group at zone in took up my cause and we all learned the zone and fought our way through.. to find a NEW zone.. and all felt like we had done something.. achieved!

Daggerfall (elder scrolls) was just so HUGE.. and any of the Beth games after.. Oblivion, Fallout, etc..

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Only in terms of abstracted complexity, while Eve Online is impressive, it's certainly more of a Sim than anything else. I swear that graphics to that game are just a nice extra to have, you could probably play it equally as well without actually rendering anything at all.

In that sense what it benefits in complexity and game mechanics are sacrificed in interesting and unique locations, I don't really consider Eve a world in which you'd explore for the sake of exploring like you would say explore a cave or a forest.

I disagree. I do tons of exploring because I live in wormhole space. Exploration is crucial to survive. If you don't you run out of resources like fuel and can't do anything.

I know people say exploring caves and forests for the sake of it is more fun than the emptiness of space, but I think games like Skyrim were boring simply because all you're doing is going through the same looking cave or forest over and over and over. Dying has very little consequence. You're just looking for loot in the end. I got bored of Skyrim really really fast.

In Eve, I could jump into a wormhole and realize that I just jumped into a camp that annihilates me in under a second, and make me lose a hundred dollars of real life money worth of assets. Or I could jump in and realize that I could make tons of money by getting all the loor available.

I mean, the world looks amazing. I was roaming around, and then I realized that I was looking at this expansive nebula in the background, that dynamically repositions itself in space according to what system you have jumped to. A large percentage of the stars you see in this picture are actually systems that you can jump to and explore. Nothing in the world compares.

 

[Craig234]

Have to Join the Everquest gang.. and the trip from Freeport to Qynos( yes some went the other way.. if you where a MONK you needed to for the monk quests).. I had no issues except High Keep.. to many GNOLLS (not to mention the orcs at the zone in from commons (or was it Nek? been so long))and it was a mess of mazes. In the early days the ZONELINES where 'safe spots" get to much you ran and zoned.. so anybody else zoning at the same time would get a HUGE surprise.. I was lucky, i got in a ways and died and was lost. But the group at zone in took up my cause and we all learned the zone and fought our way through.. to find a NEW zone.. and all felt like we had done something.. achieved!

Daggerfall (elder scrolls) was just so HUGE.. and any of the Beth games after.. Oblivion, Fallout, etc..

+1

First time I did that, I had a roleplayer grouped with me who did not go but helped say how to cross zones...

Seenng the cyclops at the bridge, the griffons... the long, long, long run on the river... just an amazing trip to make finally getting to qeynos (Sony EQ backwards).

In the early days, you could buy things far away and port back to sell to players...

Find highkeep on the way, the basement filled with camps of players learning to share on the gnolls... all sitting on the wall... one had the all red rubicite plate.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Have to Join the Everquest gang.. and the trip from Freeport to Qynos( yes some went the other way.. if you where a MONK you needed to for the monk quests).. I had no issues except High Keep.. to many GNOLLS (not to mention the orcs at the zone in from commons (or was it Nek? been so long))and it was a mess of mazes. In the early days the ZONELINES where 'safe spots" get to much you ran and zoned.. so anybody else zoning at the same time would get a HUGE surprise.. I was lucky, i got in a ways and died and was lost. But the group at zone in took up my cause and we all learned the zone and fought our way through.. to find a NEW zone.. and all felt like we had done something.. achieved!

Daggerfall (elder scrolls) was just so HUGE.. and any of the Beth games after.. Oblivion, Fallout, etc..

Whats more fun was in FFXI, high level players could spawn a boss monster in a area that was 40 levels higher than the average player level in that area. It would roam around the destroy the entire area of players in one hit, and unless a high level player stopped laughing his ass off and actually killed, it, no one could do anything about it. Dozens of level downs everywhere.

There is also the Jeuno run in FFXI. Takes a few hours to do. You have to run across the entire world dodging tons of high level monsters along the way. Insanely stressful cause a death would set you back an hour or two. Great scenery though. Running from high level monsters was scary as shit.