Games with intense and dense world-building?

On a lark I decided to start watching The Dark Tower movie. Despite how foul this film ended up, I'm still sorely tempted to finally return to those novels and finish them. It did get me wondering why that series has me so stricken that a decade plus after reading I'm still so engrossed by them. It's an effect books especially have on me. So why not games too?

I can think of a handful of games that have a similar impact. Witcher 3, King of Dragon Pass, and Horizon: Zero Dawn stand out to me right away. And while games like Elder Scrolls and Divinity: Original Sin 2 also impress, I feel like the D&D worlds they're based on give a good foundation they build upon (not that that should take anything away from them).

So which games do you think of when you think of world-building? Games with settings, lore, and histories that felt real and dense. Places that were presented in such a way that, even when thinking back on them, you almost feel as if they're real.

Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas have some of my favorite game worlds of all time, and I sorely hope Bethesda manages a return to their form sometime (though I'm not holding my breath).

A lot of Final Fantasy VII's worldbuilding was spectacular, particularly Midgar and the strange rotting cityscape that it contained. That impact lessened slightly when it came time to leave the city, but a few places like Cid's hometown still felt pretty neat to visit and learn about.

Full Throttle's near future implied near-apocalyptic world was also ridiculously cool and I dearly wish we could see more of it.

I was a big fan of Arcanum's world, though truthfully it's been a long time since I played that game. Think I'm about due to try it again.

This one's cheating, since it's built on the back of an expansive universe, but Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines had an awesome, gritty world.

There's a lot going on in Morrowind, numerous factions, tons of history, and it's all somewhat atypical for fantasy games. Definitely not high fantasy with mages and castles and kings, and far more unique than the rest of the series. Oblivion and Skyrim were a big letdown in terms of world building compared to Morrowind.

I love the lore/story of Banner Saga, especially how it evokes so much of Norse myth while still creating it's own setting and cosmology. It helps that they write so many smaller scenarios to make it feel fleshed out as you journey through the main plot.

One of my first experiences of being in a place that actually felt real is Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. The way the npcs all seem to be going on with their lives, the way animals hunt eachother (and you), the way the map was just open enough to feel expansive but just small enough to feel dense, it always felt real, and that made the horror of it all so much more real as well. I still think the only true competition these games have is themselves, but what they do isn't necessarily the kind of world building built on rich writing and a well thought out world with deep history, it's all about the moment to moment existence in a well realized setting. It's texture, not history, if that makes any sense, but I think it still counts as world building, even if it's still slightly based in reality.

What I might consider the best world building in a very different way to Stalker's approach is of course Dark Souls, but Bloodborne might be tied. Each of them is perfect at giving you pieces of the overall picture, enough to make you want more and just enough to figure out all the stuff they don't tell you. Look at it this way, people were able to figure out what Dark Souls' DLC was going to be, and where it was going to be set, based entirely based on item descriptions and map geography, before it was officially announced. No leaks, no datamining, and clearly the game wasn't putting up obvious hits either.

In Dark Souls and Bloodborne, everything builds towards a cohesive setting, from all the items you pick up to even some of the smallest details in the environment and enemies. The way it all fits together is just staggering. Bloodborne has more dense environments, which helps it, but the way Dark Souls' lore all fits together more than makes up for it's fairly sparse and/or videogamey environments. That said, I can appreciate Bloodborne for how everything doesn't necessarily fit together, it suits the Lovecraftian nature of the game to have the Cosmic elements always just outside our grasp.

One million percent Pillars of Etenrity.

Maybe boring answers but Pokemon RGBY and GSC.

Metal Gear Solid Series and FFX!

Dragon Quest Builders.... (get it world building.....) actually the story is pretty okay in that one.

In a more mature answer i would say KOTOR 1 & 2 Specially try out KOTOR 2 restored mod as some of you know KOTOR2 was rushed and this mod tends to restore the parts that where deleted.

Most of the later game takes have that have had that impact on me have been mentioned but if I got back a bit further, the first Metroid Prime really blew my mind when it first came out. I got completely taken in by that world and all the environmental storytelling there. And Red Dead Redemption on the 360 was another that was such a pull into that world it was a rare case of me not playing anything else at all until I'd had my fill of it.

I came here to say Horizon: Zero Dawn. What starts out as a post-apocalyptic setting with robot "animals" becomes so much more. I felt like, by the end of that game, it had really earned its aesthetic, if that makes sense. The robot enemies are cool, but not only are they cool, they exist for believable reasons within the fiction. I don't want to get into spoilers as the game is still just a couple of years old, but that story really goes places.

I'm currently playing through Pillars of Eternity, and that game's lore is definitely what I would describe as dense.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has the best world this gen. Not because of lore, more so due to detail and on a technical level. Mass Effect 1 to 3 are worth looking at if you never played them, which is maybe the best gaming universe mythology wise. God of War 4 and Spider-Man PS4 had great worlds.

My top 5.

---------------------

The Witcher Trilogy

The Witness

Okami

Breath of The Wild

Mass Effect 2

---------------------

I never finished Planescape: Torment, but if I did, then it would probably be quite high on my list.

The first thing I think of at the mention of world-building is immersive-sims: games like Bioshock, Dishonored, and Prey. Compared to a computer RPG, I don't know if the lore in those games is as dense, but each game establishes a good sense of place. Supergiant Games' games do a great job of presenting an otherworldly place. Pyre, in particular, gives the impression of having rich mythology and centuries worth of lore. Oh, and the world of Hyper Light Drifter was one of my favorites to explore, even though the game doesn't have any text.

@finaldasa: I’m sorry you watched the Dark Tower. I don’t have a lot to contribute game wise (I totally agree with Fallout 1, 2, and Vegas, but I also think 3 fits in as well), but I would encourage you to go back to the Dark tower books and try the audiobook versions. After an entire life of shunning the idea of having people read to me, Frank Muller’s Reading of The Drawing Of the Three completely turned me onto audiobooks forever.

His lobstrocity voice is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. I can’t recommend them enough.

And Fallout. You should play Fallout.

Forgot to mention how much I love Wolfenstein's world building from the last couple of games. Just wish we could see more of it.

I'm going to throw in Tyranny along with Pillars. Both games are so absolutely dense with history, character and background you'd assume they would have been based on an existing IP or a series of books.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 isn't based on a DnD world, it's part of a long-running series of games that started with Divine Divinity way back in 2002. That could count as one.

Pillars of Eternity is the other obvious one. At this point can we all just agree that PoE and DOS2 are the poster children, cream-of-the-crop when it comes to the late 90's-style CRPG revival we've seen over the past few years? All right, cool.

As far as the wider world of video games go... Skyrim is the best of these for me. All right, yes, I know, when looked at from a more objective angle, Skyrim kind of barely holds together in a lot of ways. But something about that game draws me in and doesn't let go. I feel a sort of itch to play that game at least once a year and I usually spend a significant amount of time playing it.

Other than that? I feel like almost everything I could mention will be mentioned a million times in this thread anyway. These massive, detailed, jaw-dropping open world games are few and far between for a good reason - making them is extremely hard work requiring loads of money and tons of talent.

Either that or you take the bland Ubisoft route of designing an open world, but I don't really count that as part of the same category. They sometimes do good work, but most of the time it's by-the-numbers painting applied to video games.

Definitely Fallout 1 and 2, but I'll also say the Wing Commander series, I think the mainline story based games were effective enough at setting up what felt like a pretty well-defined and consistent world, and then Privateer made it even more tangible by letting you explore it freely, with solar systems that felt unique despite most of the world consisting of maybe 5 archetypes of space stations/mining stations and planets.

I'd say the Mass Effect series did an excellent job at this, especially the very first game.