There haven’t been a lot of games that suck people into their worlds. I certainly remember getting absorbed in Ultima Underworld (didn’t think the 2nd was as good as the 1st) and Wing Commander. Today, the Halo universe has a lot of fans (I don’t play Halo much, personally). They’ve done a good job of building a fairly deep foundation of background that’s mostly hinted at in the games. Each game expands on the universe in an interesting way. They’ve matured to the point where you really feel in the game that there’s more to the game world than what you see on the screen (and for people who are obsessed with Halo, there are pulp-fiction paperbacks that expand the universe).
People really got into Mass Effect’s world. That game is made by BioWare, which you may recognize as the producers of Baldur’s gate, so they are more holdovers from the old school.
2K Boston (formerly Irrational, who made System Shock 2) definitely produced that level of quality with Bioshock. One of the interesting things about that game is how people talk about the “story,” but there are I think three cutscenes in the entire game–at the beginning, the middle, and the end. What the game actually has is an environment so incredibly well-crafted that you truly feel like you just arrived in a world that has its own history and stories, and as you go deeper into the world, you observe more and more and put most of the pieces together yourself. One of the things that made this game’s world so compelling is that its “mythos,” as you like to call it, was Atlas Shrugged. Most people who played the game had no idea at the time, but it shows how effective drawing from the well of established literature and ideas can be.
The last I will mention is Atlus, who made Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. Atlus doesn’t sell mass-market games, so they don’t have huge budgets or Hollywood production values. The games always have some rough edges, too (not as rough as Ultima VIII, though!). And they crank out a surprisingly large number of games, many of which are crap. But when they hit, they knock it out of the park. Their “Souls” RPGs have this incredible depth. In Demon’s Souls, there are maybe eight total minutes of voice acting, yet the world felt deeper, more interesting, and more realized than any Final Fantasy game. It does a great job of “Show, don’t tell” and leaving things to the imagination of the player. It’s hard to describe…basically, things are crafted in such a way that you feel there must be some deep history to a place that you just discovered, but there’s no cutscene or wall of text telling you about it.
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. For the consoles, I remember the NES experience was largely getting lost inside the universe of Mario (Mario Mania!) or Zelda or Metroid. Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t believe in ‘universes’ probably because they impose constraints on the precious developers (if Zelda was a universe then Aonuma couldn’t put in his trains). These constraints are good though. You don’t have Mario act like a gangster in GTA not because of IP protection but because that doesn’t fit the Mario universe for that person. What Nintendo calls IP protection, consumers call universe. And I suppose it is much easier to protect an IP when you never expand it.
I hear lots of disappointing things about Bioshock. Overrated as hell. I doubt it will pass the test of time.And poor System Shock 1 and 2. They are stuck in legal hell. I hear the IP holder belongs to some non-gaming industry, and they refuse to do anything with it unless they get bazillions. Glad I have both on disc. (And System Shock 2 is the scariest game ever.)
How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine, reader?
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