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The Hot Topic Returns


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Readers discuss their favourite fictional worlds in gaming, from the deep lore of Skyrim to the comic book style universe of Darksiders.

 

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Cosmo, who asked which game or franchise do you think has the most interesting fictional world? Is it because of its lore, its characters, its art design, gameplay, or something else?

 

With many franchises now having decades worth of lore behind them, there was no shortage of choices, although inevitably it was role-playing style games like The Witcher and Mass Effect that got the most mentions.

 

Coming as no surprise to anyone that I love the Gears universe, it's not the most complicated ever created but I love the tone and it has just the right amount of realism in it for me... especially counting the novels.

 

You can't knock the amount of work put in to things like Mass Effect, Skyrim and Fallout either.

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Generally have a bit of recency bias with these questions as it's always what I played recently that comes to mind. But the way Vvardenfell is built in Morrowind through not just the main story but contextual storytelling in its side-quests, towns and settlements, factions and religions, transit systems (because even getting around in the world is part of its world building) and in-game libraries really impressed me and made the world feel lived in. Like there was a steep history behind everything and it all exists with or without your interference. I think the fact that the world is so crudely drawn on the screen but feels more vivid and real than a lot of modern stuff speaks to the carefully layered world that they built, which of course is a world they continue to build on top of (tho Oblivion is more of a silly game, imo. Still fun tho)

 

The first two Mass Effects stand out as having both completely different approaches to building out a world and its lore. ME1 is a ton of aliens telling you their entire culture and political backstory, setting the foundation for ME2 where they shift the perspective to the seedy underworld of the galaxy and let you see what all the different alien archetypes look when they are not always the good guys. ME2 being more of a 'showing' rather than a 'telling' kind of game, I think people don't give the sequel enough credit for its worldbuilding, tending to lump it in with the action packed finale. World building isn't just a bunch of codex data about races and cultures,. Lair of the Shadow Broker is excellent world building by all its noir-ish intrigue and betrayal, you're getting a different perspective on how different people live differently in different parts of the galaxy.

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it feels a bit cheap to say Witcher, because it was mentioned in the OP and it's based on a book. I think I'll go with Shin Megami, every game kind of starts again, but invariably the world is really interesting in them, particularly the likes of Strange Journey

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Since open world western RPGs are basically my thing (my high level streetfighter play is not relevant to this thread) I could just list all the usual suspects and leave it there, the fallouts, the scrollers, the creeds, the autos etc. 

 

One game I thought had a most intense world which completely engrossed me was Hellblade. I'm in danger of getting overhyped by the upcoming sequel given the possibly blank cheque they're now working with.

 

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Legacy of Kain

Shakespearian Vampires. Alongside a heady mix of existentialism, Elder Gods and time travel. Far deeper themes and concepts than the series had any right to be using.

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Just to go a bit less obvious, a bit cool, you know.  I'm gonna say Splatoon since the next one got some news lately.  It's just with a lot of Nintendo stuff not much goes into the world building.  Like in Mario games everything is purely there to serve a fun mechanical function.  But Splatoon does go out of its way to make it's quirky world make sense.  There's signs that point to humans been extinct due to maybe some kind of climate thing and the squid kids are a new kind of evolution.  In Salmon Run there's these pokes at corporate structures.  There's just all this lore tucked away that fleshes things out in a way that isn't usually considered in Nintendo games.  I think it's because it's made by the Animal Crossing team and it has the same unexpected details in the lore, especially for a game about running around and making a mess.

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It's Tamriel stuff for me.

 

I think the greatest thing is how embellished or misrepresented is, or even plot holes between games in the series, because that's how it is, you have hundreds of years or more pass between games and stuff gets muddled up, everyone has their own perception on past events. Even the gods and religious means change between races and each faction is willing to gloss over shit that might have them been seen as less favourable light.

 

You can literally witness certain things happen earlier on in the time line and then see people talk about it later in on the time line and their take on it, where lower intelligence people might not be fully clued up on it, educated or wiser might be closer to what happened, or at least in the right ballpark of actual events.

 

Really the only stuff that everyone seem to agree on are the things that were pretty unavoidable, like Manimarco and his King of Worms phase, or the various inflictions they've had to deal with from the Aedra/Daedra.

 

Not everything is cut and dried. Even though the horrible things that have been done you will still find people that sympathised with any of the misdoings of some of the more terrible actions taken within Nirn. I feel that's what makes it feel alive, especially when it comes to conundrums that aren't just black and white. Some people do good things for bad reasons, and some do bad things for good reasons. Some do things just because it's the only thing they can do, they buy time and hope whoever the shit lands on can deal with it, like what happens in Skyrim.

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On 14/08/2022 at 22:13, Sly Reflex said:

 

Not everything is cut and dried. Even though the horrible things that have been done you will still find people that sympathised with any of the misdoings of some of the more terrible actions taken within Nirn. I feel that's what makes it feel alive, especially when it comes to conundrums that aren't just black and white. Some people do good things for bad reasons, and some do bad things for good reasons. Some do things just because it's the only thing they can do, they buy time and hope whoever the shit lands on can deal with it, like what happens in Skyrim.

I dunno how things go down in Skyrim, cause I think I will never get into that game as I'm not really into it. But I like how in Morrowind there's this theme of stuff being lost to history and certain accounts of what might have went down kind of require you to acknowledge your own biases a bit or at the very least that some of the people you might consider villainous might have done some good for the wrong reasons. Like what would happen to Morrowind if they didn't have a figure like Vivec and would their deal with the empire have been half as accommodating as it is during the events of that game with a leader as powerful as he was.

 

Writing stories like this sort of demands the player remains a bit curious about these events themselves tho or it all goes over their head, cause it ain't really spelled out and that's deliberate  

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Yeah, it can be very ambiguous, and as it's often said "The winners write the history" so getting to see it first hand and then seeing how generations after interpret it or reincarnate it in the case of the Aldemeri Dominion with Tamriel's version of the Spanish Inquisition is interesting. Like they bastardised it for their own wants in that time period. Not that I am defending the earlier renditions as they weren't great either (depending on who you listen to in game), but they took an idealistic view of how things should go and adapted that to fit them being High Fantasy Nazi's.

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Readers discuss their favourite video game rivalries, from the days of the SNES vs. Mega Drive right up to PlayStation vs. Xbox.

 

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Cranston, who asked what’s the most invested you’ve ever been in a console war? Which generation did you get the most passionate about and which side were you on?

 

The 16-bit battle between Mega Drive and SNES will always be the definitive console war but plenty others have stuck in readers minds, from the 8-bit computer wars right up to the modern day.

 

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It's PlayStation vs Xbox that stands out most in my mind but that's only down to having the Internet nowadays and the fact it been going for the longest time and will continue to until one company bows out... Snes vs Megadrive just amounted to shouting obscenities in the playground.😂

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I guess the 360 vs PS3 stands out for me. Recency bias plus the fact we had the internet and forums for that one. All the stuff about online gaming, Bethesda games running like shit on PS3 and Bayonetta being the standouts. Then PS3 owners saying they had true HD and eventually having the marquee exclusives. 
 

My favourite moment in all of the console wars thing was easily the PS4 Vs Xbox One E3 reveal things. Sony just destroyed MS so badly during that time it was just hilarious. 
 

When I was young, nobody else at school was really bothered about games so the MDvSNES onwards weren’t a real life thing. Only reason I knew there was such a thing as console wars were because of magazines. 

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When I was younger at school I don't remember much arguing over the SNES and Mega Drive.  I thought it was cool when I got to play a SNES at a friend's and I think that was just the general attitude.  Same with the PS1, N64 and Saturn era to be honest.

 

It got a bit weird during the PS2 era for me where so many were getting so weirdly defensive over their consoles of choice I kinda dreaded talking about games because I knew the conversation would end up getting dumb.  But I left school around this time too and got a job where there weren't any gamers so I only saw it again when I got on the internet during the start of the PS3/360/Wii and I hated it.

 

I guess the only investment I've had in a console war is in how to avoid it, though I probably failed at some point since it's easy to end up in a fight when you're just trying to be objectively critical and it turns into team sports.

It's not like I haven't had my preferences in a generation but I still enjoyed playing games on the other systems and have favourites on them.

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Yeah I don't remember it from when I was at school, I was into games but we were always behind the current consoles/computers, or maybe it was just that I played on pc quite a bit back then. I don't know. Those were better times because I don't enjoy the online console wars, and yeah I'm sure I get involved in it more than I'd like.

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1 hour ago, spatular said:

Yeah I don't remember it from when I was at school, I was into games but we were always behind the current consoles/computers, or maybe it was just that I played on pc quite a bit back then. I don't know. Those were better times because I don't enjoy the online console wars, and yeah I'm sure I get involved in it more than I'd like.

I remember the odd bit of it, but generally people just went round to other people's houses or something. So if you wanted to play Street Fighter or Mario Kart you played that when someone had a SNES, Sensi, Fifa, Micro Machines we played on the Mega Drive

 

I think the most interesting generation, not for fan wars but for console differences, was the PS1, Saturn and N64 gen, as they were all so different

 

I've said before, I understand people having preferences, I do/did (Sega, Treasure, Clover etc made the kind of games I liked), but as with most things it should be about bigging up not trying to drag the other consoles down

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