Summary
While the video game industry often borrows many of its tropes and themes from film, television, and literature, it still stands out as a medium like no other. Setting their fictional worlds apart; the visuals, music, and narrative of video game titles come together to form virtual worlds in front of the player.
From constantly evolving psycho-narrative terrain to the inner workings of a hierarchical alien religion, worldbuilding in video games has a lot of mechanics at its disposal. As such, the result can be engrossing and endearing arguably beyond even the best of other mediums.
Even before Nintendo’s 2007 acquisition of Monolithsoft, the Japanese RPG developer’sXenoseries was making waves in the industry. Although the worldbuilding credo of titles such asXenosagaandBaten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Oceancannot be understated, Monolithsoft’s first original title under Nintendo proved to be monumental. Not only with regards to theXenofranchise but also their relationship with their new publisher.
Building on the groundbreaking foundation of theXenoseries, 2010’sXenoblade Chroniclesand its sequels are quintessential seventh-generation RPGs. With the world itself being built on the backs of two gargantuan titans, and their imposing figures dominating the landscape, the land beneath players' feet is literally alive. Alongside protagonist Shulk’s seer-like Monado powers and the game’s subversion of the world, it takes so much time to develop, thetrials and triumphs of the player-controlled partyare not only impactful on a human level but are put into grand perspective by the living world they reside on.
Even with some high-profile stumbles, such asFallout 76’s butchered launch window andStarfield’s middling reception, Bethesda Game Studios has retained its position as one of theRPG genre’s most revered developers. However, harkening back to the dawn of a new millennium and the launch ofThe Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, Bethesda’s position as a titan of the industry was nigh unparalleled.
With the comfortability to lock players out of select content depending on characters' disposition, and the factions of Northeast Tamriel having firm stances if players were to court multiple at a time, Bethesda created arguably one of the most believable systems of interwoven systems in a Western RPG. Reinforced by fallable NPCs bestowing players with incorrect information, and over 300 books giving sometimes differing accounts of events, Morrowind is a landscape that feels truly human - faults and biases included.
Most video games - although they may be space operas or fantasy dungeon-crawlers - usually have a solid foothold in the real world. While ZA/UM’s 2019 RPGDisco Elysiummay seem relatively grounded at first glance, any further inspection provides a fictional setting that is incredibly far removed from our own.
Looking through its grimy noir-esque aesthetic, it becomes clear that almost everything - from common symbols and landmass distinctions works completely differently in Elysium’s scattered landscape. From lungs no longer being reserved solely for breathing but becoming icons of love rather than hearts, to the world itself being enveloped in the gray tissue of the Pale. Every facet of life; art, fashion, politics, and culture is contorted by even the smallest of changes,just like our own- yetDisco Elysium’s setting is anything but familiar.
Ninja Theory’s quintessential titleHellblade: Senua’s Sacrificeis a game with one world but two landscapes. While the ground beneath Pictish warrior Senua’s feet may stay the same, her struggles with Psychosis stretch and transform the scenery. From harrowing retrospectives of her youthful years to grotesque depictions of Helheim, her journey to slay the Norse goddess of the underworld Hela takes her on an introspective odyssey.
As times flexes, Senua sees and hears multiple parallel versions of the past interwoven with one another. Inhabiting these warped landscapes are Senua’s own terror-inspired interpretations of the Norsemen who pillaged her homeland, who she must defeat as she stakes her own claim on her grief and her mind.
Nearly thirty years on from its inaugural title, theFalloutfranchise is arguably the strongest it has ever been. From multiple critically adored video games under Bethesda’s newfound leadership to the surprise success of its live-action interpretation, there is moreFalloutmedia available now than ever before.
Yet 1997’s originalFalloutinstallment, subtitledA Post Nuclear Role Playing Game, not only established the narrative and thematic framework for future titles but set the standard for the franchise moving forward. Interplay’s 1950s Retrofuturism contorted into bottlecap currency, labyrinthine underground vaults, and surviving communities in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. Although Bethesda’s RPGs continue the aesthetic of the franchise, the originalFallouttitles not only showed thefictional alt-future pastof their world but humanity’s ability to move past it in a post-nuclear future.
WithinMicrosoft’s flagshipHaloseries, an FPS franchise that arguably defines the genre, there is seemingly a split in the worldbuilding - that beforeHalo 2’s 2004 launch, and that after. WhileHalo: Combat Evolvedintroduced players to the arduous struggle of Humanity against the Covenant war machine,Halo 2expanded exponentially outwards.
While the literary works of Eric Nylund had developed the events immediately before and afterCombat Evolved’s narrative,Halo 2was Bungie’s chance to really blow the doors open. The Covenant’s theocratic rule by the Prophets was properly introduced, with political and cultural fissures erupting throughout the hegemony later on in the game’s campaign. The Brutes and the Ark were introduced, lending a narrative and gameplay threat to the Master Chief’s escapades - all within a development period that has become renowned asone of the industry’s most arduous.
While 2023’sDiablo 4pleased fans of the franchise with its attention to detail and depth of mechanics, the lofty heights ofDiablo 2’s worldbuilding success are arguably almost impossible to compete with. Released at the turn of the new millennium,Diablo 2isone of the studio’s most revered titles.
Beginning as a direct continuation of the sordid events of its 1997 action-RPG dungeon crawler precursor,Diablo 2sees players witness the corruption and effective destruction of their hero from the original title. Bolstered by the continued narration of Marius - a bystander to the hero’s consumption by Diablo - the narrative bleeds with his terror-induced madness. With a cloyingly heavy tone littered with devastation and melancholia, the Gothic structures and dank dungeons ofDiablo IImake for a landscape that players seemingly still can’t get enough of.
When players first crashed into the waves surroundingBioshock’s lighthouse in 2007, nobody could have predicted the cultural impact their time in the underwater dystopia of Rapture would herald. Plunging beneath the waves, the series has now returned to Andrew Ryan’s twisted Objectivist vision of the future in all three of its titles, anda bestselling novel by science fiction titan John Shirley.
Littered with the decayed remains of a destroyed world,Bioshock’s worldbuilding is arguably a case study of how best to utilize the medium of video games to tell a story. A critically-revered landscape,Bioshockpopularized audio logs to tell a suite of very human stories in the pre-disaster era of Rapture, while environmental storytelling and character dialogue keep up the worldbuilding momentum throughout the title’s 12-hour runtime.
