Games that are a master class in world building

When it comes to world building in games, RPGs tend to lead the pack, which is a bit unfair because they have an advantage. RPGs tend to be longer, more open and have different characters to help fill out the lore. There are great non-RPGs that have managed to live up to their word as well.

For all video game consoles and genres, the following are good blueprints for creating living and breathing worlds. A modern horror example would be Resident Evil Villagewhile a more classic stealth example would be Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Let's get to how these games build their worlds well, along with others.

Blood borne

A tale of gothic horror

Of all the Soulslike games made by FromSoftware, Blood borne is the one who does his world building best. The setting of Yharnam is a gothic city torn right out of one Castlevania games if they were much darker and more confused. Players must fill in what happened from NPCs who only appear as voices behind cracked doors and piece together context clues based on environmental damage and what some of the bosses mumble.

The coolest aspect of the game is a mechanic called Insight. Once the stats are raised enough, players will have their third eye opened to see the world in a new context. Without spoiling anything, let's just say it changes the game in significant and even more horrifying ways.

Halo: Combat Evolved

You won't believe your eyes

Halo: Combat Evolved managed to do so much in its first game to create a universe that would go on to dominate the Xbox consoles for over a decade. It was Master Chief, the main character, who was a super soldier and the last of his kind, fighting against a coalition of alien races called The Covenant. They were all fighting for dominance over a ring world called Halo, which was incredibly imaginative.

Even on the original Xbox hardware, it created a sense of awe every time players looked up and saw the other side of Halo where they were. Since then have Halo The lore has only grown and become more complex, but this first game is pure, simple perfection.

Mass effect

Star Trek meets Star Wars

Mass effect was like a spiritual successor to BioWare's last space RPG, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It was an attempt to mix Star Wars and Star Trekand it worked. It took place in a galaxy where many different races found peace and ruled the universe as a council, a council that sent out spaceships to keep the peace and detect anomalies, which is where this first game takes off.

The main character, Commander Shepard, was given a doomed vision of the future along with a warning of a betrayal, all of which created the beginning of an incredibly good trilogy. With tons of codex entries and dialogue options, the world of Mass effect filled in for players as much as they wanted, but if they preferred the cover-based plot, that was also an option.

Resident Evil Village

Universal Monsters: The Video Game

Resident Evil Village is the eighth main game in the series and the second after Ethan Winters, who retreated to a vague European country with his wife Mia and daughter Rose after the last game. After Mia is killed and Rose kidnapped, Ethan must search for them, which leads him to a nearby village where something is not right. It's infested with werewolves, but that's not all.

A local cult overlooks this area, and each of the four lords has their own unique characteristics, from a vampiric mistress to a ghostly puppeteer. Although the themes are very different, Resident Evil Village manages to make them all make sense in the larger context, almost as an homage to Universal's monster movies. Overall, exploring the village and neighboring areas is engrossing as players never know what they will discover next in this survival horror game.

Final Fantasy 9

PS1's Swan Song

Final Fantasy 9 was like a swan song for the PS1 RPG and Final Fantasy as a whole, it feels like a culmination of over a decade of fantasy adventures. The world was diversely populated with races that didn't evolve, but that was okay because it still made the world feel bigger.

As players explored the world map, they saw airships flying overhead as traffic in modern open-world games, and this was on the PS1. The dangers of the mist, how each kingdom fits into the global economy, the designs and secrets of the black mages, and more. All these things done Final Fantasy 9 a gold standard for creating RPGs, whether turn-based or action, and one of the best entries in Final Fantasy franchise.

God of War (2018)

Two mythologies in one

When mythology is presented in a video game or other piece of media, the focus tends to be on one, as combining mythologies into a shared universe would not make sense. But the 2018 reboot/continuation of God of war franchise managed to do it expertly.

Kratos came from a Greek background, but he buried his past to share a new life in lands enriched with Norse mythology. The reboot managed to twist familiar tropes of Norse mythology with Greek mythology as if they were all on the same plane, from giant serpents to wacky blacksmiths to gods full of hate.

The last of us

Reimagine the Apocalypse

In some ways, The last of us is a cliche example of a post-apocalyptic game that follows many tropes. A zombie outbreak led to the collapse of the United States, with a shell of governments clinging to power while its citizens languish. Also, there are roving bandits out there, not to mention the undead. What sets The last of us apart are the twists.

These zombies are made from an infectious fungus, which makes them behave and look different from normal zombies. Also, instead of a bleak end-of-the-world scenario, The Last of Us reimagines Earth reclaiming itself from society, driving vines to grow out of tall skyscrapers, which is both beautiful and terrifying at the same time, in this survival horror journey through the collapsed United States

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Teddy Bear Panic

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a visual novel/adventure game at its core about a group of college students all suffering from collective amnesia. Inside, they learn from a robot bear, Monokuma, that they must kill each other if they want to escape, but there's a catch. When a body is found, an investigation period begins followed by a trial. If the culprit is not caught, they are free to go, and everyone else will be executed, but if the culprit is found, only the culprit will die.

It's a clear set of rules, and each chapter will see the students get closer before a new mystery unfolds. Monokuma also gives insight into the rest of the world throughout, implying that it is in a post-apocalyptic state. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is much like Schrödinger's cat experiment. Should players believe what Monokuma says is the truth, or should they be skeptical? For a simple but dark visual novel, it's intensely deep.

A Cold War epic

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a prequel and at the back of the series, focusing on one of the earliest villains, Big Boss, while he was still just a rookie. In some ways, this is a period piece set during the Cold War with appropriate costumes and technology.

But it's also a heightened universe as Big Boss, aka Naked Snake, has to face super soldiers with unique powers like The Pain, who can control hornets as if they were an extension of his body. As wild as some of these characters are, no one is looking at their powers, which in turn makes players believe that what they see is possible. This level of immersion is why stealth fans love it so much.

BioShock

A fallen utopia

There have been underwater games before BioShock and after that, and yet this remains one of the largest environments ever created on land, in the air, or at sea. This first-person shooter takes place in the ruins of an underwater utopia called Rapture, where its citizens became too confused by ADAM, a formula that strengthened the body but also warped the mind.

Players discover Rapture after their plane crashes into the ocean, and then they'll slowly unpack what happened through radio transmissions and picking up audio diaries. Apart from the sequel, there is nothing like the abject terror that Rapture can create in BioShock.