For example, I didn’t fall in love with Titanfall 2’s environmental art design—it felt a bit generic to me, like it was meant to be the backdrop for a shooter, as opposed to the Sevastopol in A:I or the station in SOMA that felt like existing locations.

Ditto BioShock: Infinite. The world felt like it was built around the premise of being an arena shooter, not the other way around.

BioShock 1 & 2 are exactly what I’m talking about though.

Even Borderlands 2 has great world-building: the corporate history that can be inferred from the level design, the weapons & the NPCs makes it one of the richer games I’ve played.

Would love to hear others’ thoughts on your favorite FPS environments!

  • bakerOPEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for the really thoughtful comment! You make all three sound extremely intriguing.

    I was unaware that any of the Halo games had much of a story at all! I’ve always just imagined them as the present incarnation of Unreal Tournament, i.e. built primarily for competitive multiplayer. I’d have expected the art direction to be, uh, perfunctory. Shame on me.

    The thing that I dislike about metroidvanias, which is that I get hopelessly disoriented, could indeed work in favor of a horror game. I’m very interested in this one now, and as a fortysomething gamer I love the idea of a Gameboy title.

    I picked up Frostpunk during the Epic giveaway but haven’t dived in yet. Thank you for the specific description—it’ll make it easier to go in with the proper expectation for suspense!