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!
Prey (2017) has a great level design. It’s one giant interconnected space station that can also be explored from the outside. Different areas all feel very organic and actually liveable.
I just finished playing Deathloop for the first time and I believe it fits your criteria. Very Bioshock, except 60’s pop art instead of 30’s art deco. I could spend hours just wandering around the island exploring all the detail they’ve crammed in.
Oh sick, I didn’t realize Deathloop was first-person (I assumed it was over the shoulder 3rd-person like Max Payne & Control).
I almost mentioned Control in my post because it did have great environmental design that felt like a cross between Aperture and The X-Files. I’ll stick Deathloop on the wishlist, thanks for the recommendation!
Doom 16 feels way more like an arena shooter than infinite for me. I think my problem was I wasn’t invested in the story and relished each combat encounter.
It is up there in years but system shock 2 is an amazing example.
Going to mention F.E.A.R 1 and to some respects F.E.A.R 2, its a first person game that lets you see your feet for one, but seriously they did a really good job with replica AI -even though they are clones they have personality - like making cover from environment, trying to use environment to get away from a bad situation - like crawl under blocked door’s crawl space or shoot and run while getting to cover
Your character has an in-game reason to have slow-mo which is really well done in the I can throw a grenade, go slo-mo, hear the enemy crap its pants and shoot the grenade,see the air around the explosion expand and witness an appropriate blood and gore shower.
They comment on your speed, panick when they run out of ammo when you rush them and try to flank you if they can.
It has some horror elements as well but usually in service to the story as First Encounter Assualt Recon is meant to deal with shady stuff and F.E.A.R 2 had a really cool school level.
Level design for the first 2 also was pretty fluid with reasonable area transistions that made sense how you got where you were at even when it is mostly just a point A to B with some light exploration for secrets or weapons
F.E.A.R 3 is meh, had some fleeting good moments and some answers to questions from the first 2, but overall felt like a lesser game than the two preceding it. It lost a lot of soul and felt more robotic in design
The Deus Ex series is good at this. Instead on having a big vast game world they have a condensed area filled with tons of details used for storytelling. You can go into a lot of places like apartments and it says a lot about who lives there. How well kept everything is, what posters they have, the station the radio was on, the stuff in their nightstand etc.
SWAT 4 also does a great job with the environments. One memorable level is where you are trying to arrest a suspected serial killer. When you approach the house everything seems…underwhelmingly okay and the mom pleads with you to not take her son because there’s clearly a mistake. As you clear more rooms things get messier with some traps and blocked doors among the clutter making it a claustrophobic and dangerous maze. Eventually you find rooms dug out from the basement with a girl who had been missing for a long time as well as makeshift torture rooms and plans to capture and kill more. It’s just a slow descent into their madness and it’s quite the experience to play.
Northern Journey for sure if nature ambience is your thing.
Wow, hadn’t heard of this. It looks great, thank you!
If you haven’t already, playing Black-Mesa -> Half-Life 2 -> both Episode 1 & 2 are the perfect examples of what you describe. So many details and stories in all the levels, and you are just a guy passing through
I’ve started Black Mesa but haven’t finished it yet. What I’ve played has been fucking impressive.
Valve is sort of the best at what I’m asking about—all of their games have the greatest touches that make the settings feel like existing locations you’ve walked into. It’s what makes me wish they published more.
The insane detail that goes into aging Aperture throughout the second half of Portal 2, the way it starts in the 40s or 50s at the very bottom and has a distinct “era” for each level as you get closer to the surface, including Cave’s progressing illness . . . it’s such good storytelling, and it’s literally just window dressing for the already-great main plot.
The crazy thing is that Black Mesa isn’t made by Valve, but was essentially a fan recreation of the original Half Life. That it fits with Valve’s style is just so amazing to me.
Valve style is gameplay first and foremost. While the environment tries to feel rooted with reality it fell short on several aspects. For example, ever notice how you never encounter a single washroom besides the one at Sector C? The physics puzzle too, it’s fun and shows off the physics engine but it’s impractical irl. And dear lord, the car battery puzzles…
Btw check out the new HL2 mod Swelter. Takes environmental design up to 11. Personally the best atmosphere of any HL source mod I’ve ever seen.
I honestly don’t notice that kind of thing. I usually play games once, and I’m not that into exploration on that first playthrough.
What strikes me about Valve games is that details are way better than I expect. Maybe not realism as you mentioned, but the narrative feels really compelling even with a silent protagonist and no cutscenes. A lot of first person shooters and puzzle games have weaker narratives despite including cutscenes and whatnot.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk feels lived-in? In my experience, once the glamour of the visuals wear off, you notice how empty the world feels. The regular NPCs are completely lifeless, every location is just surface-deep and the atmosphere is severly lacking. I stood at the center of the city at a busy intersection and the most prominent sound I heard was the pedestrian traffic light. It’s just sad. You can absolutely see where they ran out of time. Locations might be wonderfully detailed, but there is nothin for you to interact with.
Yea I agree, exploring some of the densely populated areas of the game feel hollow (like you say “surface-deep”). But, when doing the main story line it felt very inclusive and full. I still remember the parade in the main story with Takemura, absolutely beautiful, a bit chaotic and massive feeling. OP talks about Bioshock 1&2 being what they’re talking about, but I could easily argue that both of those games were very linear and didn’t allow for much exploration outside of the main quest line.
