For me GTA4 was the game that brought the world to a realistic display. Every game that I played before it used the older styles that didn't represent the same realism

Yeah I sometimes go for "vacations" in old games I'm used to haha

I wanna make a holiday mod for Deus Ex/GTA/whatever, like you book into a hotel and go for a tour round your old haunts

For me, that moment in Fallout3 when you first go outside of the Vault...just wow.
Back in the day I was very sceptical about fo3 steering away from the isometric-turnbased style, but fo3 won me over very quickly once I played it.
I did enjoy the sequel New Vegas too, but atmosphere-wise fo3 feels slightly more consistent somehow.

Half-Life: Because it was a "familiar" environment. Before Half-Life, they weren't realistic (Wolf 3D) or depicted futuristic / fantastic (Doom, Heretic) places. Half-Life was one of the first games that depicted places that you feel you could find on real life (I mean, offices, industrial areas and the like).

GTA 3: If felt "alive". You blew up a car, firemen appears. garbage trucks appears only at night. People walk and drive their own way. Weather changes... I know that most things also happened on GTA 1 and 2 (and other games), but in that 3D environment were a revelation.

Half-Life 2: Using darkness to make you feel fear, or using jumpscares are easy tricks. Build an entire environment that builds your anxiety at daylight is impressive. I was getting increasingly nervous until I heard the first shots... and then you find some points where the game give you jumpscares... even warning you (i.e.: Ravenholm, when you start to hear something climbing on pipes just before encountering your first fast zombie).

OUTCAST by appeal anno 1999 was a game-changer for me.
https://www.gamestar.de/galerien/outcast_11,99133.html

I would LOVE to play the original game on my M1-mini, but there is no source.code or third-party-port available. The Remake is also very nice but this is also M$ exclusive.

As a kid, the garbage ship in Space Quest III was incredible. I've always liked the idea of scifi junk ships or planets. Despite me being awful at those old Sierra games at the time, I still enjoyed exploring that starting ship over and over when I was young. I wouldn't have the patience for that today, as I'd just find a walkthrough once I got stuck.

The X2 games were mind blowing to me at the time. I had never explored a scifi universe with that scale before and the only space sim that I had played before was X-Wing.

The first Deus Ex game was also incredible. The writing was so good and there was so much freedom for the player to choose what to do and where to go. I also got similar vibes from System Shock 2 despite it being on a spaceship.

rasteri wrote on 2022-11-01, 10:25:

Yeah I sometimes go for "vacations" in old games I'm used to haha

This! 😀

Fallout New Vegas, GTA Vice City, and my private World of Warcraft (WOTLK) server. Always happy to spend some time in these worlds 😀

The world of Shadow of the Colossus filled me with wonder. I didn't take it as far as the groups that used to go hunting for "the last secret" for a decade or more. But the world felt so incredibly rich with vague environmental story telling. And I found this one particular forest, high up, overlooking a lake. Had some gorgeous lighting effects for the sunlight filtering through the leaves. Was my favorite place in the game, despite it's completely lack of relevance to anything story wise or mechanically. The game was full of places like that. Places that felt like enough developer time was spent on them that they should be used for something. But they just weren't.

I'm not a gamer so I haven't played too many games, but "The Neverhood" just blew my mind away. It was something of a different, much higher class than anything else I've seen in the year of 1996 or before. Even today it looks great.

There are obvious ones like Bioshock's underwater city, the excellent Sci-Fi spaceships of the original Dead Space and System Shock 2, and the Fantasy Realm in The Witcher 3. I liked the comment Ensign Nemo made, I think some of those old adventure games did an excellent job of immersing you in their world. Even text adventures still pop into my head now and then. It's true there are no better graphics than the human imagination.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-11-01, 16:09:

The first Deus Ex game was also incredible. The writing was so good and there was so much freedom for the player to choose what to do and where to go. I also got similar vibes from System Shock 2 despite it being on a spaceship.

That's terror. Terror built into the system

good to read all these, game environments can evoke a sense of wonder and of 'being there'

mr.cat wrote on 2022-11-01, 14:09:

For me, that moment in Fallout3 when you first go outside of the Vault...just wow.

oh yes, that one rivals gta 3 for me, in many ways it is better too - that wide open space - its just a bit later on in the list of experiences but it's a very comparable sense of being in a 'living' world

Namrok wrote on 2022-11-01, 16:48:

I found this one particular forest, high up, overlooking a lake. Had some gorgeous lighting effects for the sunlight filtering through the leaves. Was my favorite place in the game, despite it's completely lack of relevance to anything story wise or mechanically.

moments like the one you describe are what makes a game environment special

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-11-01, 10:11:

For me GTA4 was the game that brought the world to a realistic display. Every game that I played before it used the older styles that didn't represent the same realism

I was impressed by gta 4 (not so much by some of the game mechanics though), however by then i'd had that amazing experience of gta 3, then followed by the 80's feel of VC and the richness of SA. The graphics of a game aren't always enough to elevate it if the experience is similar to previous experiences. In fact better graphics can lead to 'over promising and under delivering' - i accepted in the earlier games that most building and shop fronts were there for appearance and that I couldn't really walk in, in gta4 i felt kind of disappointed that i couldn't walk into every single building, they looked as if it should be possible!

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-11-01, 17:43:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-11-01, 16:09:

The first Deus Ex game was also incredible. The writing was so good and there was so much freedom for the player to choose what to do and where to go. I also got similar vibes from System Shock 2 despite it being on a spaceship.

That's terror. Terror built into the system

talking to people and reading things in deux ex was so rewarding and much if its depiction of social division and decline, the concentration of wealth and power, technology leaving people behind and so on are ever more relevant

I find it very difficult to separate my feelings about games as a whole and my feelings about the game world specifically.

Like I will never forget the moment when in the beginning of GTAIII I got into that Kuruma and heard Head Radio for the first time while driving through Chinatown. GTAIII was a very influential game for me as a whole and its world has a thick atmosphere, but it was a first for me in many ways so I don't know how much to account its world alone.

Where I know the game world itself had a huge part of my impressions are:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Star Wars: Knigths of the Old Republic II - Sith Lords
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Bioshock

And maybe:
Prince of Persia (2008)
Dishonored
Brutal Legend
The Witcher (1)

mr.cat wrote on 2022-11-01, 14:09:

For me, that moment in Fallout3 when you first go outside of the Vault...just wow.
Back in the day I was very sceptical about fo3 steering away from the isometric-turnbased style, but fo3 won me over very quickly once I played it.
I did enjoy the sequel New Vegas too, but atmosphere-wise fo3 feels slightly more consistent somehow.

I played Fallout 3 before the original 2D games, but I imagine it must have been incredible having your 2D world brought to life like that. Dark Forces and X-Wing were like that for me. I first saw the movies, but those games let me be in them.

Another one:
Tachyon: The Fringe: The game is a (somewhat) standard space shooting-simulator, like Wing Commander / X-Wing series. But in most space games, space ships or space stations tends to be tiny but in this game they are HUGE. They can fill your windscreen way before you get to dock and you may even navigate near them and use parts as a cover. As a comparison, in Tie Fighter you fly below an ISD for a second or two. The only games that had such a big ships (that I can think of) are X-Wing Alliance and X series.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-11-01, 18:04:

Where I know the game world itself had a huge part of my impressions are:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

How did I forget the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games? The atmosphere in that game is unparalleled. I even loved Clear Sky despite all the bugs. Apart from Half Life, those are the games I keep reinstalling.

More games keep coming to mind. The Mass Effect games also created an incredible universe to play around with.

I noticed that a lot of the choices are the earliest 3D open world games. When the technology finally allowed for these types of games, we were spoiled with some really immersive worlds. I also think that the writing was better back then, so I doubt that I will get as immersed in anything coming out today.

The dungeons in PSO. I think I know the layout of each variant burned in my mind and the art's top notch too.

Deus Ex's scale and realism's also good, despite having been through on single-digit framerates the first time around.

Realms of the Haunting had a big ol detailed house that has seamless loading.