10 Game Worlds Unlike Any Other

Introduction

The world of video games can be a lot of things. They can be dull, they can be drab, they can be luscious, they can be colorful, and some of them just have something you can only see in that game. Hi folks, it's Zaid Ikram, and today on Swift Journeys, we’re covering 10 game worlds like no other.

Dishonored

Starting with number 10, it’s Dishonored. Equal parts beautiful and ugly, the world of Dishonored is instantly distinct in the way it combines carefully designed and aesthetically appealing locations with a layer of grunginess and decay. The first game wears its influences proudly, taking liberally from the Thief games and Half-Life 2. Hell, Viktor Antonov, the art director and concept artist for Half-Life 2, also worked on the first Dishonored game, and it shows. The contrast between the dilapidated old structures of the city of Dunwall and the high-tech apparatus like the Walls of Light comes right out of Half-Life. "Yes, yes, but do you know how it works?" "I really couldn’t say, but all the hairs on your body stand up when you walk through it. Keep your men from tampering with it." But Dishonored still manages to have this unique world all its own. The world of Dishonored is like Industrial Revolution-era London, but instead of gasoline pumped from the earth, everything's powered through whale oil. Whales and their exploitation are major background elements to the games, and their bones are used to grant upgrades like magic. There’s a supernatural being called The Outsider who grants you powers, but for the most part, it’s a pretty low-magic setting. There is a plague ravaging the city, chaos is everywhere, and it seems like the end of the world is coming. It’s an extremely pessimistic game with a tone that not even the sequel was able to match, partly because, um, you kind of saved everything. I mean, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t problems in the world. Of course, there was a sequel, and they pushed the world design even further in Dishonored 2. There’s some fantastic stuff there, but the first game is, in my opinion, still more unique despite its many influences. "I don’t think they’re going to last much longer in there. That’s what they get for taking free sacks from the steel. That tainted elixir is bad stuff, I guess."

Fallout 3

At number nine is Fallout 3. You know, it’s easy to overlook just how weird the world of Fallout is. Post-apocalypse games are a dime a dozen, but the Fallout series is considerably more strange and satirical. Most of these types of games start from the assumption that the world that ended is the same as our own, but in the Fallout games, the future of 2077 looks a lot like the 1950s. TVs and computer screens still use vacuum tubes, robots look like they’re right out of Lost in Space, and Cold War anti-communist rhetoric is everywhere. So you throw all of that into a big pot with Mad Max and monsters, and you get Fallout. It’s a game where you’re launching mini-nukes out of a handheld catapult while listening to The Ink Spots on the radio. It’s a bizarre combination, but it all somehow works well. Fallout 3 was the first game where we got to see this world up close and personal in first-person, and for a lot of people, it’s the definitive game in the series for that alone. It’s easy to forget just how much this game did to expand the setting and make it feel like a real place. When Fallout 3 came out, it was regarded as super immersive. You didn’t just view the wasteland from above; you were there, walking around, exploring buildings, finding skeletons in funny poses. Bethesda deserves a lot of credit for taking all those disparate ideas introduced in Fallout 1 and 2 and making them work in a 3D world, especially one as interesting to explore as the capital wasteland. Looking back, it’s easy to assume that Fallout 3 is a bona fide hit, but Bethesda took a lot of risks in bringing this series back, and even if bitter old-school fans don’t like it, they 100% succeeded in bringing the world of Fallout into the mainstream. "Established strategy inadequate. Revised strategy: initiate focus IIC resonance overcharge."

BioShock

At number eight is BioShock. The original BioShock doesn’t get enough credit. Sure, it’s derivative of other games, but honestly, what isn’t? All inspiration comes from somewhere, and it’s mostly derivative of the System Shock series, which it is a spiritual successor to. The world they created for this game is still one of the all-time greats. Rapture alone is a triumph of design: a decaying Art Deco paradise built deep underwater. The all-time great intro, where you ride a bathysphere into the city, passing by the neon signs and aquatic sea life, is the perfect introduction to this world. It’s just an endlessly interesting place to explore. They could have stopped there, but it’s the philosophy that makes this place unique. Founded by Andrew Ryan, Rapture was built as an objectivist enclave where the best and brightest could live and work without concerns for things like government interference and “morality.” In some ways, the place can seem almost admirable at times, but for the most part, it ended up being a hellscape where people had to pay a premium for the air they breathed, every bathroom cost money, and competition was prized above everything else. The Monopoly guy would have loved this place. "RIP Mr. Moneybags" (as if he’s real and not still with us). The world-building is just excellent all around, with every place you visit giving you little things that add to the mystery of why this city eventually fell into total ruin. The writing, the voice acting—it’s all excellent, and the Little Sisters and Big Daddies, the giant monstrous diving suit-wearing guardians, are instantly iconic. It’s just an all-around great place to explore.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Number seven is Red Dead Redemption 2. Even as the game is starting to show its age, it’s hard to say if there’s an open world that’s more dense and detailed than Red Dead 2. Every single place you go in this game has a realism and authenticity that just has not been matched anywhere else. It’s massive. The first Red Dead took place in a mostly recognizable Wild West, but the world of Red Dead 2 is a little different and a little more real. Rather than the dusty deserts we mostly associate with the Wild West, this game takes place primarily in an area that looks kind of like the Midwest and Southern United States. Each major town feels pretty distinct from one another. Valentine is the closest thing to the regular Wild West town, but its green fields are different. Saint-Denis, the game’s version of New Orleans, is still one of the most impressive open-world cities even now. What makes Red Dead 2’s world so special is just how picturesque everything is. It’s a game that just begs you to stop and look around because it’s constantly beautiful. The Wild West it presents is just a little unusual to the one we’re accustomed to seeing, but that comes from Rockstar’s unrelenting drive to create the most immersive and authentic cowboy game ever. "Wherever you are, I don’t want no trouble."

Generation Zero

Number six is Generation Zero. You don’t see a lot of games set in Sweden. That alone makes this unlike anything else out there. There’s also the alternate universe 1989 setting and, of course, the, uh, what was it, giant robots? That’s the game: a strange open-world survival cooperative adventure where a uniquely Swedish kind of nostalgia clashes with death robots. It’s sort of like Stranger Things meets War of the Worlds with a thick layer of Sweden over it. I don’t know how many more times I can say Sweden in this, but if you’ve ever seen Generation Zero, you fully get why calling it unique is an understatement, even if the reviews didn’t quite think it matched the game’s ambition. The world is so specific and interesting; there’s just nothing else quite like it.

Sleeping Dogs

Number five is Sleeping Dogs. If there’s one setting in video games that’s underutilized, it’s Hong Kong—or any modern-day Asian setting, if we’re being honest. Almost every crime game is set in the West, primarily in an American city, and sometimes London if we’re lucky. But Sleeping Dogs did something different. Instead of going back to the well of New York or Los Angeles, it’s set in modern-day (well, at least for when the game came out) Hong Kong. You play as an undercover cop named Wei Shen, and that also makes this unique in that you’re just the good guy for once. The thing that sticks with me most about this game is just the amazing recreation of Hong Kong: the slick city streets, the neon signs everywhere, the contrast between the clash and cultures of the city, with buildings that are sleek and modern, colonial and austere, and steeped in Chinese culture. There’s the big modern buildings, and also just the fact that it’s a big-budget crime game with a primarily Asian cast is unique all in itself. It’s got a fun story, and it’s definitely worth playing through, but it’s also just fun to wander around the markets, the back alleys, etc. It’s great to just drink in the atmosphere. It’s easily one of the best open-world cities out there still. "It’s horrible. I saw a guy hiding over there." "Thanks, I’ll take it from here."

Half-Life 2 & Half-Life: Alyx

At number four, Half-Life 2 and Half-Life: Alyx. City 17, Black Mesa from the original Half-Life, is iconic in its own right, but City 17 from Half-Life 2 is something else entirely. On paper, it sounds simple enough: it’s an Eastern European city taken over by aliens, which puts some basic ideas in your head about how it should look. But Half-Life 2’s interpretation of that idea is all its own. The nature of the invaders is what makes it so interesting. The Combine, as they’re known, are distinctive because of how utilitarian they are. Rather than your usual alien architecture with smooth surfaces, the telltale signs of the Combine are dark navy steel, brutally simple metal walls, checkpoints, and computers with wires exposed everywhere. "So this is Dr. Freeman at last." These guys do not care about aesthetics, and they barely bother to even alter anything. They just take whatever is not being used and put their stuff there with no regard for anything else. It also tells you everything you need to know about them from the start: all this stuff is temporary. They’re an occupying force that’s going to take what they want and leave the rest in ruin. Every piece of combined architecture is another reminder of their brutal occupation, from their human-hybrid soldiers on every street corner to the cyclopean tower that you see at nearly every point in the city. Sure, Viktor Antonov went on to make the world of Dishonored, which shares a lot of the same design ideas as the stuff being made for Half-Life, but the mix of alien and the mundane in City 17 makes it a singular place in the world of video games.

Elden Ring

Number three is Elden Ring. The worlds of FromSoftware always have a bit of a surreal edge to them, but Elden Ring goes all the way with those ideas. The Lands Between, the setting of Elden Ring, is one of the strangest open worlds of all time. The sky is dominated by a gigantic tree known as the Erdtree. There are sparkling underground caves and entire regions covered in red poison swamps and gigantic mutated animals. Even something as simple as a castle manages to be strange. Castle Stormveil seems like a traditional place from the outside, but get closer and you’ll see that the walls are covered in a strange rot that creates holes, and the deepest depths of the castle have these bizarre monsters who practice grafting, which is as disgusting as it sounds. It just gets weirder from there. I mean, this is a game where you find out there’s a guy named Two Fingers, and you think, well, maybe their fingers got cut off, but then you see them and they’re a giant sentient hand with two fingers. It’s utterly deranged. The game is also full of this kind of stuff. Look, there’s an entire village of pot people. Here’s a place where people dance around endlessly in some kind of harvest festival. The world of Elden Ring is a hostile, alien place that only gets stranger the more you learn about it.

Psychonauts 2

Number two is Psychonauts 2. This game is Double Fine at the height of their powers. The offbeat world they created here is something to behold. Set around the Motherlode, the headquarters of the Psychonauts, and inside the messed-up minds of its founding members, this game’s world is interesting both in the real-world parts and the incredibly creative mental locations. The design of this world stands out all on its own. It’s a combination of Klasky Csupo (the company behind Rugrats, which is difficult to pronounce, to say the least) and Tim Burton aesthetics, with a bit of an Invader Zim-type edge if there was also some room for compassion once in a while. It’s a world where psychics can enter people’s heads and explore their memories, and this is where the design team goes wild. It’s fun to explore and it’s a fully realized world, but what makes the game truly memorable is a morally complex and mature story. It still manages to be very funny, but this game takes some unexpected dark turns. It’s a great game, and the setting, both in the Motherlode and in people’s minds, is extremely  well done. "What did you say in that letter?" "Nothing important really, just that I loved her. She just wanted to help, but they pushed her too far. How should we have known? It’s not like she was marked fragile, but I thought I knew her and everything she held inside herself. I had so much to learn. I guess some packages are better left unopened."

Bloodborne

And finally, at number one, it’s Bloodborne. At this point, there’s no reason to keep the game’s big twist a secret: it’s Cthulhu's surprise. Before Bloodborne came out, all anyone knew about this game was that you would be playing as a beast hunter, and that seemed to be what the game was about. That is, until all of reality breaks down and everything goes off the deep end. That’s what makes Bloodborne’s world so special. It all seems fairly routine as far as settings go, but things slowly get revealed to be so much more interesting. Now, Yharnam is already a fascinating city. When you arrive, it’s in the middle of a beast hunt, where angry mobs roam the streets and kill anyone who isn’t indoors. You start mostly fighting humans and their werewolf prey through these baroque streets, which are all highly ornate and choked with nasty-looking monster statues. Oh yeah, and dead bodies. A lot of dead bodies. There are these strange white-skinned giants who are clerics of the Healing Church, which is unusual, but then a giant invisible monster grabs you out of nowhere and teleports you to an alien landscape, and that’s where things get nuts. The Yharnam you see in the game isn’t even real; it’s an amalgamation of multiple different points in history all happening at once. Eventually, you break the seal on reality and reveal the horrible truth that gigantic alien monstrosities have been here all along, which are invisible to the human eye. The Great Ones in the world of Bloodborne are among us, but unlike Lovecraft’s otherworldly pantheon, these things aren’t necessarily automatically hostile towards us, which might be worse. In Bloodborne, these things are so alien and unknowable that it’s impossible to truly understand the goals or desires of these beings, but mankind is being compelled through curiosity, religious fervor, or pure hubris to try to understand or even control them, and the results are universally disastrous. What’s real and what is a dream blend in this game. There’s a sort of dream logic to everything that happens, and nothing quite makes sense (and I mean even more so than your average Soulsborne game). It’s just unique and one of the most intriguing settings ever made for a game. I do wish the frame rate was better. Somebody at Sony needs to wake up and put out that PS5 4K 60 frames per second patch already. We all know it’s sitting on a server somewhere, not being released just to spite us or whatever. Come on, guys, update Bloodborne already. 

Outro

That’s all for today. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.We thank you very much for reading this blog. I’m Zaid Ikram. We’ll see you next time right here on Swift Journeys.