What are your favorite examples of otherworlds in video games? Things like The Dark World in Link to the Past, planes of Oblivion in The Elder Scrolls, even temporary things like the Wyrd in Tainted Grail. I'd like to see a game utilize this idea in a more random but methodical way besides just set locations and times for crossover. Maybe you follow a fox or something through the woods for too long and end up in a deep part of the forest where the birds sound just a little different and the trees have a faint glow. The wolves are a little bigger with horns now and your spells have a much larger area of effect. You travel back to town to find it empty and ruined, and after wandering for a but you turn around to find everything inexplicably back to normal. That would be neat I think.Tell me about your favorite otherworlds.
>>738326889You're going to hate my answer but I like how Minecraft's ender portals are a microscale of the overworld and you can use them to fast travel. It has a worse representation of another world but the way you can use it to move about the overworld really far and fast is something most of these games don't bother with.
>>738327107Assuming you mean Nether portals, I can agree that it was a neat concept early on. The attempts to add too much content made it worse though. For me peak Nether was ruins and quartz and nothing else No pigman trading, no biomes, none of that. A dangerous place with loot opportunities and fast travel is a fine use for that dimension alone.
>>738327295Yeah I played way before any of that stuff you mentioned like trading with them. I used it like subspace in scifi settings to move far in a tunnel. Games are all obsessed with sky islands and underground areas where those could operate as subspace and superspace realms instead.
>>738326889you guys remember that schizo that was trying to sue all game developers for hiding imaginary game content behind esoteric, unsolvable puzzles? i wonder what ever happened to him.
>>738327631Everett? He's still around but his trip got stolen.
>>738326889I feel like this used to be a more common mechanic, yet my mind can't think of more than a couple examples right now.
>>738328171It's still the primary gimmick in Zelda games obviously. Beyond that I also struggle to list very many. It seems like just having the world be weird by default is common now, thanks to Fromsoft primarily.
>>738327960>He's still aroundhuh. i figured he wouldve been 5150'd or something by now.
>>738328412>It seems like just having the world be weird by default is common now, thanks to Fromsoft primarily.Its because of OPs image. Which is a byproduct of people liking Morrowind's alien landscape. Sheo's domain is just a vibrant versioin of Morrowind's mushroom hellscape and the other half is just morrowind again. How alien his oblivion domain is is severely handicapped if you've played Morrowind. >>738328542He posts in a /vg/ thread I'm in all the time. He was in the news locally.
>>738328687I'm not a huge fan of Morrowind and this is part if the reason. Weird locations lose their impact if they are the norm. They work better as a foil to mundanity. Same with Elden Ring, all these fantastical towers and cliffs and stars and whatever makes me feel nothing if that's all there is. A game like Kingdom Come Deliverance going to the Lands Between periodically or just in the third act would hit way harder.
>>738326889Shivering Isles is one of the best settings Bethesda has made. Yes, better than Morrowind.
>>738329096Elden Ring doesn't really do this topic. The most you get to see is beyond a gate that you never enter, and all you see is light. To the people in ER the fantastical architecture is just normal to them. That giant tree that is alien to you or me is normal to them.
>>738329306And I think that creates a disconnect as a player.
>>738329735There is always a disconnect as the player. You are always a guy in modern day playing a video game about fictional worlds.
>>738329802It's much more natural to role play a schmuck in a normal mundane medieval setting than a giant tree mushroom alien wonderland. When you enter a world with giant mushroom aliens it should be a surprise to you.
>>738329906>It's much more natural to role play a schmuck in a normal mundane medieval settingYou don't know what its like to live in a medivel setting, you know what its like to be a schmuck. That is where your roleplay interest is and thats fine. Its actually pretty common in the souls games.
>>738330010Anyway my point is that the souls games settings would have more impact if they had a contrast against Kingdom Come Deliverance or similar.
>>738330146k
>>738326889The fox realm from jade empire was pretty cool
>>738327631>hiding imaginary game content behind esoteric, unsolvable puzzlesany examples of this?
>>738330871depends what you mean by game content
>>738326889It's frustrating for me because I really love this sort of thing but almost nothing has topped Link to the Past.What the Dark World "gets" is being a twisted reflection. It's all the small stuff: the trees having faces, the safe zones being all gross and weird, the small character stories going from high fantasy to dark, somber fantasy, and so on. Between this and the puzzles that connect them it feels like a cohesive thing.Too many otherworlds are just completely disconnected from the space you spend most of your time in.
>>738331323Depends on what they're trying to do. If it's specifically supposed to be a dark version of the normal world, that's obviously what you should do. But just going weird and unnerving, like some sort of hidden realm man was never meant to visit, can work in its own right - without directly contrasting the normal world
>>738326889Silent Hill series — The OtherworldMetroid Prime 2: Echoes — Dark AetherLegacy of Kain: Soul Reaver — Spectral RealmThe Medium — dual realityBloodborne — Hunter’s Dream / The NightmaresHollow Knight — Dream realms (Dream Nail)Psychonauts 1 & 2 — mental worldsPersona 5 — Metaverse (Palaces/Mementos)Dishonored series — The VoidControl — Astral Plane / Oceanview MotelDragon Age series — The FadeAlan Wake (especially 2) — The Dark PlaceChrono Cross — Home World / Another WorldThe Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds — LoruleMinecraft — The Nether / The EndKingdom Hearts — Realm of DarknessHalf-Life / Black Mesa — XenCyberpunk 2077 — CyberspaceDead by Daylight — The Entity’s Realm
>>738331071well, what did the suing guy mean?
I think Astral Chain had an Otherworld, desolate cubic place.
>>738332143I don't know, in many games you can access beta assets by going out of bounds, does that count?
>>738331640To me, what separate something that's intended to be weird, unnerving, etc. from "just another level" is a connection to the real world (in game terms)Anon's example of Dishonored's Void >>738332036 is good example. If it was just a weird abstract level it'd be neat but forgettable. But because it's a dreamlike version of the real world things and events, it sticks out as especially memorable and haunting. The the Outsider has evil eyes but looks and talks like a young man adds to this effect tremendously.This is why a lot of the "everything is weird" games, like Souls, nearly every Lovecraft adaptation, etc., really does nothing for me. Weird works when you can contrast it to the normal, and without any connective tissue to a "real" or "base" world, they end up feeling no different than jumping through a painting in Mario 64.There was a TV series years ago about a guy who got into a car accident. In on reality his son died, then when he went to bed he'd wake up in another reality where his wife died. I think there was also hints of a 3rd reality, maybe the real one, where he's the one that died. It was full of supernatural, dreamlike elements mixed with the very mundane.It got cancelled super early but I've always thought that'd make for a fantastic setting of a game. Something in the vein of LttP or OoT.
I do like how they depicted the Matrix in the Shadowrun games. It isn't exactly this surreal dream world just a largely digital landscape with rules and automatons. Like breaking through the IC is literally a fight with the avatar of the Decker themselves with installed programs and depending how aggressive the IC is, it can actually melt the brain of the Decker hacking.
