 I'm aware this isn't my usual area of expertise, but it's also what my patrons voted for, so I had no choice. The metaphorical gun is pointed at my head. A lot of video essays have been made about Elden Ring since February, going over how great it is and how it saved their marriage and helped them find Jesus and so on. It's a very fun game, though I have some notable issues with it, and it helped breathe fresh air into open world gaming like we haven't seen in years. A lot of what other people have talked about is gameplay related, like how there isn't anything telling you exactly where to go and what to do at all times. And while all of that is important, it's not what this video is about. Many others have talked about that in far more depth than I could. A large part of what made everyone go nuts is the setting. The setting of an open world game is part of the appeal. Crazy concept, I know. It wasn't just a big map to explore, it was a varied land full of secrets and lore and interesting places to poke around in. All things that have been sorely lacking in open world video games for years now. So I'm not here to talk about the gameplay, I'm here to talk about the world building itself and how the lessons there can be used to improve other open world games. Obviously, world building is a vague term and despite starting my channel off talking about it, I have trouble defining it. It includes things like the lore of the setting, along with the geography, flora and fauna, magic and technology, the list goes on. Clearly everything can be included on the list, which makes it too broad to be useful as a definition. I can't define world building very well, but I know it when I see it. And clearly it's an important part of open world game design, one that has fallen by the wayside in recent years. Open world games have been around for a long time and they've consistently gotten bigger and more detailed over the years. Grand Theft Auto Vice City felt gigantic when it was released, but it's a fraction the size of San Andreas or GTA V. They were always a small part of the market though, only a few triple A titles fitting that description came around until around 2011 when a huge boom kicked off. Yes, every triple A studio suddenly decided they wanted a slice of the pie and crapped out dozens of games with huge maps and tons of side quests. Everything in the Assassin's Creed franchise, watchdogs, Metal Gear Solid 5, Shadow of Mordor, Dying Light and many more. Even franchises that hadn't previously been open world became open world. It was everywhere, though it has slowed down recently. You can argue about what caused this if you want, I'm not interested in that, only in how the genre changed from there, or rather didn't change. Just about all of these open world settings were similar, most of them just took place in a corner of the real world, usually in a fictional country, in the modern day. All the weapons and other technology were like the real world and there was never anything really crazy to note. Things that weren't, like Assassin's Creed, were just our world in the past so instead of going shooty-shooty to the baddies you went stabby-stabby to the baddies, sometimes they'd give you some spirit visions or something, other than that it was pretty mundane. So many of them were, well, Ubisoft games. Here's one where you explore tropical islands full of pirates. Here's one where you explore mountains full of soldiers. Here's one where you explore medieval Britain. Here's one where you explore Chicago. None of these are bad per se and some have a lot of care put into their creation, they just don't stand out much or have anything all that cool about them. If you don't believe me then ask yourself, how many individual landmarks do you remember from these games? Were there any truly mind-blowing regions you explored? Is there much lore that you were engrossed in? The answer is probably no, with few exceptions. Again, they weren't bad, they just don't have much about them that's special. As a whole they're fun to run around in. That's it though. Seeing Park where the feelings stay behind while the memories fade. I like Far Cry but there's nothing all that engaging about most of their settings. Their fun to run through, clearing out outposts and committing war crimes, they just aren't that interesting. The only location I remember very well from that entire series is the giant statue of Joseph Seed from Far Cry 5 and that's specifically because it's such a batshit insane thing to put in the middle of Montana. Here's the thing. Giant fantasy has all sorts of batshit insane or otherwise fascinating locations and lore. Think of the Shattered Plains in the Stormlight Archives or Lothric Castle from Dark Souls 3, places that are immediately captivating. They look incredible and have a lot of story behind them and when you see them for the first time you want to explore every nook and cranny to see what secrets you can uncover. Places that look otherworldly are the best part of fantasy, at least for me. If you disagree that's fine but please get some treatment for your crippling mental illnesses. So few entries in the open world video game Boom took place in fantasy worlds. There was Skyrim, which helped kick off the trend. Then The Witcher 3, Breath of the Wild, God of War and a couple others helped to shake things up. They were always a minority though. And even when games were set in fantasy worlds a lot of them were low fantasy or at least leaning towards low fantasy. Skyrim had magic and Dwemer ruins and dragons, yet it still felt like it was trying to be grounded somehow. Look at the architecture and the clothing. It comes straight out of a low budget historical drama. You could explore 80% of the world and be convinced it was a medieval Europe simulator like Kingdom Come Deliverance. Oblivion feels 10 times as magical as Skyrim and that might just be because it has fucking colors. Too often these attempts to seem gritty or realistic just make things feel bland without adding anything else. This is a problem that many low fantasy works run into, which I talked about in this other video. Insert shameless self promotion here. There is no limit to what you can do with fantasy though. With more realistic settings, whether they be modern day or in the past, there's a low ceiling to the audience's suspension of disbelief. And here's when I bring this back to Elden Ring. Elden Ring isn't just another open world fantasy video game. It's one that is unabashedly high fantasy. Magic is prominent. Bizarre creatures are all over the place. There's extensive lore. Everything about it screams that this is not the world you're used to. When you step out into the lands between and see the Erd tree off in the distance, your first thought is, holy shit, that's amazing, I wonder what it is. If you tried putting that in, say, Yara, it would be very strange and confusing since that's meant to be a country in the real world. It's not that Yara can never be strange or beautiful, just that it needs to stay grounded in reality. Leaving the tutorial to see a glowing tree taller than mountains sets things apart a bit. Then you see the tree sentinel, a hulking humanoid figure on top of an impossibly big horse covered in colorful armor and carrying a magical shield that deflects all projectiles. Then you find the sights of grace and neat melanah, some sort of spirit that can materialize at will. Then you find the first troll and enemies that cast spells and you see the rotting blighted landscape and K-Lid and the impossible architecture of Stormvale Castle and a dozen other things just in the first few hours. This all makes it clear that this is a high fantasy setting and you should anticipate all sorts of fantastical things as you progress on your journey. Immediately there's a sense of wonder and discovery and urged to check out every nook and cranny to see what secrets might be revealed. It's nigh impossible to replicate this sort of feeling with a realistic setting or even a low fantasy one. Of course this sort of attention to detail and originality is rare in high fantasy as well, just being more fantastical is not an excuse to be lazy or avoid thinking things through. Part of the problem is that fantasy in general has largely been devoted to aping Tolkien for decades now. Far too often it's just a medieval Europe inspired world with some forests and castles and there's some magic and maybe another sentient race besides humans if we're lucky. There are very unusual worlds that some of these stories take place in but those are the exception, not the rule. The lands between, Scadriel and the world of the demonata are all way different than that and have become beloved settings for that very reason. Why hang around some dudes on horses when you could team up with a forearmed living doll to overthrow some demigods and go on a tour of the cosmos? Which of those tickles your fancy? Trying to look and feel closer to real life is somewhat understandable if you're filming something in live action. Budgets can get tight and even when they aren't CGI can only go so far. It's much easier to make a set look like a castle than a decaying city with the fossilizing corpse of a dragon bigger than a football stadium next to a 5,000 meter tall glowing tree. That's not an excuse for laziness, just an explanation for the trend. But when we're talking about a video game, it's a fucking video game. You can do whatever you want. Make a world of floating islands run by sentient plants. Make a world where everyone is born from rocks cracking open when sunlight hits them. Make a world where the dominant race are aquatic fish people who regularly raid the coastline for human slaves. Go nuts with it. Be different with both the visuals and the lore. It gives more opportunities for both story and gameplay if you aren't limited to having characters who are normal people with guns and bombs fighting over territories that could exist in the real world. Again, none of this is bad. The problem is that when you see something over and over again, it loses its luster. That's just how human psychology works. Things don't have to be fantasy to be original and captivating, though. I've been talking about fantasy this whole time, but that's not the end all of speculative worlds. Science fiction can be used to achieve a similar feeling of unfamiliarity. The Fallout series is famous for exactly this. Nearly every location in those games is a monument to the destruction of the old world. Think of the National Mall or the Vaults. They look incredible and tell a hundred small stories. Then there are the areas that have been built after the world ended and reflect the new societies that have formed. Combine the two of these and you've got a fascinating world to explore. A giant tower with a roulette wheel in the distance stands out in the day. At night, when it's the only light in the desert, it's a beacon of civilization in the midst of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The way you felt the first time you saw that was probably the same when you felt the first time you saw the Erd Tree on the horizon. And then you go explore the Strip and it's not just a place to gamble. It's got its own factions and a long history that led to it becoming the most prosperous part of the Mojave Wasteland. That goes beyond the locations to things like the weapons, animals and the weird societies that have popped up as a result of this nuclear holocaust. Mowing down raiders with an assault rifle is great. What's even better is putting on a suit of power armor and killing some death claws with a handheld nuclear catapult. All of this reinforces that this world is different from our own and gives incentive for players to keep exploring. Just like with fantasy, sci-fi has a ton of sub-genres that can be quite a bit different from one another. Post-apocalypse is one of them, but that shouldn't be the only one we use. The Surge was a decent game, as far as Dark Souls clones go, and the aesthetics were unique for that genre. It was basically a massive futuristic factory for making robots. The enemies are all either humans in exosuits or machines, which helps avoid the problem of having all the enemies just be dudes in armor. Then there are the locales, everything from ruined science labs to more ruined science labs to ruined factory lines to... Oh, okay, there wasn't a lot of variety. At least it stood out from the rest of the genre, though. The setting was fine, it just had no interesting lore to go along with it, which is, I think, part of the reason why this game never took off quite as much as Dark Souls. It also wasn't open world, but the overall point stands. Look at stuff like the Halo series, Wolfenstein, or Bioshock to see how this can work for more linear experiences as well. Otherworldly elements are what draw players in most, things you can't see here on Earth. Just imagine the craziest shit you can and realize that someone somewhere would love to explore that. However, keep in mind that all settings will have a ceiling to what the audience is willing to believe. If you go too crazy, they're gonna be taken out of it, and that only really works if you're going for comedy. That ceiling is higher in sci-fi settings than in realistic ones, and higher in fantasy settings than in sci-fi, but it'll always be there. And if you're not into sci-fi either, maybe because it's still out there for your taste, there are tons of settings that haven't been used, at least not very much. I love Red Dead Redemption 2, it's probably my favorite game of last generation. The world may not be super unusual or fantastical, but it avoids feeling samey by utilizing an old world setting. Not many games have done that, and because of that, it stands out. The types of people you meet, the environments you come across, and the types of shenanigans you get up to are all far different than in the GTA series, even if they're the same basic type of game. I used fantasy as a jumping off point because those are typically the most different from our world. The general idea can be ported over to other genres, too. Create something that people don't see every day and they will want to poke around. I had just as much fun exploring the Old West as the Mojave Wasteland and the lands between, even if it wasn't quite as unique as those other places. I didn't have a good spot to put this in the script, but I want to complain about it anyways. Why have urban settings in open world games died out? The earliest open world games were things like Grand Theft Auto and Jack 2, which took place mostly or entirely in cities. Those were great environments with a lot of potential for variation, hidden secrets, police chases, and all kinds of other exciting stuff. Nowadays, it seems like it's always a countryside with a couple of tiny towns if you're lucky. If the devs feel like really getting spicy, they might put in an old ruin or two that you can explore. Or maybe you can't explore them because they ran out of time to make that dungeon, but they claim looking at it from the outside is good for immersion or something. It's not that rural locations full of rolling hills, ruins, and the occasional town that has four people living in it are bad. Just give us some fucking variety, please. If there's little to no sign of human habitation in an area and no NPCs to watch or interact with, it just starts to feel lifeless after a while, even if nature is still there. Far Cry 6 has issues, many issues, but at least it had a capital city that's big enough to be believable as a city and a couple of towns that are more than just three shacks next to each other. Maybe Cyberpunk has this, too. I wouldn't know. That game looks like shit and I haven't played it. End of rant. Open-world games from the past 10 years seem to be less about exploring while having all the gameplay just be the stuff you do along the way. Rather, the open worlds are used as a way to pour in as much gameplay as possible and the exploration aspect is a secondary concern at best. Instead of having a million corners to venture into that have bandits to fight or mini-games to get good at, there are a million bandits to fight and mini-games to get good at that are spaced out over a wide area, then everything else is built around them. It makes the whole thing feel artificial. And obviously it is artificial, but it's not supposed to feel that way. When the open stretches between quests are only used as land you cross to get to the next thing instead of being places to explore in their own right, it won't matter how much detail the devs put into the leaves on the trees or the animals that wander through once a day because no one is likely to see most of it. This is why so many people liked the way Elden Ring didn't display a million icons on the map to let you know where everything is. It forces you to explore when you don't know everything and that forces you to immerse yourself in the world. The TLDW of this rambling mess of a video can be summed up thusly. Fantasy has a lot more room to be original and captivating than any other genre. Therefore utilizing fantasy worlds should help keep open world gaming fresh. This obviously doesn't preclude the game devs from making sure things like combat and other gameplay elements are polished, but it will help a largely stagnant genre ascend to new heights. Let's hope they take the right lessons from Elden Ring's success. They won't, but, you know, we can hope. Bye. Hello, for everyone who watched this far. All these names? Yeah, those are my patrons. Uh, special thanks to all of them. And a specially a special special special thanks to all of my $10 up Patreon names, people who are Oppo Savalainen, Olivia Rayan, Brother Santotis, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Dan Anceliovic, Dio, Echo, Eevee, Flax, Great Griebo, Carcat Kitsune, L. Lindberg, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Matthew Bodro, Microphone, Peep the Toad, Robbie Reviews, Sad Martigan, Celia the Vixen, Stone Stairs, Tesla Shark, Vevictus, and Wesley. Without you, I couldn't do this. If you want to get your name on here, consider donating to me on Patreon. Or, you know, don't. I can't force you, I guess. If you don't feel like doing that, you can always, you know, like the video and comment on it and subscribe to my channel and maybe become a YouTube channel member if that's how you feel. Okay, thank you for all the things. Goodbye.