Everquest, a world I'll never forget.



WoW is great as well however I mostly remember it as always dark since we always played in the evening and the day/night cycle was real time. So I only saw it in day light when playing on a weekend.

Everquest felt a lot more scary than WoW as well. WoW felt more like an amusement park to me after playing Everquest. It took months to even venture beyond the plains of Karana, too dangerous to leave the Northern end of Antonica.

Traveling in the early days took a lot of time in Everquest. It could take well over an hour to meet up with a friend on another continent. Boats were on a schedule and did not hurry. That made the world feel big as it should. Towns are mazes you get to know by how often you visit them. Kelethim in Faywdwer all up in the trees. https://wiki.project1999.com/Kelethin

No in game map also heightened the sense of place. You were relying on maps drawn by people to find your way around, or ask for directions from who ever you meet along the way. But mostly you formed the map in your mind as you were playing, traveling by landmarks and memory. For that reason my memories of Everquest are still much more vivid than WoW (which we played after EQ for 3 years) I bet I can still easily find my way around (classic) Everquest without a map :)

Lotta great picks here, keep em coming!

Some of mine:

Rapture (Bioshock) for its unforgettable atmosphere, visual direction, and backstory

Tallon IV (Metroid Prime) for how immersive it was, really making you feel like you were alone on a dying planet

Bionis and Mechonis (Xenoblade Chronicles) for how imaginative and unique and epic it was as a setting

Night City + Dogtown (Cyberpunk 2077) for how rich and fleshed out its world was in everything from its lore to design

I knew I should have posted earlier in this thread as you've represented both of my top picks here with perfect explanations.  Probably the two most beautifully realized gaming worlds I've ever visited.

I enjoy the lore and the aesthetic of Spira from Final Fantasy X, so that's probably my pick. It feels like it has a history (I guess the story of the game helps with that a lot), and I like the interactions between places and groups in it.

I also like the world of Final Fantasy XIII, again for similar reasons. There's less lore about the places and groups of that world though, so it's hard to compete with Spira. I don't know what the sequels did with the world, but I suspect it's nothing good. Regardless, I really enjoyed this one and always hoped I could learn more. Sadly the sequels to Final Fantasy XIII have never seemed worthy of my time, but maybe some day...

There's also probably a bunch of games that expose fragments of worlds in a nice way, e.g. Half-Life, but since it's just fragments, it's hard to appreciate them as whole worlds. Still, they're worth a mention. I also feel like there's a great world in The Elder Scrolls games, but Bethesda isn't doing a great job at bringing it the attention it deserves. It's always relatively small fragments in time and space that each game exposes, so it's hard to appreciate the whole and the history.

I've got two:

Spiral Mountain and Isle o' Hags from the Banjo series.
The interconnectivity between the different locations and the fact that people moved to different places made this feel so alive. I feel like WithchyWorld is at the heart of it all, as a lot of characters travel to that place and then back to their home, like Mrs Boggy and her children, the little triceratops girl, the Saucer of Peril and Goby the camel. Also, one of the twin dragons says he will travel here to grab a burger after he is defeated.

Every place though feels like it is alive, Jolly's pirate themed bar in the lagoon, Atlantis under the sea and the sunken alien ship, the gloomy mines and, of course, Grunty Industries with their pipes draining water and spewing toxic wastes to the other pristine locations.
Someone could also say that Banjo's, Timber's, Donkey's and even Mario's worlds are all connected, since the characters travel to and fro.

The other one is The Arc, from Astral Chain.
The huge city is so full of life, with many diverse locations and lots of different characters living there. Not bad for an action game.

One would think that I would consider RPG worlds to be best, but I find that they often lack interactivity beyond talking to the NPCs and battling.

Oh, how could I forget?

The Breath of Fire series from Capcom had some very beautiful worlds. Not exactly because of the graphics or the landscapes, but the world itself. The inhabitants, the pacific towns, the castles, the forests and rivers, the mysteries...

If I could dive into an RPG world to have my own adventure, I would choose the Breath of Fire world. Probably the one from the second game.

Great call on Kazooie and Tooie; their worlds had such a fantastic sense of place and were so memorable and moody in their design.

And yeah, Astral Chain's setting and the non-combat activities within it impressed me more than I expected, given I went into the game primarily expecting a game that was all about action.

For me both original Fallout and later Arcanum are some of most compelling worlds - Cain, Boyarsky and Anderson are really great at creating new settings and believable, functioning worlds rich with all sorts of social, political and economic flavours..

Staying in RPG lane, but going to games that borrow their settings, King of the Dragon Pass comes to mind, but that is mostly due to Glorantha, RuneQuest's original setting, which is considered probably THE most cohesive TTRPG setting to date.
Other one would be Planesecape: Torment and its Planescape setting with city of Sigil being center of D&D's multiverse - WotC for the most part stayed away from Plancescape setting since they bought D&D from TSR (well, until recently), so they didn't have time to fuck it up as they did with Forgotten Realms and Faerûn.

Demon's souls

In terms of open worlds, I think GTA IV is one of the best I have experienced, and certainly the best Rock Star has made. The attention to detail in every part of that map is still unmatched, it feels alive. No filler as in San Andreas, no bland content as in GTA V.

Other amazing game worlds to me include Hollow Knight, which is incredibly unique, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which has so much character. The Panzer Dragoon series is outstanding, so much lore and atmosphere. The first two Bioshock games have an incredible atmospheric world, Infinite unfortunately did nothing for me.