Question Which game worlds blew your mind?

[McStabStab]

Maybe it was the first time you stepped out of the sewers in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or stared wide eyed from the submersible in Bioshock.

Maybe it was the first realization that you could bring houses down on the heads of your enemies in X-Com: UFO Defense (1994), or annihilate an entire skyscraper in Battlefield 4.

Maybe it was the first game you played with 3D modeled environments, your first experience with ray tracing, or your first VR experience.

Which game worlds changed your relationship with gaming?

 

[Pifanjr]

Seeing Morrowind at a friend's house absolutely blew my mind. I couldn't wait to buy the game to play it myself.

 

[Brian Boru]

First one that always pops up for me in this context is the iconic scene in the first Crysis at the end of the first night. You crest a hill overlooking an enemy post just as dawn breaks:

View: https://youtu.be/qPWbg-i6pXQ?t=651

It was only my second Open World game after Far Cry [same devs], and the world was so far advanced in just 3 years.

Second would be Far Cry Primal. Ubisoft do good Far Cry worlds, but Primal imo is a step above—truly beautiful landscapes and fabulous wildlife. Who can resist riding a sabretooth tiger?

Civilization—and other 4X—also deserve a mention. Not that any one 'world' is mind-blowing, but rather that every game is a different map—that's what hooked me. Honorable mention to Endless Legend for graphical beauty.

 

[Zloth]

Yeah, the "First Light" scene near the start of Crysis was huge. Doom was the same way.

Ultima 2 was huge for me, just because it was my first game. I was completely awestruck at all the detail! Do you have any idea how long it would take a dungeon master to write up and map all those areas and time zones? And there were 3D dungeons! When all you've seen before is friggin' Pac Man and some text adventures, that game was stunning.

Skyrim was epic. Not because of Skyrim itself, but because of 3D Vision making it look properly 3D. My new card's fancy ray tracing is certainly nice, but stereoscopic 3D is even nicer in games where it works well.

For actually making my mind go boom - the Shadow Shard in City of Heroes. Awesome place of floating rocks, red waterfalls, and really interesting lore as well. Hunt! Seek! RULARUU!!!

 

[Brian Boru]

When all you've seen before is friggin' Pac Man and some text adventures

My first graphical WOW was the original Prince of Persia. The realistic human-like movement of the Prince was new to me, and twinkled an inkling of what might be possible in the future. The world was great too, kind of like the old adventure movies eg The Thief of Baghdad

 

[ZedClampet]

Most of them have blown my mind. The first time I saw Wizardry being played, with the world in a little box on the screen, I fell in love, and my mind has been consistently blown away ever since. Something modern that I really enjoyed the world in was Subnautica. These days, even smaller indie teams are making amazing worlds, like in Cloudpunk.

 

[Face Hugger]

Ultima Online back in the day. I loved merely exploring, looking inside homes and castles, dungeons and crypts. Sailing the seas to discover new islands with their resources, creating teleportation runes so I could revisit it and show my friends.

 

[Yggdrasill]

This is a really good (and tough!) question.

I was always impressed by the sheer size of the GTA maps. So huge, no loading screens, only freedom to do whatever you want.
Dragon Age Origins had a huge impact on how I perceive a promise that my "choices would matter". I'm disappointed in most cases, because I had very different expectations.
There are so many more games, Fahrenheit for the unique gameplay / storytelling. Elder Scrolls for their world building / setting / storytelling. I'm blown away by games with a pixel or comic graphic style, which can still be so beautiful, like Valheim, Disco Elysium, Sea of Thieves, ...

Edit: How could I forget Portal?!

 

[Johnway]

back in the day, Oblivion's game world was amazing (didn't play morrowind at the time). Skyrim recreated that immense awesome feeling of a game world. I suppose GTA 3, Vice city and san andreas impressed me but that was partly because of the hype and technical achievement. GTA V did impress at the start but the more i looked/played in the world the more disappointed i became. it felt like a giant shell; miles wide, meters deep.

Dead Rising 2 was the first dead rising i played and yeah, the neon lights and the fact i could go into various stores really did make me go wow and just have fun. Just a shame the game didn't come with a free roam with the base game. hell, no timer would have been best. yes, people hated DR4 for it, but i found i could fully appreciate the game world as opposed to being rushed through it and not getting to see all the effort that went into it. Speaking of DR probably all of them did make me smile - At the start eventually you would see cracks and typical design shortcuts and that annoys me.

Dead island deserves an honorable mention. The resort really was nice and the juxtaposition of the horror really did make it interesting and unnerving. Just wish they did more with it and added more areas. Really did feel limited and it sort of went down hill from there with slums, jungles and a prison. Disappointing holiday indeed.

The Division's had a sort of wow factor. The key thing that made it memorable for me was plausible narrative. you could feel the scale of the collapse of society and smaller stories and stuff sort of made sense. Oh and the snow. Unfortunately the darkzone itself was a real disappointment i was expecting something truly horrific being somewhere walled off with some opportunity for awesome landmarks and nope just boring. The Division 2 didn't quite nail it, the overgrown areas, the factions, it was all seen before and just didn't gel with me at all.

 

[mainer]

The very first game that just completely "wowed" me was Ultima Underworld. The dungeon levels were just so well done and immersive to explore, you never knew (at least on the 1st playthrough) what, or who you would find. There was the freedom of movement (you could even look up and down), and an excellent blend of melee & rune magic, as well as conversation and choices to be made.

Oblivion & Skyrim had a similar effect on my also, when stepping out of that first dungeon (Oblivion), and from the cave (Skyrim), and just looking at the huge world that was yours to explore. In both games, I just stood there and looked around at the landscape, wondering "where do I go now?". Awesome feeling.

Also of note would be Fallout 3. I'd played both Fallout 1 & 2, which were isometric with turn based combat, but there was something about being able to experience that post apocalyptic world in first person with real time combat. The exploration, combat, and the explosions, especially car explosions, was great. I remember tossing a grenade at some raiders (or whatever their name was) at an old drive in theater with a bunch of cars. Everything just blew up, including myself.

 

[Zloth]

I remember reading about people's experiences with cinema back when it first showed up. A few people would even get up and try to look behind the screen to see if actors were hiding behind it! That was really hard for me to believe at the time.

Now, having watched the gaming industry grow up, that's not hard to believe at all.

Edit: How could I forget Portal?!

Well, having one's mind blown does tend to mess with one's memory.

 

[Brian Boru]

SWG

Is that Star Wars Galaxies?

 

[mainer]

. IMO it's one of the most underated games of all time.

It's absolutely one of the most underrated games of all time. It suffered greatly from a lot of negative press just after release (some deservedly, but much of it was overblown), and it never really recovered from that. Most of those issues were fixed early, but then the worst sin of all was that EA just dropped it completely, and that Quarian DLC that was hinted at, never materialized.

While I still don't think it holds up to the original ME Trilogy in story or characters, the open world exploration and the vaults were really a great experience. And the one thing it did better than any of the games, was the combat. It was fluid, fun, and allowed you to build you character in multiple ways.

 

[DXCHASE]

Elder Scrolls and Destinys worlds are pretty awesome and among my top favorite. Currently though The Ascent has a really awesome looking cyberpunk environment, it has a better cyberpunk vibe than CP 2077 and it was created by a team of 12, so its nice to see such a great environment being designed by a small team.

 

[Ben William]

New World Deluxe edition.

 

[Withywarlock]

Maybe it was the first time you stepped out of the sewers in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or stared wide eyed from the submersible in Bioshock.

Absolutely this for me also. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was my first taste of a single-player RPG, and sets the bar for what an open world RPG must be. And I will never forget the first time I stepped into the realm of madness in The Shivering Isles, where the room dissolves into butterflies fluttering away, and you begin your journey to the Gatekeeper.

But to add my own original ideas, I'll say Grand Theft Auto's Vice City. You could say most GTA settings are themselves a character, but none are as glaringly obvious as this neon paradise. It's one of the finest parodies of the 80s craziest elements depicted in film, and stands out more because it wasn't from a time when everyone else was doing it.

 

[pathospades]

There was a sunrise/sunset video with Minecraft and Raytracing. That really wowed me.

 

[JordanWibowo]

Maybe it was the first time you stepped out of the sewers in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or stared wide eyed from the submersible in Bioshock.

Maybe it was the first realization that you could bring houses down on the heads of your enemies in X-Com: UFO Defense (1994), or annihilate an entire skyscraper in Battlefield 4.

Maybe it was the first game you played with 3D modeled environments, your first experience with ray tracing, or your first VR experience.

Which game worlds changed your relationship with gaming?

A lot of game world to choose, like GTA ETC

 

[Marsha81]

I grew up playing Tomb raider and although the graphics weren't so good back then, I loved the expanse and various possibilities for game play. I'm working through the later releases now.

More recently, my favourite game is Red Dead Redemption 2. I love open world games and this has to be one of my most loved. The setting is just beautiful and it can be as relaxing or as lively as you want it to be. The other players you meet don't seem to be as idiotic as some games either!

What sort of age range is on here? I feel like I might be too old now for a gaming forum lol... I'm hoping I'm not the only veteran ;-)

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

What sort of age range is on here? I feel like I might be too old now for a gaming forum lol... I'm hoping I'm not the only veteran ;-)

I'd be very surprised if you were the oldest here, considering you grew up playing Tomb Raider.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I'd be very surprised if you were the oldest here, considering you grew up playing Tomb Raider.

I'm new here, but I'm 49, and I gamed on an original Magnavox Odyssey. Lol. Who here is older than I am?

As for the topic at hand, Skyrim is obviously a big one for me. It's my favorite game of all time. And also it's not a PC game, but Breath of the Wild was a big one that inspired awe, too.

But I think one that I remember fondly for just blowing my mind was Halo: Combat Evolved. My uncle played it on his Xbox, but I originally played it on PC back in the day. When you first landed on the Halo and see the vastness of it in the skybox, it was just awesome. After all these years, I recently decided to play it again in Halo: MCC (on PC), and it didn't disappoint.

 

[Brian Boru]

Welcome to the forum

I'm hoping I'm not the only veteran

Let this quote put your mind at rest:

Welcome to the old folks retirement gaming forums!

Just in case that doesn't do it, check this out:

What age are you?

A new member is concerned about hir wrinkle collection: What sort of age range is on here? So let's find out! PS your vote is not viewable by other members, so no fibbing!

forums.pcgamer.com

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'm new here, but I'm 49, and I gamed on an original Magnavox Odyssey. Lol. Who here is older than I am?

As for the topic at hand, Skyrim is obviously a big one for me. It's my favorite game of all time. And also it's not a PC game, but Breath of the Wild was a big one that inspired awe, too.

But I think one that I remember fondly for just blowing my mind was Halo: Combat Evolved. My uncle played it on his Xbox, but I originally played it on PC back in the day. When you first landed on the Halo and see the vastness of it in the skybox, it was just awesome. After all these years, I recently decided to play it again in Halo: MCC (on PC), and it didn't disappoint.

Definitely not the oldest I reckon. I think Skyrim was the last one for me too. I rememeber just wandering around looking at the stars and mountains and really feeling like I was there.

Really liked BOTW but I'm not really awed by open worlds anymore even if it was one of the very best ones in recent memory.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm new here, but I'm 49, and I gamed on an original Magnavox Odyssey. Lol. Who here is older than I am?

I'm 55. Also had the Odyssey.

 

[ZedClampet]

I grew up playing Tomb raider and although the graphics weren't so good back then, I loved the expanse and various possibilities for game play. I'm working through the later releases now.

More recently, my favourite game is Red Dead Redemption 2. I love open world games and this has to be one of my most loved. The setting is just beautiful and it can be as relaxing or as lively as you want it to be. The other players you meet don't seem to be as idiotic as some games either!

What sort of age range is on here? I feel like I might be too old now for a gaming forum lol... I'm hoping I'm not the only veteran ;-)

Most of us are old. I'm 55 by the usual way of looking at age, but 155 if you just take into account my physical conditioning.