What games have what you’d call really good worldbuilding, and what in particular do you like about them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology, and often if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social customs as well as invented languages (often called conlangs) for the world.
Pillars of Eternity. I really appreciate that they must have had some Anthropology majors on the team, especially for II, because the worlds feel much more exotic than other RPGs. It shows up just how generic Medieval Fantasy most RPGs are.
The tropical Roparu (?) society with its caste system is particularly interesting. The interaction of the various factions is believable. And of course the pantheon is well though out.
The downside is that they can be clumsy about exposition of the world - especially in the first one, you get these enormous lore-dumps.
I also love how reincarnation is a fact of life in that world, and souls are a real, almost physical, thing that can be manipulated and used.
I can’t wait till they add true turn based combat to Pillars of Eternity.
I played about 3-4 hours and the loved setting and the world, but the real time combat did not work for me.
I don’t mind real-time combat, but it has to be in third person.
I couldn’t agree more! It’s a fantasy game but it explores some really cool concepts; like colonialism and freedom vs order.