Good area designs in RPGs

[HansDampf]

Hong Kong is Deus Ex. About 90% of that is due to the music, yeah.

The other 10% are exploring the Wan Chai Market, witnessing the triad fight in the Canal Road tunnel, exploring the canals, boats, bars, finding Paul's contact who is selling a map of the VersaLife building, swimming through the flooded tunnel to find a dead VL scientist with an upgrade canister, talking politics with the bartender in the Lucky Money Club, discovering Jock's apartment from where he was spying on Maggie Chow, the sniper's nest, hopping on rooftops if you have the upgraded jump aug (all optional, btw). Not to mention the many ways to deal with Maggie Chow (or not) and her security, with 3 or 4 different entrances into her penthouse.

 

[vortex]

Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Golem city complex has amazing area design. I wish whole game was like that.

 

[laclongquan]

St Louis, Fallout Tactic Brotherhood of Steel.

At first glance, it look deceptively flat. And if you believe 1st glance and charge forward fearlessly, you are going to get corncobbed.

The series of trench make a maze. You can look straight, but you can only go zigzag, sometimes go down to the trench, sometimes go back up to the ground. And at first corner you could run onto a heavy machinegunner lying prone on the trench. Or it look clear but once you get to the ground you are staring down at the big barrel of a heavy machingun from the trench looking up.

Sometimes the small depressions (explosion holes or foxholes) hide a prone hostile. Sometimes when you are on the ground you are safe, but step up that small hill and you are in range.

I believe that it's a model for designing a battle map full of tactic possibilities.

 

[Mark Richard]

Maybe Vampire Bloodlines? All that character packed into cosy hubs. I feel like I can draw a rough map of Santa Monica easily enough.

 

[Elwro]

I think the whole Ultima Underworld 1 dungeon was great, that is, it was great 'as a whole' even if not every square meter was really inspired. But lots of good memories there.

 

[Shadenuat]

Gothic games are a single gigantic well designed area.

 

[Musk of Ephesus]

Just from recent memory:

For interaction:
Arx Fatalis - Goblin City. You sneak some wine into a cake mix and give the goblin king the shits. Also the area has some locked rooms you can enter once your lockpicking skill gets better, so coming back actually pays off.

I completely forgot about the Goblin City and the prison. I love that dilapidated look, I remember trying and failing to make textures and set pieces like those yellow stone walls for Morrowind modding.

 

[Elwro]

Searching for secrets in some ruler's fortresses offered interesting things also in Geneforge 1. You could miss all of it and not even know some people had a hidden agenda, irrc

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Thieves maze in BG1 still one of the best dungeons design:

 

[MasPingon]

Deep Roads
[/spoiler]

You serious? That's an exemple of terrible area design. I still remember it as one of the worst gaming experience I've ever had.

 

[Ebonsword]

Dragon's Dogma has some awesome dungeon design. A large part of that is just due to the lighting. It's one of the few RPGs to make darkness actually dark. The Catacombs is a good example of how effective that can be, with creepy undead shambling at you from out of the inky blackness.

 

[toro]

Deep Roads
[/spoiler]

You serious? That's an exemple of terrible area design. I still remember it as one of the worst gaming experience I've ever had.

Of course I wasn't serious. Wtf!

Deep Roads and Deep Caverns are equally shitty for the same reasons and not only.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Well, for RPG cities designed really well, there is Lenelle from the Summoner, Barcelona from Lionheart and Tarant from Arcanum. I think no one really played summoner here, other than me, so you should check it out.

 

[Master]

I played it. Yeah, its good.

 

[sullynathan]

Witcher 3 Novigrad - Yeah it lives up to the hype as an rpg city with good architecture, large amounts of quests and civilians that connect to each other, no loading screens and lots of indoor areas.

Durlag's Tower - Don't know if this counts because it's one dungeon/series of dungeons. I haven't played many rpgs in general that have dungeon crawling as well designed as Durlag's Tower. From the design of the exterior castle, to the multi level dungeons and traps as you go deeper.

Dragon's Dogma Dungeons - They're good and as mentioned, it's still one of the few open world rpgs in which darkness both inside caves/dungeons and out in the open world is represented properly. Dungeons are mostly linear, but Dragon's Dogma takes great use in terms of terrain and elevation that most games don't bother to do.

Dark Souls stuff - Undead Burg, Frozen Eleum Loyce, Sen's Fortress, Boletarian Palace. The list is quite long, Souls games do it well.

 

[MasPingon]

I like The Witcher world design, but apart from port area, Novigard is a clusterfuck. Especially Temple quarter, being there I always got a feeling it was made for one cutscene.

 

[Shaewaroz]

Wizardry 8 - Marten's Bluff

 

[Darth Canoli]

Wasteland 2

• Wrecking crew stronghold
• Red scorpions area (and sub areas)
  Most areas in wasteland 2 (although i wasn't quite fond of Ag Center and Titan's Canyon areas)

Swords of Xeen

• Witch Tower (tower with some secrets, a lot of small floors and lying talking skeleton's heads)

Wizardry 8 monastery.

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