ITT: Most creative fantasy worlds/settings

It broke my heart to read that announcement. What was worse was the various Amplitude devs commenting in the announcement post saying that they didn't think anything would change, and that Sega would be really hands off.

And I had such hopes for Endless Space 2 as well...

...

Yeah it is a pity. Only good thing that could come from the acquisition would be that they actually got enough money freed up to up their game and feel a bit more security.

Must've been pretty fucking scary time-to-time being an indie aiming to make games of that degree of production quality.

Not terribly CREATIVE, but Age of Wonders 1 was the definitive fantasy setting for me.

With a dash of HoM&M3, did more to solidify 'classic high fantasy setting' for me than anything.

Honestly, famalam, I think you're crazy. SotS 2 had a boat load of problems, but wiring was never one of them.

Worst thing was probably liir being too elf-like perfect and flawless, or a little too much catholicism, neither of which are terribly damning in moderation.

mmm.

Good childhood reads.

Malazan Book of the Fallen needs it's obligatory mention.

Got 100 pages into the first book and still didn't know what was happening or who anybody was so I dropped the series.

You don't generally start to understand what's going on until midway through the second book at the very earliest.

However, that much investment isn't for everyone, even I can tell you that it is 100% worth it, so fair enough.

I feel that RuneQuest deserves a mention.

The first AoW was a masterpiece.
Subsequent games became logarithmically less so, in terms of tone.

...

youtube.com/watch?v=Q5gpsfLCnJU

There are some creative details to it, but the setting as a whole? I wouldn't say so.

"Wow, 'global cooling' is ending the world, we gotta wise up to climate change guys!" the fantasy setting

It's a very original and deeply developed universe.

Na, more like everyone dies except the vaulters.

Got a to a point where a major character died and came back and stopped reading because I realized I didn't give ashit one way or the other about that character or any other. The settng was literally the only interesting thing in that poorly written door step. Shit prose, boring characters and poor pacing. Don't feel bad about dropping one of the worst books I've had the misfortune of ever picking up.

>It's very original
I understand that you said that. That is why I made a post calling it into question. To contest my post you do not need to reiterate the original claim but rather, to support it.

>deeply developed
This is of little relevance. Arguably, it detracts from the notion of originality since what nuggets of original thought may exist are more diluted by the rest.

>very original
You've got to be kidding me. It fucking has elves and dwarves in it.

Rolled 13 (1d20)

Detecting sarcasm

But the Liir are my favorites and I don't want them to be elf-like and flawless.

I want them to be extremely susceptible to space PTSD. That's kind of the vibe I got with the whole "lack of a subconscious mind" means that when they get traumatized, they lacked the ability to heal from it in any reasonable fashion. This made sure that they really, REALLY wanted to avoid bad things. Like war.

I mean, it might develop them in directions you don't consider ideal, but I don't think that's bad writing. It was clear and consistent; such features as you describe are WHY every time they were enslaved, forced through enough tech and industry development to help a lich go to space, they collapsed in catatonic shock afterward and did their best to just never think about it again- until the very next one did the same thing a few thousand years later.

And they aren't elf-like and flawless completely; just, they're the long-lived, highly magical psychic race who could be (or could consider themselves) morally superior and prefer to avoid such crass things as physical conflict- but when they don't, they're really fucking good at it. Of course, if you zoom out and take in more of the picture rather than just fixating on a few things, they're well-rounded and quite reasonable as a species, and certainly not the designated goodguys .

And just because they have therapists doesn't mean they're going to lose all PTSD. Especially when it's basically a ~fairly~ accurate targeted lobotomy.

True. There are plenty of promising things, like how Liir growing up on different planets is having an effect.

Still, the whole space catholic thing really hit me the wrong way. Plus, there's the whole "It was actually really old liir all along" thing kind got rid of THE example that really drove home their skill with biotech, with nothing to really fill that gap but they're considered just as good with biotech.

>with nothing to really fill that gap but they're considered just as good with biotech.
I mean, they're good at lasers too. And shields. Nothing special for those. I think it's less 'good with biotech' than 'good with tech' in general- with an added dash of being extremely long-lived and having naturally-immortal biology.

From your description, I'm guessing you got to the point where Paran gets stabbed by Cotillion, so that's like... 30 pages in, meaning you have the attention span of a fucking gnat, and yet you feel like you know enough about the setting to claim that it's interesting?

Your opinion is garbage and I honestly feel dirty for having to share a planet with you.

I'm really quite fond of SotS

damn shame aboutthe devs fucking up 2 so heavily.

And Kelton Bor the swag bishop. And some necroroaches who develop into Cravers. And maybe Silics.

"Wow, 'global cooling' is ending the world, we gotta fuck off the planet with the only ship in existence before anyone else use it"
ftfy

on the one hand I'm quite fond of fallout, primarily the first and second game but Tactics has some nice content.

And at first it was nice to see some new material for it but Bethesda seems to stock complete and utter retards in their writing bullpen.

Like goddamn the plots for 3 and 4 fall apart when examined. No I'm not talking a couple points here and there don't make sense. On a basic logical level nothing about the plots to either game, right down to the existance of major factions just doesn't make sense.

There's some neat shit here and there but you have to dig through a fucking landfil to find it.

Oh well at least we got new vegas.

Don't forget that they drop like 90% of the population.

SOTS2 was such a let down. Buggy mess on release and they changed the gameplay way too much. Especially after playing SOTS1 for so long, the mission system was a pointless pain in the ass.

Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking. The mission system was one of the things that just ruined it for me. No longer could I park early warning ships all over, or build a long term strip mining fleet. At least it looked good.

Yeah, if you got that far. I couldn't be assed to get past early game because the mission system was just a complete and utter pain.
Also, I kind of liked the Suul'ka.

conceptually the Suul'ka were on target, but SotS 2 was too different a game and just a buggy mess all over, and when confronted on it the devs said 'give us money so we can make 3 better' which is just...

well at least I have that rebalance mod for SotS 1. The submarine ships are kinda lame but you get used to them.

>give us money so we can make 3 better

God fucking dammit. This is why we can't have nice things. If they removed the mission system and moved to a more SOTS1 style control system, SOTS2 would be so much more playable.

>mfw it's true

How invasive is Sega being with their game design?

I love Age of Wonders but its setting is the most generic imaginable, it has no place in this thread.

>Buggy mess on release

user, on release they let out the demo version from a few months earlier. One map, 20 second loading screens even for the in-game menus, no wiki, music played incorrectly because it was tucked away into another file at 20x the speed it was supposed to or didn't play at all...

The game was and still is horrible.

Fuck have you guys heard of mechanical dream? That shit is absolutely batshit, I have never read a more unique setting. I'm on my phone now but when I get off work I'll see if I can dig up the pdfs.

>infernal devices wasn't the last book

Whelp time to go back and reread them

It still has its issues. So it's only a less buggy mess after the Loa update. And having to unlock the wiki is such a stupid idea.

Y'all are bitches. The mission system was great. It made sense, it was easier to use than the old system once you gave it a shot, and it added a nice logistic feel to things, rather than 'slap everything into doomstack, keep going until you run out of enemy stars'.

Of course, literally everything else from espionage to admirals to reaction move to enemy AI was broken garbage. But the mission system was pretty sweet.

Wasn't there some clockwork race? Kinda getting some Allayi feel when I look at them, somehow.

I was actually talking about Mechanical Dream in this thread here (link for pdfs included):

>you will never play a naïve Liir soldier who has died to his people to protect them
>You will never witness and feel the horrors of war
>You will never become Punished Dolphin, The Black Swimmer
>You will never kidnap and "persuade" other races to join your PMC because you can no longer function without war

SEGA got extremely hands off with Creative assembly after the rome 2 launch.

That is good. Probably will just mean that ES2 will have a sega logo when starting up.

I guess Sega are realising that meddling just makes things worse.

Sega seem pretty hands off with Relic too.

I really enjoy all the Spiderweb games (definitely nostalgia) but Geneforge was probably my favorite setting overall followed very closely by Nethergate. Avernum was cool but it was too "look at the evil empire, they are EEEEEVIL!" and later "look at the evil cave aliens, they are EEEEEEEVIL!" other than that the cave nation idea was pretty cozy.

Huh?

Cultists?

Ah, yeah. The motherfuckers who leave nothing behind. Worse than necrophages.

You're thinking of Automatons?

shapers really are the coolest types of mages ive ever seen in games.
sure they are basically conjurers but they really take it to the next level by creating entire servant races to take care of all the menial shit for them.

Damn I got it mixed up. Not the Automatons. I hate my memory

EXA_PICO

The cave aliens weren't evil, though. The Empire wasn't evil from III onwards, either. Do you even Avernum?

Mah niggah.
Give me crazy music-based technomagic and genocidal planetary wills.
youtube.com/watch?v=SGaM07Pc-nI

Geneforge is my jam famalam. Gotta love magical genetic engineering, servant races made from modified humans, brute force gene hacking via magic, secret magical technology and shit.