ITT, shit shows/movies/vidya/whatever with great settings

I know. I just wanna' talk about cool settings from little-known series or at least ones where you dont normally pay attention to the setting, which is in itself also good.
I'm a w/asp/ so honestly I have no right to say what is and isnt good entertainment.

I dunno, if that one race is all the flavor of the show, seems to make more sense to just steal that and drop it into some other setting where it'll contribute to something. Also being "strict caste" makes it sound like an NPC race if they dont have much autonomy as individuals.

Always felt like "X-Men meets anime bullshit, featuring Warcraft's Sha'"
Prove me wrong Veeky Forums

What's a Sha?

This thing

When an elder god died, it was buried underneath an entire goddamn continent as its resting place, this being not!Asia.
The people then noticed that when they even THOUGT of doing bad shit, horrific black and white monsters appear seemingly out of nowhere and begin to slaughter the place.
Instead of going off into city states though, the entire population took up monastic tradition to control their emotions, preventing any more of the creatures from spawning.

Villains also seem to know of ways to harness these evil entities, becoming eldritch demigods in the process.

Pandaria was pretty damn underrated storywise imo
Killing Orc Hitler and raiding a capital city was friggin great

>I dunno, if that one race is all the flavor of the show, seems to make more sense to just steal that and drop it into some other setting where it'll contribute to something. Also being "strict caste" makes it sound like an NPC race if they dont have much autonomy as individuals.

Now you're just nitpicking. Just admit you watch the show and like it.

I unironically like SU, see, I'm free.

If only you fucking knew[\spoiler]

Nah I also genuinely like the show but the "setting" is a pretty bottom reason for that. After 3ish seasons and still knowing next to nothing about how anything actually works, pretty sure there isnt much to actually work with.
There could be A LOT to it all, but theres still too many holes to piece anything cohesive together without blatantly making up at least half the setting.

At that point, I'd rather make my own setting.

Characterization is nice though

Civilization: Beyond Earth.

They packed a load of flavor and lore into the Civilopedia, but it's all weighed down by the sheer averageness of the rest of the game.

Killing Orc Hitler was cool, but it just dragged on and on, even into Orclords of Orcnor. The rest of it was pretty great. Blizzard's best stories shines when it's not tied down to the Faction War or any "Leader" characters.

RIP Theramore never forget.

KLK pretends to have a semi-serious story with an interesting setting and lore, some nicely set up characters, then proceeds to go full retard with the plot around halfway through. The tired comedy gags from the sidekick repeated in every single episode don't help either.

Some video games that come to mind:

Hyperdimension Neptunia - Needs no introduction. Everybody has Technopathy. Nobody has ANY protection from psychic powers. Also there's an omega-level reality warper whose sanity-ripping doom-powers lead you to wonder whether they might be evil.

Ar Tonelico / Exapico universe - Magic is songs. Songs are magic. Also magic is computers. And computers are songs. And magic controls robots. And sometimes you have to go into somebody's brain Psychonauts-style and solve their problems so you can save humanity with their computer magic biology songs.

A Reckless Disregard for Gravity - In the year of our lord 20X6, skyscrapers are so high that you cannot see the surface of the Earth. But you can look down from them. And jump.

Creeper World - No matter how advanced humanity and aliens become, the Creeper is more advanced. No matter how deadly humanity becomes, with its black-hole bombs and anti-concept beams and time travel, the Creeper will always be more deadly.

Jamestown - Colonizing the U.S. with robots and eldritch horrors.

Rochard - You're a miner, you mine for neo-oil and neo-coal. One day you find artifacts. You have a gravity gun. Pirates will murder you, if your own megacorporation doesn't first.

There are some fun ideas in Friendship is Magic, which can make the setting downright bizarre if you pick and choose the best parts of it. Unfortunately there's so much shit, and so much bad lore ruining the better parts of it.

I'll just take my leave now.

I think you're stretching.

I don't disagree with you.

The idea of having the personifications of day and night having an epic struggle with one another seems like a huge opportunity. Too bad it's just a random kids show.

I'm not sure if it was shit so much as just okay, but Titanfall's universe always intruiged me, if only because they're so damned coy with giving you any details. We have mysterious alien ruins, megacorps supplying both sides with orbital mecha factories, corporate militiraries deploying robot infantry with AI officers, FTL jump points, weapon black markets and frontier planets away from home systems undergoing civil war along with shadow organisations offering elite soldiers illegal boosts for cash.
It's a fucking adventure's paradise. Guns, cyberware, spaceships, corps and factions, and giant fightan robots all for the looting and shooting. Shadowrunners, mercenaries and explorers are all there, and all we ever see are matches and lobbies.
I want to explore the fucking cool sci fi setting with goddamn alien ruins and all I have to work with is a (actually pretty fun) shooter.

It was tied to jack black voiced drunk kung fu pandas though.
It could have been the best thing since gravy and sex and it would still be regarded poorly.

Rainbow power.

Always wanted to play/run game in this setting.

...what is it? Why?

I really like the general theme of the inhabitants of Equestria being in charge of just about every aspect of nature. There is something mythical and folkloric about it.

Take fairytales like Old Man Winter or Jack Frost, who personify, but also summon winter in their wake. Take mythological tales like many tales of the Sun Chariot, that draws the mighty sun across the sky every day. Both of those things are in a sense true and normal in FiM.

The royalty control day and night, and the different tribes/races all are in charge of some aspect of nature. They control the weather, bring the seasons, are responsible for most "lesser" animals, plant seeds and direct growth. Their world is a garden, and they are all the gardeners.

And if actually is left to chance, or grows free and by itself, it freaks them out. The Everfree Forest, which is the forest that in many ways is the most like a real world forest, is entirely unnatural to them.

If you view it outside the scope of what the series is, it's actually a really strange world.

Pls no.

Such good lore, world building, art. Horrible gameplay. Makes the other Castlevania games look boring in comparsion.

This game is so forgotten it's sad
The history of Hammerfight:
>Flying machines swinging huge-ass maces, swords, hammers, axes AND CRUSHING FUCKING EVERYTHING
>Giant flying worms, crustaceans and BEES, plus polyps with shiny magic gems inside
>Persian vibe
>Warring families of Four Houses
>Timespace fuckery by Seraph the big robot

Command & Conquer. The tech level in the setting (during TibSun and TibWars) is pretty muehc exactly where I like it and Tiberium is an excellent tool to drive constant conflict in the world. Nod and GDI can both serve as excellent antagonist factions for the players. But mostly I like it because you got this feeling of hopelessness as the spread of Tiberium is inevitable and even if GDI would find an answer to that, Nod would come in and break it.

Stretching [spoiled]Yang's poon ;D[/spoiler]

But nah it just feels a little uninspired to me. Like a lot of the concepts are just slapped on rather than woven in with the rest of the setting. Granted, yeah, rule of cool is king in that world, but Im honestly not sure what the real "theme" of it is anymore. If that makes sense

I just cant use spoilers right today wow

>implying GDI will help you
GDI are the tools of corrupt corporate oppressors. Kane will liberate the world and lead us to a glorious future, inshallah.

I'm sure I'll get flak for saying this but I unironically like Sword Art Online's setting, especially after the garbage in Fairy Dance was over.

I really like the idea of a sudden influx of a few thousand people into the "becoming working age" demographic of a modern, relatively peaceful setting whose only notable skill is close combat. I like it even more once the even stupider higher-level plot bullshit starts happening.

The long and short of it is that bad guy from Aincrad invented AIs partially by figuring out how to use human brain function to cause state changes in quantum computers, and now a bunch of different government black teams are fighting over who gets to use the research to invent the future. America and Japan each want to use AIs grown in an accelerated virtual world to pilot unmanned weapons to reduce human casualties in war while another, smaller group made up of people from the first two recognize that AIs are people too and are fine either leaving them to their own devices or just living in the database.

As much as Reki Kawahara is a shit writer, some part of me loves that he took dotHack and expanded it into Metal Gear with a side order of Start Ocean 3.

>Implying Nod is any better
At least with GDI I can enjoy limited freedom, with Nod you're just given a future version of AK-47 and pointed towards whatever enemy they particularly dislike that day.

I wouldn't even go that far, it's more like "Hogwarts meets every tired anime cliche ever."

Destiny and The Elder Scrolls. They both have big piles of interesting background material, but the developers seem terrified of actually using any of it for the games.

But A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is a great game.

Another game with a setting much better than its main plot is Dishonored.

>Future AK-47

I think NOD calls it an AK-47

>implying that people of nations whose tyrannical governments are propped up by the military power of the GDI are free
It's like you want to die of starvation in a hovel while your tax money funds GDI protected citiesprotected cities exclusively for the rich and powerful. Please continue to lick the jack boot as it crushes the life out of your body.

Why oh why did it have to be a trilogy

That sort of reminds me of one of the reaons I think Nod is an interesting faction. Most of the military hardware they have is cheap and shitty compared to GDI but at the same time their elite troops have tech that far outclasses whatever GDI has. Like, even after fifty+ years of fighting GDI still hasn't figured out stealth tech.

Circa the second tiberium war both Nod and GDI use "M16 MK2 pulse rifles"s as their assault rifles. Though the GDI and nod versions are visually different.

Hunger Games (books/movies)
K6BD (webcomics)
Technically also the recent Warcraft movie.

Fucking Jungle Romans. I played Oblivion as my first TES, thought it was pretty good, if unbalanced as fuck.
Then I found out what Cryodiil was originally and what the fuck. How many samey grass fields did I trek through when it could have been a fucking jungle?

But user that's too high poly and generic Europe is easier to design for.

...

...

For Destiny, there's hundreds of pages of interesting backstory, but the second you boot up the game it goes "Here's your gun, go shoot some shit. 'Why?' What are you, some kind of faggot?"

Then go somewhere else. Skyrim was always a rocky snowy place, they could have done that for IV.
How hard is it to do sand dunes? Rocky coastlines? I'm just.. fuck, when else am I going to get to play in fantasy magic jungles? I can go to so many places for pseudo-european medieval fantasy. But not as a Jungle Roman.
That said I did like the Ayleid ruins. Missed them in TESV and their glowy stones you could TK or shoot down for dosh.

Listen here you little shit, Origins is a fucking fantastic game.

Not that guy, but 2 and Inquisition were bad. 2 was better than Inquisition, lore -wise, but they really shat on everything Origins did.

2 had the worst gameplay(repetitive battles) and RP elements, imo

But this show was pretty decent.

>It was tied to jack black voiced drunk kung fu pandas though.
>It could have been the best thing since gravy and sex and it would still be regarded poorly.

This argument always bothered me, because the Pandaren were canonized back in Warcraft 3 and then referenced again during Vanilla World of Warcraft, but somehow Blizzard had gone forward in time to rip it off anyway.

I never really liked Pandaren, but the endless threads about Kung Fu Panda that popped up after their announcement were fucking annoying.

I think its direction/pacing were shit, despite it being an overall good show.

Can I post a picture of an awesome show with a cool setting?

I maintain that Bleach is the single worst offender for this.

Bleach's setting doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

That's because it's almost entirely rule of cool. It's the thematic and stylistic choices that make it great for me.

Inquisition was like, I didn't feel like any decisions mattered at all, that half the party members were lame as fuck and some other shit too.

There seemed to be a lot of small things wrong with it.

Kindred: The Embraced.

> WoD gets TV show.
> Suprisingly shit.

I think they could pull it off today, but back then, it just didn't fly.

>WoD
>great setting

Nasuverse.

Seriously though. No matter how much I love the first three movies they are not good.

ebin

>The entirety of the third film
It gave me cancer
It gave me triple cancer

Bionicle's setting is great. The way the actual story is presented was very hit and miss. Because the main purpose of the whole thing was to sell toys and related merchandise to kids, what was actually going on in the storyline was presented in a billion different ways: during the first four or five years the exact same events would be shown as books, films, games, comics and online animations - all of wildly different quality. So yeah, while the movies were pretty awful cheesy crap, the comics and books that showed the same events might have been way better.

At what point did Bionicle jump the shark and become shit?
I'm gonna go with 'when they had the underwater adventure.'

It went to shit after first two seasons.

It had fucking Evanescence as the trailer music
I thought it was going bad with Metro Nui, but then they had the spider things which was based. After that it was just pretty dank until SPOOPY MUTANT WATER SCRUBS

Homestuck. The story just gets way too fucking convoluted and the ending is garbage, but the actually setting itself is pretty interesting.

I really didn't mind the underwater arc. I thought the villains for it looked great.

I think one of the most poorly pulled off things is how the Mata Nui robot had the entire universe inside of it - but because we didn't know about the robot yet, for 8 years half the world was just underground for no apparent reason.

>The Galochios are a family of wandering gypsy psychics who hold a violent grudge against the Aquatos, Raz's family. According to Augustus, they murdered his entire family and cursed him and all of his descendents to die in water. This curse manifests itself through the Hand of Galochio. While they do not physically appear in the game themselves, Augustus implies they are still actively hunting him and his family. A poster in the Meat Circus advertises a group called "The Galochios." This poster also states they are "dead." This is peculiar, especially considering the poster advertising "The Flying Aquatos" says the same thing. The fact that both families appear to have performed in the same circus also raises some interesting questions.

>The family is never seen by the player and make no direct appearance in the actual game, but their presence is felt throughout. The Galochios are Augustus' biggest motivation against allowing Raz to go to camp. They are why Raz believes his father hates psychics. And most notably, they are the reason Raz cannot enter deep water.

I want to play a Psychonauts campaign right now

leviathan wakes and the second or third book of the Takeshi Kovacs series is all about that.

parts of it were fucking brilliant, then they would slather the gaps in the lore with DREADFUL SJW BULLSHIT AND DIARRHEA SPACKLE FEATURING WHO DARES ENTER MY MAGICAL REALM ELECTRO-SWING MARIACHI TRIBUTE BAND EXPERIENCE.

I saw it as it was originally airing, and thought it was cool. if ventrue hadnt died and we would have gotten another season, i bet it would have hit its stride, and we would have had werewolves and mages ripping shit up

Yet all the EXA_PICO world are good. And "magic" there is just the way they describe their lost technologies after most society suffered a massive technical regression after two near-world ending catastrophes.

They hired an actual writer for the Grimoire cards, and so there's a consistent narrative and themes that continue to turn up, that all consistently hint at a larger picture, but one that still leaves the mysteries deep.

It takes philosophical concepts and merges them with science, mathematics, faith, mythology, and just a whole lot of almost-nonsense, and creates a feel like you can kind of get the universe, but still need a few extra senses and a brain a thousand times more intelligent to actually have an understanding of what's going on in the setting, to comprehend it on a deeper level. It's actually some solid Scifi, and it plays its elements well. The Grimoire entries for The Last Word are unsettling, but also wear their spaghetti western influence like a sheriff's badge. The "No Time to Explain" gun is basically a weapon caught in a paradoxical time-loop. The Book of Sorrows gives you a step-by-step of how The Hive became the Hive, and you can actually understand them to a degree.

I wish you could interact with the world in more ways than simple violence. For the intelligence written into the story we don't see in game, you would expect to be able to interact with the world in smarter ways than simple brute-force. Or at least apply that brute force more cleverly. It's begging for wider plains of exploration, more items and uses and economy, a more complex interaction with players and the environment.

The original canon had the whole world 'underground' already, only not inside a robot.

Originally, everything was inside a giant dome, and there were many other domes, each with their own 'universe' and Great Spirit guardian.

Seconding this. I have no idea how Nasu created such an amazing setting, and has a complete inability to actually fucking do anything interesting with it. Seriously holy shit, what a waste.

Does mass effect count?

The first one was good, but the third as pretty bad comparatively.

The 2005 arc was when they had no pre-planned story. I mean, I liked the setting and the story they threw together was neat, but the entire arc felt incredibly out of place. Very obvious that it was just mandated by Lego. Also that was then things started getting edgy.

The 2006 story had very nice bits, but again, the presentation was too tryhard dark and that's when they threw out almost all of the original atmosphere in favor of generic, flavorless science-fantasy crap that tried too hard to be grimdark.

Still, I can look past these. For me, 2008 was when even the setting (cliffs in the sky and generic swamp) became irredeemably boring, and the retarded internet serials took a heavy toll on the story.

People often consider this franchise shit.
But I think the setting would make for good game mechanics.

Plus who wouldn't want to be kids growing up with your robot slaves being forced to fight each other for parts?

Mass Effect was good until they pulled a JK Rowling and shoehorned in a bunch of shit from nowhere, crunched for time and basically handed the story to one person who could write scifi but couldn't really write the kind of story that had so far been consistently established, which led to a story that was clichéd, melodramatic for cheap drama points, and ultimately the ending which is a massive case of videogame blueballs.

what the fuck is that? Google's showing me nothing.

It's fan art of Medabots based on one episode.

Well, seeing as I've listed these video games, I've played through them, which means I enjoyed them a modicum.

I just listed them as they were either not critically well received (somewhere), or there's a vocal minority that dislikes them and seems to be everywhere they are.

I'm glad you enjoyed those games too.

Ar Nosurge was a beast of a game.

It started going downhill in 2007 with the underwater stuff, sure. But it didn't truly become shit until 2009 when they tried to soft reboot the setting. And then it got even worse when they had to shoehorn in a rushed ending to the entire story a year and a half later.

Spiral Knights
>Our space cruiser has suddenly and inexplicably run out of fuel as we entered an uncharted system
>Before all was lost, we were able to enter the orbit of a strange planet
>It appears to be mechanical, with continents pieced together from different worlds moving up, down, and around various levels on a kind of massive clockworks
>We have no way of surviving outside of our biosuits, and most of the natives of the planet are hostile, whether they're sapients, animals, or supernatural monsters
>However, there is some kind of massive energy source at the 'core' of the artificial planet
>The only way to survive is to look downwards

I liked 2 better than Inquisition. Considering inquisition was full of things i hate, that facebook game table, resource hunt, mmo style leveling system, wide world but forgettable and boring, i've had enough of this shit when i played Amalur.

The companions were also dull as fuck. At least 2 felt comfy.

The was a medabots game, I owned it as a kid but my little bro and I never learned/read the rules.

I was appalled by the lack of axe-dwarves.

Nobody mentioned Naruto? The source material is pretty bad but the setting is legit good.

Only if you're a ninjaboo.

Naruto setting was vaguely interesting in the first half or so, but quickly turned into DBZ, in the bad way, later on. It still maintained several interesting concepts, but they were overshadowed by all the stupid powers like giant chakra mechs.

Nobody really minded the land area existing I think. I thought of them as a fun addition, good for NPCs and quests.
It was making them the focus and title of a whole expansion that got me. There was so much more to their world that would have been more appropriate. Hell. I could have shit out a better premise.

Outlands Reborn, a mysterious Ethereal trader guild has decided to back the Horde, while the free Arrakoa have joined the Alliance! The shattered remains of Draenor once again see battle as through the twisting nether, a new continent collides into the floating lands! Who will claim the riches of the new land, and is everything as it seems! What lurks below the surface?

But now there's... time travel? Dual realities? How can I care about anything if we can just undo shit in time and be invaded by clones from the mirror universe. Nothing carries weight then.

>Virtual Reality everywhere
>Illegal adventurers looting bugs in VR frame for fun and profit
>VR Cops
>Not-so-VR ghosts
The shows wasn't exactly shit but they could have done so much more with the setting.

>Land area
I meant the pandas. Autocorrect can be really stupid at times.

As of Volume4 it looks like we've left Hogwarts, hopefully forever; would mean we get to start actually exploring around and seeing what the rest of the world is like instead of relying on the World of Remnant vids for context.

replace ninjas with wizard mercenaries