What makes a game's universe interesting?

What makes a game's universe interesting?
I think it's interesting and hits the spot of a good universe if I start thinking "I wonder what it would be like to live there.", but what does it for you?

Big tities

Often I do shit like wonder how hellish it would be to live in certain games like Spyro post 100% the game.

Imagine living in an empty world with a few stranded NPC's that never deliver contextual dialog to you and just repeat the same thing over and over again.

It would seem like a kind of Purgatory would it not?

Also my bad for sentence spacing. Just got up.

Step 1. It's not made in Japan.

Tiny/practical details. I loved Pikmin 2 for not presenting me with autistic amounts of lore, but instead giving me Louie's intendedly-humorous notes about preparation and consumption of the local flora and fauna. It makes the world a lot more real when it gives you information like food preparation or what they do for recreation.

japanese games are usually far better in world building.

That goes without saying.

It also can't have a ton of people that look or act like white men. The more multicultural, the better.

Do you have any examples?

Internal consistency is the single most important facet of worldbuilding, followed by having a cohesive design or central philosophy outlined for what you're trying to create. A world that breaks its own rules is a world that survives through author hand-waves and duct-tape, and aimless writing or 'setting creep' can turn otherwise good settings into confusing or conflicted messes.

That isn't to say things like kitchen sink or incredibly mysterious settings are impossible, but rather than you have to know what you're doing when you create them and weave them into your game (See: Planescape: Torment and DaS1).

fa/tg/uy weighing in

On top of all of that, it doesn't hurt to have a good, coherent aesthetic to tie it together.

not too far from reality.
as realistic as possible.
as few elements as possible that break immersion.
if there's magic, make it subtle (nothing too powerful).
mature themes: politics, intrigue, real crime…
real crime gives impetus to the player.

a non shit character creation and non shit lighting.

doesn't 40k fill most of those criteria?

man you're a fucking bore

In truth, the best way to make game universes interesting is by leaving large chunks of the story to the player as guesswork. One's own imagination is superior to anything a human hand can write.

The key ingredient is leaving stuff open for interpretation.

so being as vague as possible.
can I name drop places, people, and things and never elaborate into them?

It certainly does, for some.

Actually, one of the greatest facets of most 40k lore (if not just because it lets them get away with a lot of fuckups and flaws) is that it's incredibly subjective; almost all information in events, books, and codices are filtered through the biases, perceptions, and propaganda of the various factions. It's complete guesswork as to what is and isn't true, exaggerated, or outright propaganda.

Touhou is the only one I actively fantasise about.
I just like it, not sure why. But I liked it a lot less after the moon bullshit. Eirin and Kaguya were fine, but lunarians are op.

Not necessarily as vague as possible - you need a solid framework for your story. But let te player's spin their own story.

say I have a character moving through a region of a continent, and have him meet travelers and hear rumors from other parts of the globe, something like that?

Firstly, remnants of a previous time, along with the loot and scrap of value to be applied to your current time and experience. This adds the value of exploring feature, and that seems to be all that is needed for me to enjoy myself.
Secondly, challenge. Thirdly, voyeuristic opportunities of any kind, to come upon information or tiddies by listening, hiding or remembering something is going to happen at this time or place. Fourthly, interactive pieces of the environment, crafting, stealing, random loot, etc…
Lastly, expansiveness and polish. All the things mentioned before flushed out, given prefixes and suffixes. The azure tiddie watching telescope of chief crustyhands +3, for example.

Nah it's always unite the crystals and reawaken the blah blah blah. Get a life, dork.

Sort of. As a matter of fact, rumors are an especially useful tool as you an always say that it's just hearsay if you dislike the development of the topic

trans people & people of color in positions of power/respect

...

It's true in one case, at least.

Fuck this shit.

Came here to post these, my nigga.

Got a hash/magnet to the games?

I think in-game history, slowly parceled out to the players over the (series of) game is what makes the setting interesting. Just vague enough to leave people wanting more, but detailed enough to explain, bit-by-bit to the autists following along, how everything came to be in the modern player-controlled era. Supplementary materials could compliment this, such as fan-books, drama cds, etc etc.

Of course, everything needs to be logical consistent and sound.

What?

a games pretend world is inserting depending on your level of autism

Chekd

learn english

1.) Good environment
2.) Good environment you can actually explore
3.) Lots of NPCs so the world doesn't feel desolate
4.) Give every NPC something to say, even if its just one-off generic dialogue like "Its looking to be another good harvest this year!" it still contributes to fleshing the world out a bit

Thats really it actually, if your game universe has cool lore and shit it can be covered in subtle enough ways just by having NPCs reference it.

thats a pretty good threshold.
what really ends up drawing me in is when a world seems to have something were missing. a sense of adventure, wonderment or beauty that youre not going to find outside of fantasy.
characters that im invested in certainly help too. you dont really have to do all that much world building, but its nice. questions are going to come up and its nice to have answers.

buy them you pathetic broke nigger pc gamer

Try b4 you buy m8.

also that. that always helps

Why is there a Tuba wrapped around that thing?

How logical and consistent it is tends to be one of the biggest factors in a universe being good. I never thought of it like this until some author whose name I totally forgot was talking about it in the context of creating a fantasy world. He was talking about things like you can't have nations with armies fighting each other if you also have wizards that can just wipe out entire armies in the same universe. Things need to be believable.

Don't make world where assassinating the Emperor of the biggest human kingdom meaningless.

well to explain its looks, sound, science/magic and and music are the main themes of ar tonelico. its some kind of laboratory and administrative machine.
near the top of the tower those shattered crystals look kind of like cds

good combat.

Absolutely not

What 40k has going for it is a metric fuck ton of factions and interesting places to go and blow up

Waste of dubba dubs. Wide hips are the right answer.