Best locations in vidya?

I can't get enough of spooky forest settings, with fog and possibly paranormal shit. What games do this best?

What other settings do you guys enjoy and which games do them best?

Anyone else like sewer / cistern type settings or am I in a significant minority?

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Ruins that have enough world building and good art and environment design to sell them as locations that actually were used for something in the past. It doesn't have to be completely autistic (mild platforming and a few traps is fine for adding gameplay) but it helps.

BOTW had some surprisingly good forests. The Lost Woods was nice and atmospheric, full of fog and spoopy trees. And there was the island of darkness which was pure fun. Running around an inky void with a torch, lighting signal fires, fighting a giant monster who you can barely make out as a silhouette, it was the closest the game got to feeling like an actual adventure full of mystery.
Myself, I love a good forest, which is a shame because they're rarely done well. The Witcher 3 had some amazing forests, properly lush and vibrant, with leshens wandering around to fuck your shit up.
And a nice abandoned cum ruined castle that is half exposed to the elements is good too. So for one section you're crawling through a hallway filled with rooms of aged and rotting furniture, and then you're on the battlements and they break open to reveal the mundane elements of the castle like the barracks underneath. Dark Souls games do this well, and BOTW, again, one of the few decent parts of the game was Hyrule Castle, especially the way the music changed depending on whether you were inside or outside.
Exploring is fun. Automaps, quest markers, and floating waypoints can fuck right off. Have the NPCs give proper directions. I hate casuals.
Only if they make the sewers relative to the overworld, and you can use them as shortcuts or ambush points or whatever. If it's just a generic sewer level then it can fuck off.

I like abandoned industrial environments. I enjoy walking through them in real life, but games that exploit that eerie feeling of rusty metal, giant structures and half-functional machines really work for me.
It's a pity only a handful of games get the atmosphere right and even those rarely offer matching gameplay.

The depths in Dark Souls were kind of underwhelming, but I liked the big drain where you fight the toothy dragon.

I'm a fucking sucker for snow areas in general. You can take any average shit game and add a winter climate to an area and at the very least I'll like the aesthetic more.

Games with spatial distorsions. That building at the end of SMTIII was great in that regard. Antichamber had some moments amid all the hipsterdom and its rapid descent into samey puzzles

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Not really a location but I love the blue skies in Sega's games, and poppy environments in general that hit the aesthetic of what they're going for on the nail.

It's been a long time since I saw a snow level in any game.

This, combined with abandoned urban/rural settings. Especially when it's been taken over by something that you're not quite sure if it's paranormal or some kind of runaway experiment. Something like those urban dark souls fake screenshots people post sometimes.

Specifically Hollow Knight, or the Legendz anime when the dark wind blows or they start growing crystals

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Nehrim had super good forests. Hard to find videos, though.
Some of the early areas are comfy
youtube.com/watch?v=ASNLpyRHHPU

The dark forest was one of those places where I just went FUCK THIS and tried to get through it as quickly as possible. But then I'd keep finding places and have to look around which with the heavy winds and rain made for some genuine discomfort from the immersion.
youtu.be/F0BZeGMhPAM?t=6m38s

But then getting out from the haunted forest and entering the plains of Treomar, where you see the kingdom that got fucking wrecked by the gods, you get this sense of tranquility. Just ruins and grass growing in the long dead city, yet somehow it's beautiful. Also, you can fly over it which is pretty cool.
youtube.com/watch?v=tjRs3z8i_qc

In general Nehrim looks pretty fucking good, especially considering its a fucking total conversion mod of Oblivion.
youtu.be/Wdp3NUhkO-8?t=56s

You are my absolute niggers.
Unfortunately I can't name any newish games that do those, because new games kinda suck, but almost any RPG or Action RPG released before 2013 has a swamp or foggy forest or obligatory snow area.
Sacred 2 is not the best example but it's one I have screenshots of at hand.

For industrial ruins I can only think of Rengoku and Baroque, both are japanese real time dungeon crawlers with pretty clunky combat systems, but god-tier aesthetics.
And a bit of Nier I guess.

lets be honest here, Bethesda makes the best locations, sheer attention to detail and work going into those environments parallel to none, even if every new entry seems to scalp another layer off the RPG mechanics

Lost Planet 1 is still my go to for snow levels. I really loved the over areas where you see the dead remnants of a civilization lost to snow. Lost Planet 2 is a much better game, but I really liked the aesthetics that LP1 had.

Ruins / abandoned cities, especially ones ravaged by crisis. Dishonored had some very nice areas ruined by pestilence with only non-humans living there scavenging for food, the map was big enough to be open world without the empty world syndrome (multiple routes to the same goal, exploration is rewarded…etc)

Underwater stone ruins. Shadow of the Colossus, Far Cry 3 and Black Flag come to mind.

That's about the only thing the game has going for it tbh.

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Anywhere you aren't.