which game has the most living breathing world ?

Infinity Nikki is the most "alive" world I have played recently. Not really surprising having top talent from Zelda and TW3.

There are tons of NPCs with night/day routines in each town doing a huge variety of activities. A good portion of them have storylines and side-quests. Besides, they aren't always located in the same places. Some travel to other towns or disappear for some time and then tell you where they have been in random dialogues.

Also, the game takes advantage of being a live service. Constant updates bring new people to towns, adding more variety and seasonality. In the New Year event, there was a ship from other region docked, and the locals reacted to it, mingling with the newcomers. Now the ship is gone and everything has returned to normal, but there are a few changes here and there due to that visit. A new area that has been sealed off for two months recently opened up, with a new story and people around it.
 
Red Dead Redemption 2 and its not even close.

red dead redemption 2 fire GIF by Rockstar Games
 
Greenvale from Deadly Premonition.

Yes, a very much so acquired taste, but I love roaming around this town more than 95% of other games.


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The town map looks like a dog .. like come on mangg !!


CbTnRdyQ01hCpFzhNLMJN1RsF14BNv863qAKiV3kgvA.png
 
There's the usual Rockstar and Witcher games, but I think BotW and TotK in particular are very impressive. They do a lot with little and every NPC is finely crafted.
 
Holammer said:
There's the usual Rockstar and Witcher games, but I think BotW and TotK in particular are very impressive. They do a lot with little and every NPC is finely crafted.
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I do agree with this. BotW and TotK might not have a world that is as densely populated and full of detail as Rockstar's stuff. But Nintendo does indeed "a lot with little", I like that description.

Overall, I would probably say that RDR2's open-world is pretty good. The game has different problems though (controls and how the narrative and missions are oftentimes designed "against" the open-world.)
I would also argue from the viewpoint of purely emergent gameplay stemming from system interactions that Dwarf Fortress belongs in the mix as well.
 
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Black_Stride said:
Easily Dwarf Fortress.

dwarf_fortress_1.png




A full 3D version of Dwarf Fortress would probably be game of the forever.
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Do you have like a video that explain why?

I'm trying to look into it and it looks like a commodore 64 game...i can't even fucking see the ncps doing stuff :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
 
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Easily games like Morrowind, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, and Fallout 4 even without modding them. And they exceed that far more when modded. That's why those games are so awesome and perhaps the best games of all times. They are also paired up with a much deeper and interesting lore compared to every other games.
 
RDR2. I was talking to my brother about it this week, and he had never played it. I sent him a copy. I said just get through the snow, and the game opens up. Hopefully he likes it.
 
GymWolf said:
Do you have like a video that explain why?

I'm trying to look into it and it looks like a commodore 64 game...i can't even fucking see the ncps doing stuff :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
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The classic one:

www.pcgamer.com

How cats get drunk in Dwarf Fortress, and why its creators haven't figured out time travel (yet)

Dwarf Fortress simulates the world to such an absurd degree, cats that walk on spilled beer can end up getting drunk.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com

"I added taverns to fortress mode, so the dwarves will go to a proper establishment, get mugs, and make orders, and they'll drink in the mug," Adams said. "And, you know, things happen, mugs get spilled, there's some alcohol on the ground.

"Now, the cats would walk into the taverns, right, and because of the old blood footprint code from, like, eight years ago or something, they would get alcohol on their feet. It was originally so people could pad blood around, but now any liquid, right, so they get alcohol on their feet. And then I wanted to add cleaning stuff so when people were bathing, or I even made eyelids work for no reason, because I do random things sometimes. So cats will lick and clean themselves, and on a lark, when I made them clean themselves I'm like, 'Well, it's a cat. When you do lick cleaning, you actually ingest the thing that you're cleaning off, right? They make hairballs, so they must swallow something, right?' And so the cats, when they cleaned the alcohol off their feet, they all got drunk. Because they were drinking"
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The game only got more detailed and ambitious in the last six years

The attention to details is insane
 
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HRK69 said:
The classic one:

www.pcgamer.com

How cats get drunk in Dwarf Fortress, and why its creators haven't figured out time travel (yet)

Dwarf Fortress simulates the world to such an absurd degree, cats that walk on spilled beer can end up getting drunk.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com



The game only got more detailed and ambitious in the last six years

The attention to details is insane
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I don't wanna sound like a jackass or diminish the game too much, but it is far easier to inject any detail and complexity you want when it's mostly textual with beyond basic graphic, no animations, physics etc.

Rain world probably does less in term of complexity but at least it has a unique animation system and you can actually watch the breathing, living world going on and it's not just a mountain of text...

DF could be probably even more complex if it was just textual without even the 2d sprites, do you get where i'm going?

I think that a living, breathing world can't be just in textual form and not much else, it is kinda implicit in the context of you know a "living, breathing world"
 
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Monster Hunter World and Iceborne, liked the routine of visiting my garden tland merchants for new supplies followed by the smithy and the cook for a meal before going to queue up for a quest. Liked that you could interact with other players via the gathering hub and arm wrestle and whatnot. Hope this comes to Wild soon.
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I like mass effect world from what Sheppard says, he cares about other species, he's wise and make decisions when it's necessary from our understanding of the real world, the plot is connected to our understanding of the real world. That to me is breathtaking more than my eyes can see visually. Veilguard is just a bad take from the same concept, I don't think it doesn't belong to the same world of mass effect, it's just a bad apple.
 
Reizo Ryuu said:
How do they know it's stolen? 🤔
Sounds like the oblivion psychic guards problem all over again.
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The game has a shitload of systems but some of them are half baked, npcs are way too rigid and they don't know the meaning of flexibility.

Like 99% of games with a breathing living world, you can catch the limits of the systems in a couple of hours if you are an experienced player, we are still far from actual living, breathing smart npcs, right now it's a contest to who can put more precanned scripts in their npcs that turn on when something happen around them and hope that nothing breaks.

Not a knack on the game, they all have these limits, from rockstar games to everything really.

I know people don't wanna hear it, but AI is gonna be crucial in making actual smart npcs in the future, or we still gonna have mannequins that pretend to be alive.
 
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I don't think some people understood what op was asking when i read some of the responses...

Good written side-characters or lore go under the writing section.

Avowed has a deep pillars of eternity lore and a shitload of flavour text, but the cities feel dead, wd2 has shit writing but the city feels alive, good writing and looking alive are 2 separate things.

At best good lore help with the believability of a place, to make it sound like it is a real place with a real history, but that is not gonna make your city look more alive if the npcs are zombies that barely react or move.
 
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GymWolf said:
Do you have like a video that explain why?

I'm trying to look into it and it looks like a commodore 64 game...i can't even fucking see the ncps doing stuff :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
Click to expand...

Its such a trip.

The paid version has "better" graphics but in reality its the systems that make the game, the game.
Download the free version and play for just one hour......by then assuming youve got a decent grasp of whats going on, you will forget that the NPCs are mostly represented by ASCII characters, and you will genuinely be like this letter is a cat.

If you got some change buy the pay version cuz they improved the graphics to help people onboard.
But the worlds are so on point, your fortress can get large enough over time even modern CPUs can be crippled by all the AI "simulations" that are going on.


Its why I say if someone was to make a true #D Dwarf Fortress game it would melt everyones brains how much shit is actually going on constantly.
 
Links Awakening on Gameboy Advance 1993. Shopkeeper called me a thief even though he didn't actually witness me steal anything. It was only after doing inventory did he catch what happened and he put 2 + 2 together and called me out. Mind blowing.
 
Black_Stride said:
Its such a trip.

The paid version has "better" graphics but in reality its the systems that make the game, the game.
Download the free version and play for just one hour......by then assuming youve got a decent grasp of whats going on, you will forget that the NPCs are mostly represented by ASCII characters, and you will genuinely be like this letter is a cat.

If you got some change buy the pay version cuz they improved the graphics to help people onboard.
But the worlds are so on point, your fortress can get large enough over time even modern CPUs can be crippled by all the AI "simulations" that are going on.


Its why I say if someone was to make a true #D Dwarf Fortress game it would melt everyones brains how much shit is actually going on constantly.
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Like i said in another post, to me a breathing living world can't just be a mountain of text, no matter how detailed and dynamic it can be, it must have at least some basic visuals, animations, physics, physically seeing npcs doing stuff, reacting to what you do etc.

I don't think i could apprecciate this game even if it is really the best because of its nature and because it is not what i expect when i talk about living, breathing world.

Not a knack on the game of course.

Just for curiosity, have you played rain world, if you like ai simulation and DF is number one, rain world must be number 2.

Also kenshi, that one is pretty complex aswell.
 
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thief183 said:
Come on guys, KCD2 at the moment is the best one around cause not only it looks real and alive but it react accordingly, try for example to poison a random food source and make the time pass hour after hour, you' ll see ppl in the sorroubd commenting about it, someone guarding the corpse, all waiting for the gravedigger to come come and take the body.

Another example is that if you leave something on the ground ppl will take it and use it, or sell it.

RDR2 is a great example but the interaction is minimal in comparison.

Otherwise you got stuff like Rainworld where Devs simulated an entire ecosistem, but it is smaller in scale.

Edit: ofc also skyrim is a great example, but still the interaction is kinda limited.
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StereoVsn said:
Yep, KCD2 world realization is just crazy. Like say if you steal something out of a house at night and are sneaking away in dark clothing without a torch. Guards will stop you if they notice you and search you for stolen items.

There is so much interactivity between various systems it's kind of crazy.
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This sounds amazing!
First impression from video makes it look so incredibly boring though when it's based on history and no fantasy and monsters. But maybe it is actually fun because of all those systems? What do you do in it? How is a standard quest?
 
Living breathing world is very unique. There are plenty of amazing worlds that may be static(Silent Hill 2) or semi-static(Elden Ring).

However a true world that changes with gameplay decisions(somewhat eliminates BG3), has roaming NPCs(eliminates almost everything else, like, does Avowed have roaming NPCs?) and these two things aren't just arbitrary one offs but regular events throughout the game.

We are talking about a handful of games already. RDR2 has detractors for the slow pacing. I haven't played Goblin Fortress or XBCX(yet). Witcher 3 I'm not sure, I love that game and the world, it is hard to argue anything against Witcher 3 except they should have defaulted the difficulty to death march to make people need to explore the world. I think because of the default difficulty allowing you to 1 button spam most of the game, I'm gonna not suggest it either. Not yet played KCD2 either but soon, soon.

So, I'm gonna say Fallout New Vegas as my main suggestion.
 
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Fess said:
This sounds amazing!
First impression from video makes it look so incredibly boring though when it's based on history and no fantasy and monsters. But maybe it is actually fun because of all those systems? What do you do in it? How is a standard quest?
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It has an excellent if a bit grim story. And really good side quests.

Overall game is fun because of the systems. It's crazy what you can do.

Edit: Forgot to mention that there is a ton of different ways to finish various quests. It's really expansive in that sense.
 
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StereoVsn said:
Because they see a suspicious individual sneaking around at night without a torch.
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...so lol? How could they possibly know what you have on you is stolen or not if they didn't see you steal it? Because it's marked as a "stolen item" in your inventory? Super lame if that's how.
 
Reizo Ryuu said:
...so lol? How could they possibly know what you have on you is stolen or not if they didn't see you steal it? Because it's marked as a "stolen item" in your inventory? Super lame if that's how.
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That is exactly how it work.

Like i said, complex system but not without flaws.
 
GymWolf said:
That is exactly how it work.

Like i said, complex system but not without flaws.
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It could be more complex, but if you take it from higher level, it makes a bit more sense.

This is early 15th century Europe. There is no habias corpus. Guards see someone suspicious skulking around, they take them in and perhaps talk to the owners of the house you were skulking around. Stolen items are identified and then further investigation proceeds.

You can talk your way out of it depending on your skills and reputation.
 
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