For example, I didn’t fall in love with Titanfall 2’s environmental art design—it felt a bit generic to me, like it was meant to be the backdrop for a shooter, as opposed to the Sevastopol in A:I or the station in SOMA that felt like existing locations.
Ditto BioShock: Infinite. The world felt like it was built around the premise of being an arena shooter, not the other way around.
BioShock 1 & 2 are exactly what I’m talking about though.
Even Borderlands 2 has great world-building: the corporate history that can be inferred from the level design, the weapons & the NPCs makes it one of the richer games I’ve played.
Would love to hear others’ thoughts on your favorite FPS environments!
Yea I agree, exploring some of the densely populated areas of the game feel hollow (like you say “surface-deep”). But, when doing the main story line it felt very inclusive and full. I still remember the parade in the main story with Takemura, absolutely beautiful, a bit chaotic and massive feeling. OP talks about Bioshock 1&2 being what they’re talking about, but I could easily argue that both of those games were very linear and didn’t allow for much exploration outside of the main quest line.