From alien cantinas packed with strange and exotic lifeforms to the bridges of starships, aglow in red emergency lighting as the crew fends off yet another attack, the sci-fi genre is packed with imaginative settings to capture the imagination of its audience.
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The sci-fi settings featured in gaming have been just as wild, diverse, and compelling as those that appear in cinema and literature of the genre. Every art form immerses its audience, but only games give fans the chance to truly inhabit and explore these fantastic worlds for themselves. Whether bleak and hostile or bright and welcoming, here are the sci-fi games with the most immersive settings.
No one said people had to want to be immersed in their game’s setting.Dead Space 2isa triumph of sci-fi horror storytelling.Players won’t want to be stuck in the bleak, black corridors of the Sprawl for a second longer than they have to.
There’s plenty to worry about in the darkness of this abandoned space station, and thanks to top-notch designs for levels and creatures, the player will find it difficult to sleep much after playing this one. There’s much to be said for how far sound design will take a game, and the setting ofDead Space 2is the perfect example of how the right sound can be endlessly unnerving.
7Half-Life 2
Gordan Freeman’s adventures may not have received the litany of sequels that other sci-fi franchises have, but that hasn’t stoppedHalf-Life 2from becoming one of the most memorable sci-fi stories of all time.
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A breakthrough for its generation,Half-Life 2may have aged, but players need only dip their toes back in to remember just what made Gordon, the Combine, the Black Mesa Incident, and the rest of this game’s fiction so memorable.Half-Life 2may be a shooter rather than an RPG or open-world survival game, but it packs more imagination and conviction into its environmental storytelling than almost any game of its kind.
6Alien: Isolation
Sevastopolis a Seegson Corporation space station orbiting a star, and it’s toSevastopolthat Amanda Ripley — daughter of Ellen Ripley — must go.Alien: Isolationwas praised forthe killer AI which allowed the xenomorph to hunt playerswith an eerie level of accuracy and intelligence.
Though the xenomorph and its AI deserve all the praise they get, no amount of alien intelligence would make the game scary if players weren’t drawn into its world.Sevastopolutilizes the scariest elements of Ripley’s ship theNostromofrom the originalAlienfilm: narrow corridors, lots of shadowy corners, and far, far too many ducts for the creature to crawl through. It forces the player to either adapt to them or die.
5EVE Online
Most players would be hard-pressed to name a game with a more notorious reputation for complexity of its mechanics and the commitment of its fanbase. MMORPGEVE Onlinedoes its best to demonstrate exactly what humanity’s sci-fi future could look like.
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Leaving politics, economics, and war in the hands of player factions,Eve Onlineis immersive precisely because it’s a living ecosystem. Actual human personalities, rivalries, grudges, schemes, and ambitions shape what happens, whether that’s a space pirate’s botched raid or an epic faction battle that destroys thousands of ships. Many games can’t shake the feeling that they’re simply artificial.Eve Onlineis different, because its setting is a tapestry of human motives.
4BioShock
Before players were introduced toa city in the cloudsinBioShock Infinite,there was Rapture. The originalBioShock’sretro-inspired underwater city is dripping with aesthetic charm, even more than one would expect an underwater city to drip.
Throwback signage, neon, the crackle of old voice recordings, the heavy footfalls of Big Daddies — everything aboutBioShockexists to drag players deeper into its world. With a plot influenced by the philosophical writings of Ayn Rand,BioShockdoesn’t hesitate to explore big ideas. It says a lot that the city of Rapture is just as fascinating as what happens there.
3Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic(KOTOR)is 20 years old, and its combat feels clunky by today’s standards, but its story and setting are some of the best that have ever been done in science fiction gaming. The crew of theEbon Hawkgets to explore a number of iconicStar Warsworlds such as Tatooine, but the ship manages to become a setting just as engaging.
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What makesKOTORso exciting is the omnipresent feeling that one’s choices matter. Whether pursuing the light side or the dark, the player gets to shape their own destiny as they travel between planets, meet the locals, and learn more about their place in the galaxy.KOTORis a phenomenal storytelling experience with a setting so immersive that many won’t want to come up for air until they’re done.
2Mass Effect 2
Building upon the lessons of choice-driven games likeStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic,Mass Effect 2took the winning formula created by the first game in the series and honed it to narrative perfection.
The Council, Reapers, and Illusive Man all give the player plenty to think about as they jet around the galaxy, but it’sthe relationships that the player builds with their crewand other NPCs that makeMass Effect 2so immersive. Most RPGs that claim to offer impactful choices struggle to do so in the long run, but here the player’s choices just keep layering upon one another. Between the lore, the locations, and the player’s choices, it’s hard not to feel that one is truly a part of theMass Effectuniverse.
1No Man’s Sky
WhenNo Man’s Skylaunched, hardly anyone would have described the game as immersive. With over 18 quintillion planets, it was incomprehensibly big. However, there simply wasn’t much to do, and gamers struggled to connect with it.
But thanks to a litany of massive expansions and patches,No Man’s Skyhas transformed into what it was always meant to be: the ultimate example of what truly limitless discovery looks like. An exploration simulator on the largest scale,No Man’s Skylets the player decide how they want to immerse themselves in its universe, whether that’s running a colony, smuggling goods from one system to the next, or cataloging every alien flower in sight.
