What a fictional world needs

[TrueGota]

So, after playing a lot of FF14 recently and being absorbed into its world I wondered what things you should include and think about in a fictional world. I've been worling on one for quite some time now although I kinda restarted everything and began anew, there are still a lot of things implemented already, though (like the world map and races and stuff). 

What I wanted to say - what do you think is it that a world needs to feel complete and immersive? You could stretch the question however you like.

[Kismet]

I'd personally recommend watching Brandon Sanderson's lecture on world building. He does a good job of easily breaking down ways to make a world feel... well, like an actual world. This lecture is just one part of an entire series meant for writing fiction (he also has stuff on creating magic systems and etc), but the information could easily also apply to other mediums.

 

 

v98Zy_hP5TI

[Warren Castille]

His world building and rules for magic are spot-on. If you're going to have a magic system, it has to be well enough devised that people don't feel like you're using it to asspull or deus ex machina out of a situation if you hadn't already established something.

 

XIV does a fuck-awful job of this, for example. I've vented before about how dumb the teleporting mechanic is and I maintain that; We can use it in the plot when things are convenient, but never any other time. Healing magic, too, isn't particularly well handled between in-game and in-lore situations (looking at you, every major NPC death in the MSQ!).

 

If you're going to allow supernatural powers into your setting, you have to let them perform as you'd expect unless you've got extremely specific reasons why those things don't work. I can also recommend Sanderson's takes on world-building (and his books if you're not reading them) since he does a very good job of following rules through, barring a few half-retcons in a number of situations.

[Gwen]

 Healing magic, too, isn't particularly well handled between in-game and in-lore situations (looking at you, every major NPC death in the MSQ!).

 

Yeah, so many times I wonder why everyone just stands around and accepts a death. It's similar to Mass Effect,t where everyone is equpied with seemingly limitless rechargeable shields. Yet Shepard can shoot anyone in the face and kill them instantly just because they are talking with guns pointed at each other and that's an acceptable time to turn off shields? Or Harry Potter instant teleportation spells which jump into existence 5 or 6 books in and would have really come in handy before! :dazed:

 

It's pretty hard to stay consistent with things like healing magic though. Especially if you're playing as a healing class and just watching your 300 quest long buddy die in front of you.

[TrueGota]

Altough it's one of my favourite series Yakuza is one of the biggest offenders when it comes to this. In the battles you can take dozens of bullets, sword slashes, punches etc but in the cutscenes ONE guy with a gun (and you sometimes fight like 5 people with guns at the same time) is suddenly the biggest threat ever and characters die with just a few shots while you beat them up for minutes (or shoot them a ton of times) in the battles - and there is no magic at all.

It's like the battles and cutscenes are two different worlds and I think that's not good at all because it destroys immersivity. (The battles are still badass as hell, though)

[Parth Makeo]

Altough it's one of my favourite series Yakuza is one of the biggest offenders when it comes to this. In the battles you can take dozens of bullets, sword slashes, punches etc but in the cutscenes ONE guy with a gun (and you sometimes fight like 5 people with guns at the same time) is suddenly the biggest threat ever and characters die with just a few shots while you beat them up for minutes (or shoot them a ton of times) in the battles - and there is no magic at all.

It's like the battles and cutscenes are two different worlds and I think that's not good at all because it destroys immersivity. (The battles are still badass as hell, though)

It's this way with cinematic Vs Ingame for game play reasons. Yes you can 'Take' bullets during an actual fight because if it was a cinematic, your character would be too fast for those specific gun toting people to shoot down or they are disarmed before firing a bullet and so on. They have to make it so you don't instantly die because 'Laws of bullets'

 

But when it comes to a cutscene, it usually is a more down to earth tone because your character either stood too long and has a barrel aimed at him, and if he moved he would be shot.

 

If you want a game to be as real as possible, then then GTA games and even Red Dead Redemption would of been impossible to even play because EVERY BULLET TYPE KILLS YOU IN ONE HIT! There's a time and a place to just forego the laws of reality during gameplay for a moment and continue on....

 

BUT WITH THAT SAID! Final Fantasy has had it's moments where cinematic Vs Gameplay do not work together. Case and point: Final Fantasy 7 and Aerith's death. CLEARLY you can toss a feather on someone and revive them but apparently that can't revive someone who was killed. An Item that REVIVES DEAD COMPANIONS does not work on the one character who Dies...

It's this scene i will always remember being angry about and hearing rumors of the infamous 'revive Aerith' method that made me think that maybe my allies are not dead in combat but more unconscious and still breathing rather than riddled with arrows, burned alive five times, bullets through them like swiss cheese, hypothermia, radiation poisoning and or severed in more than five hundred ways.

 

I mean if you designed a game, wouldn't you want your cinematics to still have some ground in reality for a narrative? (Except when it's over the top ala: Devil May Cry)

[TrueGota]

Wouldn't it  be a good way if you have your own world and say "Yes, the people are actually as strong as they are in the battles"? There could still be ways how someone can die in cutscenes, like being attacked by dozens of attacks from all directions at the same time or in other ways. Altough that wouldn't work with Earth as the place.

[Verad]

Within the boundaries of a game, you decide if you're comfortable with ludonarrative dissonance or not. If you are, then the complaints that are always raised regarding magical and healing-related inconsistencies don't matter.