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!
I’ve got about 2k hours in Skyrim so I definitely love a Bethesda game, but what I’m thinking about are simple arcade shooters with less of an RPG structure than TES or Fallout.
Admittedly Borderlands has skill trees and classes, but I feel like it’s safe to call it a shooter first & a roleplayer second. But DOOM, Bioshock, Portal, Metro—if there’s more to your character than their name & their gun, the game barely acknowledges it. :P
Ah, I was gonna recommend the original Deus Ex but it is also an RPG
I see what you mean, you want a "shooter first "game where it doesn’t feel like the world was built around you, all i can say for that is boneworks.