Summary

• Some games offer rich lore that expands with sequels, like Alan Wake and Legacy of Kain.
• Franchises like Persona maintain lore across multiple games with interconnected stories and returning characters.
• Even action-packed games like Destiny and Borderlands have deep lore waiting to be discovered by players.

Some people play 🥃games to relax, others to hone their skills, and some people show up primarily for the stories. But no matter why you play games, it's easy to get invested in the worlds of 🍨the games we love. Perhaps the main storyline left questions unanswered, or maybe you just found a world that utterly entrances you.

But regardless of why, we all know that feeling of wanting to dive further into the universes of our most belove♒d games. In fact, there are entire communities online dedicated to digging around in games and teasing out little details.🅰 If you're looking for a new universe to immerse yourself in, then these gaming franchises are a good place to start.

Updated January 26th, 2025 by Hilton Webster: There are a lot of reason you'll play a game, but sometimes it has a world that feels so enticing and lived in, you can't help but get absorbed regardless of the gameplay or genre. We've updated this article to highlight even more o𝕴f the games that show off just how diverse and deep some game worlds are.

28 🦋🤡 Dishonored

At first glance, the Dishonored games can feel simple in thei๊r world building. An assortment of islands that resemble European cultures and the great unexplored beyꦫond that. But then the Outsider is introduced, and the small ways you see ritualistic practice are woven into the world. You realise then that the world of Dishonored is temporary, transitory. A drop in the great beyond.

Whales are turned into deific figures in a world fearful of its own speedy development. Arcane powers are subjugated yet e⭕nvied after. And every cobblestone of Karnaca, each dank alley of Dunwall, all of them are loaded with history and stories, big and small, that make this setting feel so lively and changeable.

27 Death Stra𓃲ndi⛎ng

Death Stranding was by all means a controversial game, but it was also one very confident in its own vision. The game's strengths are primarily shown in the organic gameplay and asynchronous player interacti꧟on, though these same themes and deeper lore aꦗre played out across the story as well.

The strength of D🔴eath Stranding's lore comes from reality. The BT's looking like oil, the westward push where more and more golden chiral is found. The scientific tying of extinction entities to human greed. It's a game that can be viewed in many ways, and applying real-life history and science to its world helps unravel its unique mysteries.

26 The🍌 Ivalice Final Fantasy Games

Outside of direct sequels, the Final Fantasy games are mostly disconnected. A few summons and themes can reappear, but that's it. Final Fantasy 12 stands out in this regard though. Rather than sharing typical FF aspects, it reuses the world of Ivalice, first introduced in Final Fantasy Tactics. And that is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a world steeped in its own history.

The Ivalice world is comprised of FF Tactics, FF 12, and the non-FF Vagrant Story. They all take place across various swathes of history, and are seemingly disconnected at first glance. But certain figures and names reappear w🅰hen you dig deepe♛r, the shifting borders of the world start to align. It is a deeply complex and political world that rewards you diving in at the deep end.

25 🅘𒅌 Alan Wake Series

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alan Wake was a solo affair for a straight decade. Then, in 2019, Control was released. While at first Control seemed💞 to be its own thing, fans slowly started sniffing out the connections, and before long we all realized that the Federal Bureau of Control,🐻 and its Objects of Power, existed within the same universe as Alan Wake.

And just like that, what was once a creepy, Stephen King-inspired horror title expanded to include a rich world filled with mysteries, oddities, and paranormal activities. Heavily inspired by SCP fan-fiction, and David Lynch films, the world of Alan ღWake is an incredibly bizarre home for rich lore and fascinating storytelling. With Alan Wake 2, the world has once again grown. Needless to say,𒈔 we look forward to seeing where the story of this franchise goes next!

24 Legacy Oཧf Kain Franchise

In the first game in the Legacy of Kain series, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen, we followed the titular Kain as he was turned into a vampire, and then gradually accumulated power. While Blood Omen features two endings—including one where Kain acts as a redemptor of the world—it would be the "bad ending" which would serve to sꦓet the scene for 𝐆the game's sequels.

From here, we get multiple games that feature elder gods with dubious intentions, a post-apocalyptic world of vampires, and an ever-twisting timeline. The Soul Reaver games allow us to see Kain from the perspective of Raziel - one of Kain's subordinates whom Kain betrayed. The games go in a number of unpredictable directions. The world of Nosgoth is thick with lore, it is just a shame that we hav🐭en't been given a new game in the franchise in well ওover a decade.

23 Mega ܫMan Series

Sure, we understand why you may think that Mega Man is an odd choice for a lore list. The first seven games barely have a story after all. However, with each new franchise, things got more and more interesting. What started off as Mega Man (or Rock in Japan) hunting down robots that have been corrupted by the sinister Dr. Wily, would transition to robots advancing, havin๊g obtained free will. As the series continues, there are civil wars, the robots are subjugated, and, with the Legends series, we see that eventually human life itself is wiped out. Replic🀅ants, which we all designed based on Mega Man X, become the new humans.

There is more to this, too. Zero, one of the heroes from the Mega Man X series, has direct ties t🌊o Dr. Wily. Who, himself, may or may not still be influencing events. There is even some indication that his consciousness was present in one of the Mavericks. Though none of this is confirmed. Oh, and the original Mega Man? His fate is a mystery. These elements have made the Mega Man series one that, over time, has grown quite a bit of interesting lore.

22 ෴ Castlevania 𝐆

Woah! Hold your horses. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Castlevania? The game where you spend all your time walking to the right and whipping things? Yes! That Castlevania. While the series started of🧜f simple enough, being about a family of vampire hunters who kill Dracula once every hundred years, as the franchise grew, so did the surrounding lore. The roster of heroes 💜began to grow, including Dracula's own kin. We learned about the Belmont's lineage.

We witnessed the (tragic) origin of the Belmont's siﷺgnature whip. And we even saw heroes live long enough to become the villain, and villains long enough to become the hero. How many franchises feature a thirty-game-long redemption arc? Castlevanꦓia even managed to work Bram Stoker's lore into the mix. That's right, the literary masterpiece is, technically, part of Castlevania's lore. C𒈔astlevania is (kinda) part of the literary canon, people!

21 Persona

My how far the Persona series has come. It used to be a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Shin Megami Tensei spin-off. Now, it feels more like the centerpiece of Atlus' RPG franchise. One of the primary distinctions between the two franchises is how interconnected each Persona game is. For starters, all the Persona games are set within the same world. The (underappreciated) first three games in the series had playable characters cross over. But other elements, such as the Velvet Room and Igor, (and to a lesser extent, Philemon) run throughout nearly every game. We have also seen entire Persona✱ casts interact with each other in a number of side games.

So, each story has built on the lore. The end result is a fascinating version of the world that intersects with a shadowy version of itself. One where our emotions, and our identities, manifest themselves as creatures and entities. The characters in the Persona games must confront these elements of their being. Famously, Persona is heavily rooted in Jungian psychology. This has all led to a fascinating alternate version of our world that has maintained 168♍澳洲幸运5开奖网:continuity across all🗹 six mainline games (yes, SIX) as well as🐷 the va🍷rious off-shoot titles.

ꦏThe most recent title to release in the Persona franchise is Persona 5 Tactica, which adds a whole new ඣwrinkle to the already pretty elaborate Persona lore.

20 Baldur's Gate

Is this cheating? Is it cheating to add a game franchise set in a world that has had literally hundreds of books written in it? Yeah, probably. But here's the thing; even if you've never read a Forgotten Realms book, based solely on the games alone, the lore in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate is fascinating. The world💮 of Toril is lively and filled with memorable characters. There is a palpable sense of history he🌳re.

However, Toril, as seen in Baldur's Gate, is also a treacherous world where damn near every other character has machinations of some sort. But political intrigue is far from being the player's only obstacle! Dark, twisted gods are always involved in some way, shape, or form. The plots of the first two Baldur's 𒁏Gate games entwine elegantly. While Baldur's Gate 3 is set over a hundไred years after the second game, there are a number of returning characters who play a pivotal role in the most recent entry.

19 🅘 Kingdom Hearts 𓆏

Is the lore labyrinthine in the world of168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Kingdom Hearts? Absolutely. Not even the most ardent Kingdom Hearts apologist is going to argue that168澳洲幸运5开奖网: the series isn't a bit convoluted. But even if it can be a to🌳uch messy, there is a reason why this series has such an incredibly devoted fanbase. There are twists, turns, and a whole host of characters with complicated motivations.

Kingdom Hearts isn't bashful about diving into the thick of i🦩t headfirst. Every entry makes the series slightly more unwieldy. But if you are a lore hound who loves jumping into the weeds with some truly multifaceted world-building, then there are few series that can offer you a more ent♕hralling world than Kingdom Hearts.