One of the most distinctive hallmarks of culture is architecture. The use of the things surrounding us to build, from homes and shrines to farms and leisure, architecture finds its way into every building, a quick snapshot of the land around you and the essence of the area it inhabits. It's as much a character as anything else.
Games then fall into an interesting area, especially fictitious ones. It can be hard♍ to pull an architectural style fully from scratch, and harder still for it to logically make sense. All real architecture was drawn from somewhere, after all. But many games still achieve it, either by blending the real with the unreal or truly managing to pull in 𝔍a style that only loosely resembles anything that exists.
8 ๊ The Last Guardian
From the creators of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the works of Fumito Ueda and his team have always been grand in scale, insurmountable things laid before you that all work as analogies to the human min🥀d and emotion. The fear of something unfathomable in scale, wrapped in something understandable.
In 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last Guardian, Trico itself is a great example of this. A giant chimeric beast, they strike fear in you. But then, you recognize the pieces. Some dog, bird, lizard. The architecture of the world does the same. Silent and eerie, the stones bleached white. Towers soar arou🔥nd you, seemingly forever. And yet you continue to climb, and suddenly those grand towers seem so familiar.
7 Destiny
The story of Destiny started in a somewhat standard way. Humans make it to space, land on Mars, and discover some grand power. In this case, the Traveler. And though early locales like Earth can feel reminiscent of many post-apocalyptic settings, you then meet the Vex, and the ways they've seeped into the natural with their harsh technologies. Pure form, no fashion.
But then we go further. Enter the Dreaming City, a locale that feels almost unreal. Monumental structures with beautiful curves that end in hard peaks, twists that shouldn't exist, whites and purples and blues all blended together. Or Unknown Space, a faded blue across plain sand filled with inexplicable shapes. So much variety, and all of it tells its own story.
6 Morrowind
One of the greatest benefits of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Elder Scrolls series is its incredibly detailed lore. With such an extensive history, it is easy for them to build a culture in any setting they choose. They put this to great effect in all their games, but in the historically xenophobic 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Morrowind, it shows the greatest.
Morrowind is distin𒅌ct for its deep, dirty colors, blanketed in ash from the nearby volcano. Many of its buildings are oblong, shaped like the many insects dotting the area. Some even are the hollowed-out shells converted. But then come major cities like Vivec, with much taller, rounded, and uniform shapes. Some areas have Imperial settlements, where these styles all intersect, bringing forward a genuine sense of cultur🧸al blending.
5 Halo
Halo is an interesting one for how it uses architecture, and much of its foundations were carried forward to Destiny in theme. Rather 🌃than having sꦕome grand cultural aspect, it focuses on functionality. But rather than the slow creep of Vex tech and how it consumes, Forerunner architecture is quite the opposite.
The Halo rings are of course something distinct by themselves, massive installations that house such life, and the obvious symbolism of them. But Forerunner structures themselves, the way they tower into the sky with their sleek yet sharp angles is so alluring. They seem almost like they were just dropped there and didn't want to upset nature at all. There's a funny juxtaposition to it, but that's likely the point.
4 ꧃ꦑ Dark Souls
FromSoftware has been in the business of game-making for quite a bit longer than many may know, having started way back on the PS1. But with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dark Souls, they suddenly became known the world over for the new experience they brought to the world. Dark Souls' designers are very open about their inspirations, but there's more than just looks here.
A key aspect of Dark Souls is how interconnected everything is. True, it can look like a clash of medieval and gothic styles for much of it, but it's the way the areas weave. Seeing the grand scale of Anor Londo towering over the smaller cities below, or the sunken temples of Lost Izalith consumed by chaos. There's design here, yes. But the way they link 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:speaks just as much for the world's story.
3 𝐆 Dishonored 𝐆
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dishonored is another that doesn't inherently have a purely unique design, pulling heavily from late Victorian England with a splash of the industrial revolution for Dunwall, but it's more the way it has blended technology, and the meticulous design of the city's layout. You see the tall apartments and wide streets of the rich, and the alleys and plague-infested corridors of the poor.
A major aspect though is how the technology runs through it all. Tall brick buildings now have wires running through them all, thrown about in plain sight, clunky metal contraptions laid about wherever it's effective. It's starkly similar to Half-Life, and how Combine technology creeps outward. No surprise, considering the games share the same designer.
2 𒆙 Final Fantasy 12
The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy series has one great benefit to it, which is that each game gets to be something almost entirely new from what came before, and Final Fantasy 12 was that in more ways than one. A free camera, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a very theatrical methꦜod ꦍof storytelling, and a dramatic shift to how combat 🌠functioned, but one of the most distinc෴t is its visual design.
Its developers are very open on its architectural influences. Unlike many medieval adjacent settings, 12 actually takes very little from Central Europe. Instead, it takes much from Arabian and Turkish design and the areas of the Mediterranean where all those cultures intersect. It's clear from the waterways and arches, the pillars of tombs, and the general use of color. Its use of architecture parallels the cultures that created it, Ivalice being a world of many cultures.
1 Bioshock
When one thinks of Victorian and gothic architecture, it's common to jump to games like Bloodborne or Dishonored. They even feature a period of time in which it makes sense. But some games, like Bioshock, play with that idea. The architecture of Bioshock's Rapture is intentional, a hearkening call to the ideas of gothic architecture and what it represents, mixed with grand visions of the Ameriꦐcan Met🔯ropolis.
Rapture is a utopian ideal. An urban center buried beneath the sea for a select few. It holds the surrounding darkness, 🌌that fear of the deep sea so commonly associated with gothic designs while claiming it is the height of architecture. It has billboards and neon signs reminding you of the early days of American urban growth. Rapture is the dream city you envisioned the real world to be. An Impossible City.