just came across this great article about the various ways in which lordran is interconnected and displayed via environments and viewpoints in dark souls, and it really got me thinking about how this is one of my favorite aspects of playing videogames. ocarina of time is the first 3D game I can think of that does this, but there are a lot of classic sidescrollers that do this – he notes the original castlevania as a very early example. I’m not in a position to gather screenshots right now, but I seem to remember one of the mystical ninja games doing this, as well as maybe sparkster/rocket knight adventures? post your favorite examples if you got em!
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cool no category nerd.
this is just another threadbare reason for me to tell people that Dark Souls is the actual Castlevania 64
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meant to post this in galaxy oddity. what the hell
Metroid Prime does this within the same area and it goes a long way to making you forget that you’re never “outdoors.” Between areas it’s wildly illogical.
Demon’s Souls did this with Boletaria Castle. You saw the False King’s tower in the distance from the very first archstone.
Half-Life 2 is This Thread: The Game.
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oh man, yeah. half life 2 does have some pretty great moments like this. but they tend to be far more localized – like little snippets of levels that wrap around themselves before shunting you to the next set piece. the citadel would be the biggest exception? episode 2 does it more.
I wish I had time to google up some screenshots. maybe this weekend…
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I moved it to the axe and you or someone else must have moved it to where you wanted it
You’re the only one to have managed to accidentally make a thread not in a subforum so far, good work
I don’t know how I did it! it said “galaxy oddity” when I was posting it!
I moved it back here gosh darn it!
The first game that really impressed me with this type of thing was ICO. When you see a distant structure, it’s something you can eventually reach.
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yeah! yeah! man, ico does it so well. something that was (kinda) missing from sotc.
Beat em ups always did weird things with this. Final Fight gave you that weird Metro City map, and your journey was underscored by the subtle Warriors style night to day transition.
The SoR games had some weird interconnectedness too. My favorite is the baseball diamond where home plate hides a secret elevator into a generic high tech base.
The introduction to Faxanadu comes to mind, though the branches you see probably don’t correspond to the game’s map.
The map screen approach used to be fairly common, with examples including Ironsword and Ghouls 'n Ghosts.
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I always liked the way Riven looped and linked the different islands, and how you could see the maglev tracks that connected them across the water. Within areas this was really cool as well (the island village comes to mind). It’s a slideshow game, so the sense of connectivity isn’t quite as strong, but it’s still there.
As a kid i liked poring over this old walkthrough, specifically the MS Paint map of the various nodes. You used to be able to click on the nodes and see a screencap of the place in question, though all the image links are busted now.
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I feel like this article about Wolfenstein 3d I read recently is relevant to this thread. It’s pretty matter of fact, even after it finishes explaining what a videogame Easter egg is(page 9)
“Visual integration” with the most efficient route in black
6-3 with the 10% most integrated lines (integration core) in red and the 10% most segregated (segregation core) in blue
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