Topic: Game Themes, Settings, and Backdrops - the When’s, the Where’s, and the Who’s

A lot goes into what constitutes a game’s setting and general sense of where and when it takes place and who is involved.

Here I’d like us to discuss the times, locations, and environments in which game stories take place, as well as their themes, worlds, tone, and characters that give them their base identity from a narrative perspective.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the settings of video games. So much of a game’s identity is the themes, time, location, environment in which it takes place. Just like in movies where we seem to get fads with movie genres and settings, I see it happens in video game development also.

This came up recently in discussion after the recent shows from Sony and Xbox where there was discussion about many games feeling very redundant on the surface with similar art style and setting.

Over the last couple console generations we’ve had a deluge of certain narrative backdrops and themes that I see recurring.
On the flip-side, some settings have only rarely been done, or are surprisingly underutilized.

I was just pondering this and have my own list.

Settings and themes that have been done extensively (maybe overused in some people’s opinion) recently:
-Dark Fantasy/High Fantasy
-Post apocalyptic
-Zombies
-Norse myth
-Greek myth
-Feudal Japan/East Asia
-WWII
-Star Wars
-Modern Urban
-Superhero (Marvel, DC, and their clones)

Settings that probably haven’t been explored enough:
-King Arthur/Knights of the Round mythos/Crusades
-Steampunk/Cyberpunk
-Western/Cowboy
-Native American and associated lore
-Pacific Islands and associated mythology
-Hard Core Sci-Fi
-Cult/Religious
-Dinosaurs
-French Revolution
-Africa and associated mythos
-American Civil War
-The Great Depression
-Ancient Egyptian
-Arctic/Antartic
-Himalayan
-Microbiological
-Time Travel

Feel free to discuss, dispute, agree or disagree, and come up with ideas maybe I didn’t think of. What are the places and times that you want more of? Are you tired of certain settings yet? What do you think will be the next fad?

I’d follow this topic. Settings are pretty neat. I tend to somewhat gravitate towards buzzing city settings due to how quaint and quiet life can be in Kuwait at times especially in Jahra which is the more rural governorate.

I adore surrealist fantasies as well. Or unorthodox ones.

My third mention for themes I like would be wars and political dramas. Those really get my brain juices going. I love philosophy and life lessons stuff.

I’m gonna sound biased but I want more arab settings explored in general. Nothing specific in mind, but this is a great opportunity to mention that.

@Th3solution I know people love to sh** on Ubisoft. But they are one of the only publishers that already have or would happily explore all of those different settings you listed with their dev teams 😆 And others do definitely need more variation in the type of themes they are willing to explore.

Personally I want to see LA/Las Vegas in a Mafia game spanning 30's-50's for pure selfish reasons. I mean there is so much intrigue and depth to explore from Hollywoodland to the Flamingo and the Strip, to Celebrity Gangsters, to Jewish gangsters trying to sell explosives to Mussoloni and the Nazis.

And i'd like some damn grounded, period, European spy thrillers.

But apart from that, anything devs are passionate about, rather than trend hunting. So Warhorse making games about Czech history, for example, is how people should make games. CDPR licensing things they love to make games, Larian making games they truly love. Stuff like that shows in the final products. Naughty Dog makes things they want to, usually, so it will be exciting to see what they want to make next.

I would probably like to see ND or someone reliable tackle a proper period WW1 or WW2 setting for a gritty, emotional thriller, as you don't tend to get war settings unless it's a multiplayer, sometimes with a slight campaign bolted on and nothing that really explores the grey areas, the genuine pain and suffering or the overall use of people's lives by their governments.

@Ravix Some really good ideas there. I hadn’t thought about Las Vegas as a great backdrop, even in modern day because it’s a very unique city.

The war setting in a game that isn’t a shooter is also great idea. There is that one game called This War of Mine which is more of a survival game in a war torn environment. I didn’t play it but definitely there’s lots of fertile ground to take the thriller angles or spy and civilian plight type of approach. Speaking of Ubisoft, another one is that WWI puzzle game Valiant Hearts, which I did play. It was a really good usage of the WWI setting which felt fresh.

@Yousef- Absolutely! Good shout-out for more Arab settings. I definitely agree. Both modern and historical.

One of the really most unique settings which is surrealist, unorthodox, war adjacent, with loads of political drama and philosophy is Disco Elysium. It’s one of the most distinctive and original settings in gaming that I’ve ever experienced. It’s a fictional Eastern European post-war backdrop mystery rpg. Maybe you’ve played it but it definitely fits your bill as something novel and frankly weird. 😄

The elden ring/dark souls setting could use a long break

@Malaise Those are some amazing ideas! I hadn’t considered the idea about transportation being a character feature and even a potential setting, like the train or perhaps a boat, like a large cruise ship or a Battleship. For a while so many games had horses for the transport, I was jumping from D-horse to Roach to Agro to Kage to whatever I named Arthur Morgan’s horse… Rusty or something lame like that. 😅 But yeah, I need to move Days Gone up the backlog list, as I also do like the Pacific Northwest. The zombie though… eh, I’m just now getting back where I can get interested in them again.

I’ve also always loved alternate history. Different timelines or fictional settings with real historical characters. That game The Council was so exciting to me to imagine a council of powerful people meeting Illuminati-style secretly, composed of Manuel Godoy, George Washington, Napolean Bonaparte… it was a great idea for a setting. Too bad the game was rubbish and a complete missed opportunity.

@Malaise interesting point about GTA VI, as I also nearly forgot to mention GTA IV having one of my favorite settings and probably my favorite fish out of water setup. Niko felt like the most relatable protagonist in my eyes and it was a great contributor into making GTA IV one of my favorite fictional products of all time.

@Th3solution thank you man. The game does seem up my alley and if I do wind up picking it up somewhere around the end of July I’ll be sure to come back here and leave my thoughts. It helps that it’s super cheap too. Probably one of the cheapest physical games in Kuwait.

EDIT:

• Point 1: AC and Arabs

to add to both of your comments about both Assassin’s Creed and Arab reps in general, AC does do a good job in my eyes. In both games where the setting is the star. Now I have unfortunately never been a fan of the gameplay which is my only gripe (I don’t mind the repetition since I like stuff like dynasty warriors, more on that later. it’s just too non-stimulating if that makes sense) but the reps in general are extremely well done.

The random npcs in AC1 speak accurate Arabic which is extremely impressive for a 2007 game, shows their dedication from the start. Baghdad also feels like a well realized setting in Mirage. Also, AC1’s protagonist has an excellent name. “Al-Ta’ir ibin La Ahad” (the flyer, son of no one) is an extremely raw and epic name. All of this is rarely discussed in AC so I wanted to point it out and show my respect as someone who can reliably verify all this stuff. You can feel free to @ me about any Arab stuff in games. Or in general really.

• Point 2: Other Games

Shaheen from Tekken gets a shoutout from me. He’s properly dressed and looks pretty accurate.

Rashid from Street Fighter also gets a shout. Cool guy overall. Zero negatives. His Nationality might be a mystery although he’s speculated to be Saudi like shaheen, the theory I’m more likely to believe is that he’s Emirati (although if he’s Kuwaiti that’d be super based. No bias here at all)

It’s a bit tricky to think of many others off the top of my head. Might add them later in a separate comment.

• Point 3: other cultures I think are under represented

My shoutout will go to Ancient China (that’s where the dynasty warriors mention was leading up to). Not necessarily real history, but fictitious history as well. Ever heard of Da Ji? She’s a total certified B*atch, and an incredibly fascinating one at that. And she did not even exist.

To more specifically narrow down my picks for reps, it’d be Chinese mythos (besides Sun Wukong, who’s a little over-represented in my humble opinion) and Three Kingdoms period as well as the Jin Dynasty (the romance of the three kingdoms novel as well).

Wo Long dynasty was neat, but I’m not a huge fan of team ninja stuff so I tend to default to dark souls or dynasty warriors for the two niches the game covers (being souls like and ancient China).

Three kingdoms period is so fascinating. Did you know Guan Yu is worshipped and has a giant statue in China? Look it up! It’s fascinating! Three Kingdoms is so dope, as well the novel and mythos obviously. Ever heard of Taigong Wong? He’s neat!

EDIT 2:

• Point 4: Misc. Stuff

Here’s the statue in all its glory in case you never seen it. Resides Jingzhou (although there’s current plans to move its location due to complaints from the locals). Allegedly the Largest bronze statue in the world, costed a whopping 23 million dollars. Craaaaazy.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

@Th3solution can't remember if this was the exact thread where you were getting in to dream games or not, but it is close enough as it encompasses setting too.

I just had a thought of what I'd love to see, though. And that is a game based around a real human drama in a similar setting and environment with a similar feel to Training Day with all the fan pleasing elements that entails tacked on.

Training Day is a film that is probably the most like GTA San Andreas that there's ever been anyway, and I imagine takes some influence from that game. But it then really stands out on its own for its visceral tone, deep, almost primal human emotion hidden beneath a crumbling facade of a street toughened, ice cool man surrounded by drugs and gang crime on the streets of Los Angeles.

Visually, tonaly and for character drama it really stands out as almost a style of its own. And I'd love to see a studio tackle something similar in a game.

@Ravix Training Day is badass. I’d also add Boyz in the Hood to that.

Though I’m a little confused what you mean by “takes influence from that game” when the film came out in 2001 and GTA San Andreas came out in 2004. Don’t you mean the other way around or am I misreading?

@Yousef- human error, yeah, initially I think I just assumed San Andreas was more ancient than it actually is 😅 but either way round is good 😆

I mean... the graphics in Training Day are just much more crisp than that of GTA 😂

Not many developers seem to tackle proper crime dramas with really human stories at the center of them, beyond Rockstar. Mafia 3 is kind of the closest thing I can think of from the rest, but that is very much period centered where the 60's is almost a character itself. There was also some really bad game design decisions in that game holding it back, but I still loved it for its story and pure style, and a top quality soundtrack.

Judgement, and I guess the yakuza series, has that crime focus, but those games are also silly as sh** at the same time, and very arcadey in gameplay. I wish they would make just one grown up, and more open world game, because the drama is there, just not in a fully committed way.

@Ravix all good! I have my brain a little too marinated in both mediums so I was quicker to notice.

You might mean “Judgment” without an E in the middle. I’m a little confused with why they used the American spelling when more people subconsciously spell it with the E in the middle.

If you know where to look, there’s a lot more crime drama stuff beyond Yakuza and GTA, just not “gangster drama”, per se.

Ace Attorney definitely counts as crime drama despite being more court drama.

Dead Rising in its plot uses a lot of Mystery elements, characters getting framed, governmental conspiracy theories, all the such.

@Yousef- haha, I trained myself to spell it the game way when I was playing it, and it took great effort to do so. That has since worn off..

Yeah, there's some crime, but considering how popular a genre it is in film and television, there is infinity more "war" and fantasy games in comparison. The ratios seem really off for crime drama, and I think devs are just scared of Rockstar to some extent. I mean, the Mafia series gets mocked for not being GTA despite it being it's own thing rooted in various eras of the mobs of America.

But like my initial comment, I really want something dirty and gritty and visceral like Training Day. Something where human drama takes center stage and where it has a certain style to it.

I don't have that much hope for the genre though, mainly because of the gamers themselves, because as we know, GTA 4 is the pinnacle of a fish out of water crime drama, and a true worthy successor to popular cinema like Scarface, and yet people just mindlessly play GTA 5 online forever and ever and ever and whatever.

Part of me hopes a SIE dev has impressed daddy Sony enough to let them have at the Breaking Bad ip, however. And thus develop a new story seperate to that of Walter White, but in the same vein as both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Unique to itself, but using the same style and setting and fitting the "lore" of the show.

You’re right, @Ravix . There’s too many great crime stories in movies (goodfellas, donnie brasco, taxi driver, boyz in the hood, Scarface, godfather, baby driver, drive, north by northwest, training day, the driver, blue streak, national security, lethal weapon, Beverly Hills cop… barely scratching the surface here) and it feels under-explored in games even when it is explored it’s either a little too derivative and struggles to stand by its own feet. There may never be anything that comes close to duplicating the beauty of Niko Bellic’s story.

• ”And thus develop a new story seperate to that of Walter White”

So true! My favorite parts of BB are the ones with the other characters! Mainly Jesse!
It doesn’t also strictly need to adhere to the universe, it could separate itself entirely and be a new IP but with the same spiritual feel. Somewhat similar to GTA V feeling like a spiritual successor of sorts to The Sopranos, with even the opening being almost a 1v1 to that. (I should mention that I also really like the story of GTA V in general, but don’t know where to fit that in my comment. I actually think I’ve enjoyed all GTA stories in general).

@Yousef- @Ravix I think those are some valid points about crime drama focusing on the human side. Agree that it could use better exploration in the gaming space. I haven’t seen Training Day in years, but I remember liking it.

In that vein, I had been thinking a prison setting as a backdrop could really make for a good game, if done right. I never played A Way Out as co-op isn’t my bag, but reviews were middling. And I think the setting needs a full character study type of treatment with the underground internal prison gangs, a personal human drama, the grittiness and bleak nature of prison life, etc. Games often have a prison sequence where you’re thrown in jail for 5 minutes until you inevitably break out and then it’s over and back to the real world. We never spend time inside the criminal justice system and the drama therein. At least not that I’ve ever played. I know a modern day prison is aesthetically the most boring thing imaginable, but with enough creativity it could be done.

@Th3solution I’m honestly gonna go mean-girl mode for a second and tell you a A Way Out is close to bottom of the barrel Crime Drama writing for me and it’s largely why I feel Josef Faris gets a lot of undeserved credit as a writer.

I must make it clear that ham-fested or overconfident writing is not my boat at all and find that injecting mature themes does not equate to nuanced or mature writing and that simply having the confidence to have a mature and bold direction does not automatically translate itself to having the competence to carry that direction and make something nuanced and thought provoking out of it. If anything, it’s arrogant more than anything. Mean-girl mode will now be turned off.

@Yousef- It’s not an unreasonable opinion, mean-mode or not, and one that I would tend to agree with.

In the case of A Way Out I wasn’t even aware that there was much of an attempt to set the game up in a realistic mature setting. I knew that it was a co-op game about working together with a friend to escape prison, but I have always thought of it as a very ‘video gamey’ adaptation of a prison break. To know that it dabbles in true crime drama studies is news to me.

I also don’t really follow project developer and writers closely, especially when I haven’t played their games, but a quick google of Josef Fares reminded me that he is also responsible for the It Takes Two narrative, which I heard was fairly shallow, despite the gameplay being fantastic. And he also did Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons which I felt was quite good, in respect to both gameplay and story/themes.

@Th3solution back!!! Mean-girl mode ACTIVATE
Time to kick some arse!! (Gif courtesy of Ape Escape 3)

So this will actually be really easy to write down cuz I have surprisingly very little nice to say about Josef and his borderline amateurish writing. It’s a lot more natural for me to diss someone than to praise them especially in mean-mode!! That said, there’s gonna be another part to this but not about Josef thankfully. Just something I recall while writing these rants.

First of all, to reply to your comment, yes everything you said checks out. I would also add that there’s two statues in ITT that are the two protagonists of AWO (god these acronyms are BAAAAD, there’s a reason you’re supposed to be careful with what you call your game, don’t forget that AWO rolls off the tongue real poorly, both the abbrev and the full name it’s also a weird set of syllables. That’s another thing to consider)

Despite how tired I am this is surprisingly seamless to me. The fact you had to google Josef is extremely funny to me. He’s someone who believes his own hype yet doesn’t know that he’s, Y’know, unknown (real wordsmith, I am).

Although to backtrack to my point about the statue, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with referencing your own work, but I think it’s not unfair to assume the implication that doing so means you’re proud of that work, well, especially if you have a freakin statue!! Pride in what you do is respectable but this feels like a pride you must avoid at all costs. Creators will tell you even their first big projects are something they’re extremely critical of so being so proud of yourself so early is basically shooting your progress in the foot and dooming yourself to a cycle started by complacency. Your dissatisfaction with It takes two tells me what I, frankly, already knew.

On an unrelated tanget, I alluded earlier to Josef being a descent of us, so the fact someone of our world is an arrogant guy does not fill me with heart. But I want this rant to be funny and not depressing.
MEAN MODE DEACTIVATE.

@Yousef- Gotcha.
So it sounds like there’s a couple issues, but one of the main criticisms of Josef is his ego. And I can totally understand that. There’s examples of egocentricity in the entertainment industry which have definitely got under my skin. Unfortunately a lot of creators are very, how shall we say… self-assured. Perhaps some of this stems from their need to be confident in the industry so they can pitch their ideas and get them funded. Perhaps some of it stems from people constantly blowing smoke you-know-where so as to give them a false sense of their own work.

So here’s a hard question — What about Hideo Kojima?
He frequently references himself and his prior work in his games. Arrogance and hubris? Or righteous pride and worthy self-endorsement?

Edit: By the way, love the gifs in your post there. Very clever and brought a smile to my face. 😄

@Th3solution that is a really excellent question you’re bringing up, and a quite healthy one at that.

Naturally, when a rarely discussed gets called out, the entire practice will be examined and called into question.

At the risk of being so deflating already, the answer is no. But obviously, there’s more nuance to it.

I knew I was tiptoeing stuff here when I called out Josef’s self-referentialism. But I was regardless confident my statement stood on its own and held water without necessitating comparative writing.

Comparative writing is something with both strengths snd weaknesses that are both exposed based on the effectiveness of the use. I saw no point in comparing Josef to, as my own example, Keiji Inafune, because not only were the actions and their applications different but the works referenced were different.

Without a doubt, personal assessment is required to make a judgement on where to draw the line. I’ve obviously made my own personal assessment that Josef believes his own BS. He simply has that “vibe”. His “F the Oscars” speech did not do him favors in my eyes. Just sounds like an overgrown manchild and not a well-composed individual.

Also, this may seem like an unnecessary jab, but I found his Swedish films rather lame.

To revisit your initial question however, I feel somewhat confident that Keiji Inafune might be the better choice due to the more simplistic nature of his self referencing being easier to dissect, however bringing up Kojima has merit as well, as he’s one with his own set of detractors.

Problem is I’m not one of them, so I cannot make this point from the viewpoint of a Kojima critic. Because I’m not. In fact, not only am I such a big Kojima weirdo that I frankly can’t get behind many of his detractors. Normies don’t speak my language, and that’s the bottom line.

Hope that satisfies your curiosity.

Edit: you are more than welcome, friend. I rarely find the gifs I want, so I create my own. That GTA V gif, for example, was created by me. I need to credit my own work more often. I’m humbled I’ve made you smile.