Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Decline What is the most post-apocalyptic setting in any video game?

  • Thread starter Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal
  • Start date

Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal

Guest
I haven't played a lot of post-apoc games, but out of those that I have, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver comes to mind. Its setting would be more accurately described as post-post-post-apocalyptic, the end result of a series of very slow apocalyptic events, by the ends of which pretty much the whole world is in ruins.

The eco-system of Nosgoth is virtually non-existent - there is no vegetation, no animals, no wildlife at all.

Even the lifeless land is constantly wrecked by earthquakes and cataclysms.

Humanity is almost extinct, save for some survivors in one remote fortress and occasional stragglers.

The empire of vampyres is in total ruin, all of their cities, fortresses and holds are decrepit ruins of misshapen metal or stone.

The vampires themselves have degenerated into mindless monstrosities, scavenging the ruins of the world for any kind of sustenance.

The vampire lords have also devolved into horrible monsters - one is a pile of sown-together corpses, another is an insectiod abomination fused to the chamber he occupies, the third is a fishlike creature, the fourth - a monstrous giant impaled upon his throne.

The ruler of the empire - Kain, is nowhere to be seen, and doesn't seem to give a shit about anything.

The whole place exudes a strong feeling of loneliness, abandonment and ennui. The only sentient beings in the whole game are the protagonist Raziel, his "father" and arch-nemesis Kain, his four "brothers" he kills as the game progresses (the fifth one is missing), and the enigmatic Lovecraftian tentacle monster who serves as his "mentor". And the ghost of Ariel, still haunting the pillars after thousands of years. The fact that all this happened after thousands of years of gradual decline makes it feel almost... tragic. I'm sure a lot of this can be attributed to the game being early 3D open-world, and therefore lacking resources for stuff like trees/NPCs/etc, but the storytelling, ambience, soundtrack and atmosphere make the best of these circumstances.


Compared to that, settings like Failout and Wasteoftime are down-right brimming with life and activity. Mad Max also comes to mind, which, despite being a dry wasteland, is filled with roaming gangs of crazy people on cars. Then there's Dark Souls, whose setting strongly resembles that of Soul Reaver, except with plenty of NPCs to chat with. Also, it gets renewed at the end of the game, and then falls back into ruin by the time the next game starts.

What about you? Ever played anything even more post-apocalyptic than SR1? Perhaps, there is a game set in the world that is completely destroyed, and you're just floating in blackness the whole game?

Discuss!
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,756
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream: The computer network called AM has wiped out humanity, except for 5 survivors that it has rendered immortal in order to torment them for all of eternity.
Unlike the original short story, there are human survivors kept in stasis on a lunar base from which they can repopulate Earth.

Demon's Souls
: The northern land of Boletaria has been overrun by demons generated by a Cthulhu-esque monstrosity. The five realms you encounter are almost devoid of true life, instead being occupied by undead abominations, some of which are grotesque, twisted parodies of what they were in life.

Nier: Automata
: Three-thousand years in the future, androids based in orbital stations are fighting a perpetual war against robots occupying Earth, with humanity relegated to a small number of survivors on the Moon.
There are no surviving humans; this is a myth created by the android leadership.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Final Fantasy 8.

It's a world that get pretty regularly invaded by monster from the Moon, so it's pretty much apocalypse now~ The whole world, which is pretty big, only has three or four kingdoms/empire/dukedoms left. Everywhere else it's on the level of city states, or isolated towns.

Humans are a super majority, but sentient nonhuman (with once-existed civilization) have a notable presence too.
 

Citizen

Guest
8UoVKk.png

8XVV1i.png


Post-apocalyptic, post-singularity cyberpunk grimdark setting. It's about survival in a world torn apart by a conflict between once-powerful factions.

and you're just floating in blackness the whole game?

Yes, if you fall from the edge of the map this is exactly what happens here.
 

potatojohn

Arcane
Joined
Jan 2, 2012
Messages
2,646
Soma.

Everything is dead. The remaining humans are simulations in orbit on a satellite without any capacity to do anything, just waiting for the inevitable component failure that destroys them.
 

Jokzore

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
623
In recent history Nier:Automata did a good job. The only thing thats extinct there are humans though, plants and animals seem to be doing just fine.

The game that comes closest to, --omg theres literally nothing left-- scenario is probably Frostpunks.
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
7,938
I haven't played a lot of post-apoc games, but out of those that I have, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver comes to mind. Its setting would be more accurately described as post-post-post-apocalyptic, the end result of a series of very slow apocalyptic events, by the ends of which pretty much the whole world is in ruins.

Soul Reaver is more Dying Earth than Post-Apoc.

Blood Omen 2 could be consider Post-Apoc since the Hylden overrun the world and Vampires are fighting a losing guerilla war until Kain wakes up.
 

hexer

Guest
Nier: Automata: Three-thousand years in the future, androids based in orbital stations are fighting a perpetual war against robots occupying Earth, with humanity relegated to a small number of survivors on the Moon.

I remember standing on the top of a building, looking at the desolate cityline knowing *everybody's* gone.
That along with it's phenomenal soundtrack truly hit that PA feel of being all alone.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,931
Obvious winner is Lisa, I mean how more dystopian can you get than wearing a dress and giving other men massages in exchange for nudie mags?
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,979
Thea is a pretty good candidate. The number of remaining humans in the world is perhaps less than a hundred, all manner of terrible monsters roam the lands, the gods are dead and the world tree has died. The goal of the game is to reverse the apocalypse, but you can also just go along with it and let the monster races dominate the world and let the humans die out. Oh, and there are massive giants that are like lesser gods that controlled the weather and such that have also gone insane and are just wrecking shit. So... good luck with all that.

One Way Heroics is perhaps too gamey and weebish to get the atmosphere across properly, but the plot is that a wall of darkness is mowing down the world (which is a narrow ring, I think?) constantly destroying basically everything in it's path over and over again, with some heroes occasionally stopping it temporarily so humanity isn't completely wiped out. Essentially a world that has been in a state of constant apocalypse forever.

Breath of Fire 5 is probably my favourite though- humanity had a war so fucking epic they had to abandon the surface entirely and live in a sprawling underground colony for as long as anyone can remember. The lower levels are a literal garbage dump with feral mutants and dangerously poor air quality where the lower castes live, while the closer to the surface you get the more posh (and basically abandoned, because almost nobody lives there) things get. The surface itself is basically a myth everybody is forbidden from reaching, and when you finally reach it it's revealed to have long since totally recovered and is basically a pristine world with blue skies and green as far as the eye can see. The thing that really sells it is the setting inside the colony- everything is just so fucking bleak and resigned, and even as you move upwards into the nicer areas everyone is completely fatalistic and terrified of the prospect of opening the ceiling and potentially finishing everyone off with whatever is waiting on the other side.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
The world of Fallout 3. After you have seen Megaton you know there will never be any hope for mankind again. Only endless retardation into Oblivion...
 

RegionalHobo

Scholar
Joined
Oct 2, 2018
Messages
294
Metro series if it s modern apocalypse.

Dark sun if there s no such limitation

i have no mouth and i must scream if we are meming.

then there are '' mythical '' apocalypse like the cthulhu series. there s a interesting upcoming game on this genre with a quite popular thread on this forum that i've forgot the name. really liked the demo.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,170
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Thea is a pretty good candidate. The number of remaining humans in the world is perhaps less than a hundred, all manner of terrible monsters roam the lands, the gods are dead and the world tree has died. The goal of the game is to reverse the apocalypse, but you can also just go along with it and let the monster races dominate the world and let the humans die out. Oh, and there are massive giants that are like lesser gods that controlled the weather and such that have also gone insane and are just wrecking shit. So... good luck with all that.

One Way Heroics is perhaps too gamey and weebish to get the atmosphere across properly, but the plot is that a wall of darkness is mowing down the world (which is a narrow ring, I think?) constantly destroying basically everything in it's path over and over again, with some heroes occasionally stopping it temporarily so humanity isn't completely wiped out. Essentially a world that has been in a state of constant apocalypse forever.

Breath of Fire 5 is probably my favourite though- humanity had a war so fucking epic they had to abandon the surface entirely and live in a sprawling underground colony for as long as anyone can remember. The lower levels are a literal garbage dump with feral mutants and dangerously poor air quality where the lower castes live, while the closer to the surface you get the more posh (and basically abandoned, because almost nobody lives there) things get. The surface itself is basically a myth everybody is forbidden from reaching, and when you finally reach it it's revealed to have long since totally recovered and is basically a pristine world with blue skies and green as far as the eye can see. The thing that really sells it is the setting inside the colony- everything is just so fucking bleak and resigned, and even as you move upwards into the nicer areas everyone is completely fatalistic and terrified of the prospect of opening the ceiling and potentially finishing everyone off with whatever is waiting on the other side.
interesting. I have fond memory of breath of fire 4, but thats it.

Is it ps2 only? Viable with pcsx2?
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
What does it means for a setting to be the most "post-apocalyptic"? Do we mean "post-utter-annihilation"? Or do we mean "most embodying the characteristics of the PA genre"?

My own view is the genre is traceable to the flood story, and that a core component of the genre is the idea that the destruction has a cleansing/purifying aspect, such that those who survivor are morally superior to those who did not -- the world is better off for the flood or fire or what have you. IMO, Fallout has a significant element of this, particularly FO2, where the world seems to be rapidly recovering toward a better state than pre-apocalypse.

I'd say in Primordia there was no apocalypse (no revelation leading to new awareness or a holier state). There is a cataclysm, and its robotic survivors are no more enlightened than the dead humans were. Same is true of Nosgoth.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,403
Location
Djibouti
I'm pretty sure the apocalypse in Nosgoth is actually still waiting to happen - I think it's heavily implied if not even stated outright that the world is held together by a shoestring in the form of the corrupted Pillars of Nosgoth. But once those finally collapse on themselves for good, it's game over man.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom