What is your favorite setting in an RPG and what is its general geography?
RPGs specifically? No idea.
Do you like your typical high fantasy woods, forests and tall mountains?
Do you prefer something more out of the ordinary, like Morrowind's ash storms, swamps and a Blight spewing volcano?
Do you like realistic geography that makes sense? A North Pole, South Pole, extremes of temperature, different climates, and so on?
Anything is fine, as long as gameplay works in unison with the environment. For example, in The Long Dark (not an RPG) surviving the environment is the entire foundation of the gameplay. In contrast, Mass Effect Andromeda's (barely an RPG) different planet environments barely have any effect on the gameplay:
- Voeld is an ice planet, but there are no disorienting snow storms, and no avalanches. There is a cold mechanic, but since you can always warm up in your car it doesn't matter much. There's said to be an ocean under the ice, but there's no risk of the ice breaking under your car. There's said to be living creatures in the ocean, but of course no way to drill a hole in the ice and explore it.
- Elaaden is hot desert planet, but no blinding sandstorms, and again the car will protect you at all times from the heat. At least there's one side quest where your car breaks down briefly. There's also a huge alien spaceship wreck, but you just get a short quest exploring its bland interior.
- Eos is another desert planet with radioactivity, and again the car will protect you. No need to carefully navigate through radiation fields like in Stalker.
- Kadara is a mountain planet full of sulphur springs, that could have required special suit upgrades and careful navigation like in Stalker's anomalies, but in practice the springs don't matter for gameplay. The mountains just act like barriers forcing you to travel even longer with the boring car.
Most of the above planets contain the same 2-3 species of dinosaurs and invisible dogs. I kept wondering how these animals could find any food on the barren ice and desert planets, let alone survive the allegedly extreme temperatures.
