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Areas in games that were hyped up in-game and lived up to expectations?

BillFromAccounting

Banned
Jun 12, 2018
633
Think Mass Effect 2. The whole game you were pretty much aware that you and your team would be going through some major shit at the end of the game, as you attempted to discover the collector's home base of operations. When I finally reached it, I was truly amazed at the setting and combat of the area, and I feel like the suicide mission really lived up to the hype that had been built for it in-game.

Another good example would be the dark portal from World of Warcraft. You KNEW something was behind the portal(even moreso if you were familiar with warcraft lore beforehand), and you also knew that you would eventually go through it. Characters in the game would tell you how the portal lead to a mysterious world completely different from our own. When The Burning Crusade comes out, you finally enter the portal and...
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I know this looks outdated nowadays, but believe me when I say, entering the portal and discovering the Outlands for the first time was MAGICAL. It truly felt like the alien environment that had been hyped up the entire time.

So what about you guys? What are great examples of when games hint at a place that you'll be visiting in future, and the place completely lives up to the hype and expectations that the lore had set?
 
TheBiInBilingual

TheBiInBilingual

THE STORE ENSURED ME THERE WOULDN'T BE FILM
Member
Feb 22, 2018
2,796
Hyrule Castle in Breath of the Wild. So much lore. An amazing soundtrack as background music. Don't even count the fight with Ganon but everything else surrounding it and within it is amazing to me. I looked at every nook and cranny before even thinking about Ganon.
 
spad3

spad3

Member
Oct 30, 2017
7,122
California
There's a few like that for me.

The Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey was as amazing as I expected it to be.

Assassin's Creed II + Brotherhood did this entire buildup of setting up Monteriggioni as Home. In AC2 it's Ezio's uncle's home, but it eventually becomes the home for the remaining Auditores. The game does a fantastic job in having the player feel like they're home whenever you end up back at the Villa. However, since it's in the past, it's kind of heartbreaking when Desmond is pulled out of the Animus....but then AC Brotherhood comes around and blows your mind. In Brotherhood, you get to roam around the Villa in the present. I was so hyped when you start up AC Brotherhood and you see the crew pull up to Monteriggioni and then you get to control Desmond instead of Ezio in Ezio's home, CENTURIES later. fucking LOVED it.

The Batman Arkham series had this slow burn build up too, and it was fucking worth it. Seeing plans for Arkham City in Arkham Asylum, and then seeing Gotham City in the distance in Arkham City, and then finally roaming around Gotham in Arkham Knight was just the most satisfying hype-to-delivery I've felt in gaming.
 
Dlanor A. Knox

Dlanor A. Knox

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Member
Apr 6, 2018
4,159
Altissia in FFXV

Edit: I'm tired and I read "didn't leave up to expectations" for some reason.

Hmm, then I'd go with Hyrule castle from BOTW aswell, absolutely loved it, the music, the atmosphere, all the little secrets.

The entirety of Hyrule in general was incredible tbh, couldn't wait to explore Hyrule before the game came out and I ended up getting what is now my favorite open world of all time, blew my expectations out of the water.
 
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Taruranto

Taruranto

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,049
latest


Well, this was more hyped by the players than the story, I believe. I can't remember how much the story mentions "The Celestial Capital" and when they start to do it.
 
P-Tux7

P-Tux7

Member
Mar 11, 2019
1,344
Well, Kefka getting the power of magic was hyped up as a bad thing and he turned the map into the World of Ruin... does that count? Really hit that atmosphere.
 
SolVanderlyn

SolVanderlyn

I love pineapple on pizza!
Member
Oct 28, 2017
13,507
Earth, 21st Century
BillFromAccounting said:
Backstory on this? I'm out of the loop
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Harmonia is the most powerful and influential nation in the backstory of Suikoden, and mentioned several times over the course of the main five games, with the latest game in the timeline (Suikoden III) featuring it most prominently. It was meant to be the location for the finale of the series, which is now not only defunct, but also lies with Konami.

You got to briefly visit it in a spinoff game, but that was it. It had almost a decade of hype by the time Suikoden V released, and that was the last game we ever got in the (main) series.

My answer for this thread is also Hellfire Peninsula/Outland in general, from The Burning Crusade. The portal lie dormant for all of Vanilla, but if you were a fan of the series, you already knew where it went from the story told in Warcraft III. Come Burning Crusade, and the new starting areas for the new races, Draenei and Blood Elves, had much tighter quest design, extremely creative world design by comparison to the Vanilla zones, and a more tightly interwoven story. The new "max level" zones of Outland promised to be similar, based on the fact that they came with the same expansion.

You got through the first 20 levels in the new areas, and it left you wanting more. But then you were shoveled back into Vanilla. You needed to work your way up to those better zones. Enter a grueling leveling process from 20-60, which back then took quite a bit of time.

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Not only did those Outland zones completely deliver on their promise, they were better than I could have ever imagined. A forest of green crystals and lightshafts, a marsh of giant bioluminescent mushrooms, a mountain range of spikes and blade-like protrusions with the heads of dragons impaled on their edges, a charred and broken land with black soil and falling comets and a dark temple, far to its edge. MAN, it was awesome. Even better was the sanctuary city of Shattrath, a major city hub for BOTH factions - a new and novel idea at the time, and the first true sanctuary in the game, proving the bigger threat that was on the horizon.
 
Acorn

Acorn

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,972
Scotland
The citadel. You are limited to a smallish area but they did very well to make it feel much larger, talking to the a.i and encountering weird aliens was breathtaking at the time to me.

I know a bunch of people aren't fans of it but it just worked really well for me.
 
Terbinator

Terbinator

Member
Oct 29, 2017
10,248
I'm not sure if it counts, but the limited action on Earth in Halo 2 was a bummer after the pre-release hype and fake E3 trailers.
 
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