10 RPGs Where the World Feels Bigger the More You Learn About It

For as long as the genre has existed, fans have been drawn to Roleplaying Games (RPGs) for their rich, detailed worlds and exciting cast of characters.

Some of the best RPGs out there strike the perfect blend between their worldbuilding and character-driven narratives, letting your companions and the many NPCs serve as vessels to teach you about the world's continents and social classes. Ideally, these also help to inform us of these characters' beliefs and aspirations, and help the world feel genuinely lived in.

Personally, I love exposition delivered like this, as it's such an effective way to get hooked into a companion's backstory, while also drawing intrigue about their background, encouraging us to ask more. It also sets the seed for an exciting payoff when we get to explore these foreshadowed areas later on.

That's why, for today, we'll be looking at some of the best RPGs whose worlds continue to open up with depth the more we learn about them.

10 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Fairy Tales, Politics, and Folklore

There's a reason why The Witcher 3 is one of the most revered RPGs of all time, and yes, it's because of Gwent. No, I'm talking, of course, about its impeccable worldbuilding and lore, which sinks its hooks into you before you even realize you're more invested than you once thought. Eventually, all you can think about is the various lands of The Continent, and its subversive ties to European folklore.

The Witcher 3 follows Geralt once more as he searches for his surrogate daughter Ciri, who is being chased by The Wild Hunt for her universe-bending abilities. This quest sees Geralt and gang travel to various lands throughout the world, stumbling into towns placed under a tragic curse and cities ravaged by war and social prejudices. It helps that there are seemingly endless requests that will drag you all over the continent, engaging with its people and learning about their very personal yet complex issues.

All of these come together to help the world feel like a world that has been lived in, and continues to progress outside your own journeys. Where the game shines is also how it handles its monsters and mythology, which feel less like disposable mobs placed to break up your travels, and more like considered parts of an entire ecosystem. Even the most simple of Drowners are placed specifically and have a reason to be wherever you encounter them, adding to the location's mystery and lore.

9 Dragon Age: Origins

BioWare At Its Best

Dragon Age is, in my humble opinion, BioWare worldbuilding at its finest. The first game hinges on the existential threat of the Darkspawn, and how the entire world of Thedas has been affected by this dreaded foe. Dwarves live deep in the mines, whose roads often lead to the darkest depths where the Darkspawn dwell. Elves have ancient, forbidden artifacts that contain the Blight, a mysterious, corrupting source that threatens to overtake the land. Humans worship a questionable religion that believes the Blight is a divine punishment for those who attempted to breach the Golden City. But, as we learn, there's so much more to this and how all the game's races are connected.

We play as a Grey Warden, beings specifically tasked to push back the Blight and defeat the Archdemon controlling it. Due to a ritual, we take a part of the Blight inside us, which gives us a special affinity to detect Darkspawn, but at the cost of a reduced lifespan. It's all just fantastic, dark worldbuilding that sets up for so much speculation about the world.

We eventually get answers to these lingering mysteries in later games, but it's impressive how much is foreshadowed right at the start of the series. Better yet, fans had speculated on these revelations years in advance, yet their confirmation still felt satisfying years later, which is just proof of great worldbuilding.

8 Mass Effect

A Sci-Fi Opera With a Millennium of History to Catch up On

There's a reason BioWare RPGs dominated the early 2000s, and it's thanks to the studio's remarkable ability to craft universes that are so easy to get invested in. Mass Effect follows Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre, who finds himself in the middle of an existential galactic threat posed to wipe out the universe.

After the former Spectre Saren attacks the human colony Eden Prime with the Reaper Sovereign, we're launched into a galaxy-spanning quest to uncover proof of the Reapers and why Saren is helping them. Along the way, we're introduced to countless Alien species, each with its own history and rivalries. For example, the Krogan, a powerful warrior race, hold a justified grudge against the Salarians, who released a sterilizing virus onto their people, nearly dooming their entire race.

As we recruit more companions and beat our heads against the bureaucratic walls of the Council, we learn more about the special circumstances each alien race has and their long histories with one another. When talking to one of the characters on the ship, the conversation will usually steer towards a larger culture, war, or ideological struggle, which makes the universe feel so much larger and interconnected than you previously realized.

7 Disco Elysium

A Deeply Traumatized City With Complex Politics

Disco Elysium is still one of the greatest modern RPGs in recent years, and that's in large part thanks to its deeply tragic characters and its even more heartbreaking setting.

You play as a detective who has seemingly lost his memory after a serious drinking binge. Apparently, you were sent out to investigate a murder in the city of Revachol, a town that has slowly been deteriorating after a failed revolution, and still retains a politically tense atmosphere.

As your investigation picks up steam, and you're able to ask your fellow co-detective, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, about the history of the town, you slowly start to understand that Revachol is a city haunted by social decay. The game never lectures you on this. However, instead, it lets you experience all of this through walking its streets, listening to its people, and letting your own warped thoughts shape your interpretation of the city.

Personally, my first playthrough of the game left me feeling overwhelmed by the layers of complexity in the story and setting. But once things started to fall into place and I could map out the different factions and ideologies people belonged to, speaking to these characters became fascinating. It helps that the game's dialogue is razor-sharp and draws you in like no other video game out there. Yes, that includes Cuno, too.

A World Whose Depth Is Easy to Underestimate

Skyrim is the most deceptively lore-rich RPG I've ever played. It's too easy to take its lore on a surface level and not really engage with it, but if you take your time to comb over the wide variety of books and engage in what the NPCs are telling you, there's actually some very rich worldbuilding here.

You play as the Dragonborn, who, after barely surviving a beheading, ends up caught between a civil war between Skyrim's people and the Imperial Empire. In between all of this, we also find ourselves in the centre of the dragons returning, along with Alduin, a seemingly universal threat who's capable of consuming the entire world. We unfortunately don't get to see this side of him, as shouting at him to land and stabbing him with knives does the trick, but within the lore of the game, he's a pretty big deal.

It's very easy to take the game's lore for granted. Take the ancient Dwemer, for example, whose history and connection to the Falmer is pretty upsetting, but once you learn their history, exploring these dungeons feels genuinely exciting and less like a chore.

One of the game's strengths is that it never fully explains its lore to you, and lets you discover it on your own, should you decide to seek it out. It is, at the same time, a bit of a downside, as it's possible to sprint right past key NPCs sharing important backstory to you without realizing. Which is also wild, given how we can make some pretty significant choices that are sure to dramatically alter the land's trajectory.

5 Baldur's Gate 3

Just One More Surprise Waiting for You

I think it's fair to say that while it's no surprise that a Larian CRPG would have some stellar worldbuilding, I think a lot of people entirely underestimated just how much effort the team put into it. Baldur's Gate 3 remains the game that continues to give no matter how many times you run through it, with there almost always being new interactions to find depending on your class and who you choose to bring with you.

It's connection to the wider Dungeons and Dragons lore is also very impressive. Not only does the game introduce several concepts and storylines to players, but it also actively moves the needle, going beyond just a cameo to actually progress the storyline. Case in point is the Githyanki arc, which could see you free Orpheus and either turn him into a Mindflayer, or let him continue his conquest against Vlaakith.

These are storylines D&D players have been following for years, which makes it so rewarding for long-term fans to see the canon of the universe handled so well.

4 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Discover an Ancient World Hiding in Plain Sight

Vampire: The Masquerade is a cult favorite for so many RPG players, and for so many years, it alluded me. However, after finally giving the game a go, I can understand why so many fans consider this peak.

The game puts you in the role of a newly turned vampire, who suddenly has to navigate clan politics, secret wars, and general supernatural events happening within this secret society within Los Angeles. The game goes out of its way to have you navigate this dense world with countless conflicting ideological factions and hierarchies, where, suddenly, vampiric immortality is far from the most powerful thing you can attain.

Each vampire clan embodies a different social or psychological power dynamic. For example, the Lasombra operate on a Social Darwinist structure and embrace a cutthroat rule of strength. If you're more artistically inclined, the Toreador, also dubbed "The Degenerates", are more stereotyped as creatives and socialites, but also boast tremendous psychic and emotional power. Every clan comes with its own extensive lore, making it an absolute treat to uncover and learn, as you slowly descend the rabbit hole of this hidden nocturnal society.

3 Planescape: Torment

Where The Impossible Becomes Possible

Planescape: Torment is an impressive RPG, especially for the time it was released. This 1999 classic puts you in the role of The Nameless One, who is an immortal man trying to uncover his identity and why he can't die.

The journey you embark on is more on the surreal side, as the Planescape setting turns impossible ideas into reality. For The Nameless One, his search for identity becomes a physical journey the universe has constructed, filled with philosophical questions to help you uncover who you really are.

So much of the worldbuilding found here is philosophically loaded, and it will see you faced with questions about mortality and selfhood. Each town you stumble into will have different social structures that will relate to this. For example, the eerie town of Curst has an intense obsession with punishment and transformation, and will also test your ability to act morally in a chaotic setting which is anything but moral.

2 Deus Ex: Human Revolution

An Immersive Cyberpunk Society

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is an underrated sequel to what was already a cult favorite RPG.

In this fresh sequel, we play Adam Jensen, a bodyguard who, after a terrorist attack on your company headquarters, leaves you heavily augmented. As we come to learn, a lot of the world has found itself on the cusp of a social collapse following the rise in humans augmenting their bodies with robotics. In pure cyberpunk fashion, this has led to a whole new type of class division and has given corporations even more power in society.

What makes the world-building in the game so rich is that it extensively explores how a world changes after human augmentation is introduced. It also depicts how labor, the media, commerce, and even law enforcement would dramatically shift following its implementation in society.

A lot of these details can be learned just by roaming the streets of the many cities you visit throughout the game, all of which have been dramatically impacted by the rise of this new technology, effectively turning people into living cyborgs. We also learn later on in the game that an actual Illuminati is hiding behind the scenes, coordinating in the shadows to covertly control human augmentation technology to assert their dominance over humanity and its dependency on this technology.

1 Fallout: New Vegas

A Wasteland With 200 Years of History To Discover

Fallout: New Vegas was a glorious return to form for the franchise, establishing a new location in the Fallout universe oozing with rich local history players can lose themselves in.

We play as The Courier, who is shot and left for dead at the start of the game, over the platinum chip they're carrying. After getting patched up by a generous local doctor, we embark on a quest to get revenge on the man who tried to kill us and retrieve the chip that was looted off our then-corpse. As we come to learn, the Mojave Wasteland is caught in the crossfire of three main factions: The NCR, Caesar's Legion, and the mysterious Mr House.

All three of these factions are vying to be the answer to how civilization should be rebuilt, and to do that, they need access to Hoover Dam, which, coincidentally, ties in with the platinum chip you were carrying at the start of the game.

What makes the worldbuilding within the game so rich is how so many characters you come across in the game have history with these factions, for better or for worse. You can also see their influence spread across the hundreds of locations you stumble into in the game.