For example, I didn’t fall in love with Titanfall 2’s environmental art design—it felt a bit generic to me, like it was meant to be the backdrop for a shooter, as opposed to the Sevastopol in A:I or the station in SOMA that felt like existing locations.
Ditto BioShock: Infinite. The world felt like it was built around the premise of being an arena shooter, not the other way around.
BioShock 1 & 2 are exactly what I’m talking about though.
Even Borderlands 2 has great world-building: the corporate history that can be inferred from the level design, the weapons & the NPCs makes it one of the richer games I’ve played.
Would love to hear others’ thoughts on your favorite FPS environments!
Prey (2017) has a great level design. It’s one giant interconnected space station that can also be explored from the outside. Different areas all feel very organic and actually liveable.
Great answer here. And the world building is in all of the details. There were some scattered objects that I assumed they just had a model for and used it to add to come background clutter, but then found some logs and story details that made it all make sense - it’s all very well thought out and interconnected beautifully