The Hidden Purpose of Hub Worlds
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- Do you think hubworlds are boring? That they're some sort of throwback level design artifact? Well have you considered that they've actually got a very important job to do?
Join The Architect as they uncover what being a hub is all about, using Dark Souls' Firelink Shrine to do it.
Video Script: docs.google.co...
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You Saw:
Mass Effect 3 (2012)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2016)
Bloodborne (2015)
Monster Hunter: World (2018)
Deus Ex: mankind Divided (2016)
Maplestory 2 (2018)
Shovel Knight (2014)
Dark Souls (2011)
A hat In Time (2017)
Super Mario 64 (1996)
Super Mario Sunshine (2002)
Metroid Prime Trilogy (2009)
World of Warcraft: Battle For Azeroth (2018)
Wandersong (2018)
Yooka Laylee (2017)
Deep Rock Galactic (To Be Released)
Wolfenstein The New Order (2014)
DOOM (2016)
Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze (2014)
Destiny 2 (2017)
Mass Effect 2 (2010)
Nier Automata (2017)
Return of the Obra Dinn (2018)
Oxygen Not Included (To Be Released)
Dishonored 2 (2016)
Final Fantasy 15 (2016)
XCOM: EU (2012)
XCOM 2 (2016)
Half Life 2 (2004)
Opus Magnum (2017)
Interesting Links:
Great article on Hub Worlds: kotaku.com/hub...
Deus Ex MD's great(ish) open world: • Deus Ex: Mankind Divid...
Dark souls and the rebirth of tragedy: variety.com/20...
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Apparently they also take Twitter followers as payment??? twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
massive big dumb idiot.... talk about redundant. massive and big... dumb and idiot. Wait, do they work like double negatives and cancel each other out?
I am shocked that you didn't bring up gta. Nice video
tf how did you pin your comment, i thought you can do that only on your own video, or did YT glitch, im watching RTgame's vid
@@leone1246 I think youtube must've bugged out because you can't pin comments on videos you didn't publish- imagine how badly people would abuse that!
oh and whilst RTgame is great I've never commented on one of his vids, should've mentioned that.
And not a single mention of the greatest Hub of all times, from the unquestionably best videogame of all time: Where ist the Lego Star Wars Cantina?
I don't own Lego Starwars on PC :( It's a really good hub though!
@@ArchitectofGames Words cannot express my disappointment. Only joking, great video as always
the greatest place to start a fight with tourists
i know of one hub thats even greater ......
Do do do do do-do doo, do-da-da do do doo doo
Video in one word: HOME
- All cultures have this concept, even if they are nomadic their "home" is the portable shelter/bags/supplies they carry with them. It might not be 100% Safe, or Comfortable, or Clean, but it's Constant and Familiar, two concepts that are a luxury in a crazy complex world that wants to kill you, both IRL and in Video Games.
Great Video
Which is why there’s a certain level of emotional impact when that “home” gets disturbed or destroyed, in game and real life
Yup, I couldn't agree more. I wanted to comment that after watching the video, but I'm glad someone already brought it up. A video game hub has to feel like home. Maybe that's why, you can sometime decorate it and personalize it haha
Heck, maybe survival games, and games like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing are all about building your hub.
agreed 100%
@comradesky5931*Shouldn't
But he is right. You're not supposed to capitalize words like adjectives and "video games."
"A tradition my team developed was a pre-mission drink, followed by throwing our mugs into the drill to piss off our supervisor."
I like you. I hope UA-cam doesn't screw you over one day like it does virtually everyone else.
I'll never forget the moment I returned to Firelink to find the Bonfire snuffed out and the fire keeper murdered by Lautrec; it's one of those moments that stuck with me, in a game where you can always pick yourself up and try again having something permanent taken from me really left an impact. That made it all the more satisfying when I hunted down Lautrec in Anor Londo.
Was surprised Adam didn't talk about it. He specifically talked about how the hub changes along the game, was sure he'd talk about this there.
It's one of those moment when you think you're back to safety only to find it ruined, aching for a place to save, but no, it's gone.
@@Soul-Burn
Yeah exactly
This is a great moment, the only reason why I didn't mention it is that I was worried I was talking about dark souls a little too much and wanted to give some other games time to shine. That said, the entire journey up to Anor Londo is the highlight of Dark Souls for me
Well fuck, I recently bought the remastered version since I never played Dark Souls and now I know and can never unsee this information :( Should have played it sooner fuck
@@menof36go Spoilers lurk around every corner, friend. The best ring in the game is hidden in the pocket of an invisible ninja behind a paywall in the forest
Dishonored 1 mastered the Hub.
The pub (that’s not a typo) was a safe place to explore, try powers in a safe place, trade, and sleep.
[spoilers]
The Loyalists betraying you *in the pub* and you getting knocked out in your own bedroom totally violates you.
THE safe place is where the lowest blow was given, and when you finally return it’s been emptied out by the Loyalists, signifying how the safety you once felt is stripped away.
It even literally has the corpses of your friend laid out in plain sight.
"There's a grief that can't be spoken; there's a pain goes on and on..."
Plus they did a fantastic job expanding the backdrop characters there. It was also a really fun level when you came back
Absolutely agree probably my favorite game of all time and I've played through it 5 times along with the dlc. Also when you return for the mission located there it's so awesome because you have been exploring every nook and cranny of that place for the entire game and now you get to use that knowledge to your advantage. Such a fantastic game!
@@timothymclean
"Empty chairs at empty tables; now my friends are dead and gone..."
Well said, bravo! Agree completely
Hubs are cool things to have for sure, especially the bit you said about when they change over time to fit the game's overall changes. I'm suprised that point wasn't leading to another 'Firelink also...' section, because the slow influx of NPC's into the Shrine, making it feel like a populated place, only for those same NPC's to leave again and inevitably decay into death and madness, really gives Firelink a great weight of loss rather than hope by the end. Assuming you care about the NPC's at all, it kinda gives the Shrine it's own little three-act structure, of the final flow and ebbing of the First Age of Light.
One thing great about how that was done, you'll need those NPC's to keep growing. So unless your build has no need for them, or you already bought them out, you will care.
Bastion is a great example of changing the hub over time. Your entire quest is to find items to rebuild it.
Or you can go killing spree on the NPCs and have Firelink end up deserted...
@@rmsgrey Yah, but other then the people who did it just to try. People usually do it when they are done with/have no use for them and want what, if any drop they have.
In addition to this, I want to point out Hub Worlds similarity to Home Bases.
Often when I'm playing Minecraft, or Terraria, I'll setup a base that has all the crafting equipment, gear, tools, storage, and looks nice.
The Home Base is where I'll create new tools, plan want to do next, chill out for a bit, etc. It acts just like a man-made Hub World.
I think The fact that I'll create my own Mini Hub World when I can proves the importance in Hub Worlds, especially in games like Dark Souls and Mass Effect.
It's actually an instinct to build a home. People seek shelter. So the concept of a hub or a base is natural
@@a_wild_Kirillian True!
Yep.
Another role of a good hub is to provide motivation: Protect and improve your hub. Can be figurative/narrative or quite literal as in a base building game.
i was trying to make a run in fallout 4 without having a home, the closest i would do woud be keeping the power armor in the gas station, but endup with so many eventually to you can just leave on in each city
Terraria actually enforces the base as a safe zone by preventing enemies from spawning too close to a large cluster of NPCs (outside of various events like blood moons).
Hubs let you have a break from the game, without having to stop playing the game. Especially for people like me who like to use game to 'escape' for a few hours into another world, hubs allow you to 'live' in that world for a while. Constantly moving forward without a break, like you would in Doom, can be a little exhausting. And as far as I know your brain also needs the pause from constant action to actually process the new information in order for you to learn and get better at it. That's an unconscious process that only really kicks in when you are not consciously thinking about it.
Love well done hubs and other places similar to this, especially if they have good music. I remember playing Monster Hunter3 and dark souls 2 and the longer the play session went, when I got to the hub, the more I just stayed and enjoyed the scenery and music. Hubs allow you to immerse in the world while also taking a break.
Another thing I like are "safe spaces?", Where you can take a quick break in the game. An example would be in darkest dungeon when you camp. You're in a hostile area, you're in danger, supplies are running low or you're preparing for a big fight; but right now, you can take a break. Best of all, keeping with the games theme, you're not really safe in the camp because unless you prepare against it, you can be ambushed when you finish the camping break
I think saying people didn't finish DOOM because it didn't have a hub is incorrect because correlation doesn't equal causation. Titanfall 2, Resident Evil 4, Wolfenstein Old Blood, these do not have hubs. What they have is varied level and combat arena design, while DOOM basically had small fights during exploration and arena fights. DOOM didn't have a cabin sequence, or a platforming gun level, or a nonstop running god mode level, or a big stompy melee only mech.
So while it's correct to say DOOM was exhausting, a hub level is not the reason. It had downtime with secret hunting and level exploring, it just had the same (albeit amazing) arena fight over and over which killed its variety.
I think a good term for your expanded definition of a "hub" would be "conceptual anchor". They don't need to be a physical place, but they're something you use to contextualize your relationship with the game. And it's actually not 100% exclusive to games, though they definitely do have them most commonly.
For an example, read The Zombie Knight (it's a really awesome web novel) and consider the role of Garovel. As a millenia-old spirit and an exposition source, he's the main way that ideas and plot points are introduced to the readers, in the form of him giving Hector quick explanations of the things Garovel expects him to have to deal with soon. He's also a good way of establishing the several parts of the story's tone. Black humor and people doing the best they can are major fixtures of the story, and Garovel epitomizes both ideas better than almost any other character.
Thanks to you now I have an awesome novel to read. My gratitude =3
I love how Dark Souls gives you this feeling of homesickness when you venture too far from Firelink, progressing through a level, not knowing that is to come next.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the fact hubs (most notably those like in Monster Hunter World) serve as a "home". The player can usually feel safe and relax here, and it provides a *massive* immersion bump. Some of them even have living quarters with functional home furniture, such as the aforementioned's beds that you can actually rest on if you for some reason feel like doing that.
Styx and the sewers.
"Firelink acts as a nexus"
Demon's souls says hi.
Firelink feels a lot more ragtag and homelike, Demon's Souls' nexus feels like a church you have been invited to but not a place to call your own imo
@@lavendeer6290 You are literally prisioned in Nexus.The most home hub of all soulsborne games is Majula followed by Hunters's Dream.
Hey look, another free design class. Thanks friend.
Purple Fanta I’m addicted to you please send help
One of my personal favourite hubs -> Overlord (the game) tower
The tower starts all broken and missing areas.
As the story progresses, it is repaired and all upgrades the player collects in game are added to the tower, sometimes unlocking new areas.
If the player is chaotic evil the sky Will gradually turn into a cloudy dark red. If he is lawful evil, it stays a clear sunny day.
I like how it changes with player actions and progress. (It also has some costumization as a bônus)
Hub worlds are home. They're a place to decompress, relax, and immerse in story rather than gameplay.
TTRPGs have relied on them for ages as a way to make players care about the world around them, and in those games they're quite literally a home. It's not uncommon for the player characters to have a controlling interest in a small tavern or inn, or possibly each have their own project where they work as a blacksmith or a library or temple, etc. In those cases, it's often a whole city district that makes up the home base. Sometimes it's literally a castle that they own and run.
Point is, they're safe. 99% of the time. If something's attacking you at home, it's because it's the big kickoff to a major plot shift. The riots in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided are an excellent example of that.
What the hell are TTRPG's
@@boneslice4419 Tabletop RPGs. Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, and the like. As opposed to CRPGs - Computer RPGs - which are the video game take on things.
The skeletons also provide a low stakes enemy to practice new weapons such on. The hollows before New Londo give you a punching bag to see your damage numbers freely. There was a lot of thought put into Firelink
Well, the hub in Mass Effect *does* actually have several important story moments. The scenes where the Normandy gets attacked and having to move around in this burning wreck of a place that is very familiar is itself a pretty powerful effect, not just a transition set piece. ME is not the only game to do this, see also e.g. Mother Base in MGSV.
side note: many hub worlds are also sometimes used to hide some loading screens and loading times, while the player does things in the easily loaded and cached hub, the game can load the next chunk.
doesn't apply to everything you said, but it's another neat little thing they can be used for.
Firelink is the dark souls of hubs. xD
Nah, that'd be Majula, because there are two little psychotic pigs that can kill you. I don't count the graveyard in Firelink because it feels like a different area.
Urbz: sims in the city is the dark souls of video games
@@Lucifronz also dark souls 2 is the dark souls of souls games
@@simon-patrickjohnson This is the Dark Souls of comments right here.
And Dark Souls was the Hub of this Video. :P
The hub worlds protect the lug nut worlds
I think the reason more people beat wolfenstein over doom has more to do with the fact that wolfenstein is a story based experience vs doom which is a gameplay based one. People want to see the end of wolfenstein whereas doom youre pretty much doing the same thing throughout its more lethargic
Precisely. DOOM is my favourite video game ever made, because I value gameplay above everything else. Story is good, but I can read a book or watch a movie for a good story. A video game offers an experience I can't have anywhere else. So, part of why I love DOOM so much is the fact its non-stop action. It's a constant,unending experience, and I understand why people find that exhausting or even boring. But, I love it. I love the neverending intensity and constant action, and a hub world would have diminished that experience for me. If you had to return to some Mars lab every mission, it would have made the game feel very stoppy-starty to me, whihc is a problem I had with Wolfenstein. I loved the gameplay itsself in Wolfenstein, its fun, chunky, gripping combat,like DOOM is, but having to stop every mission and "Give this letter to my friend" and all that made the overall experience actually less compelling to me. I get that I'm in the minority here, but I love DOOM because of it's gameplay first, story second design.
@@blackblood9095 a hub would really be weird since your character is all alone, but i guess there could be some staff rooms that all looked the same to get attached to, like safe rooms in L4D, they are all different, but they fell like home because they are full of resources
Another good hub i’d say is dirtmouth in Hollow knight, It offers access to a lot of areas, has many vendors and a place to test out your new upgrades and charm builds. Also i find it interesting how the same thing happens in deus ex machina as similar to the city in that game abondoned crossroads becomes a lot more dangerous than it was originally.
Delfino Plaza is maybe my favorite hub ever. It does such a good job at setting up the atmosphere for the game, and makes the whole game feel like a real place, in a way. Exploring it for new entrances to secrets and worlds, blue coins, and such in between doing actual levels is a lot of fun and the widening circle of light is a nice indicator of your progress through the whole game. And there's plenty of space to play around with the controls, especially for the nozzles as you unlock them
Yeah, I loved exploring Delfino Plaza myself, and actually ended up turning one of the areas within Delfino Plaza into a sort of mini-hub within a hub, I liked going up to the water and waterfall behind the shine gate, and besides that I can't count the number of times I just ran around the plaza doing stuff and exploring.
I'm a sucker for the Hubs that slowly upgrade/devlop as you go, Examples Include:
- YS8's Castaway Village
-Little King Story's Kingdom
- Mario Galaxy 2's Ship
"Isn't that neato?" best line I heard all week
Not any mention to the bastion from Bastion? That was an amazing hub.
I really like Clock Town in Majora's Mask as the hub/home base. Thematically, geographically, and mechanically, it fulfills the role of both a place to reset and a place to drive learning and interaction with the game systems and story
the two hotline miami games had a really good hub
with the houses of where your characters live
im not sure if that counts as a hub but i really liked staying in them for a while to get the feel of each character before they inevitably died
Yeah and the contrast in the first game when you had been playing Jacket in this empty, dirty tiny apartment in some run-down area, and then you switch to the boy in the high-tech super modern 80's luxury apartment with his friends and a neon tiger skin. Really told you a lot about those characters, before you even got to play out their stories.
Nevermind me, just spewing observations on games I've played.
Spyro 1, 2, and 3 have hub worlds called home worlds. They contain portals to all the other levels, or worlds.
Spyro 1 does it the least well, in my opinion. They are exactly the same as any other world, populated with enemies.
Spyro 2 and 3 have their homeworlds devoid of enemies, with calm, relaxing music, and their atmospheres are the same. The only hazard that some home worlds have is falling into the void, which the first home world in each of the two does not have so that by the time the players get to home worlds that do have falling hazards, they're experienced enough to know what jumps they can make. They still have collectibles littered all around, which encourages you to explore the world and get familiar with it. They're also mostly linear, guiding you to different worlds in a distinct order, giving a subtle hint as to what order the player should play the worlds in. (Although this order is strictly inferior to the optimal one in both games, so I don't know what the devs were thinking.)
Kingdom Hearts would benefit from a hub world, in my opinion. Or, more accurately, an anchor. Primarily as a way of reflecting a changing tone as you progress the story. That would've been pretty cool. I wouldn't say to replace the world map, as I feel that would work better both functionally and thematically for choosing worlds, but perhaps have a world that players have to keep coming back to every few worlds or so, and give them new things to do there each time, such as new shops, new areas to explore, etc. Have recently-made friends hang out in this world, and give the main character a cutscene with the friend to tell how the character's getting along in the world and what they've been up to. Perhaps the friend set up a shop or a new training ground and such. It would help to show the main character's ever-growing repitoire of friends, as friendship is a big theme in Kingdom Hearts. Also, give it a big change when the final battle is coming up. Have the big baddy smash it or something.
I think Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days had a hub world, but I haven't played it myself, so I can't reflect on it.
Man sure was getting hyped for some Hello kitty island 4: Lair of the flesh god at 9:56 but i suppose some Dark souls thing will do...
I don't know why... but the fact that you said "Kirkensen" instead of "Jonathan Kristensen" really blew me out of the credits. The back of the head was screaming that something was wrong and I had to go back 2 times to realize what bothered me, watching the credits only at the side xD
I think it fair to include JRPG "Airships" as Hubs, using the definitions in this video.
Many iconic character conversations occur in the iconic airship found in many JRPGS, especially the Final Fantasies.
This is doubly so in Playsation 1's Xenogears, where almost half of the main story dialog takes place inside the Yggdrasil - your main ship throughout the entire game.
Regarding the skeletons in firelink:
I started my first DS playtrough as the "deprived" which begins with good stats and a club against which the skeletons in the graveyard are weak, meaning they can be killed in about 3 blows.
So I thought the graveyard was a "training area", and since I had heard so much about how punishing and unforgiving the game was I decided I wouldn´t explore much until I mastered the graveyard and the items it gave me.
long story short, when I went to undeadburg I was one-handing the zweihander. Made undeadburg a lot easier
Described but not mentioned explicitly: immersion. Hub worlds have always provided a great deal of immersion for me. Add a player home that can be upgraded with money/items earned from playing the actual game and I find myself much more engaged in the world. So much so that I can enjoy just wandering around looking at the scenery, or sit in front of my in-game fireplace while eating my actual dinner rather than watching youtube etc.
Nice video. Another great hubworld that deserves a shoutout: The Bastion from Bastion. In a game with strong themes of rebuilding that's taking place in a world that's literally fallen to pieces, having a hubworld that you regularly expands, upgrades and occasionally bring more survivors to was a brilliant move. Plus that *spoiler* thing that happened that someone will probably mention in the replies.
Bastion's is definitely one of my favourite hubs
Perfect Dark had an amazing hub that let you play around, do little challenges and get to know your support NPCs. I loved it and spent so much time screwing around there.
It is so satisfying in the beginning half of dark souls, then fighting your way through only to find the short cut back to firelink shrine. Furthermore, in the second half of the game, traveling further from firelink made the bosses feel that much more grand.
Well, Doom's gonna be solving the 'nonstop action tiring out the brain' bit with the new Fortress of Doom. So that's great. :)
Honestly I think one of the most important functions of a hub is as a pace changer.
The order of the games on the description helps sooo much when you don't know what that game is and you wanna play it. Thank you a lot, Sr.
Perhaps you never played it, but Silent Hill 4: The Room also had a fantastic hub world. The actual levels were all in 3rd person, while The Room (Hub) was presented entirely in 1st person. It was the only place where you could save the game, stash away items, or just relax without fear of an invincible spirit finding you. You also get to watch the outside world go about its business, but are never able to interact with it, even if you try.
It was in many ways dull, lonely, mundane, but it was safe. Its purposely does everything it can to let you get connected to The Room, despite it being your prison.
But then your safe space starts to be invaded, as slowly the room begins to be subverted, and all of the mundane objects become twisted and dangerous. This continues until The Room, your safe hub, becomes the most dangerous place you can be. You never know what you new thing in the room would become cursed. Where the bloody footprints might appear, the new hole to another place might open, or even if you can use the stash without consequence.
Eventually the player is faced with a choice. Stay in the levels where you at least know what is chasing you down, or go back to The Room, which may have warped in new ways. But of course, you must always go back to The Room eventually, even if it kills you.
Your take about how hubs are place to rest is spot on. Movie and books have total control over their content's pace, but video games are all about agency. By making a hub world, you give the power to control the pace itself to the player, which is just awesome.
Skyrim (and games like) use the player homes as both places of safety, but also they represent progress by storing all the things you've collected.
On Metro 2033 and Last Light there's the usual city stop where you get to learn about the different places in Metro, and also buy resources which you will be needing in the future. There are even extras in which you can watch a show or even lap dancing.
It's an unbearably robotic and cringey lap dance, but I have this head canon where Artyom wants to somehow make it up to the poor woman he's silenced and pushed into a dark corner, but is too shy and socially awkward to actually apologise.
Also. what the hell kind of "good communist" doesn't pay his strippers? I was more annoyed at Pavel for that than for drugging and turning in Artyom.
Isn’t Bloodborne’s hub the Hunter’s Dream rather than Yarnham
The dream is not connected to any other areas it is a hub of sorts but Yarnham is a area that leads into many other areas like Firelink leads to the graveyard New Londo and the burg
snair I thought it’d be the cathedral ward. It’s linked to the healijg church workshop yarhnam old yarhnam hemwick charnel lane etc
Mister Guy wait can you not travel from any lantern to another? It been a while since i saw the game if so thats kinda annoying that they would limit travel
i'm taking you to flavor town yeah you can’t go from lamp to lamp
Marcus Manzl seems like a shitty move to waste time
The part about making the hub world change reminded me of Cave Story. At the halfway point, when the story turns dark, you get thrown into the Labrynth instead of returning to the village, and when you finally do get back to the village you discover that every single person has been kidnapped. If you're playing through for the first time rather than the "good" ending that is the last time you visit the hub level because without the mimigas, there's nothing left there. (On later playthroughs you'll cut through it 1-2 more times for sidequests).
Love well done hubs and other places similar to this, especially if they have good music. I remember playing Monster Hunter3 and dark souls 2 and the longer the play session went, when I got to the hub, the more I just stayed and enjoyed the scenery and music. Hubs allow you to immerse in the world while also taking a break.
Another thing I like are "safe spaces?", Where you can take a quick break in the game, kinda like the barricaded rooms in left for dead or the save rooms in re4. My favorite darkest dungeon when you camp during a quest. You're in a hostile area, you're in danger, supplies are running low or maybe you're preparing for a boss fight; but right now, you can take a break, you can reflect on what you need to do to survive and make the best use of supplies. Best of all, keeping with the games theme, you're not really safe in the camp because unless you prepare against it, you can be ambushed when you finish the camping break
I've noticed that I tend to like TV shows that have a central location that is almost a character in and of itself, like The Office, for example.
Supernatural has Dean's car, but a major theme in the show is how the brothers don't have a home to come back to. In fact, time and time again, Dean's car is destroyed and rebuilt, further symbolizing how they have no place to call home.
Dean's car? Not the Men of Letters bunker?
@@eneco3965 I don't really like post season 5.
I think the music also plays a great part in cementing Firelink's place and vibe overall.
The only time you hear music aside from creating your character and the intro (which are kinda parallel), is in Firelink the safest place in the game, or during bosses, the most vulnerable place in the game
You hit the nail on the head. There's a scene in Link to the Past that still sticks with me twenty-five years later. And it's not even a scene per se: after defeating Aghanim and being sent into the Dark World, Kakariko Village -- previously a safe haven -- acquires a patrol of guards under Ganon's control. It's just two basic enemies, posing minimal threat, but their mere presence had such an emotional impact that I still think about it today as one of my formative gaming experiences.
Hollow knights dirtmouth applies a very interesting twist, if you can fast travel, you can get to dirtmouth and back, meaning it encourages you to check back there to see how the place is doing. It's also quiet and mostly abandoned, contrasting everywhere else's infected chaos.
One game I love is Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. It has a main hub full of friendly Pokémon, you have a shop, and other useful services, therefore you will find yourself interacting with these characters often, and learning more about their lives and becoming friends with them.
They always have something new going on all the time as you progress through the story, some personal problems and drama, which makes you curious to keep interacting with them.
Then at one point you become outcast by the town. You don’t get to chat to the friendly residents of the town anymore. You’re stuck going back to a hole in the side of a cliff as the hub now, and it leaves you feeling lonely every time you beat a dungeon and come back to this hole.
These feelings only add to the amount of relief you feel when you redeem yourself and you are welcomed back into the town. You get to see familiar faces again after what feels like too long. It’s joyous and it connects you deeper into that town and to the characters.
Shanate and the Pirate Curse's hub (Scuttle Town) world, which changes a lot and is used for story a lot towards the end of the game was really cool. Spending time there througout your whole playthrough leads to you REALLY wanting to stop Ammo Baron (and the Pirate Master later) and finish the last acts of the game once Scuttle Town undergoes reconstruction, is reconstructed, and finally shrouded in darkness with a drastic change in music once the Pirate Master takes over. 10/10
Great Video !
Also, I just want to say that I love that Humanity Sprite avatar :D.
''that sure is Neato (or Nito as in Gravelord)'' as he talks about the tomb of giants
Yes, That was the joke
I didn't get it, could you dissect it a little more please?
@@mathm1410 oh i only caught it when i was thinking about what he said, i didnt think it was all too obvious because its a well used phrase
@@insaincaldo Nito is the lord soul of the tomb of giants being 1 of 4 bosses you need to kill before you can progr-- wait this is sarcasm isnt it?
@@robyntherobyn You know.. Here are some genuine good sport points, cause this turned out better then I expected.
9:15 Ok pretty cool.
Thing raises itself out of the water. NOPE NOPE NOPE! ALL THE NOPES!
You go to your Minecraft House to store many resources you collected, but don't need yet. And you take the Resources you need. And it's the place where you skip many Nights & the Place where you respawn. Your Minecraft house is basically your Customizable Hub World, or better said: Hub Building, in your Minecraft world.
Hub worlds are like your virtual homes. When the Normandy gets invaded at the end of ME2, it felt personal.
6:43 "isn't that Nito" fuckoff lol
How did no one else see this?
Plenty did
Whiterun city, especially the smithing stations and shops near the city door checks all the boxes in Skyrim. Its the first of such densely packed places with most things you need to craft/upgrade which is also right next to the fast travel point.
One of my favorite hubs will probably be Sanctuary from Borderlands 2. I spend so much time there, often doing stuff completely meaningless to the actual game but it still kept me entertained. Sure, some of that stuff might have not been intentional - like jumping around the rooftops (even though I'm not sure if the panties thing is a wanted easteregg or not) - but that doesn't change the fact to me that Sanctuary always felt like - well, a sanctuary.
Here's an example I think sums it up pretty good:
Super Mario Galaxy 1 vs 2. 1's Observatory was one of the best hub worlds in any game I've ever played, where you had to explore and climb about the ship to find the next level. 2 had a generic "world map", with an optional "hub world" you could explore if you wanted to, but all your stuff was in just one place so you never had to.
1 always felt like a perfect game, 2 always felt like it was... missing something.
Thank you for making this video!
It made me understad how hub worlds work. So basically hub worlds are a break from the game,
a place where you can chill and look at the progress you've made,while also training you to become better prepared for the game.
oh god, that ancient space rig in DRG brought back some memories.
A good changing hub is the hub area in GRIS. It does an amazing job of showcasing how new colors change the world and bring life back into it.
Good video, though i'm not sure I'd agree with the statement that Doom never gives you a break - that's just not true. The game gives you a TON of exploration quiet time after every major fight - I spend roughly half my time in the game just walking around, even when I'm not hunting for secrets.
Dr. Caesars Palace MD Agreed. Also, I actually played almost straight through Doom whereas I got distracted and never finished Wolfenstein TNO.
Creative director of Doom Hugo Martin put it best. "We figured it was better to leave it up to the player to turn the gear down". From the noclip documentary on Doom.
Doom is fairly mediocre
Honestly, one of the things that could have made Dishonored 2 Improve on its formula more than it did, would have been to have a Hub more integrated into the city. Overall, there was less of a feeling of things going to hell than in the first game (such that rats and blood flies felt tacked on) and instead of being on a boat seeing Karnaca from afar, having your lair in a hub connecting to a breathing district where you can see the impact of your actions on the populace would have felt great.
Imagine seeing the winds of the dust district getting clear of dust, the miners in the taverns no longer coughing ash and blood after you complete that level, the blood fly infestation slowing down or getting out of control as the chaos meter moves, etc...
And also having a story all About karnaca rather than starting and ending in Dunwall would have made the game as a whole more cohesive.
I'm impressed. This is something I haven't paid much attention to, other than "I just keep getting lost in here..." until I explore. Not only do you put hubs in another light, to me they've started to glow on their own.
Btw, give Overlord's hub a try. It's really satisfying (if you don't get lost and don't know what's going on).
I believe you are referring to downtime. Not an industry term but one I'm used to. In various Halo games they would give you tanks when they wanted you to take a break. Especially in CE because every encounter on foot was a challenge. (at least in the harder difficulties) The tanks gave you time to relax and watch things go boom
Your Orbiter in Warframe accomplishes the same thing as the hub in Wolfenstien, Warframe is constantly about action, but there are huge amounts of things to do within an extremely small hub, that allows you to pause and think. This also is amplified by the two Open World areas which each have their own hubs, and the worlds themselves can act to give you a break of the regular straightforward missions!
Nothing will mellow me out like walking into firelink and hearing the music swell into existence
In minecraft and similar sandbox games, i can’t stress it enough how important it is to beautify your home.
Often i grew tired of an entire save just because i worked in a dirt hut to rush to the end, not very fun
Terraria enforces this by locking various items and mechanics behind the requirement of building an actual town for the NPCs. How this town is laid out is entirely up to you, but even the simplest of designs is guaranteed to feel far more homey than a Minecraft dirt hut.
Theres a game I worked on that I'm pretty proud of for the most part, its a horror game that acts like its giving you a hub room as it teaches you the mechanics of the game in a safe-ish way as you leave and return to it a couple times. You then have no choice but to leave the room which you're then given the sense that you wont return there again as the intro credits roll. I like the feeling of departure from safety you get from this, I believe it was pretty effective since playing on the feeling of safety you get from a hub world lent its power to this moment as we take it away from you.
Oh my gosh, I never considered the Normandy as being a hub...It fits all the categories...
I'm glad you made this video hubs are one of my favorite parts of a big world game. They kinda remind me of how Disney Land is Laid out with the park center Leading to the different parts of the park. My favorite games are like this in how there are ways to bypass the hub and go to a neighboring area in the game giving it an almost open world feel but not too much
I really wish you mentioned the hound's pit pub and how it was turned on it's head and suddenly became an overtly hostile area, and how the flooded district serves as a hubworld when playing as daud but as bowsers castle when playing as corvo.
so that is why i like driving in rage, the vehicles make you so op that it is literally a walk in the park between missions, also the npcs are always reminding you what you are doing, not in a "time is running out way"
YES! Someone finaly mentioned oxygen not included to make a point!
Liking your vids a lot, and I gotta point out that the hub of Bloodborne is the Hunter’s Dream, not Yharnam. Yharnam could be a hub in that the game sprawls outward from it, but the HD is your safe place.
- I really love the Hunter’s Dream. Concept, Moon Presence, graves, flowers. All of it.
Even movies and TV shows have their hub worlds, from the helicarrier in Avengers to GI Joe's secret bases to Blade's hideout. Unfortunately, when these places are shown prominently then they would most likely be attacked/infiltrated by the enemy later on.
Best argument for a hub really, sometimes you need to prepare, socialize, shop, and practice and test at a home. Sometimes you need a place to turn in the last quest get the reward buy the stuff you need for the next quest with it and get the next quest all at the same location. When all of those things are done at different locations the world feels desolate then players either utilize the services rarely and as they come across them, or travel unreasonable distances to get everything done. A good example of this is Pokemon, where daycare buying TMs the next gym the nearest poke store and a place to make money if you run out can be 5 separate locations. Of course in Pokémon you have fly, but if I over stocked on preparations and need ultra balls want to teach my Alakazam physic and want to hatch for a shiny then there’s a lot of flying to do. I’m not opposed to traveling services, but putting all needed services in one place does something more than cut down on fast travel. It lets the player decide when, and for how long, and in what way, they will make any and all preparations before setting out to accomplish things. Which lets the player pace their own game and encouraging long term planning. Which can keep players playing. And that’s all you really need.
A hub, can be a menu, think of dark souls 2 bonfires but if all npc services were in the bonfire. They’d be relaxing right? Or think darkest dungeon. Where you decide what all the heros you don’t take on adventures do for the week, as well as shopping and upgrades. What’s important is a single, safe, frequented location used for preparations.
for DRG my first 10h of the game
We litteraly pass 5h just in the hub
What a great wait to lose time with friends
Silent Hill 4 is the most obvious example of a hub world suddenly becoming hostile. There is also the fog that shows up towards Persona 4’s endgame, right at the moment when the story starts taking dark turns. You are no longer allowed to forget about the threat even as you continue about everyday activities that were once distractions from the plot. The entire mood changes.
I've played persona 3, 4 and 5, I've reached the end game at all three but I've never finished one of them. I love the spending time with characters and choosing what activity to do, but whenever you reach the end and there's nothing but combat and the final dungeon left I just completely lose all interest, because those are the parts I care the least about, the parts I only suffer through to progress.
I know the idea is that the first playthrough is only meant to set up for newgame+ but I just don't buy into that design, why do I need to play through a whole game once just to do it again with nothing really new happening. They really ought to make a persona style game without the combat and dungeons.
Gossa Mera Wouldn’t that basically be Stardew Valley or one of those visual novel games you can find on Steam like Dream Daddy or Doki Doki Lit Club? Personally, I love the RPG and social sim elements. It is like living in the world of a classic anime series. So the Persona games were perfect for me. I’ve seen a few people complain that the don’t like how the pace slows down when there is no palace to do and it is like they are missing half the fun
@@TheJadedJames Well in the broadest possible sense maybe, though you really couldn't have picked any worse examples for VNs, but yeah the whole live as a Japanese teenager part is where it's at. Not a whole lot of games do that, and certainly not where you get to walk around, VNs are all static backgrounds. The ongoing overarching story coupled with the story you make yourself, it's just a shame that it ends way too quickly, only one or two terms.
ODST also had a changing hub world it changed the lone wandering as the game went on, along with crash bandicoot taking you out of a level in a hub where you could use your jumps/new powerups in CB3 without actually having to try them in a level first.
I want to expand on this with another example this video made me realize: Monster Hunter
after every quest, you return to either the village or hub. while there, you'll innevitably spend time preparing for the next quest or determining what quest to do next. sometimes you'll jump intobthe next one right away, sometimes you'll rake a short break, sometimes you'll spend an hour or more conjuring a new build, optimizing, planning, and plenty of other things. The village and hub can easily soak up half of your total time with the game, and since the rest of the game is pretty much just hunting the same 50 or so monsters via the same quests, those breaks between hunts become vital to keeping players from burning themselves out and giving them an opportunity to think and reflect. I could link it to a bunch of other things too but who's going to read this far anyways?
OG Firelink is the best. It's safe but it's not unassailable. The moments when a skeleton or Hollow would follow you back or when Lautrec kill the Firekeeper remind you of the danger of the outside world and make the peaceful moments of safety that much more impactful as you now know that they might not always last.
9:56
"Hello kitty island 4: *Lair of the flesh god"*
The horror...
what even was that 😭
Just want to say I like the new cut-in avatar. It gives this feeling of "The Architect peaking out from behind the curtain". Really appropriate.
This is also an excellent reason why Borderlands is able to keep the player going for so damn long. Sanctuary is one of the best hub worlds, it does so much to help familiarize the player with the world setting, the characters, provides new quests, a chance to rest, heck even the zone and the NPCs change to show the progression in the story.
Another aspect of hubs vs. basic menus is that of emersion. One of the challenges of good game design is to make the experience feel more real. Standard menus break the illusion, where as hubs give the player all the functions of a menu without taking you out of the game.
you Kind of mentioned the real perfect hub... its gruntys lair in Banjo kazooie where you sometimes get really tested bevor entering the actual levels
For me, the one hub that truly made me understand the role and importance of this concept is Myst Island, in Cyan's Myst. I'll never forget how cool it was when I realized that the whole game was built around understanding and solving one overarching mystery which takes place on that one island.
little point WoW has had space ships since burning crusade it's what the Draenai crashed to Azeroth on. I don't know when you stopped playing or if you stopped playing but legion went into more of the backstory of our beloved space goats when we went to argus.
Not to be an annoying fan boy of course
it's why it's nice to come back to your crib in VtM: Bloodlines
That little routine of flicking on the radio & checking your e-mails is pretty great. But VtM: Bloodlines does hubs a little differently; it's an unfolding design; the "hub" gradually expands as you explore and advance through the main plot. The four main area's of the game each area is divided into sections tied to a sanctuary that serves as a temporary hub that connects different quests. Your crummy apartment serves as a reminder that you're a insignificant fledgling compared to all the ancient and powerful vampires you interact with between your adventures.
An example of a non physical place that acts as a hub world, that comes to my mind, is the shop guy in Resident evil 4. The moment I see that blue light, I relax and start thinking about the bigger picture of the game.
Something interesting you didn't mention about Firelink Shrine: during the first half of the game the hub gradually fills with various npcs and merchants that you've met on your travels, all operating on independent questlines that happen to place them all in Firelink at roughly the same time. After Anor Londo, however, the hub gradually empties as you advance and complete each character's questline (usually resulting in them dying horribly), creating a feeling of growing isolation as you watch the game's cast of characters whittle down to just you and maybe a couple of murderous assholes (Patches, Petrus, and Ingward are the only characters whose questlines will keep them in Firelink until the end of the game unless you personally kill them) as you work towards your ultimate goal.
"Isn't that Nito?" I see what you did there :D
"Ain't that nito" goddamnit I haven't heard that it like 12 years and i had a nostalgic laff
So basically hubs act as a palette cleanser, but are also best utilized helping to represent the game as a whole.
Freedom Fighters utilized the hub world pretty well, gradually gaining more and more resistance followers as the game progresses and ending it by using the hub world as the last boss stage.
Ein absolutely loooove overworlds that have some extra stuff to do, even when it's just basic. Delfino Plaza in Sunshine, the island in Diddy Kong Racing, DK islands in Donkey Kong 64, Capital B's hub in Yooka-Laylee, Showdown Town in Banjo-Kazooie Nuts&Bolts (this one is especially giant and awesome to explore).