@@thoughtfulpug1333 Ctrl+C Ctrl+V It is suspected by the fans of RWBY that the map of Remenet has two obvious dragons because the world was made by the gods who are bough dragoons in there true forms. Keep that in mind Tigerstar the continets where not made like they where in our world.
The other map of Middle-Earth you showed is actually a map of Beleriand, which was west of the lands in the Lord of the Rings but which sank into the sea
Wait what are you talking about? That is all of middle earth All of that was were all the lord of the rings movies take place they never sank into the sea
Well, I mean Game of Thrones is quite literally just a fantasy retelling of the War of the Roses. So it sort makes sense the world would look somewhat similar to the place the story was based on
@@theoldsaxon6484 I wouldn't say he stole the ideas from the real world. More like he took the idea and expanded or retracted what he wanted and what he thought was important to his story. A lot of writers do this to make their world/events seem more realistic or more easy for readers to digest because they have some base within reality. A lot of his story is inspired by real-world events, places, time periods and even climate/weather. Obviously, the Wall is a direct reference to Hadrian's wall that was built by Emporer Hadrian to keep the Pictish tribes (I think) out of Roman Britan. The red wedding is his take on the real-life event called the black dinner. The Maesters tower in Oldtown is based on both the Great Library of Alexandria and the Great lighthouse of Alexandria.
The Old Saxon I wouldn't say stealing. More like taking inspiration from history. Pretty much every fantasy writer takes inspiration from somewhere, even Tolkien, who used a lot of real world mythology to inspire his lore.
The thing I didn’t like about this video is that there was no standard on what you based your likes and dislikes on. Some of the maps you talked about continents and plate tectonics and the gave the map a low score. On other maps you were like, “I like the colors and the pretty compass” and then gave it a higher score. There was no consensus.
Two things could be going on here: a) He´s simply doing a ranking on how he likes the maps. That means that two maps that are systematically as good as each other are subjected to the whims of a unreliable human brain with different and not all understood judging criteria. b) He has a list of criteria, but he doesn´t want to bore his audience with the details so he talks about certain highlights. It may seem like he´s judging on a different bases, but he´s just trying to find the one reason that´d sum up the entire grade despite there being so many reasons that affect his choice.
I'd say there's criteria, it's just not stated. I mean you have to consider style, balance, potential, geo-activity, and overall effect. A map that only comes through the corner of the map lives or dies by it's style, geo-activity, and overall effect. A map that covers an entire world needs to at least pretend there could be geo-activity, and lives or dies by the balance implemented in it's design. If a world is just basic shapes with no regard to geo-activity and/or a lack of creativity (ripping off real world places is not creative), then it reflects negatively on the map. If the world has a unique design and gives the appearance that the creator did some basic research on how planets function, it reflects better.
Woody This is not the Dunning-Kruger effect at all. This guy has more competence judging fantasy maps (of all things) than most people. And just as much as others interested in history and maps. I mean his youtube channel is largely consists of this interest. It’s also pretty evident that this judging contest isn’t that serious. Man, read up on your definitions again.
@@pmcshow44 a brittish youtuber, with surprisingly only 800K subscribers. A week ago he uploaded a 1 hour video about the falklands conlict. It keeps showing up in my recommendations since I haven't gotten around to watching it. the Falkland's map/contour is in the thumb nail.
The second map you showed of Middle-earth was actually of the First Age when Beleriand still existed. Also the first map definitely isn't the OG one Tolkien drew, at least judging by the thickness of the contours of the map's objects.
@@joshowensby6339 But it's pretty forgivable because it's not something you'd ever learn by just reading the books. There's no point within the context of any of Tolkien's stories where he reveals that. Very different from, say, Broken Empire where the reader is mean to discover that the story is taking place on a distant future Earth.
@@z-beeblebrox he does have a book where an english man finds the straight road (the way to get to the undying lands for the elves after the undying lands were taken out of the world) so technically it is in a book but I cant remember its name
@@strider04 "The Lost Road and Other Writings." Both it and the Silmarillion were published posthumously by his son, based on writings and essays JRR did while writing LotR. It's likely that Tolkien would have never published those materials no matter how much longer he lived, since he was very much against "showing the bone that makes the soup". So this calls into question what counts as canon, whether it's acceptable to fold backstory written by the writer himself against the writer's wishes, etc. It's all a very complicated topic, but personally I consider it outside the scope of Lord of the Rings as a narrative work.
@@z-beeblebrox the only reason the silmarillion was never published was because it kept changing as he experience more things if he had lived long enough it would have been published by him most likely, he rewrote it a couple times if I remember correctly
What fantasy worlds overlook are translations between names, so mzinchaleft in Dwemer language would probably be turned into a simpler and easier name in English
gothicfan52 Keep in mind though that the Dwemer language is near untranslatable. Moreover, consider the prestige associated with Dwemer society, culture, technology and by extension, language. It would probably be more prestigious to know the correct names of Dwemer ruins, as opposed to their names in the vernacular (for comparison, look at how the Greek language was viewed in Classical Roman history) and since map-makers are likely to be employed by academic institutions and the likes, it’s very unlikely they’d choose the less prestigious of two conventions.
@@user-pm1gb2eo1s It's not entirely untranslatable. The dwemer alphabet is known, even ingame, though of course only by scholars on the Dwemer. The real problem is that we don't have full knowledge of dwemer grammar or how the rules of their compound words work. EDIT: Nevermind, just realized you said "near untranslatable".
willl676 Aye, there’s a whole mini quest line in Morrowind about translating it but it’s made clear that even most Imperial experts in Dwemer history don’t know how to translate it.
The thing about the Westeros/Essos map is that it's made by scholars from Westeros. It's actually supposed to mirror old maps by medieval scholars. The continents have near straight line edges and the further you travel east, the outlandish the cultures become (not because they are, but because that's what Westerosi believe, they don't appear in the series).
The Warhammer map was meant to have ties to the real world. They liked that people could tie real geographic regions to the fantasy ones. It means people can get the favour of an area without having to actually know the lore.
Yep, it's satirical, it's not supposed to be a perfectly built world. A bit of that was lost over time (not to the degree it was in 40k though), but still, it's supposed to be Earth but with fantasy cultures and races, many of which are over the top parodies of real world ones (Ulthuan and Naggaroth reenacting the Athens vs Sparta thing, Lizardmen being indigenous mesoamericans who both believe in ancient aliens, and are correct to do so, literally everything about Bretonnia, and Norsca, etc)
Warhammer 40k and fantasy have always both been parodies of earth under different circumstances. sci fantasy, the other high tolkienesque fantasy, but a lot darker.
I seriously cannot tell if youre joking about the "cut from a corner" maps. Obviously most maps are cut from a corner. Not every story has an entirely developed planet, the entire point is that the story takes place in one section of the world. Do you want them to make an entire map of the planet that shows places that are on the polar opposite of where the actual story takes place? and why do you find it "cheap" for mountains to be at the edge of the map? obviously the mountains serve as an obstactle or barrier from the rest of the world and thus explais why the rest of the region is unexplored. it would be nice for you to elaborate on this stuff instead of just stating it as fact
@@lizardipeters6612 , they are more of a "known world" map, which is why it stops at the mountains and a certain distance of ocean, because nobody there has been able to travel further. These maps should probably not be included in "world map" categories if he is going to be that critical of them.
@Wiz because that's what sets apart experienced map makers from newbie map makers . you just do not draw some continents and call it a day. understanding how your continents got there, why are they like that, why the have those climates etc etc, it's just part of creating the world/story.
I'm also into fantasy maps and I'm going to critique this video cus I kind of find it pretty flawed I am sorry. I only hope for it to be used to improve future content like this because I find this an interesting subject. There was very, very little attention paid to actual geographic features in this video. The only real relevant geographic feature mentioned was that continents should really kind of share contours to give the impression of continental drift.. which was promptly forgotten for all future grades. Geography tends to follow basic patterns, most impacted by latitude and mountains. Tropical areas and desert areas tend to be around the same latitude. Very wet and very dry areas tend to be buffered by mountains. Rivers tend to form river systems with many rivers feeding into a larger one. One things rivers absolutely do NOT do, ever, is completely traverse an entire continent -- river systems have a particular direction they flow in. I hate to break it to you, but the Airbender geography is absolutely awful; it's not represented well in that particular map, but you have two big lakes that have drainage rivers literally going every which way around the entire continent, and a complete river/lake system which goes from one ocean to the next. If you look at more detained maps, you can see tons of unrealistic flaws, including a swamp literally right next to a desert with no mountain to buffer it -- wait what? Terrible. You also tend to not see smaller rivers feeding into these ones, there's no real semblance of real water systems. And sure, you could say that you're looking more at the style of the map itself and not the geography but, that airbender map has no features whatsoever that would be useful for navigation. It's just a bad map. The Westeros map, on the other hand, is much better because it actually has river systems that makes sense with many rivers feeding into larger rivers that don't unrealistically span the entire continent with many separate mouths draining into the ocean from all sides, mountains buffering wet and dry areas, and basically geographic features that actually make sense. Most everything is actually labeled and you get to see indications of climate. If you only account for the CANON geography, it's like... this is seriously a better map. Notice how the contours between the two continent actually line up? And it's the only map in this entire list that does that? How it actually follows the one and only relevant geographical feature mentioned in this video? I also feel like the "corner map" criticism is invalid because it makes a lot of sense for fantasy maps to only focus on a subcontinent region, for a lot of reasons. It makes sense the world isn't fully explored in fantasy settings, and these are supposed to be useful reference points for the setting, which typically does not span the entire world. I feel like you give bonus points just for something being a world map, which strikes me as kinda unfair. Anyway I hope if you continue this series you pay more attention to geographical features rather then, I don't know, what shapes of continents and what names of regions you think are more aesthetically pleasing. Because, personally, that is far more what interests me and it's also far less of a subjective measure. Thanks.
I just wanted to add that the Planetos map (game of thrones) is also only of the known world, indicating the inhabitants are still in pre discovery phase. Saying it's not a good map geographically is like saying our own pre discovery history maps are somehow not realistic simply because the other continents had not yet been discovered.
Agreed! It annoyed me how he just talked about continental drift for the RWBY map but not the others. Like...bruh? This point is just a me problem. I just don't like the look of corner. I get you points tho.
The map for A Song of Ice and Fire is what the people in the world think their planet looks like. So Essos probably isn't a rectangle, but people think it is because of their flawed map.
The first Middle Earth map is from Bilbo Baggin's original account of the War of the Rings, the Red Book of Westermarch. You can see the coastal section on the western part is quite detailed, all the way inland to the The Shire area (where Bilbo Baggin's kin, Hobbits, had lived for many generations. Beyond the Misty Mountains in the center, the Mirkwood Forest is detailed too but everything else becomes quite sketchy. That is because these regions were all drawn by Bilbo, based on more or lesser detailed information from people who had actually been there (Elves, Men, Dwarves). So yeah, it's not that impressive but that is mainly because it was drawn by a Hobbit. Hobbits remained in their own little land called "The Shire" and the only known exceptions to have travelled (far) beyond its borders were literally a handful of Hobbits.
And the second map he showed was from the previous ages of the world (Arda) before the war of the valar, so not entirely middle earth as the hobbit/lotr know it. So in my opinion is a separate map from a a separate story despite being the same world in essence.
@@badron88 I tried to explain in my comment but I'm not well educated on it. Is one not formed from the other or do they both exist in the one time (the land mass maps I mean)
@@mango5ful Yes, Beleriand and Middle Earth were part of the same landmass but considered to be separate continents. Until the end of the War of Wrath when Beleriand was destroyed and mostly sunk into the ocean. But those two are definitely separate maps.
"my personal opinions on the franchise won't play into my opinion" "Now, I love avatar the last airbender and can draw this map from memory therefore A" Huh
@@Outcast115 that wasn't the point, the point is if the guy didn't like avatar he would have given that map an f for lazy design like the other one that wasn't very detailed 😂 not to mention it's resemblence to earth with its northern Eurasia hemisphere and large central continent
Warhammer is supposed to be rip off of real world map, Every faction also represent some historical nation or belief. It's everything in our world but also including magic, witchcraft and creatures.
Yep, Europe = humans. Middle East = Angry Orcs. Northern Africa = Egyptians and Arabs. Ulthuaan = Atlantis. South America = Aztecs. Norway = Bad humans, North America = Edgy Elves cause we need more elves. Throw some dwarves in the mountains. Japan = Samurai.
What the map doesn't communicate well is that it isn't just an archipelago in the shape of a man, all of those are gargantuar chambers inside of Mata Nui's robotic body, connected by tunnels and whatnots with each other, creating his full body. Metru Nui is the inside of his head/brain, the island of Mata Nui (that smaller map) is actually the only part that is on the surface outside of Mata Nui himself. It got accidentally created on top of his face due to a... leak (the guy is lying dormant), directly above Metru Nui, and i think it is Metru's landmass that influenced the shape of the forming land above it, that is why both have the same shape.
@@someinsignificantguy4433 Not that much time was needed. Few hours of reading here and there would let one get the gist of it (like the geography and who Mata Nui even is). I haven't read every single thing though, like all the comics and whatnots, so I don't know how every single plot point played out besides the summary of those events.
@@christopherbacon1077 because of nostalgic and childhood that it, the show is not good and it difficult to take it seriously when it a kids show and I don't like protagonist because he look like a idiot
@@Kriss25Toku He's not an idiot, he's a kid who, like the other main characters grows and matures throughout the show. And while it has certain aspects of a kids show it also has aspects that appeal to adults.
Funfact about Middle Earth, the normal laws of physics wouldn't really apply to its shape either way. It was initially sung into existence as a flat plane by the gods, who then used it as their personal playground for uncounted millenia; growing forests and mountains, seeding lakes and oceans, and waging wars that obliterated whole mountain rages and tore unhealable scars into the world. Eventually, the gods even took the continent Valinor and tore it out of the world in order to finally protect it fully from evil; the "Undying Lands" exist in some seperate plane of existence now, and only the Elves can still find the Straight Road through the sky and reach it on their boats. Once they get there however, there's no going back. As Valinor was torn away, the plane it left behind warped and formed into a sphere - and that is how Middle Earth finally became a planet. But still, its shape and form is willed by the gods, so I suppose it follows its own rules. Sorry, physics.
Also important to note that the second middle earth map shown is largely a completely different map because it was from the first age, before beleriand sunk into the ocean due to the war of wrath
Maybe it's all coincidence. The Rockies and Appalachians are in pretty straight forward lines at opposite directions of each other so it makes a little bit of sense ig
If you're interested the in-world explanation is that in Tolkien's legendarium the world and everything in it was created by a deity, with help from other lesser deities, and so was designed as said deities wanted it to be.
Manuel Sacha basically the a region with an actual major faction will be more fleshed out, the Warhammer world Far East doesn't have any major factions except for maybe the Ogre Kingdoms and Chaos Dwarf, so that region of the world wasn't given much development or effort.
I think the people that sent him the Warhammer one just wanted him to review it so they insisted that it isn't earth. It literally is. Even in-canon. It's Earth. They call it Holy Terra because it's like a temple world but it's Earth.
The bionicle "map" makes absolute sense if you know the lore towards the end the of series. I checked out before they explained it or even showed it, and I assume you did too. I went back and found out about it, and apparently it's because it's not the outline of a dead diety, but literally the body of Mata-nui who is a robot.
The more I learn about Bionicle, the more questions I have. Amazing how they've managed to squeeze so much story out of a premise that boils down to "God-robot suffered a BSoD, we need to fix it"
@@Axius27 the god robot is actually based on one of the main creators of Bionicle, Christian Faber, who was suffering from a brain tumor and had to take medication. He was wondering "what if every pill contains a superhero that fights my tumor?"
"I don't know what was the original map of Middle Earth." The one from the books. Those famous books that everyone knows about where there's a map right in the front.
1. Believe it or not, some people don't have a copy of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy sitting around their house to scan. 2. Believe it or not, there have been multiple versions of LotR published! The text doesn't change much, aside from Tolkien fiddling with his worldbuilding, but the paratext-that is, the things which exist near the story proper but aren't part of it-changes a lot. Different covers, different appendices, and yes...different maps.
Timothy McLean Go to website www.google.com and in the "Search" field type "original lord of the rings map". Hope that helps. Besides, there is one iconic map of from LotR that pretty much appeared in every edition of LotR. Nice try though.
7:23 is the map in the 2+3.age when LotR rise and fall ( in the2 age Numenor is in west of ME)(the map in the Thumbnail is the map in the book) the map at 8:04 was at the 1age the Westlands they fall at the end of age1.
@@frozenweevil4022 I just checked, and they exclude (among other things) the pages containing the map. Regardless, saying "There are online resources you can use to find maps!" is a weird response to "I don't know what the original map was." Your response is better than "just google it lol," because Google turns up a lot of _different_ Middle Earth maps, but it still runs into the "not all versions of the book are the same" problem. (And the "oh hey Google Books doesn't actually display the maps" problem.)
Could've been a lot better. As it stands you don't explain what you are in fact comparing between maps (the basis of any ranking is comparison), instead you ramble, mentioning apparently whatever is coming to mind and then providing an apparently arbitrary grade, without breaking down even the importance of the factors you did mention in your judgement. Pretty incoherent analysis: D.
@@liamsmith331 The medium doesn't matter. He is grading maps infront of an audience, therefore he has to explain his reason and comparison between maps.
Mr Bee It’s a series about clans of feral cats living in the forest. There are a lot of books in the series and one of the main antagonists for the first six books is Tigerstar (his sprite design is Tigerstar but in a military uniform). I say Warrior Cats is worth a read, at least the first arc.
I see, I also like cats (no more than dogs, but I do). I have 3, one skinny and violent (Tom, very original name), one who is hairy and needy (Shay) and one who is fat and loving (Happy, also very original). Interestingly, I also have the third on top of me as I type.
The fact that World of Warcraft continents are "too well balanced" is because of the lore. They didn't drift appart because of tectonics, but because of an explosion (like, a *very* huge explosion). At the beginning, there was only one continent, named Kalimdor, and it got broken in some continents and islands when an explosion of magic power occurred in the center of the continent (where now lays the Maelstrom, that spiral between Kalimdor and the Broken Islands), and since the explosion happened in the middle, it makes sense that the continents were sepparated in the main cardinal directions
Amenator V well, I think he’s going by aesthetics, not lore/reasoning. If he was, I’d say bionical would take the cake for most interesting/inventive reason for the worldshape, seeing as how the vaguely human shape of the archipelago is due to the islands forming on top of the body of a massive god robot and there are tunnels (the comatosed interior workings of the god) which connect all the islands. God, I wish bionical wasn’t discontinued, if anything just because of the lore.
@@ximbabwe0228 well actually the easternmost piece of land are three contintents, Azeroth (south of Blackrock Mountain), Lordaeron (north of Thandol Span) and Khaz Modan (in between). Eastern Kingdoms is just the general name of the region since every civilization there has come in the "shape" of a kingdom, it isn't lazy but self-descriptive
Avatar world is actually have details but since it made for children they made the map more easier to understand for audience. But of course you cannot compare Avatar map with Middle Earth or World of Ice and Fire.
@Rising Horizon Gaming Seriously what? The show is honestly objectively one of the best children TV series ever. What makes it amazing is that is takes its audience seriously, so even an adult can watch and enjoy it. I personally never saw it as a kid but only much later, and I still loved it. It's about the characters and their personal journeys. Some of the characters being some of the best in not just children TV but media in general. Prince Zuko being one of the most flashed out antagonist to protagonist characters I've ever seen in a 3 season tv show. The nations cultures are specifically inspired by real world equivalents, but just that. Inspired. The setting still has the job of driving the story with the characters, which it does very well. Aangs personal conflict towards the end of the series is a very convincing mental burden, being cought up in it just how a child would act and think. The love for the series comes from its self awareness and its self aware humor.
Rising Horizon Gaming, you’re joking right? The show pays more attention to detail and to Asian culture than any anime you probably watch. Each bending style is based a real martial art, and they had a master of each fighting style brought on to make sure the animation was accurate. The creators literally moved to South Korea so they could be around the Korean studios they hired to animate the show. All of the writing shown the show is readable text, and most of the customs of the show are based on real life customs in Asia
@@TheHeavyModd Not really, the point he brought up was about continental drift (a valid point) but then ignored that for all the other maps. Not just that but it actually does make some sense especially compared to the other maps where he ignored his own point. Besides real world landmasses are like slightly hard play-doh. They bend, squish, crack, and break. India was a giant island that crashed onto the underside of Asia. As for his complaint on the lack of labels...that one's on you Comrade Wallace. You could've gotten a labeled version.
Emperor Tigerstar: Just because I really like the show doesn’t mean the map’s getting an A Also Emperor Tigerstar: I loved Avatar so much! This is a definite -A!
And Middle-earth gets a B If he said why, and if his reasoning made sense, I’d be fine. His two seconds of “I um.. uh, I don’t- it’s hard to tell what I’m seeing” sounded more like he was thinking of an excuse to give it a B and couldn’t WTF???
@@Yceb0x The Middle Earth is not good. It is just filled. Quantity, not quality. These maps share the syndrome of white wastelands. Except it is not "Here by lions" it is "Here be no story." Yeah, you can always tell where is the story taking a place. Which is why Warcraft is by far the greatest map in the bunch. The creators were forced to actually colour it.
Yup, his reasoning is so inconsistent. He dislikes the RWBY map for not having a good frozen north and praises that island for having all these biomes separated the way they are (with ice in the middle, lol) and then dislikes the whole map just cuz it looks like a gian robot.
As someone who writes in fantasy, here's something to note. Not necessarily a criticism, just noteworthy. A lot of writers (including myself) have drawn up maps that don't contain the whole world because they want to focus on the area or areas that are relevant to the story. Very few stories get the whole world involved, and usually it's because it's either a very small world or a very long series.
Well, the Warhammer world is supposed to look like Earth... I think that was what they were going for: Earth, but with terrifying magic screwing it up.
They basically took the general shape of the stains and adjusted them to fit their designs. The RWBY wiki actually has a picture of the actual napkin in case you want to compare the finalized map to original stains
The dragon is one of two, the others being the arctic zone Jen pointed out that isn't far north They represent the two gods that created the world and took the form of dragons after the first wave of humans rebelled against them, led by Salem herself
I thought this was going to be an in depth critique on fantasy maps i.e. How realistic the rivers and mountains are, etc Instead I got "I don't like those colors. This name sucks." lol you're just judging maps based on the art style and most of these aren't originals but artist renditions! Learning the lore of the world might help a bit when judging names, might make you look less foolish
@@TheHeavyModd And complete nonsense. Desert northern region, followed by an icy mid region which is then followed by a tropical region? How can an ice region exist between two incredibly warm climates?
Those mountains on the edge of the Wheel of Time map are called “The Spine of the World” and eventually the story goes past them into “the waste”. The map of the world from Wheel of Time (or “Randland” as people have taken to calling it jokingly) is visually a little wack, but the way it factors into the story really brings it to life. You go to every city throughout the story and they each have unique cultures and relationships with their neighboring city-states. Eventually there are people from other nations OUTSIDE of the “Known World” that become major players, a massive army from an unknown western continent, and people from a land in the far east past the waste, that most people think is fictional. Really cool world building, a lot of unreliable narrator stuff as well, since all the narration is characters _within_ the story.
Yeah, I think that WoT has the best worldbuilding of any series (At least that I have read), excluding external info. It's sheer length means that practically every single location can be visited, explored, and adds to the plot.
Yeah, I think Emperor Tigerstar would have given a higher rating to this map if he was also given a full globe that included the Waste, Shara and Seanchan and told this is basically an inset of the main landmass where the story takes place
To be honest...this was pretty stupid grading. You contradicted yourself every minute. Regarding how he seemingly views himself being picky with maps, he is a prime example of the dunning-kruger-effect
@@wisemankugelmemicus1701 He claimed to have high standards for reviewing a maps quality. But he only picked on personal preference. That is no standard at all. Edit: I only now realise you tried to be clever by correcting my grammar...guess you never heard of past tense. Grow up kiddo.
@@monkeydabomb6058 yeah got me there, though we do not use this...what ever it is called in our language, so I usually forget about it altogether. When your guys best argument is to correct my grammar, be my guest. To play your unnecessary game: "a maps quality" Two quotation marks...not one. Hopefully you see now how dimwitted correcting grammar is in an arguement.
Scifi Matrix bruh its a youtube comments section who cares. Also as an edit I just saw you make an argument towards someone without proper grammar in another reply section sooooo
It makes more sense if you accept the fan theory that the world exists in the Warhammer 40K universe, where there are a bunch of worlds that have been terraformed to look like Earth. By either Dark/Golden Age humans or the Old Ones.
In the RWBY map's defense, it came to be when the show's creator took a napkin, squirted ketchup onto it, rubbed the napkin on itself, and the result was the map we see now kind of like how ink blots work
In defense of the map of Remnant from _RWBY:_ - The map was created from a ketchup-stained napkin and then planned out using food graphics (I am not kidding, Monty Oum was _very_ talented and _very_ eccentric... or creative, take your pick). - Remnant's map has several versions, including a more generic fantasy one, a full terrain map in addition to the more stylized one, and ones with symbols marking the four main cities/kingdoms: Vale, Mistral, Atlas, and Vacuo. - As you actually pointed out, one of the continents looks like a Western dragon... but the one to the far east of it looks like an Eastern dragon. This is widely theorized to resemble the (*spoilers!*) brother gods who created Remnant, as they were able to take the forms of a Western and an Eastern dragon. - The name of the Western dragon continent is, actually, unknown, though some speculate it's the location of Salem's domain--which is further evidenced by the presence of no kingdoms on it, the shape resembling the dragon form of the God of Darkness, and the Land of Darkness bearing strong resemblance to Salem's land.
Fantasy worlds are based on our own so you would expect that. Also you need to create a certain set of rules and boundries for it to be cohesive. That's just a dumb argument to make.
Nippon means Japan in Japanese... The New world means the same as it does in our world. Its North and South America (Naggarond and Lustria). The names are entirely plausible.
@@seraphazrael4218 No, they are not. If it's been a long time that America isn't called "New World", que would it be in the future? And how would Japan change its name? America's been already called New World, and Japan's Nippon in its native language. Yeah, so what? That doesn't mean it makes sense to they be called like this in a future world.
“Let’s show the fire emblem map” *shows one map out of a plethora used as fire emblem jumps from one fantasy world to another like it’s going out of style*
And the funniest thing is that the map he graded (the Tellius map) is the only real corner map if I remember correctly. The Archanea, Jugdral, Elibe and Fodlan maps are way less guilty of that.
Really? I don't notice it. Now, don't take it the wrong way, I'd really like you to explain what you meant, because I am intrigued! Can you give me some examples? Thanks!
The rest of the world is hypothesised by scholars is Tamriel but many know that the nords came from Atmora and that there was an attack on Tamriel by Akavir. No one in Tamriel knows what the other containants look like but the devs say that this is the actual map of Nirn
Tiddles the Pigeon true but the only canonical maps show Tamriel, Yokuda and Pyandonea. Aldmeris, Atmora and Akavir have all never had a canon map show up in the franchise. And I would LOVE to get a source from you on that last statement cause I call BS
2 Things... RWBY map was created by the creator literally smooshing ketchup onto a napkin. He wanted to make sure that there could be no accidental recreations (Like with the Warhammer map). Speaking of which... The Warhammer Map is made to be a rip off of earth. It is fantasy earth after all.
Honestly awakening seemed to tie many of the continuity's together. With fire emblem 1 2 and 3 all cannon to it. ((Well the remakes of one and three anyway.)) Tellius cannon to it as well, with Laguz actually being mentioned and the magic actually having runes based off things from the tellius games. Hell it even connects to fire emblem 4 and five with the dreadlords and a few other things!
@@AbstractTraitorHero Right, except we only have reliable placement for Valentia & Archanea in Awakening & beyond. Meanwhile, we have no idea where Jugdral is relative to the other two. Awakening also introduced the Outrealms, which serves as a headache saver explaining Priam, Before Awakening xenologue, potentially the recruitable bosses. While there may be similarities to Tellius, there's no evidence to support its presence in the same continuity. I don't recall the Taguel ever being called Laguz? Does make for a nice mystery trying to trace together where each of these worlds interact with each other, I'll give 'em that!
So it's not okay for Bionicle to have its landmasses be the weathered remains of a dead deity buried in the ocean, or for a wintered continent to be called 'Northrend', but it *is* okay for a landmass called 'The Fire Nation' to literally just be a flame shaped island 🤔
Now that you pointed that out, there's a good chance it's meant to be a flame, but our world has countries that are closer to objects than that (Italy being a boot, for example). The Bionicle map _does_ make sense, to be fair, but it looks very fake. Because no real archepelagos look like that.
For me personally, corner maps are mostly fine, simply because there might be more stuff beyond that that the creator doesn't want to show yet, or they want to focus on a coastal kingdom, etc.
It often makes sence in the world too. The rest just wasnt discovered/ completly mapped out yet. Just like the romans had no idea how skandinavia looked or how far it goes into Asia or Africa.
I'm sure somebody said it but the Warcraft map isn't the world, there's an unexplored area on the back of the planet. What you saw weren't originally continents, the entire sea in the middle connected the masses together before it was submerged by a magic discharge. So it isn't lazy, its the surviving edges of a larger continent.
I love how ATLAs map has the names of the nations in litteral chinese. But it's not just making it chinese, they have mixed new and old characters and modified some to make it look more fantasy.
Glad to see I wasn't the only person thinking/remembering that! If I remember right, Mata-Nui is above (and outside) of the area depicted on the Matoran Universe map. The city of Metru-Nui just has the same shape as the island lying above it.
Not only that, but those other islands, which are all on roughly the same level as Metru Nui, are arranged that way because they're literally inside the body of the great spirit/giant robot god Mata Nui. The whole island of Mata Nui is just a malfunctioning camouflage system the denizens of Metru Nui started living on after Mata Nui fell into a coma. Fun fact, the series was meant to end 2-4 years in with the giant robot thing being a big reveal, but the success of the franchise as a whole made them continue on for a good while until actually revealing it in its 8th or 9th year.
Well RWBY’s map was created by Monty Oum squirting ketchup on a napkin in IHOP and editing it in photoshop. While it does look weird, gotta give Minty props for creativity.
I wouldn't count that as a sign of creativity, since it was just random chance his sneeze wound up in that particular pattern. ANd from what I've heard at least, it wasn't even intentionally something he went out and did specifically.
@@thoughtfulpug1333 Yeah. I like RWBY, but I wouldn't call their worldbuilding creative or profound. For example, their excuse for why names like Yang Xiao Long (her being blond) come to be in the same nation as names as Ruby Rose, was "is a fantasy world, so names don't have to correspond like in Earth." Yeah. Just like that.
@@JohnnyElRed yeah, RWBY was my jam back in the day, but now I recognize the writers are morons, no safer way to put it. Watching Volume 5 is utter agony, it is just the worst writing, acting, pacing and actiom I have ever seen in a story.
Actually the uninspired names are actually quite realistic. In the real world a lot of places have very uninspired names, like for example England has several rivers named "Avon", and "avon" is just celtic and literally means "river"
Ah, but that isn't because the rivers didn't have names. That is because the Romans asked the natives what that river was called and the natives misunderstood and gave them the word for river aka Avon, which was then taken as the name by the romans.
The seven cities is just one small part of the Malazan world, hence it's cut-off state on the map. You should review the Malazan world in its entirety next time, that map is much more interesting.
a stranger The Malazan world map is one of the biggest and most detailed maps out there, with an incredible amount of locations and cultures, and also there is not an official version of it that has been released to date.
It kinda remind me when i see Avatar map.. does Avatar it self kinda represent that japan (Fire nation) attack China (Earth nation) from in 19th century to WW2? Idk just opinion..
I think that's supposed to be the implication. The Fire Nation's original motivation for invasion - to share its "superior" culture and way of life with all while simultaneously extracting industrial resources for use at home - is even similar to Japan's real-world motivation for invading China and attempting to establish its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Did the Legend of Korra predicted the Hong Kong riots years before? If the Earth Kingdom is mainland China and the United Republic represented Hong Kong/Singapore, what does it say today?
I thought I would dislike this video because I'm a writer and I'm working on my own fantasy map, But your critiques were just so fair, and never once did I think that you were biased for or against any of the maps. You sir are a gentleman and a scholar and have earned yourself a like.
You should make an alt history rating next with topics such as 1984 or Kaiserreich, and even some fan-made alt-hist scenarios. Me and many others would really enjoy it. Maybe even collab with AHH on it.
Maps that have large blobs smack NE in the corner, with mountains at the edges: Sorry, but I consider these quite accurate. A culture will spread for as far as they can go. Oceans and large mountain chains tend to become huge obstacles. If the Silk Road was blocked by a mountain range, too, this would EXACTLY be what we'd see in medieval European maps. The Silk Road and Moghul empire gave *some* information of India and China. It's debatable whether a map could also be a land mass "smack in the SW corner"; this IMO is preference because of the historical European Maps that went at max from Finisterra to the Urals. North of the Equator, expeditions will become harder north of the polar circle; and around the Equator, tropical zones with large jungles and their extreme evolutionary pressure will make predators and plagues such a huge mess that eventually, continuing simply won't be worth it any longer. Tropical growth also means it is very hard to blaze trails and keep them open. Even today(!), in the Amazon Rainforest there are uncontacted tribes. Mountain ranges just block human migration, or at least cultural contact respectively. Cartographers may invent some land areas behind the mountain ranges; but that'll be more of a copyright mark, a mapmaker copying those imaginary features just giving away he copied the original drawer's map. In a Fantasy out-of-setting map (don't get me started how in-setting period maps would look like...) that's made for today's reader, mountains being the border just makes the most sense. There'll be mountain tribes/settlers on the edge, but many travellers won't venture more than some days' travel into the mountains before returning. Same goes for the oceans. Seafaring until the 15th century was predominantly coastal seafaring. It makes sense that, absent of a huge continent on the other side that the culture knows about, there'll be not much more than coastal waters drawn. So while they may not SEEM to be æsthetically pleasing, "landmass smack in the corner"-maps are about what maps would have looked like in most cultures; the only exception I can think of being India because it has two long coasts. China would be "smack in the upper left corner". Even Indonesia would draw Asia in the North and Africa in the West as "land borders", because they simply were out of focus for the culture.
Warhammer and ASoIaF: Imagining realistic maps IMO is only possible for Geologists. So yes, it makes PERFECT sense to glue Britain and Ireland together, or just fragment Earth a bit: You don't have to worry about an unimportant part of world-building, but can go right into the story that should be the main focus (or your story will be bad, regardless of the map). Also, you can use REAL maps to visualise areas, without drawing too few rivers or too much water. It's not lazy, it's making your world more believable for the reader and geologically alike. Even if you copied the wrong features (eg, the "border" between "Britain" and "Ireland" sporting features that wouldn't work in an inland map because they depend on coastal erosion), you still can explain it that that's what in-setting is known about the map.
In fact, land masses don't have to match, continental shelves have to. Crank up flood.firetree.net/ to +60cm sea level rise, then "grade" the map that it gives - I am quite sure you're in the territory of the "dragon-and-dolphin-map" because the matching shelf borders not lay underwater and the coastlines no longer match as now, only the elevated areas will be above water.
I thought this was gonna be more based on whether they got geographical elements right rather than whether they just looked aesthetically pleasing or not.
More Fantasy maps please. I want Strangereal (The ace combat series map). Maybe the The Pillars of Reality series by Jack Campbell map. And if I could stretch one please review the Honorversus map by David Weber.
This is the first time I've been on this channel so I don't what the regular content is, but this video was quite disappointing imo. The judgements seemed really quick and arbitrary without much knowledge of the media the maps are based on.
Normally he does videos on history of the world day by day or week by week, which are quite decent, but other videos than this he seems very biased and gross
Tolkien's Middle Earth *is* a version of our world too (like the Warhammer one). It started off as Arda, a perfectly symmetrical round world on a flat disc with a large lake at its center with an island at its center. With each tumultuous, age defining major catastrophe, the round continent split in two and started drifting off to east and west. The lake and the island disappearing. As the evil forces of subsequently Melkor/Morgoth/Sauron kept ravaging the world and plunging it into catastrophe, the once perfect shape became more fragmented and accentuated. When we look at the map of Middle Earth, we are looking at a predecessor to our own world. Btw, after the first major catastrophes or two, the once flat disc world of Arda curved into a sphere, so at the time of Middle Earth, it was a globe.
Finally someone agrees with me that the Game of Thrones continents are painfully rectangular! My friend absolutely refused to see it when I brought it up.
Frosty Woods the fact you said game of thrones makes your point invalid. Especially since game of thrones doesn’t even have all the continents nor islands from the actual book series.
Frosty Woods second if you actually knew the lore you would know that there is speculation that Westeros and essos are actually connected bu the lands of always winter
In fact I'm pretty disappointed that you missed Ursula K. Le Guin's ingenuity... especially Earthsea, an archipelago map, and the Western Shore, which is, as you expected from its name, kind of sticks out from a corner map but greatly detailed...
You didn't like the symmetry in other maps, but here you failed to notice that the entire Avatar world is basically diamond-shaped. Then you didn't like that a continent in another map was shaped like a dragon, but you had no problem with the skull-looking Fire nation and how unnatural looks the area where its eyes are supposed to be. Finally, you mentioned tectonics on another map, but it didn't seem to bother you that the Avatar map also doesn't look very realistic as far as tectonic powers are concerned. Obviously, rating maps is highly subjective, but if we are using rules to judge them, at least we can try to apply them to every case and be consistent.
Thank you for your video and your opinions. You made some observations that made me step back and evaluate some of my work. I would like to point out a away to not only judge the visual value of a map but also the value design. I would love to see your opinions on this same maps comparing their visual qualities vs the effectiveness as a tool /design. Also I would love to know your opinion on how well the map duffles it’s function. A suggestion on evaluation: design vs esthetics vs accomplishing a role First, Design should not be confused with esthetics. The purpose of a tool is to get a job done / accomplish a task. Not look pretty. Yes good design can produce amazing pieces of art. Also good design can result in some eye bleach moments. The two should not be confused. 2nd the eye candy. You have a great eye open what looks nice and looks wonky. Not only did you point out some common “tropes” you were able to successfully iterate their value. 3. Fulfillment of purpose. This is the hard one. Identifying if a map has successfully accomplished it’s objective. Examples. The avatar map. As a map it does show the relationship between land masses and the “cough” color of the people who live there. But that is all. Artistically it is breathtaking. But I have no idea what’s in the big colored spaces. The map, alone is basic and lacks information. Now here is the kicker. Why was it created? Did it fulfill its purpose. Absolutely. I see it, I instantly know what’s going on, this map is not used as a map but as a story device. It sets the world’s concept and the people’s cultures location. I have shirts of this, and wall scrolls Example 2: warhammer. (Oh boy) Design. This single map shows where every mountain, valley river is. It gives boarders, kingdoms, and everything else (except the skaveen) the design is unmatched. It is ugly. And a “rip” off of our world. Yes the details are impressive. Creative this is not. Copy paste and there you go. How success full does it do it’s job? As a map to be used by the warhamster guys, hands down better than anything else. If you point to an area on the map you have a good idea of what kind of people, armies, nasties your going to be dealing with. The jungle place over here. Lizards and Dino’s. Norway? We got baserkers and mead. It shows what’s there, whose there (biased on our own perceived knowledge) was climate and feel. All by making it detailed and that it resembles our world. That’s the symbolic language of a map being turn to 11. It won’t be on my wall but in a book.
That doesn't really matter for the point of the video and then makes it matter even less cuz the points he used to grade each map were inconsistent and poorly made.
A globe is the ultimate fantasy map. Everyone knows the Earth is a raptor
Indeed Cody, indeed
Heathen. It's actually an inverted mobius strip
Cody UA-cam’s most prolific commenter short of Justin y
The Earth is a shake weight
What If We Had top 5 Fantasy maps in one world?
Dora’s map is obviously the best map.
Better than RWBy's thats for sure
@@thoughtfulpug1333 Ctrl+C Ctrl+V
It is suspected by the fans of RWBY that the map of Remenet has two obvious dragons because the world was made by the gods who are bough dragoons in there true forms. Keep that in mind Tigerstar the continets where not made like they where in our world.
Yes it is xd
@@gunarsmiezis9321 the gods in RWBY are British cavalry men from the 1700s?
@@bootdude7527 I dont know. They only showed up for one episode in did nothing to explain any why.
The other map of Middle-Earth you showed is actually a map of Beleriand, which was west of the lands in the Lord of the Rings but which sank into the sea
Makes sense. I just graded what I was given off of twitter and both were called Middle Earth.
@@EmperorTigerstar thanks for explaining!
Wait what are you talking about? That is all of middle earth All of that was were all the lord of the rings movies take place they never sank into the sea
@Enlightened Pigeon I'll delete my comment then
Elves: *decapitate Morgoth*
Sealife: it's free real estate
I love how George R R Martin just put Britain upon Ireland and moved them near Turkey to create a fantasy map
Well, I mean Game of Thrones is quite literally just a fantasy retelling of the War of the Roses. So it sort makes sense the world would look somewhat similar to the place the story was based on
@@nicholaspost9017 So, he basically stole all of his ideas from the real world?
The Old Saxon no all it is mostly original but it is loosely based on the war of the roses.
@@theoldsaxon6484 I wouldn't say he stole the ideas from the real world. More like he took the idea and expanded or retracted what he wanted and what he thought was important to his story. A lot of writers do this to make their world/events seem more realistic or more easy for readers to digest because they have some base within reality. A lot of his story is inspired by real-world events, places, time periods and even climate/weather. Obviously, the Wall is a direct reference to Hadrian's wall that was built by Emporer Hadrian to keep the Pictish tribes (I think) out of Roman Britan. The red wedding is his take on the real-life event called the black dinner. The Maesters tower in Oldtown is based on both the Great Library of Alexandria and the Great lighthouse of Alexandria.
The Old Saxon I wouldn't say stealing. More like taking inspiration from history. Pretty much every fantasy writer takes inspiration from somewhere, even Tolkien, who used a lot of real world mythology to inspire his lore.
The thing I didn’t like about this video is that there was no standard on what you based your likes and dislikes on. Some of the maps you talked about continents and plate tectonics and the gave the map a low score. On other maps you were like, “I like the colors and the pretty compass” and then gave it a higher score. There was no consensus.
Yes correct, you have found yourself an example of the dunning-kruger-effect.
Two things could be going on here:
a) He´s simply doing a ranking on how he likes the maps. That means that two maps that are systematically as good as each other are subjected to the whims of a unreliable human brain with different and not all understood judging criteria.
b) He has a list of criteria, but he doesn´t want to bore his audience with the details so he talks about certain highlights. It may seem like he´s judging on a different bases, but he´s just trying to find the one reason that´d sum up the entire grade despite there being so many reasons that affect his choice.
I'd say there's criteria, it's just not stated. I mean you have to consider style, balance, potential, geo-activity, and overall effect.
A map that only comes through the corner of the map lives or dies by it's style, geo-activity, and overall effect.
A map that covers an entire world needs to at least pretend there could be geo-activity, and lives or dies by the balance implemented in it's design.
If a world is just basic shapes with no regard to geo-activity and/or a lack of creativity (ripping off real world places is not creative), then it reflects negatively on the map. If the world has a unique design and gives the appearance that the creator did some basic research on how planets function, it reflects better.
Woody Its clearly not a serious video stop trying to appear smart
Woody This is not the Dunning-Kruger effect at all. This guy has more competence judging fantasy maps (of all things) than most people. And just as much as others interested in history and maps. I mean his youtube channel is largely consists of this interest. It’s also pretty evident that this judging contest isn’t that serious. Man, read up on your definitions again.
The Falkland islands would make an awesome fantasy map, now I think about it.
In EU4 Random New World sometimes it just generates a huge version of the Falklands.
And Denmark and Australia, don't forget about them
I see, you too have Lindybeige's video in your recommendations.
@@ehtuanK Lindy who? What video? Explain please
@@pmcshow44 a brittish youtuber, with surprisingly only 800K subscribers. A week ago he uploaded a 1 hour video about the falklands conlict. It keeps showing up in my recommendations since I haven't gotten around to watching it. the Falkland's map/contour is in the thumb nail.
The second map you showed of Middle-earth was actually of the First Age when Beleriand still existed. Also the first map definitely isn't the OG one Tolkien drew, at least judging by the thickness of the contours of the map's objects.
Arda is technically supposed to be Earth so he kind of broke his rule on that one.
@@joshowensby6339 But it's pretty forgivable because it's not something you'd ever learn by just reading the books. There's no point within the context of any of Tolkien's stories where he reveals that. Very different from, say, Broken Empire where the reader is mean to discover that the story is taking place on a distant future Earth.
@@z-beeblebrox he does have a book where an english man finds the straight road (the way to get to the undying lands for the elves after the undying lands were taken out of the world) so technically it is in a book but I cant remember its name
@@strider04 "The Lost Road and Other Writings." Both it and the Silmarillion were published posthumously by his son, based on writings and essays JRR did while writing LotR. It's likely that Tolkien would have never published those materials no matter how much longer he lived, since he was very much against "showing the bone that makes the soup". So this calls into question what counts as canon, whether it's acceptable to fold backstory written by the writer himself against the writer's wishes, etc. It's all a very complicated topic, but personally I consider it outside the scope of Lord of the Rings as a narrative work.
@@z-beeblebrox the only reason the silmarillion was never published was because it kept changing as he experience more things if he had lived long enough it would have been published by him most likely, he rewrote it a couple times if I remember correctly
Emperor Tigerstar: I like Nirn, the names sound natural and not made up
Dwemers: *MZINCHALEFT*
Tbf have you *seen* Georgian?
What fantasy worlds overlook are translations between names, so mzinchaleft in Dwemer language would probably be turned into a simpler and easier name in English
gothicfan52 Keep in mind though that the Dwemer language is near untranslatable. Moreover, consider the prestige associated with Dwemer society, culture, technology and by extension, language. It would probably be more prestigious to know the correct names of Dwemer ruins, as opposed to their names in the vernacular (for comparison, look at how the Greek language was viewed in Classical Roman history) and since map-makers are likely to be employed by academic institutions and the likes, it’s very unlikely they’d choose the less prestigious of two conventions.
@@user-pm1gb2eo1s It's not entirely untranslatable. The dwemer alphabet is known, even ingame, though of course only by scholars on the Dwemer. The real problem is that we don't have full knowledge of dwemer grammar or how the rules of their compound words work. EDIT: Nevermind, just realized you said "near untranslatable".
willl676 Aye, there’s a whole mini quest line in Morrowind about translating it but it’s made clear that even most Imperial experts in Dwemer history don’t know how to translate it.
The thing about the Westeros/Essos map is that it's made by scholars from Westeros. It's actually supposed to mirror old maps by medieval scholars. The continents have near straight line edges and the further you travel east, the outlandish the cultures become (not because they are, but because that's what Westerosi believe, they don't appear in the series).
The Warhammer map was meant to have ties to the real world. They liked that people could tie real geographic regions to the fantasy ones. It means people can get the favour of an area without having to actually know the lore.
Yep, it's satirical, it's not supposed to be a perfectly built world. A bit of that was lost over time (not to the degree it was in 40k though), but still, it's supposed to be Earth but with fantasy cultures and races, many of which are over the top parodies of real world ones (Ulthuan and Naggaroth reenacting the Athens vs Sparta thing, Lizardmen being indigenous mesoamericans who both believe in ancient aliens, and are correct to do so, literally everything about Bretonnia, and Norsca, etc)
Warhammer 40k and fantasy have always both been parodies of earth under different circumstances. sci fantasy, the other high tolkienesque fantasy, but a lot darker.
I seriously cannot tell if youre joking about the "cut from a corner" maps. Obviously most maps are cut from a corner. Not every story has an entirely developed planet, the entire point is that the story takes place in one section of the world. Do you want them to make an entire map of the planet that shows places that are on the polar opposite of where the actual story takes place?
and why do you find it "cheap" for mountains to be at the edge of the map? obviously the mountains serve as an obstactle or barrier from the rest of the world and thus explais why the rest of the region is unexplored.
it would be nice for you to elaborate on this stuff instead of just stating it as fact
probably because its a overused thing with the mountains
These are "world" maps so I doesn't make sense to have a edge like that.
@@lizardipeters6612 , they are more of a "known world" map, which is why it stops at the mountains and a certain distance of ocean, because nobody there has been able to travel further. These maps should probably not be included in "world map" categories if he is going to be that critical of them.
He starts the video off by saying that if the names are hard for English people to say then it is a bad name
So
He is probably serious, unfortunately
@Wiz because that's what sets apart experienced map makers from newbie map makers . you just do not draw some continents and call it a day. understanding how your continents got there, why are they like that, why the have those climates etc etc, it's just part of creating the world/story.
I'm also into fantasy maps and I'm going to critique this video cus I kind of find it pretty flawed I am sorry. I only hope for it to be used to improve future content like this because I find this an interesting subject.
There was very, very little attention paid to actual geographic features in this video. The only real relevant geographic feature mentioned was that continents should really kind of share contours to give the impression of continental drift.. which was promptly forgotten for all future grades. Geography tends to follow basic patterns, most impacted by latitude and mountains. Tropical areas and desert areas tend to be around the same latitude. Very wet and very dry areas tend to be buffered by mountains. Rivers tend to form river systems with many rivers feeding into a larger one. One things rivers absolutely do NOT do, ever, is completely traverse an entire continent -- river systems have a particular direction they flow in.
I hate to break it to you, but the Airbender geography is absolutely awful; it's not represented well in that particular map, but you have two big lakes that have drainage rivers literally going every which way around the entire continent, and a complete river/lake system which goes from one ocean to the next. If you look at more detained maps, you can see tons of unrealistic flaws, including a swamp literally right next to a desert with no mountain to buffer it -- wait what? Terrible. You also tend to not see smaller rivers feeding into these ones, there's no real semblance of real water systems. And sure, you could say that you're looking more at the style of the map itself and not the geography but, that airbender map has no features whatsoever that would be useful for navigation. It's just a bad map.
The Westeros map, on the other hand, is much better because it actually has river systems that makes sense with many rivers feeding into larger rivers that don't unrealistically span the entire continent with many separate mouths draining into the ocean from all sides, mountains buffering wet and dry areas, and basically geographic features that actually make sense. Most everything is actually labeled and you get to see indications of climate. If you only account for the CANON geography, it's like... this is seriously a better map. Notice how the contours between the two continent actually line up? And it's the only map in this entire list that does that? How it actually follows the one and only relevant geographical feature mentioned in this video?
I also feel like the "corner map" criticism is invalid because it makes a lot of sense for fantasy maps to only focus on a subcontinent region, for a lot of reasons. It makes sense the world isn't fully explored in fantasy settings, and these are supposed to be useful reference points for the setting, which typically does not span the entire world. I feel like you give bonus points just for something being a world map, which strikes me as kinda unfair.
Anyway I hope if you continue this series you pay more attention to geographical features rather then, I don't know, what shapes of continents and what names of regions you think are more aesthetically pleasing. Because, personally, that is far more what interests me and it's also far less of a subjective measure. Thanks.
I just wanted to add that the Planetos map (game of thrones) is also only of the known world, indicating the inhabitants are still in pre discovery phase. Saying it's not a good map geographically is like saying our own pre discovery history maps are somehow not realistic simply because the other continents had not yet been discovered.
And...I spoke without reading all of it lol. My bad.
@@Rhaenarys It's all good :)
@@angryroy6277
Thank u!
Agreed!
It annoyed me how he just talked about continental drift for the RWBY map but not the others. Like...bruh?
This point is just a me problem. I just don't like the look of corner. I get you points tho.
The map for A Song of Ice and Fire is what the people in the world think their planet looks like. So Essos probably isn't a rectangle, but people think it is because of their flawed map.
Yep, real medieval and ancient era maps do have very similar errors.
Yo that’s super creative
That actually makes so much sense.
That makes sense. Because if this were the actual map of the World of Ice and Fire I could not understand why Yi Ti is so rich.
The first Middle Earth map is from Bilbo Baggin's original account of the War of the Rings, the Red Book of Westermarch.
You can see the coastal section on the western part is quite detailed, all the way inland to the The Shire area (where Bilbo Baggin's kin, Hobbits, had lived for many generations.
Beyond the Misty Mountains in the center, the Mirkwood Forest is detailed too but everything else becomes quite sketchy.
That is because these regions were all drawn by Bilbo, based on more or lesser detailed information from people who had actually been there (Elves, Men, Dwarves).
So yeah, it's not that impressive but that is mainly because it was drawn by a Hobbit. Hobbits remained in their own little land called "The Shire" and the only known exceptions to have travelled (far) beyond its borders were literally a handful of Hobbits.
Nice. You are the first i see here who includes Tolkiens style of justifying everything in his world. I love that style.
And the second map he showed was from the previous ages of the world (Arda) before the war of the valar, so not entirely middle earth as the hobbit/lotr know it.
So in my opinion is a separate map from a a separate story despite being the same world in essence.
Not literally a handful of Hobbits - Hobbits aren’t THAT small 😉
@@badron88 I tried to explain in my comment but I'm not well educated on it. Is one not formed from the other or do they both exist in the one time (the land mass maps I mean)
@@mango5ful Yes, Beleriand and Middle Earth were part of the same landmass but considered to be separate continents. Until the end of the War of Wrath when Beleriand was destroyed and mostly sunk into the ocean. But those two are definitely separate maps.
"my personal opinions on the franchise won't play into my opinion"
"Now, I love avatar the last airbender and can draw this map from memory therefore A"
Huh
I mean if you don't like the Avatar map is an A then I don't know what to tell you.
@@Outcast115 that wasn't the point, the point is if the guy didn't like avatar he would have given that map an f for lazy design like the other one that wasn't very detailed 😂 not to mention it's resemblence to earth with its northern Eurasia hemisphere and large central continent
Just look closely and its a spread out and 3D animated Yin Yang symbol, thats creativity at its finest
maps looks like it was drawn by a 5 years old weeb with a bunch of crayons lol
Mr Flibble says...
Game over, boys!
Fantasy maps: *_exists_*
Emperor Tigerstar: *I'm your tutor*
Hey dude, idk why but i always encounter a comment from you on the videos I watch
Warhammer is supposed to be rip off of real world map, Every faction also represent some historical nation or belief. It's everything in our world but also including magic, witchcraft and creatures.
Doom Wolf No, they supposed to represent the hedonism of the Americans :)
@Doom Wolf Ask seals;)
Yep, Europe = humans. Middle East = Angry Orcs. Northern Africa = Egyptians and Arabs. Ulthuaan = Atlantis. South America = Aztecs. Norway = Bad humans, North America = Edgy Elves cause we need more elves. Throw some dwarves in the mountains. Japan = Samurai.
@@jamesrobsonza7752 i agree with that but Northern africa = orcs and Middle east = Araby
You had Bionicles as a kid?
*Respect +*
Everyone had.
He's right though, the full Matoran Universe isn't very aesthetically effective.
What the map doesn't communicate well is that it isn't just an archipelago in the shape of a man, all of those are gargantuar chambers inside of Mata Nui's robotic body, connected by tunnels and whatnots with each other, creating his full body.
Metru Nui is the inside of his head/brain, the island of Mata Nui (that smaller map) is actually the only part that is on the surface outside of Mata Nui himself. It got accidentally created on top of his face due to a... leak (the guy is lying dormant), directly above Metru Nui, and i think it is Metru's landmass that influenced the shape of the forming land above it, that is why both have the same shape.
@@Jasza676 how many years you had to study to understand the bionicle lore?
@@someinsignificantguy4433 Not that much time was needed. Few hours of reading here and there would let one get the gist of it (like the geography and who Mata Nui even is). I haven't read every single thing though, like all the comics and whatnots, so I don't know how every single plot point played out besides the summary of those events.
At the beginning: «Im not going to judge from what series I like»
At the end: «Im a huge fan of this show»
Honestly last bender is the most overrated kids show that adult watch
@@Kriss25TokuCare to say why?
@@christopherbacon1077 because of nostalgic and childhood that it, the show is not good and it difficult to take it seriously when it a kids show and I don't like protagonist because he look like a idiot
@@Kriss25Toku He's not an idiot, he's a kid who, like the other main characters grows and matures throughout the show. And while it has certain aspects of a kids show it also has aspects that appeal to adults.
Kriss25 Toku what an abysmal take
Funfact about Middle Earth, the normal laws of physics wouldn't really apply to its shape either way.
It was initially sung into existence as a flat plane by the gods, who then used it as their personal playground for uncounted millenia; growing forests and mountains, seeding lakes and oceans, and waging wars that obliterated whole mountain rages and tore unhealable scars into the world.
Eventually, the gods even took the continent Valinor and tore it out of the world in order to finally protect it fully from evil; the "Undying Lands" exist in some seperate plane of existence now, and only the Elves can still find the Straight Road through the sky and reach it on their boats. Once they get there however, there's no going back.
As Valinor was torn away, the plane it left behind warped and formed into a sphere - and that is how Middle Earth finally became a planet.
But still, its shape and form is willed by the gods, so I suppose it follows its own rules.
Sorry, physics.
Also important to note that the second middle earth map shown is largely a completely different map because it was from the first age, before beleriand sunk into the ocean due to the war of wrath
The only thing I don't like about the middle Earth map is how the mountains of Mordor are in 3 straight lines. Always looked weird to me
Maybe it's all coincidence. The Rockies and Appalachians are in pretty straight forward lines at opposite directions of each other so it makes a little bit of sense ig
@@tony.2902 true but they are more on an angle unlike mordors which are pretty much parralel
If you're interested the in-world explanation is that in Tolkien's legendarium the world and everything in it was created by a deity, with help from other lesser deities, and so was designed as said deities wanted it to be.
@@tony.2902 you have an interesting point. I would counter with that they're also not connected and the Appalachians go more in a diagnal line up.
Those mountains are made by Sauron.
Pretty sure Cathay on the Warhammer Map is just an old European word for China
Yes, it is. Some Europeans still use it. For example, in Russian China is Kitai
@Manuel Sacha :|
Manuel Sacha Araby, yes. Italia, no, the Warhammer world does have a version of Italy called Tilea.
Manuel Sacha basically the a region with an actual major faction will be more fleshed out, the Warhammer world Far East doesn't have any major factions except for maybe the Ogre Kingdoms and Chaos Dwarf, so that region of the world wasn't given much development or effort.
I think the people that sent him the Warhammer one just wanted him to review it so they insisted that it isn't earth. It literally is. Even in-canon. It's Earth. They call it Holy Terra because it's like a temple world but it's Earth.
Now rate Earth as if it were a fantasy world. that's gonna end well
Yes, good idea.
Beefy Blom eh it's probably a C-
“What idiot put so many isthmuses and tiny straits, unrealistic, F”
He did that with Warhammer.
Beefy Blom no
The bionicle "map" makes absolute sense if you know the lore towards the end the of series. I checked out before they explained it or even showed it, and I assume you did too. I went back and found out about it, and apparently it's because it's not the outline of a dead diety, but literally the body of Mata-nui who is a robot.
The more I learn about Bionicle, the more questions I have. Amazing how they've managed to squeeze so much story out of a premise that boils down to "God-robot suffered a BSoD, we need to fix it"
@@Axius27 the god robot is actually based on one of the main creators of Bionicle, Christian Faber, who was suffering from a brain tumor and had to take medication. He was wondering "what if every pill contains a superhero that fights my tumor?"
@@krishacz I think I heard about that, the "Bio" part of the name refers to biology...
@@Wiimeiser BIONICLE means BIOlogical chroNICLE.
"I don't know what was the original map of Middle Earth." The one from the books. Those famous books that everyone knows about where there's a map right in the front.
1. Believe it or not, some people don't have a copy of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy sitting around their house to scan.
2. Believe it or not, there have been multiple versions of LotR published! The text doesn't change much, aside from Tolkien fiddling with his worldbuilding, but the paratext-that is, the things which exist near the story proper but aren't part of it-changes a lot. Different covers, different appendices, and yes...different maps.
Timothy McLean Go to website www.google.com and in the "Search" field type "original lord of the rings map". Hope that helps. Besides, there is one iconic map of from LotR that pretty much appeared in every edition of LotR. Nice try though.
7:23 is the map in the 2+3.age when LotR rise and fall ( in the2 age Numenor is in west of ME)(the map in the Thumbnail is the map in the book) the map at 8:04 was at the 1age the Westlands they fall at the end of age1.
@@timothymclean Google has the scanned beginning of most books for free
@@frozenweevil4022 I just checked, and they exclude (among other things) the pages containing the map.
Regardless, saying "There are online resources you can use to find maps!" is a weird response to "I don't know what the original map was." Your response is better than "just google it lol," because Google turns up a lot of _different_ Middle Earth maps, but it still runs into the "not all versions of the book are the same" problem. (And the "oh hey Google Books doesn't actually display the maps" problem.)
Could've been a lot better. As it stands you don't explain what you are in fact comparing between maps (the basis of any ranking is comparison), instead you ramble, mentioning apparently whatever is coming to mind and then providing an apparently arbitrary grade, without breaking down even the importance of the factors you did mention in your judgement.
Pretty incoherent analysis: D.
It's a UA-cam video. You're not his professor lol.
VineFynn have to agree, this definitely could have been more in-depth
Totally agree
@@liamsmith331
The medium doesn't matter. He is grading maps infront of an audience, therefore he has to explain his reason and comparison between maps.
Also there were maps on here that he wasn't even using the actual maps Such as Westeros from Game of Thrones.
You’d think someone with “Tigerstar” in their name would do the warrior cats map lmao (jk)
Mr Bee It’s a series about clans of feral cats living in the forest. There are a lot of books in the series and one of the main antagonists for the first six books is Tigerstar (his sprite design is Tigerstar but in a military uniform). I say Warrior Cats is worth a read, at least the first arc.
I think you like cats...
Kaiser Wilhelm II perhaps a little (the cat in my pfp is my own cat. Her name is Jojo and she’s amazing. She’s laying on me as I type this)
I see, I also like cats (no more than dogs, but I do). I have 3, one skinny and violent (Tom, very original name), one who is hairy and needy (Shay) and one who is fat and loving (Happy, also very original). Interestingly, I also have the third on top of me as I type.
Khajit has maps if you have coin
The fact that World of Warcraft continents are "too well balanced" is because of the lore. They didn't drift appart because of tectonics, but because of an explosion (like, a *very* huge explosion).
At the beginning, there was only one continent, named Kalimdor, and it got broken in some continents and islands when an explosion of magic power occurred in the center of the continent (where now lays the Maelstrom, that spiral between Kalimdor and the Broken Islands), and since the explosion happened in the middle, it makes sense that the continents were sepparated in the main cardinal directions
Amenator V well, I think he’s going by aesthetics, not lore/reasoning. If he was, I’d say bionical would take the cake for most interesting/inventive reason for the worldshape, seeing as how the vaguely human shape of the archipelago is due to the islands forming on top of the body of a massive god robot and there are tunnels (the comatosed interior workings of the god) which connect all the islands.
God, I wish bionical wasn’t discontinued, if anything just because of the lore.
I still can't believe how lazy the name Eastern Kingdoms is
ximbabwe0228 to be fair a lot of real world places are named that way. Exhibited A: Austria/Österreich.
@@ximbabwe0228 well actually the easternmost piece of land are three contintents, Azeroth (south of Blackrock Mountain), Lordaeron (north of Thandol Span) and Khaz Modan (in between). Eastern Kingdoms is just the general name of the region since every civilization there has come in the "shape" of a kingdom, it isn't lazy but self-descriptive
@@gonzalosanchez1538 uuhm, dude, Azeroth is the planets name
Realistic maps with labels and details: meh i dont like it , D-
Cartooney map with no details whatsoever: S O L I D A -
Avatar world is actually have details but since it made for children they made the map more easier to understand for audience. But of course you cannot compare Avatar map with Middle Earth or World of Ice and Fire.
@Rising Horizon Gaming Seriously what?
The show is honestly objectively one of the best children TV series ever.
What makes it amazing is that is takes its audience seriously, so even an adult can watch and enjoy it.
I personally never saw it as a kid but only much later, and I still loved it.
It's about the characters and their personal journeys. Some of the characters being some of the best in not just children TV but media in general. Prince Zuko being one of the most flashed out antagonist to protagonist characters I've ever seen in a 3 season tv show.
The nations cultures are specifically inspired by real world equivalents, but just that. Inspired.
The setting still has the job of driving the story with the characters, which it does very well.
Aangs personal conflict towards the end of the series is a very convincing mental burden, being cought up in it just how a child would act and think.
The love for the series comes from its self awareness and its self aware humor.
Rising Horizon Gaming, you’re joking right? The show pays more attention to detail and to Asian culture than any anime you probably watch. Each bending style is based a real martial art, and they had a master of each fighting style brought on to make sure the animation was accurate. The creators literally moved to South Korea so they could be around the Korean studios they hired to animate the show. All of the writing shown the show is readable text, and most of the customs of the show are based on real life customs in Asia
but hey hes not gonna let his clear bias for the show affect his "critique!
@Rising Horizon Gaming Found the master baiter
6:20 bruh that’s just Alaska upsideown
Wait what it actually is, no way.
Fun Fact, the map of Remnant actually originates from a ketchup-stain
I was a little sad he rated it as a d
@@atomicshiney6002 Same, I was hyped he included my submission but them kinda shat all over it
Well I agree that it's a cool way to make a world map but his critique was principled and made sense I guess
@@TheHeavyModd
Not really, the point he brought up was about continental drift (a valid point) but then ignored that for all the other maps. Not just that but it actually does make some sense especially compared to the other maps where he ignored his own point.
Besides real world landmasses are like slightly hard play-doh. They bend, squish, crack, and break. India was a giant island that crashed onto the underside of Asia.
As for his complaint on the lack of labels...that one's on you Comrade Wallace. You could've gotten a labeled version.
Emperor Tigerstar: Just because I really like the show doesn’t mean the map’s getting an A
Also Emperor Tigerstar: I loved Avatar so much! This is a definite -A!
But he liked the map too
i know.. i was like wtf?? he's like "i love the Details!" but the world of Avatar doesn't even have a name... and it gets an A???
FR!
And Middle-earth gets a B
If he said why, and if his reasoning made sense, I’d be fine. His two seconds of “I um.. uh, I don’t- it’s hard to tell what I’m seeing” sounded more like he was thinking of an excuse to give it a B and couldn’t
WTF???
@@Yceb0x The Middle Earth is not good. It is just filled. Quantity, not quality. These maps share the syndrome of white wastelands. Except it is not "Here by lions" it is "Here be no story." Yeah, you can always tell where is the story taking a place. Which is why Warcraft is by far the greatest map in the bunch. The creators were forced to actually colour it.
Bionicle universe map is an actual robot.
Yup, his reasoning is so inconsistent. He dislikes the RWBY map for not having a good frozen north and praises that island for having all these biomes separated the way they are (with ice in the middle, lol) and then dislikes the whole map just cuz it looks like a gian robot.
Sigh, yet another peninsula conveniently surrounded By mountains.
Europe map- C+
nice
As someone who writes in fantasy, here's something to note. Not necessarily a criticism, just noteworthy. A lot of writers (including myself) have drawn up maps that don't contain the whole world because they want to focus on the area or areas that are relevant to the story. Very few stories get the whole world involved, and usually it's because it's either a very small world or a very long series.
“...And for our FINAL FANTASY map...”
Mat_h3w there’s like 15 of them.
martypython lol
Well, the Warhammer world is supposed to look like Earth... I think that was what they were going for: Earth, but with terrifying magic screwing it up.
he didn't mention Ulthuan. *sad pompous elf noise*
@@thegreatbookofgrudges6953 I guess not...
the rwby map apparently was made when Monty folded and unfolded a ketchup stained napkin, no idea how he got the dragon.
Maybe he -is- just that good at folding and unfolding ketchup-stained napkins
Edit: was
They basically took the general shape of the stains and adjusted them to fit their designs. The RWBY wiki actually has a picture of the actual napkin in case you want to compare the finalized map to original stains
@Pepe The Platypus
The "is" is crossed out for a reason...
The dragon is one of two, the others being the arctic zone Jen pointed out that isn't far north
They represent the two gods that created the world and took the form of dragons after the first wave of humans rebelled against them, led by Salem herself
*he pointed out
I thought this was going to be an in depth critique on fantasy maps i.e. How realistic the rivers and mountains are, etc
Instead I got "I don't like those colors. This name sucks." lol you're just judging maps based on the art style and most of these aren't originals but artist renditions! Learning the lore of the world might help a bit when judging names, might make you look less foolish
This video sucks
You're missing the point about the Bionicle map. The landscape itself is literally a giant machine.
Yes
He litterly said it looked like a dismembered diety.
No he explicitly mentioned that but just thinks it's not a good look
Not sure I understand the checklist of criteria you're grading on. Seemed pretty arbitrary.
8:51 i see some bias here... an island with desert, jungle, ice?, and volcanic region at the same time?? :thinking:
But it's cool though!
@@TheHeavyModd And complete nonsense. Desert northern region, followed by an icy mid region which is then followed by a tropical region? How can an ice region exist between two incredibly warm climates?
Westeros and "Easteros". Good guess but it's called Essos.
The Lands and Peoples of Planetos
In the middle of Systemos in the the Universos.
@@theoldsaxon6484 You forgot about the galaxios
@@THEPELADOMASTER Oh, yeah! Thanks for the reminder!
And Merry Christmas to you, as well!
Those mountains on the edge of the Wheel of Time map are called “The Spine of the World” and eventually the story goes past them into “the waste”.
The map of the world from Wheel of Time (or “Randland” as people have taken to calling it jokingly) is visually a little wack, but the way it factors into the story really brings it to life. You go to every city throughout the story and they each have unique cultures and relationships with their neighboring city-states. Eventually there are people from other nations OUTSIDE of the “Known World” that become major players, a massive army from an unknown western continent, and people from a land in the far east past the waste, that most people think is fictional.
Really cool world building, a lot of unreliable narrator stuff as well, since all the narration is characters _within_ the story.
Yeah, I think that WoT has the best worldbuilding of any series (At least that I have read), excluding external info. It's sheer length means that practically every single location can be visited, explored, and adds to the plot.
Yeah, I think Emperor Tigerstar would have given a higher rating to this map if he was also given a full globe that included the Waste, Shara and Seanchan and told this is basically an inset of the main landmass where the story takes place
To be honest...this was pretty stupid grading.
You contradicted yourself every minute.
Regarding how he seemingly views himself being picky with maps, he is a prime example of the dunning-kruger-effect
contradict*
Also, how does ability factor into subjective opinion?
@@wisemankugelmemicus1701
He claimed to have high standards for reviewing a maps quality.
But he only picked on personal preference. That is no standard at all.
Edit: I only now realise you tried to be clever by correcting my grammar...guess you never heard of past tense. Grow up kiddo.
@@_Woody_ I'll help him with correcting you. A map's quality, not "a maps quality
@@monkeydabomb6058 yeah got me there, though we do not use this...what ever it is called in our language, so I usually forget about it altogether.
When your guys best argument is to correct my grammar, be my guest.
To play your unnecessary game:
"a maps quality"
Two quotation marks...not one.
Hopefully you see now how dimwitted correcting grammar is in an arguement.
Scifi Matrix bruh its a youtube comments section who cares. Also as an edit I just saw you make an argument towards someone without proper grammar in another reply section sooooo
Warhammer being a ripoff is it's whole shtick.
It makes more sense if you accept the fan theory that the world exists in the Warhammer 40K universe, where there are a bunch of worlds that have been terraformed to look like Earth. By either Dark/Golden Age humans or the Old Ones.
That doesn't make it good, that's just admitting laziness.
@@lahusahah1994 GW has made it clear that the two universes were separate.
@@the_dropbear4392 It is implied that wasn't always the case as in official fantasy art there are chaos troops with bolters and such.
@@ExternalDialogue yeah it wasn't always the case. But it has been for quite a few years now
Alternate history
You should grade:
Kaiserreich
Furherreich
And
Red World
Don't forget The New Order
And any of the YA dystopias that happen to have proper maps of the world. XD
Fuhrerreich? Right?
Don’t forget the canon lore map for TWR (Thousand Week Reich).
Fuhrerreich is an alternate history of an alternate history.
Sigmar Forbids this Tigerstar! HERETIC
Sigmar ≠ Old Warhammer Fantasy
@@camyx_ What, Sigmar was a thing long before Age of Sigmar was thing...
@@camyx_ Sigmar was around long before AoS buddy
@@camyx_ Big dumb
Heretic Cat!!!!
Why did this show up in my recommendations and why was it so disappointing
I was just thinking the same thing. Also, why did I keep watching it?
@@brianmayerchak1677 Sunk cost. You wasted your time but still staid because you needed the video to feel satisfying.
@@invock that's not how you spell stayed I'm afraid.
@@corn4me994 this stayn will never wash out
In the RWBY map's defense, it came to be when the show's creator took a napkin, squirted ketchup onto it, rubbed the napkin on itself, and the result was the map we see now
kind of like how ink blots work
The map sucks tho. Just like the show after the third volume
Still crazy how the dude managed to straight up get a dragon and a fish in ketchup.
Like damn.
The game of thrones ending would definitely have an F
haha GOT bad amirite guys
@@isakkallsmyr9854 D&D burned my crops,poisoned the water supply and delivered a plague upon our houses!
@@Marylandbrony They did???
@@danielogats No, But are we going to wait around until they do?
Nah... At least an D-
In defense of the map of Remnant from _RWBY:_
- The map was created from a ketchup-stained napkin and then planned out using food graphics (I am not kidding, Monty Oum was _very_ talented and _very_ eccentric... or creative, take your pick).
- Remnant's map has several versions, including a more generic fantasy one, a full terrain map in addition to the more stylized one, and ones with symbols marking the four main cities/kingdoms: Vale, Mistral, Atlas, and Vacuo.
- As you actually pointed out, one of the continents looks like a Western dragon... but the one to the far east of it looks like an Eastern dragon. This is widely theorized to resemble the (*spoilers!*) brother gods who created Remnant, as they were able to take the forms of a Western and an Eastern dragon.
- The name of the Western dragon continent is, actually, unknown, though some speculate it's the location of Salem's domain--which is further evidenced by the presence of no kingdoms on it, the shape resembling the dragon form of the God of Darkness, and the Land of Darkness bearing strong resemblance to Salem's land.
EmperorTigerstar: Reviews fantasy world maps.
Also EmperorTigerstar: Brings real-world scientific concepts as criteria into his reviews.
On that note, I challenge you to review the Discworld map/s in another video!
Fantasy worlds are based on our own so you would expect that. Also you need to create a certain set of rules and boundries for it to be cohesive. That's just a dumb argument to make.
You would think it is obvious how rivers work, yet it is quite surprising just how much can mapmakers screw them up...
@@GreenRatel not dumb when he only applies real world knowledge to some maps, while ignoring other real world aspects and general context for others.
@@GreenRatel Yeah, I agree. Though I did get in trouble on one discord server for saying that basically...
EmperorTigetstar: We will be grading FANTASY World Maps
Also EmperorTigerstar: Its not Scientifically accurate.
The world of Warhammer was created to be a mythicized version of real history, from a western european perspective.
He shouldn’t have added it to this list. It is supposed to be a very alternate history of Earth.
The names given were terrible though.. New World? Nippon?
Nippon means Japan in Japanese... The New world means the same as it does in our world. Its North and South America (Naggarond and Lustria). The names are entirely plausible.
@@seraphazrael4218 No, they are not. If it's been a long time that America isn't called "New World", que would it be in the future? And how would Japan change its name?
America's been already called New World, and Japan's Nippon in its native language. Yeah, so what? That doesn't mean it makes sense to they be called like this in a future world.
@@guilhermevargas5643 Dude, fix your grammar so I can give you a proper response, I couldn't understand half of that.
I was expecting actual geographical science to be used in this video, but instead I wasted 11 minutes of my life.
“Let’s show the fire emblem map”
*shows one map out of a plethora used as fire emblem jumps from one fantasy world to another like it’s going out of style*
You know how casuals are
And the funniest thing is that the map he graded (the Tellius map) is the only real corner map if I remember correctly.
The Archanea, Jugdral, Elibe and Fodlan maps are way less guilty of that.
“People will use the weirdest possible syllables when they really don’t need to”
Poland in a nutshell
Really? I don't notice it. Now, don't take it the wrong way, I'd really like you to explain what you meant, because I am intrigued! Can you give me some examples? Thanks!
Poland has nothing on the Welsh.
"llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch"
Germany: Am I A Joke to you?
The map of Nirn is likely not entirely accurate because exempting a few locations much of the world is not no known
The rest of the world is hypothesised by scholars is Tamriel but many know that the nords came from Atmora and that there was an attack on Tamriel by Akavir. No one in Tamriel knows what the other containants look like but the devs say that this is the actual map of Nirn
Tiddles the Pigeon true but the only canonical maps show Tamriel, Yokuda and Pyandonea. Aldmeris, Atmora and Akavir have all never had a canon map show up in the franchise. And I would LOVE to get a source from you on that last statement cause I call BS
Metsarebuff 22 I didn’t mean they don’t exist, I meant their landmasses aren’t canon, meaning we don’t know their sizes and shapes
“I’m grading maps but I don’t know any of the lore behind most of the maps”
2 Things...
RWBY map was created by the creator literally smooshing ketchup onto a napkin. He wanted to make sure that there could be no accidental recreations (Like with the Warhammer map). Speaking of which...
The Warhammer Map is made to be a rip off of earth. It is fantasy earth after all.
There is no one Fire Emblem map. Tellius is only one example out of 6, potentially 7 different continuities.
Yeah and only pherae matters
@@quuuuro Oh, you mean Elibe?
@@Mind_Crimes yeah, my bad lol
Honestly awakening seemed to tie many of the continuity's together.
With fire emblem 1 2 and 3 all cannon to it. ((Well the remakes of one and three anyway.)) Tellius cannon to it as well, with Laguz actually being mentioned and the magic actually having runes based off things from the tellius games.
Hell it even connects to fire emblem 4 and five with the dreadlords and a few other things!
@@AbstractTraitorHero Right, except we only have reliable placement for Valentia & Archanea in Awakening & beyond. Meanwhile, we have no idea where Jugdral is relative to the other two.
Awakening also introduced the Outrealms, which serves as a headache saver explaining Priam, Before Awakening xenologue, potentially the recruitable bosses. While there may be similarities to Tellius, there's no evidence to support its presence in the same continuity. I don't recall the Taguel ever being called Laguz?
Does make for a nice mystery trying to trace together where each of these worlds interact with each other, I'll give 'em that!
Wonder what he would say on Fire Emblem Fates world map.
Oh god.
The map in Three Houses does have the land mass of Fodlan jutting out from the top right corner, with a mountain range at the edge...
How about Three Houses’? A game that has actual world building?
@@zwan6740 I want his opinion on Google Map.
So it's not okay for Bionicle to have its landmasses be the weathered remains of a dead deity buried in the ocean, or for a wintered continent to be called 'Northrend', but it *is* okay for a landmass called 'The Fire Nation' to literally just be a flame shaped island 🤔
Now that you pointed that out, there's a good chance it's meant to be a flame, but our world has countries that are closer to objects than that (Italy being a boot, for example).
The Bionicle map _does_ make sense, to be fair, but it looks very fake. Because no real archepelagos look like that.
For the Warhammer Map looking like earth:
It's the point. It is fantasy, but more like an alternate fantasy History world
@tigerstar
The Warhammer map is supposed to look like poorly drawn earth
For me personally, corner maps are mostly fine, simply because there might be more stuff beyond that that the creator doesn't want to show yet, or they want to focus on a coastal kingdom, etc.
I do wish that the corner maps were less of just a big blob tho and the coastlines had more variety
It often makes sence in the world too. The rest just wasnt discovered/ completly mapped out yet. Just like the romans had no idea how skandinavia looked or how far it goes into Asia or Africa.
You should grade the Breath of the Wild map!
i give it a z
The Great CooLite basically what he said for corner maps
"and for our FINAL FANTASY map...... Here is the map of avatar"
You got me there
I'm sure somebody said it but the Warcraft map isn't the world, there's an unexplored area on the back of the planet. What you saw weren't originally continents, the entire sea in the middle connected the masses together before it was submerged by a magic discharge. So it isn't lazy, its the surviving edges of a larger continent.
I love how ATLAs map has the names of the nations in litteral chinese. But it's not just making it chinese, they have mixed new and old characters and modified some to make it look more fantasy.
Metru Nui is the top island on the Matoran Universe map, not Mata Nui (which is actually layered ABOVE Metru Nui).
Glad to see I wasn't the only person thinking/remembering that!
If I remember right, Mata-Nui is above (and outside) of the area depicted on the Matoran Universe map. The city of Metru-Nui just has the same shape as the island lying above it.
Are you a bionicles lore master, I can’t believe you exist
@@enterfil there are a surprising number of us hiding about
@@enterfil I'm no master. Just a lifelong fan who still has his entire Bionicle collection. (toys, books, comics, games, etc.)
Not only that, but those other islands, which are all on roughly the same level as Metru Nui, are arranged that way because they're literally inside the body of the great spirit/giant robot god Mata Nui. The whole island of Mata Nui is just a malfunctioning camouflage system the denizens of Metru Nui started living on after Mata Nui fell into a coma.
Fun fact, the series was meant to end 2-4 years in with the giant robot thing being a big reveal, but the success of the franchise as a whole made them continue on for a good while until actually revealing it in its 8th or 9th year.
Well RWBY’s map was created by Monty Oum squirting ketchup on a napkin in IHOP and editing it in photoshop. While it does look weird, gotta give Minty props for creativity.
I wouldn't count that as a sign of creativity, since it was just random chance his sneeze wound up in that particular pattern. ANd from what I've heard at least, it wasn't even intentionally something he went out and did specifically.
@@thoughtfulpug1333 Yeah. I like RWBY, but I wouldn't call their worldbuilding creative or profound. For example, their excuse for why names like Yang Xiao Long (her being blond) come to be in the same nation as names as Ruby Rose, was "is a fantasy world, so names don't have to correspond like in Earth."
Yeah. Just like that.
@@JohnnyElRed yeah, RWBY was my jam back in the day, but now I recognize the writers are morons, no safer way to put it. Watching Volume 5 is utter agony, it is just the worst writing, acting, pacing and actiom I have ever seen in a story.
Nirn's, and more detailed, Tamriel's geography is also very detailed and well developed. Lovely list.:)
Actually the uninspired names are actually quite realistic. In the real world a lot of places have very uninspired names, like for example England has several rivers named "Avon", and "avon" is just celtic and literally means "river"
Ah, but that isn't because the rivers didn't have names. That is because the Romans asked the natives what that river was called and the natives misunderstood and gave them the word for river aka Avon, which was then taken as the name by the romans.
@@MirrorscapeDC Doesn't change the fact they're named "river river". The reasons don't matter, just the fact it does happen, a lot.
Maybe do the alternate history ones next. I saw some great ones myself!
The seven cities is just one small part of the Malazan world, hence it's cut-off state on the map. You should review the Malazan world in its entirety next time, that map is much more interesting.
a stranger The Malazan world map is one of the biggest and most detailed maps out there, with an incredible amount of locations and cultures, and also there is not an official version of it that has been released to date.
It kinda remind me when i see Avatar map.. does Avatar it self kinda represent that japan (Fire nation) attack China (Earth nation) from in 19th century to WW2?
Idk just opinion..
I think that's supposed to be the implication. The Fire Nation's original motivation for invasion - to share its "superior" culture and way of life with all while simultaneously extracting industrial resources for use at home - is even similar to Japan's real-world motivation for invading China and attempting to establish its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Did the Legend of Korra predicted the Hong Kong riots years before? If the Earth Kingdom is mainland China and the United Republic represented Hong Kong/Singapore, what does it say today?
well the fire nation didn't want any war after they Empire was over, (sounds familiar?)
I thought I would dislike this video because I'm a writer and I'm working on my own fantasy map, But your critiques were just so fair, and never once did I think that you were biased for or against any of the maps. You sir are a gentleman and a scholar and have earned yourself a like.
Thats going in the book of grudges.
So nobody's gonna point out the square mountain range of Mordor?
@@PYRESATVARANASI They are. When Sauron arrived there in SA 1000 the area was already like that.
@@Nai-qk4vp Didn't Melkor make them like that?
@@kamikazoo6599 yay
Who cares
The RWBY map was a result of ketchup stains on the creator's napkin
This is true.
You should make an alt history rating next with topics such as 1984 or Kaiserreich, and even some fan-made alt-hist scenarios. Me and many others would really enjoy it. Maybe even collab with AHH on it.
Maps that have large blobs smack NE in the corner, with mountains at the edges: Sorry, but I consider these quite accurate.
A culture will spread for as far as they can go. Oceans and large mountain chains tend to become huge obstacles. If the Silk Road was blocked by a mountain range, too, this would EXACTLY be what we'd see in medieval European maps. The Silk Road and Moghul empire gave *some* information of India and China.
It's debatable whether a map could also be a land mass "smack in the SW corner"; this IMO is preference because of the historical European Maps that went at max from Finisterra to the Urals.
North of the Equator, expeditions will become harder north of the polar circle; and around the Equator, tropical zones with large jungles and their extreme evolutionary pressure will make predators and plagues such a huge mess that eventually, continuing simply won't be worth it any longer. Tropical growth also means it is very hard to blaze trails and keep them open. Even today(!), in the Amazon Rainforest there are uncontacted tribes.
Mountain ranges just block human migration, or at least cultural contact respectively. Cartographers may invent some land areas behind the mountain ranges; but that'll be more of a copyright mark, a mapmaker copying those imaginary features just giving away he copied the original drawer's map.
In a Fantasy out-of-setting map (don't get me started how in-setting period maps would look like...) that's made for today's reader, mountains being the border just makes the most sense. There'll be mountain tribes/settlers on the edge, but many travellers won't venture more than some days' travel into the mountains before returning.
Same goes for the oceans. Seafaring until the 15th century was predominantly coastal seafaring. It makes sense that, absent of a huge continent on the other side that the culture knows about, there'll be not much more than coastal waters drawn.
So while they may not SEEM to be æsthetically pleasing, "landmass smack in the corner"-maps are about what maps would have looked like in most cultures; the only exception I can think of being India because it has two long coasts. China would be "smack in the upper left corner".
Even Indonesia would draw Asia in the North and Africa in the West as "land borders", because they simply were out of focus for the culture.
Warhammer and ASoIaF: Imagining realistic maps IMO is only possible for Geologists. So yes, it makes PERFECT sense to glue Britain and Ireland together, or just fragment Earth a bit: You don't have to worry about an unimportant part of world-building, but can go right into the story that should be the main focus (or your story will be bad, regardless of the map). Also, you can use REAL maps to visualise areas, without drawing too few rivers or too much water. It's not lazy, it's making your world more believable for the reader and geologically alike. Even if you copied the wrong features (eg, the "border" between "Britain" and "Ireland" sporting features that wouldn't work in an inland map because they depend on coastal erosion), you still can explain it that that's what in-setting is known about the map.
In fact, land masses don't have to match, continental shelves have to.
Crank up flood.firetree.net/ to +60cm sea level rise, then "grade" the map that it gives - I am quite sure you're in the territory of the "dragon-and-dolphin-map" because the matching shelf borders not lay underwater and the coastlines no longer match as now, only the elevated areas will be above water.
I thought this was gonna be more based on whether they got geographical elements right rather than whether they just looked aesthetically pleasing or not.
Tigerstar would make a great geography teacher.
(Also I dare you to take an online geography test)
This Murican Boi He is basically a geo-history teacher though.
Axel Andersson I mean online one
This Murican Boi Seeing him take such a test would be interesting.
More Fantasy maps please.
I want Strangereal (The ace combat series map).
Maybe the The Pillars of Reality series by Jack Campbell map.
And if I could stretch one please review the Honorversus map by David Weber.
This is the first time I've been on this channel so I don't what the regular content is, but this video was quite disappointing imo. The judgements seemed really quick and arbitrary without much knowledge of the media the maps are based on.
Normally he does videos on history of the world day by day or week by week, which are quite decent, but other videos than this he seems very biased and gross
the Warhammer fantasy map is legitimately a parody of earth
Tolkien's Middle Earth *is* a version of our world too (like the Warhammer one).
It started off as Arda, a perfectly symmetrical round world on a flat disc with a large lake at its center with an island at its center.
With each tumultuous, age defining major catastrophe, the round continent split in two and started drifting off to east and west. The lake and the island disappearing.
As the evil forces of subsequently Melkor/Morgoth/Sauron kept ravaging the world and plunging it into catastrophe, the once perfect shape became more fragmented and accentuated. When we look at the map of Middle Earth, we are looking at a predecessor to our own world.
Btw, after the first major catastrophes or two, the once flat disc world of Arda curved into a sphere, so at the time of Middle Earth, it was a globe.
Finally someone agrees with me that the Game of Thrones continents are painfully rectangular! My friend absolutely refused to see it when I brought it up.
Frosty Woods the fact you said game of thrones makes your point invalid. Especially since game of thrones doesn’t even have all the continents nor islands from the actual book series.
Frosty Woods second if you actually knew the lore you would know that there is speculation that Westeros and essos are actually connected bu the lands of always winter
In fact I'm pretty disappointed that you missed Ursula K. Le Guin's ingenuity... especially Earthsea, an archipelago map, and the Western Shore, which is, as you expected from its name, kind of sticks out from a corner map but greatly detailed...
(tigerstar looks at map of always coming home) ugh! why does it look so much like california it's so obvious! f-!
You didn't like the symmetry in other maps, but here you failed to notice that the entire Avatar world is basically diamond-shaped. Then you didn't like that a continent in another map was shaped like a dragon, but you had no problem with the skull-looking Fire nation and how unnatural looks the area where its eyes are supposed to be. Finally, you mentioned tectonics on another map, but it didn't seem to bother you that the Avatar map also doesn't look very realistic as far as tectonic powers are concerned.
Obviously, rating maps is highly subjective, but if we are using rules to judge them, at least we can try to apply them to every case and be consistent.
Thank you for your video and your opinions. You made some observations that made me step back and evaluate some of my work. I would like to point out a away to not only judge the visual value of a map but also the value design.
I would love to see your opinions on this same maps comparing their visual qualities vs the effectiveness as a tool /design. Also I would love to know your opinion on how well the map duffles it’s function.
A suggestion on evaluation: design vs esthetics vs accomplishing a role
First, Design should not be confused with esthetics. The purpose of a tool is to get a job done / accomplish a task. Not look pretty. Yes good design can produce amazing pieces of art. Also good design can result in some eye bleach moments. The two should not be confused.
2nd the eye candy. You have a great eye open what looks nice and looks wonky. Not only did you point out some common “tropes” you were able to successfully iterate their value.
3. Fulfillment of purpose. This is the hard one. Identifying if a map has successfully accomplished it’s objective.
Examples. The avatar map. As a map it does show the relationship between land masses and the “cough” color of the people who live there. But that is all. Artistically it is breathtaking. But I have no idea what’s in the big colored spaces. The map, alone is basic and lacks information. Now here is the kicker. Why was it created? Did it fulfill its purpose. Absolutely. I see it, I instantly know what’s going on, this map is not used as a map but as a story device. It sets the world’s concept and the people’s cultures location.
I have shirts of this, and wall scrolls
Example 2: warhammer. (Oh boy)
Design. This single map shows where every mountain, valley river is. It gives boarders, kingdoms, and everything else (except the skaveen) the design is unmatched.
It is ugly. And a “rip” off of our world. Yes the details are impressive. Creative this is not. Copy paste and there you go.
How success full does it do it’s job? As a map to be used by the warhamster guys, hands down better than anything else. If you point to an area on the map you have a good idea of what kind of people, armies, nasties your going to be dealing with. The jungle place over here. Lizards and Dino’s. Norway? We got baserkers and mead. It shows what’s there, whose there (biased on our own perceived knowledge) was climate and feel. All by making it detailed and that it resembles our world. That’s the symbolic language of a map being turn to 11. It won’t be on my wall but in a book.
Really felt like you just rolled the dice and added how you liked the art style with how you described it
In your next video (if you will do another one of these) you should do the map of Mount & Blade: Warbanner!
Is anyone gonna tell him that the RWBY-world Remnant... was literally based of a Napkin Stain... I’m serious
That doesn't really matter for the point of the video and then makes it matter even less cuz the points he used to grade each map were inconsistent and poorly made.
9:56 "and for our final fantasy map for this episode"
missed and opportunity to shove a map from Final Fantasy in there.
Wtf you gave that last one an A ? With no labels? The point of a map is to know where you are .... jesus christ what a biased grading
Man, Tamriel is actually the best continent name i've seen, sounds epic, is short, sounds like a place, is perfect wtf
Thats why he said it's better than Yrdskvardicon