The final frontier: strange new worlds, exotic alien life forms, bizarre cultures and civilizations -- the wonders of creation. For good or ill, I never feel like I’m experiencing these wonders when I play hard sci-fi games like Mass Effect. Usually, I only feel the thrill of exploring alien worlds when they’re found right here on Earth, such as in BioShock’s Rapture or in Red Dead Redemption’s American West. Sure, the Mass Effect games literally send you out into space, but for some reason Mass Effect’s final frontier feels all too familiar to me.

Some time ago, I read an article about the molten-diamond oceans of Neptune and Uranus. Imagine that for a moment: entire seas of liquefied diamonds, dotted by solid diamond icebergs. That right there is a case of fact being stranger than fiction. I can’t recall ever seeing something so amazing and unimaginable in a video-game world.

I definitely never saw anything so amazing and unimaginable on the uncharted alien worlds of Mass Effect. I read about a lot of cool geographical features -- a giant trench caused by an ancient super-weapon, for example -- but all I ever actually saw was a grass world, a dirt world, an ice world, and a lava world. In other words, the standard video-game tropes.

Likewise, Mass Effect’s alien species fall into the familiar sci-fi mold of humanoids with weird heads. The asari are spiritual blue women with tendrils instead of hair; turians are militaristic humanoid raptors with chitinous hides and ridges; the krogan are large-framed, warmongering lizard people. The most inhuman alien lifeforms I ever encountered in Mass Effect were giant plants and bugs, two things I’ve been killing in video games for as long as I can remember (Mario’s Petey Piranha says “Hi”).

Arguably, such limitations are the result of cost, time, and resources. The jellyfish-like hanaar and the lumbering elcor deviate as far from humanoid as developer BioWare can likely get away with. Having some kind of truly inhuman creations would open a whole Pandora’s box of art and development difficulties, such as designing entire environments to accommodate them, implementing unique art for weapons and armor, and creating special animations.

So why not root things on Earth?

BioShock's Rapture, a fantastical place still rooted on our soil, feels much more foreign to me. The real-life depths of the ocean host the most alien-looking things I’ve ever seen. It’s one of the few places on the planet man was not meant to go. When we enter the ocean, we enter the food chain pretty close to the bottom. And that’s just when we're treading water. When we venture into its blackest depths....

Fear of the unknown is a good way to create an atmosphere of the alien. And that’s exactly what BioShock is: a trip into this unknown, secret, ancient place. Rapture is a world by and for a very select group of people, with very specific and extreme philosophies, built in an impossible place, and -- most importantly -- ruined. The unknown, whether terrestrial or not, old or new, is alien by its nature: foreign, exotic, scary, different, other. You have to explore and probe the unknown simply to understand the fact of its existence.

Arguably, the setting itself plays a big role in this feeling. Mass Effect’s space opera, informed by decades of popular fiction, is a much more traveled path than the underwater utopia brought to ruin by clashing political ideals (that also serves as a satire of video game conventions). Therefore, whatever tropes and cliches BioShock invokes (or repeats from System Shock 2) aren’t immediately apparent.

What about Red Dead Redemption?

The West is a familiar territory if ever there was one. So how can a world that I’ve so often seen represented in movies, television, literature, and video games feel so strange? How can an old frontier that we conquered over a century ago in real life feel so unexplored in a video game?

My answer is simple and therefore anti-climactic. Red Dead Redemption’s West feels so alien because it’s hard for me to imagine that my world was actually like that.

A boar ambushes me from the bushes, killing my horse. I mash on the controller, trying in vain to stand up faster than the game will allow. I fire wildly at the terrible beast as it charges toward me. I’m too scared to even aim properly.

When I fight giant bugs from deep space, I feel oddly comfortable and slightly bored. Predictably, they burst from air vents and spray acid at me, all the while shrieking, chattering their pincers and wildly flailing their tentacles. I calmly point my gun and squeeze the trigger and the bugs drop to the ground in a fit before going silent. Yawn.

Grass World #284 in Mass Effect may orbit two blue suns, but stumbling across the occasional mine or bunker on the planet pales in comparison to the mystery surrounding the blood-red mesa on the desert horizon in Red Dead Redemption. Even though I know there are probably no great treasures to be found in the shadow of that mesa, I just need to see it. I need to see it because I’ve never seen it before.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder how much my own empathy plays a role in my immersion in an alien world. Mass Effect’s space stations, landscapes, and cultures are mostly pulled out of thin air. Sure, the series is informed by the likes of Star Wars, Star Trek, and the many sci-fi serials, novels, and comics that came before, but everything about it exists purely in speculation.

Contrarily, Rapture and the Old West give me places to explore that I have some tenuous connection to. Maybe I’ve been too into my book of H.P. Lovecraft stories lately, but I associate the unknown with fear, and fear is so much more vivid when it’s real. Or at least informed by real places and concepts.

In Rapture, I fear exploring too deep. I fear that my curiosity to explore this amazing place will lead to my death. I fear that my need to uncover its secrets will lead to losing my humanity. In the West, I fear the ruthlessness of my environment: the gunslingers, predators, the harshness of the land itself.

Or maybe I’m just over sci-fi/fantasy.

This is the second entry in my series of posts about my experiences with video-game worlds. For some background, check out the introduction.