Morrowind is much-beloved among fans of weird, complex video game fiction with tons of depth and plenty of text. I once read (on here, I think) that there was one person responsible for most of the weirdness and quirkiness of the setting in Morrowind (and the earlier two Elder Scrolls games, surely?), who left Bethesda after it was released, and that's why Oblivion and Skyrim feel so much more like a generic fantasy setting.
It's playable on any common desktop OS via OpenMW (you'll need a copy of the game for the art, level data, sounds, et c, though), which is also far more stable than the official binary, and has some nice QOL improvements baked in.
I think that would be Michael Kirkbride. My understanding is that he is responsible for some of the more interesting elements of the lore.
True! I guess Alpha Centauri really stuck out because it is so unexpected to have something like that in a turn based strategy game, they tend to be pretty dry.
All of the Elder Scrolls games (eg, Skyrim) contain ridiculous amounts of background text. I seen to remember lots of books in Pillars of Eternity as well. Oh, and the lore scattered around in Cultist Simulator is also quite something...
Re:The Ur-Quan Masters
by thaumasiotes on Monday January 24, 2022 @10:51PM
(#30067742)
Lemmings 2 came with a novella setting the backstory. I probably spent more time reading the novella than playing the game.
I miss when games used to provide giant reams of text like that. There was a game, "Lords of Magic" that came with, essentially, a small novel's worth of entirely superfluous setting information (in the form of a little book!). It had the kind of background fluff you'd normally find in a D&D manual. I think I spent about as much time with the book, as with the game.