One of my favorite environments in gaming is probably from The Last of Us. There's simply something magical about buildings being run-down and overgrown with plants/vines, I just love it. They did a great job in that game in terms of creating and apocalyptic world in which nature has slowly taken over.

I am going to have to check out that game.

I loved the environments in Xenoblade Chronicles. That's one of the things that make me sad that I sold it.

I ended up getting Pandora's Tower in that Operation Rainfall petition for it's Japanese art style and action gameplay. I didn't like the controls much and ended up trading it in. I wish I hadn't done that now.

environments and level design is a seriously under appreciated art in most of the world.  Well not around here!

I've messed with game design, and I was never good at it, but I've designed quake levels and the like, and it's really fun to create these artificial worlds.  I miss it. 

In just reading about the software involved, it looks very involved. I was looking at textures in the real world all day yesterday thinking about how you would photo reference them and then appy it to drawn images in the computer. Neat stuff.

yeah it's serious business man. It's a lot of fun though. 

I always appreciated the effort that goes into making a detailed game environment. I agree with you that while gameplay and controls are important, having a beautiful environment to explore is what compels me to keep playing a game.

I was playing Oblivion last year and just wandered around in the forest and found so much variety in the landscape. There was downed trees, bushes and just a lot of detritus that you find in a real forest. I was really impressed with it. I guess they procedurally generated the landscape and then went around every inch of it tweaking it to make sure it all looked natural from any view point. 

That's awesome, didn't think to look for tutorials on this subject. 

World of Level Design was the top search hit on Google and it's a really cool site with tons of info on every aspect of design. I noticed that for each piece of needed software that comes at a cost, there's one that's free too. The free ones may not be the perfect solution, but it's good to know that you can just jump in without investing a lot of money at the start.

I discovered the same with video editors. Lightworks is free and used professionally ... still need to dl it. 

This is an interesting subject. I've spent time in some games just looking around and being amazed. I was really impressed with Uncharted on the Vita, as well as other games on the PS3. Are you going to limit this to just console stuff or the PC as well? I've seen some really amazing screenshots from PC games. Props to the artists, designers, and fans who create the mods.

Yea mods are wicked cool. I've been following Justin Matkowsky's Elder Scrolls Forge blog series here at Pixlbit and am amazed at what can be done. It's the main reason I'd like to put together a gaming PC.

I may not be much for art but I get what your saying with this. I have te same feeling with the Bioshock seires. I'll have to check this out during your BaD's when I can.

I was so into Bioshock Infinite's world when the trailers came out, but when I played it I was disappointed it wasn't as interactive as I expected it to be. It seemed like a frozen environment with the only interaction a few searchable spots and shooting enemy.