Games with the best sense of scale in battles?

[Stabby Joe]

Edit: Why are so many people mentioning Shadow of the Colossus. Don't get me wrong, great game, with a great sense of scope, but I'm pretty sure it's set up is EXACTLY the opposite of what OP was asking for. He was looking for sense of scale involving just being a single member of a larger force, not being a single person against a large, singular, force in a barren landscape...

This.

People have a tendency to assume what the topic is based on latter posts. I remember making a thread awhile back that asked a simple question. I moved on but it proved popular. Pages and page later I looked back and the most recent post was someone pointing out about half way people missed the point haha.

That said, he also asked for single player, and I gave him an MMO... so yeah.

Actually multiplayer games are fine to. Like I mentioned at the start, Mount and Blade's multiplayer is excellent at this.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

Star Wars: Republic Commando, did some good large battle scene stuff where even though you and your unit weren't involved in the main battle directly you could always tell that shit was going down around you and you were striking at important targets to swing the tide in the republic's favor...

I know a ton of people have mentioned Homeworld and I would agree, that game is amazing, so is Homeworld: Cataclysm, but for different reasons.

 

[Scow2]

Dedicated PvP MMOs like Planetside and GW2's World Vs. World come to mind. So did parts of World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion.

Single player games... STAR FOX 64!

 

[Bertylicious]

snip of awesome pic

I remember Kingdom Under Fire being a rather mediocre Warcraft 2 clone but that pic made me pop a massive chubby.

The series changed during the Xbox era. Look up the Crusaders and Heroes.

Wow, I see what you mean! It looks a lot like Dynasty Warriors, which I think a few people have mentioned as a possible candidate.

 

[Luftwaffles]

Planetside2

peasandrice

 

[distortedreality]

how has only one person mentioned mass effect 3...palavens moon, thessia, EARTH! every battle field in that game had huge scope and every time i looked up and saw a reaper it sent shivers down my spine.

I really enjoyed ME3, but i'm going to disagree with this, especially with Pelaven.

When I saw the thread title, it reminded of how boring Pelaven was, especially when compared to say Thessia. Thessia was epic - there was a definite sense of a losing war being fought by the Asari to save their planet, even though it was frighteningly obvious that they didn't have a chance of winning.

Pelaven, on the other hand, was almost like a Sunday stroll for the majority of the level. A couple of decent encounters connected by long bouts of walking made me think at the time that Bioware had somehow forgotten to include different battles - it just seemed empty. Sure, you could see the planet burning in the background, but it lacked the immediacy that was brought on by the Thessia battle (and to a lesser extent, the return to Earth).

If i'm honest, the start of the game on Earth had a greater sense of scale than Pelaven did, by a mile imo, which was really a bit of a let down. I actually think ME1 did a better job with this, especially on the Citadel at the end.

 

[Violator[xL]]

War Thunder, especially when we get to do Land & Naval stuff next to the Planes. Keep it coming' Gaijin!

 

[Stabby Joe]

Having a look at ARMA II, there are some Youtube clips where someone has modded it to support over a thousand, a they look very intense. Knowing that game however, you'd die very very quickly... like real life.

 

[SckizoBoy]

NOTE: Strategy games like Total War do get the scale but I'm talking about being in the actual fight.

That's a bit unfair isn't it? Zoom in on any close combat and watch a soldier go at it in any of the post M:TW titles and you really do get a feeling of 'holy shit, how insignificant is this guy?' especially from M2:TW onwards where the kill animations and uniforms become more varied. Granted you don't have much by way of control over the individual elements, but with the general, you do feel some concern when he gets stuck in a fight and knowledge of how much is going on around the guy does a good job of bringing across the scale.

Any actual battle in the Assassin's Creed games, from small scale skirmishes in the streets of Rome and Constantinople to actually seeing the armies massing ready to fight at Viana and Arsuf. Even in the fights where Ezio or Altair are part of those battles, the sense of scale is never lost, seeing in the distance armies clashing even if you can't get involved yourself (what with tracking down your Templar foes and whatnot...).

I wasn't that impressed by the battle of Viana, 'cos it just looked like a massive brawl, though historically, it wasn't much of a battle. Still, it didn't have any aura of epicness to it (not that it came across to me, at least)... :/

Battlefront's already been mentioned... so... -_-

 

[PorkChopXpress]

I was always a fan of Kessen, as far as epic historical battle games go.

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[renegade7]

Actually thinking about it Metal Gear Solid 4 definitely makes you feel like you are in a warzone a lot of the time with all sorts of stuff going on.

On that note Killzone does quite well as does Vanquish.

I'll take your Sins of a Solar Empire (fantastic game btw) and raise you an EVE Online

0.0 battles that can last for hours over battlefields hundreds of kilometers wide with ships ranging from the size of commercial jets to small cities. With real consequences for defeat and rewards for victory, not just points.

 

[Greni]

Spellforce 2 (likely also 1, didn't play it.) You are one guy, you go into RTS mode, get an army and go into battle, still just one guy, with an army behind you.
For all its flaws it feels really satisfying to go into a epic battle as a leader of an army.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I'll raise you AI War zoomed out. Now imagine that happening in several different systems at once.

FINALLY someone else mentions AI War before I do. I used to play one night a week every week with a group of five or six people in multiplayer, which basically multiplies the number of AI units by the number of players, plus having all the additional units from having so many extra people playing. It got to be sheer insanity on literally a galactic scale once we got far enough into a campaign to have a decent chunk of the map opened up. We'd be throwing 2000 ships at a system, which would be a diversion to sneak 200 ships somewhere else, which would themselves be another diversion, all so a dozen raid starships could sneak through to take out an important target. And that's just on a single front. Then there's the time I tried to break defender mode when it was first added just to see how far I could push it and caused it to spawn a million ships simultaneously, which is not at all an exaggeration...

 

[Stabby Joe]

NOTE: Strategy games like Total War do get the scale but I'm talking about being in the actual fight.

That's a bit unfair isn't it? Zoom in on any close combat and watch a soldier go at it in any of the post M:TW titles and you really do get a feeling of 'holy shit, how insignificant is this guy?' especially from M2:TW onwards where the kill animations and uniforms become more varied. Granted you don't have much by way of control over the individual elements, but with the general, you do feel some concern when he gets stuck in a fight and knowledge of how much is going on around the guy does a good job of bringing across the scale.

How is it unfair? I love strategy games with a sense of scale, makes the battles seem more real than the standard 10 to 30 troops of the RTSs of old. And while you are correct (in Shogun 2 you can follow individual units), I'm referring to actually fighting within, having to think for yourself while chaos is all around you where anything could happen due to the balance of allies and foes. Strategy games do get the scale but not the kind of games I'm talking about.