In fairness, seasons and varied terrain aren’t guaranteed.
Of all the bodies in the solar system, only Earth has such a wide variety of landscape. Mars is rocky desert or rocky desert with canyons. Pluto is ice ball or rocky ice ball. Etc.
Also, if humans were colonizing earth from outside, we would probably just build cities on the river deltas and skip the less habitable spots. Stories set here would then just be cityscape or river delta, even though the ice caps/mountains/jungles/deserts still exist. Colonized worlds will have different population distribution that organically settled ones.
Mars is rocky desert or rocky desert with canyons.
Mars has river deltas. It has flat plains. It has shifting rolling dunes. It has mountains and valley. It has a twisting series of canyons so constricted they’re called the Labyrinth of Night. It has vast ice sheets and polar caps of frozen carbon dioxide and water. It has caves and frozen mud flats and a thousand other varied forms.
Mars is a world. It is a place. It has biomes as varied and unique as those of Earth.
Pluto is ice ball or rocky ice ball.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Well, not exactly biomes. That one it doesn’t have.
Honestly, by the numbers, Earth is mostly an ocean/forest planet with some desert. Desert and ice planets are believable, too, given those are more temperature-based, and city planets seem like they’d be inevitable in a sci-fi setting just due to population sizes.
By the numbers I think it’s an ocean planet with 71% coverage. Of the land, it’s actually pretty evenly split 1/3 forest, 1/3 desert, 1/3 grass or shrubland.
Given what we know of the Earth’s own history, forest planets, ice planets, and desert planets are all possible and the Earth has been each in different geologic times. Although in every case there will be pockets of other biomes that are very large on a human scale. A single France-sized forest would be massive to a human explorer, even if the rest of the planet is ocean and ice.
Yeah, plus NMS has come a really really long way since release and they haven’t ever asked for another dime.
This guy biomes.
“Wait wait, you’re from Doloron? Oh my god, I work with someone from the Swamp Planet!”
“Why does everyone call it that. It’s a planet with one or two famous swamps.”
“What was it like growing up in a mud hut?”
“We have other ecosystems! You know, mountains, fields, outlet malls…”
“How did you get to school? Bark canoes? On the back of a swamp snail?”
“No, like everyone else… In hover cars.”
“Is it true you all have eggs sacs? Take off your pants.”
“No I’m not taking off my pants!”
“Aha! We got a swamp monster here!”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! (sigh) 50 years ago, Dread Trooper scouts landed in a swamp on our planet, and for some reason didn’t bother exploring anywhere else. If they had gone one mile to the left, they would have found some beautiful beachfront condos. But they didn’t. And now… we’re the (air quotes) swamp planet. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“I uh…”
“Don’t say anything. Let’s just eat our lunch in silence.”
“… Is that moss!?”
“It’s a delicacy!”
Hmm. Still no resolution on the egg sac question, though.
Swamp monsters from the Swamp Planet find questions about their horrifying egg sacks to be very personal.
Moss is to be sorted by color not taste!
I imagine No Man’s Sky is doing this specifically to reference the trope as was originally commonly portrayed in e.g. Flash Gordon serials and various golden age comics. Similar to Starbound, this also has an intentional gameplay implication in that it forces you to leave the planet and find another one with the biome appropriate for whatever resource it is you need. Otherwise you could park your butt on one planet and never have any compelling reason to go anywhere else which really rather defeats the intent of the game.
As far as other works of fiction go, though, yes. It’s just lazy.
A lot of stargates seem suspiciously located in abandoned quarries in the Pacific northwest
Laughing in Metroidvania.
To say otherwise would be to admit your story has no need for aliens.
Whereas Horizon Forbidden West packs all of these into a patch of North America a few miles across (except that the cities are abandoned). The DLC adds a volcanic section.
Edit: the end-credits is a fly-through of much of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVjufECOeHk
Is it the Pacific Northwest? Everything in OP’s pic is within driving distance.
The Pacific Northwest? Aka Stargate…wherever planet looks like the hills around Vancouver…
Bits of California, Nevada and Utah all squished together.
that’s the nice thing about california.
But the planets in our solar system, except Earth, have not a lot of different biomes. To me this is one of the proofs leaning toward the simulation theory. Why make different biomes if your players and NPCs are only on one planet?
To get real pedantic, the planets in the solar system besides Earth don’t have any biomes because they don’t have any life as far as we know.
My psyche doesn’t like this.
I didn’t read the title at first and NMS is exactly what came to mind. I adore that game but they need more diversity.
Agreed. I love NMS but it gets old roaming around an unchanging biome
I wonder if a single-biome planet with life would actually be more likely to produce predators that could threaten a human visitor. Like, would Wampas actually be more likely to evolve on a fully frozen planet like Hoth than a planet with some temperate climates that creep into their niche occasionally over the eons? Sci fi loves when dangerous native fauna threatens an advanced human visitor.
I’m working on a Starfinder campaign, so explaining all of these and the lore becomes more complex. I’m homebrewing a lot of the lore, because I’d rather make my own than learn a different one (and it lets me make things up on the spot that I don’t know). I know for one planet, its industrial revolution made its inhabitants flee underground, since the surface became too hostile. Magic helps with a lot of explanations too.
I would love a game like NMS that actually had varied bioms and civilizations. I know it’s to much to ask. And with out as much fighting so I can focus on exploration and trade. But it’s to much to ask
The word for world is forest
