What games have what you’d call really good worldbuilding, and what in particular do you like about them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology, and often if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social customs as well as invented languages (often called conlangs) for the world.
Even Warcraft 3 was basically a giant retcon of the first 2 games (even as plot light as they were). The series has constantly pulled new stuff out of it’s butt.
Oh, absolutely - but a lot of perpetual/evolving media has similar issues where previous canon ends up being recontextualised, reframed or outright retconned in order to better fit the overarching story currently being told.
Sometimes it’s for the better, others for the worse (cough, Shadowlands, cough).
Still, it doesn’t stop it from being an otherwise great example of world building - evident in part by just how many people actually care about the lore!