Rayman 2

[Jewish Candy]

What I've always enjoyed in R2 is its lore, no game since has quite had the same world-building as R2 had, it's not Metroid Prime levels of world-building, but I definitely found it engrossing for what it was. The Robot Pirates were fun enemies, and I think one of the best looking enemies in the series. The aesthetics, while I think they could do with a nice visual update, definitely conveyed a natural, yet somewhat cartoony world.

The world building is also the biggest draw for me, and likely the reason my heart (if not my head) belongs to Revolution. World building isn't about the storytelling, but the potential for storytelling. With hindsight Revolution's open areas weren't fantastically implemented, but they gave a sense of the world being a physical place rather than a chain of levels - I think that's also one of the reasons the Echoing Caves/Fairy Glade connection feels so satisfying, as well as it tying the beginning to the 'end' of the game. The similarity between each stage in R2 is disappointing when there isn't something like the Front to tie them together and demonstrate why there isn't the variety. It is all taking place on a tropical Avalon after all. To be fair I think the UbiArt games have worked pretty hard on world-building, someone else could probably better explain what doesn't work there.

While R3's aesthetic was clearly an evolution of R2's, it suffered - in my opinion - from belonging to the adolescence in 3D platforming. You know, when things had come on leaps and bounds but not quite far enough so that everything was lumpy and dorky. For all its relative primitiveness I find R2 much more pleasing to look at then its sequel, even if R3's combat is a return to form.

[MrBadGuy]

I like Rayman 2 and Rayman 3

[Shrooblord]

I totally get how the Front solidifies your ideas on why things belong together or how it ties them together better than the Hall of Doors does at first glance. But if you pay attention (and I don't mean to say you don't - don't get me wrong there), you may notice that through the Hall of Doors, level progression makes sense:

You start out in the Woods and move towards a Glade. From the Woods you traverse downwards into the Swamps and Bayou. At the edge of the Bayou, you transition onto a beach (the Sanctuary of Water and Ice). You move back up into the Hills, up up up until you're in the Canopy of a(nother) forest. Moving back down, you find yourself in a Bay. From there, you move into the mountains once more, finding a volcano and the Sanctuary of Stone and Fire within. Then, you find some Caves - but it is clear at the end of the Echoing Caves judging by the surroundings and the background, that you're still in the mountains. You run along these mountains and along a Precipice as the Pirates chase you in their Warships.
Still in the mountains, you climb higher and higher and higher until you've reached the highest point in the Glade - the Top of the World. From there, you descend and find yourself in yet another swamp. You stumble into the openings of the Sanctuary of Rock and Lava (or is it destiny?) before travelling Beneath it. Within the depths of these mountains, you find a Tomb. As the mountains roll down into the Hills, you secure the final piece you need to open your gateway into the Pirates' Prison Ship. You travel along it, battered, on fire and exploding as it is (for reasons I've yet to discover - really that's a part of the game that doesn't exactly make sense to me, seeing as Polokus himself admits the Buccaneer was virtually untouchable to him (and as such, I imagine to anyone else as well)) and make your way up through its bowels until you reach the Crow's Nest.

I hope to have illustrated with this story how your travel is in fact an incredible logical progression through the landscape. You move up and down hills, into beaches and bays, back up mountains, all progressing through several levels to get there as you do. The levels are not at all disjointed. They flow lovely into each other, both in colour palette, theme, location, music, ambience... it's all quite natural, really.

The Spiral Doors... I am reluctant to give away how I think about their form of travel, since it is another one of those things I'd like to introduce in my game... whenever that comes out... but basically: they're not as 'fast-insta-teleporty-travel-magic-translocationy' as you think. They can take you places, yes, but they don't zip you all over the continent. Far from it. In fact - do you know the Nether in Minecraft? It is a subdimension of the Overworld with a Hell theme going on. While you travel in the Nether, you cover 8 times as much distance as you would in the Overworld. That is to say, when you enter the Nether, move 3 meters and exit again, you return in the Overworld 24 meters from where you started.

This analogy is how I also view the Hall of Doors. The Hall is - in a simplified manner of speech - Rayman's Nether. The Doors link you from one dimension to the next, but they don't teleport you themselves. It's thanks to the differently stretching spatial dimensions between the Hall and the Overworld that the doors transport you across (short!!!) distances. They themselves don't make you travel. You make you travel by using the Hall of Doors.

How did the Teensies ever find, let alone open a Door into this mystical realm, this dimension under or in between the dimensions, linking places across the world like wormholes through space? That's a story for another day.

[Jewish Candy]

In fact I totally agree with your theory on how the Hall of Doors works, it's the prototypical otherworld where fast travel is possible. And as I consider the Glade of Dreams, at least what we see of it, to be a sort of Dreamtime, the Hall/Isle makes more sense to me thematically than the Front - these are spiritual denizens of an eternal world confronted by alien invaders with an entirely different means of immortality (fan theories hoy).

The levels do follow a natural progression; I hope I didn't imply I thought they were 'disjointed' because even if they didn't follow a logical route (and they do) the aesthetic is still very consistent. But I always feel like I'm having to climb out the water, walk a short distance along the bank only to jump back in - which is literally what you are doing in the Hall of Doors. The Isle is better in that way as the geography of the world is always on show, though it's a step down in other areas.

This is purely a matter of personal preference. There's a difference between knowing things connect and experiencing things connect. I love the latter. I love the immersion of the 'real world' rather than the everything-in-miniature overworld. I will literally stand on a rock and spin the camera to get it to just the right position for me to say "huh, that's a nice view". I'm boring as fuck and proud of it. But again, the Hall of Doors is more useful in a videogame for practical purposes, and the Front was not handled as well as it could have been.

[Master]

Hmm, the Isle of Doors pretty much follows what Shroobie's stated too. Headcanon accepted.

[MrBadGuy]

I prefer the hall of doors because I don't get lost in it

[Adsolution]

The Isle of Doors is downright ugly.

[Shrooblord]

This is purely a matter of personal preference. There's a difference between knowing things connect and experiencing things connect. I love the latter. I love the immersion of the 'real world' rather than the everything-in-miniature overworld. I will literally stand on a rock and spin the camera to get it to just the right position for me to say "huh, that's a nice view".

I totally do this constantly in games. Hell, I spend maybe as much as 40% of all my time playing games that have adjustable cameras (and sometimes those that do not, too) putting everything in a nice perspective, lining things up to make the sun shine through my characters' limbs and cast a shadow on the plant in the foreground or what have you. Or I'll stare at a butterfly. Or the mutating corpse of the members of the Flood. If it's interesting, I'll inspect it. But I enjoy how the developers gave us those interesting camera angles in the Hall of Doors too. You may have noticed that the camera is placed quite cinematically throughout your progression through the Hall. It tilts, swerves, rotates, puts things in worm's eye view, side-on, third person... I enjoy the devs' view on a 'nice scene and angle' as much as my own.

[Master]

Hmm, one thing that I do find is lacking in RO and RL is that they don't really give you the compulsion to stop for a moment and drink in the artwork. R3 I think was pretty good at this, with moments like when you approach the Fairy Council, or having the offices of the doctors in the distance in some open areas.

[need my speed]

Hmm, one thing that I do find is lacking in RO and RL is that they don't really give you the compulsion to stop for a moment and drink in the artwork. R3 I think was pretty good at this, with moments like when you approach the Fairy Council, or having the offices of the doctors in the distance in some open areas.

Exactly! I really dislike the whole rush-rush feeling of Origin and Legends (presumably; I have never played Legends, and I doubt I ever will).

Also, this whole page about the Hall of Doors and immersion is an awesome read. For what it's worth, immersion - and 'Shandification', too - is a really big deal to me. I love all the small and not-so-small changes Revolution made to make it feel more like a connected world where a war is going on.

[Jewish Candy]

Hmm, one thing that I do find is lacking in RO and RL is that they don't really give you the compulsion to stop for a moment and drink in the artwork. R3 I think was pretty good at this, with moments like when you approach the Fairy Council, or having the offices of the doctors in the distance in some open areas.

Yes. As a kid playing R3 for the first time, the Fairy Council approach was just pure joy. Hmm, despite my general dislike of R3 people here are making me want to play it again...

And yes, Revolution made the Glade feel more like an island/continent/planet resisting invasion. There was a tangible world and way of life to protect - it was less mythologised while still maintaining that sense of, eh, eternity I guess. Both the Front and H/IoD suit the setting in their own way.

[Bradandez]

Gee, I feel dumb for walking instead of running in Rayman Origins and Legends now.

[Master]

Fair enough, though I do feel that levels in RO and RL are designed to encourage movement, with items like Lum Kings and Purple Lums. Then again, I guess you could say the same with R3 and its scoring system. The gameplay style is completely fine, it's more to do with the atmospheric side of things, at least, to me.

[Droolie]

Gee, I feel dumb for walking instead of running in Rayman Origins and Legends now.

Yeah, that's pretty dumb when you're being chased all the time.

To be fair I think the UbiArt games have worked pretty hard on world-building, someone else could probably better explain what doesn't work there.

Hmm, I don't think they've worked on world-building that much. I think you did a pretty good job of explaining that yourself:

World building isn't about the storytelling, but the potential for storytelling. With hindsight Revolution's open areas weren't fantastically implemented, but they gave a sense of the world being a physical place rather than a chain of levels

The levels in Origins and Legends are just that: levels. They are quite good platforming courses, but there is nearly no potential for them to tell a story. Castle in the Clouds, for example, should be a very interesting place: a floating castle isn't something you see every day. It's a nice backdrop, but that's about all it is. Why don't we get to explore it? That would give a lot more potential for a story than what I got from playing the level:

Rayman found himself in the sky, wondering why he had come up this far. He saw a floating castle and decided to ignore it. Today, he was out here for his part-time job as Lum Collector. When he saw the toads along the way, he couldn't resist beating them up with his stylish moves to have some fun on the job. Uh oh! A storm was on the way. His gleeful liana swinging came to a sudden stop when some prickly plants appeared out of nowhere to chase him into the storm. A Teensie cage conveniently floated right in front of his big nose as he ran, so he punched it. As the Teensie fell to the ground from this height, Rayman did not look back. He was having the time of his life, and continued to do so until the end. He danced, and there was confetti and the Teensie miraculously lived happily ever after.

Wait, I guess that proves there is potential for storytelling, but... perhaps not the story we would wish for.

Moreover, there is no coherence between the levels at all, and definitely no reason for them to be there or why Rayman should want to enter them.
Let's take the Mansion of the Deep as an example - it's my favourite level in the game, and apart from the great music, this is why: the areas in it are very detailed (there are chairs, tables and whatnot) and coherent, yet also varied (there are various rooms with different purposes), making it feel like a real place. It's the only level in both UbiArt games that really shows that amount of world building.
But Rayman has very little reason to be there - there just seem to be some Teensies (which I doubt anyone cares for) trapped by some Toads (which we are beating up for no reason). In Rayman 2, Rayman has far more reason for sneaking through the Pirate fortress in the Fairy Glade, since he needs to get to Ly to rescue her.

To be fair, Rayman 1 also doesn't do very well in this aspect, but one silly little thing improves it a lot: the world map. It shows all the different worlds one after another, allowing players to really work toward a goal, either to reach the next world or Mr Dark's Dare. If I remember correctly (I haven't played it in a long time), RO has a circular world map without a real goal. It also didn't show any real glimpse of the worlds (sure, maybe a few sketches in the background), so there was no real reason to be interested in them before actually seeing them. RL partially brings that feeling of having a goal back with the paintings.

I understand why this is, though. It's much harder to create worlds in 2D than it is in 3D. It's visible in all franchises that have 2D and 3D entries. All of the 3D Mario games have had a lot more "coherent world"-like levels than the 2D ones too.

Anyway, back on the topic of Rayman 2's hubs...

The Isle of Doors is downright ugly.

I agree. I feel the Isle of Doors is the weakest hub of them all, because there's just nothing else that distracts one from seeing it as a hub. Personally, I quite like the Front because it emphasized the war that was going on, and I actually feel that the level/world progression in Rayman Revolution makes more sense. The Hall is awesome too, because of its mysterious atmosphere, its aesthetics, the holograms, and the cinematic viewpoints. I don't really prefer one over the other, but I do dislike the Isle. I think the Isle of Doors would have worked better if it had been bigger and you could walk around freely in it, like a classic world map like in RPGs. It still wouldn't be as good as the Front or the Hall though.

(Oops, my apologies for the huge post!)

[Haruka]

The Isle of Doors is downright ugly.

I wouldn't say "ugly" but more like "artificial".

I wished I could express better but I sense some oddness everytime I interact with that map. Hall of the Doors for the win!

[OCG]

Guess I am the only one who likes The Isle of Doors best

[Bradandez]

Gee, I feel dumb for walking instead of running in Rayman Origins and Legends now.

Yeah, that's pretty dumb when you're being chased all the time.

Oh gee, do I feel dumb! I forgot we didn't have time to walk in the other levels where running was an option.

(Oops, my apologies for the huge post!)

No.

[Adsolution]

Ironically, the chase levels were often the ones with the most beautiful scenery.

[Bradandez]

Ironically, the chase levels were often the ones with the most beautiful scenery.

Appreciate all scenery in all levels.
#AllLevelsareBeautiful

[Rayfist]

Ironically, the chase levels were often the ones with the most beautiful scenery.

That's an interesting opinion some of my favorite levels are not those, while I still enjoyed all of them overall.