What exactly is a hub world location? It’s a place you come back to after a long, tiring quest. A place where you collect yourself and get ready to embark on your next mission. A place where you hang your hat at the end of a day, and have some relaxed conversations with your friends and companions. It is, in a word, home. Over the years, there have been loads of excellent hub worlds in video games, spanning across multiple genres and franchises. In this feature, we’re going to take a look at the fifteen that we feel are the absolute best of the best.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
NORMANDY SR-2 (MASS EFFECT 2)
Seeing the Normandy get ripped apart right in the opening minutes of Mass Effect 2 was heartbreaking, but the Normandy SR-2, courtesy of Cerberus, somehow turned out to be an even better home for Shepard and co. The ship itself didn’t have much to do or look at- if you’d seen it once, you’d basically seen it all, barring a few new rooms that opened up as the game progressed. It was the people that inhabited the Normandy’s many quarters that made it such a perfect home. From Garrus and his constant calibrations, to Joker’s humour and his awkward and hilarious conversations with EDI, to the random chatter between crewmates, there was a great deal to soak up every time you stepped back onto the ship.
