Media with Universes (or Premises) more Interesting than their Content - idk where to put this thread so it's going here. Be warned: highly autistic content may lay within.

The galaxy of Star Wars (at least pre-JJ). It's millennia of spacefaring history on a galactic scale, in a galaxy that could be billions of light years away, millions of years ago. It's the only setting in SF I know of that's so removed from the here and now.
Star wars has a whole galaxy filled with all sorts of weird yet cool stuff while also having a huge timeline filled with lore but all we really ever get is crappy stories filled with the Skywalker family and his retarded friends. Also they only really focus on one tiny part of the timeline for the most part, removing all the stuff that isn't in the era of Luke/Anakin which is gay because it's the most boring part of the timeline. The futuristic Star Wars comics Star Wars: Legacy got one in a half series before being shelved and never touched again. There are only a handful of stories that take place in the old republic and yet there's a lot of lore from these two time periods and that lore is much more fun to read then a story about Luke killing another group of Stormtroopers.
I've always liked Star Wars less for the story and more for the insane worldbuilding, cool droids, and cool spaceships. That was my favourite part of it as a kid, but I came to appreciate the stories when I was older. I remember spending hours when I was 14 digging deep into obscure lore bits, especially from the far past and far future of the timeline, the most mysterious areas of the lore, and the weird metaphysical Force religion stuff. I'll have to check out those Star Wars: Legacy comics; I personally love the Dark Empire comics and consider it the best Star Wars story I've experienced, even if it does focus on the Skywalkers.

Mahoromatic had a really interesting premise that was just blown away. There's a shadow war between humans and aliens, secret societies, cool futuristic military technology, men-in-black, androids with existential crises, Christian aesthetics (there's a really cool church battle in the manga), lots of tragedy and fake facades, and a highly-advanced alien race with really cool technology and interesting motivations. But that premise was unfortunately wasted so that Mahoromatic could be a slice-of-life with plenty of pedo fanservice and the sci-fi in the background. It was done like that to get across the message that life is precious and that we should treasure every moment, but it falls flat in doing that because the characters are so poorly written. I've considered writing my own version of the story to focus more on the sci-fi stuff, add additional worldbuilding, and take out certain characters that are just annoying. That said, the two-episode special from 2009 is pretty enjoyable if you skip past the fanservice parts (there's a cool school battle with 2D transforming jet robots in that).

This Ugly Yet Beautiful World is another one. Never has a piece of media made me as angry as that show did. Again, it had an interesting story about life on earth getting erased every 10,000 years and some good action scenes, but it's just wasted on being another slice-of-life pedo ecchi school romance. Having pumped out such poorly-executed shows like Mahoromatic and This Ugly Yet Beautiful World, it's easy to see why Gainax went bankrupt.
 
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The recently, relatively I guess, cancelled show Inside Job was one of my more favorite series premises. Felt very SCP foundation but they're actually in control of the situation and not constantly ending the world.
Unfortunately it suffers from the same thing every other modern show suffers from, and therefor was unable to develop the plot points as well as they could have been before its inevitable early death.

Ugly Americans is another show that had a good premise, instead of every conspiracy being real, every mythical figure/fairy tale creature was real and had to deal with the modern world and all its idiosyncracies. Rather unfortunately told from the perspective of a bland and uninspired social worker (who quite obviously is modeled after Jim from the office), but had a lot of promise and an interesting set of characters to play with all things considered. Worth a watch if you're into that sort of thing, despite its shortcomings.
 
X-Men Origins: Wolverine would have been so much better if they had based the whole movie on that opening credits sequence, with Wolverine and Sabertooth fighting together in various real-world conflicts.
 
Have you given Artemis Fowl books a try? Personally really liked the series and it has similar worldbuilding. Don't bother with the movie, it was dogshit.
I remember waiting for my school library to open so I could be the first one to check it out when we got it in. God that's been over twenty years ago.
I can't recall if I've read all of them, but I recall I enjoyed the ones I did read.
 
I have been watching the situation and news around Bethesda and their fall from grace. Starfield seems like a perfect example of the sort of thing this thread is asking for.

You have a interesting concept and basis, and it completly destroyed by Emil's absolute dogshit writting and a severe case of "too many cooks" going on in the development that made fleshing out anything a nightmare so it ends up bland as all hell. They didn't so much waste a opportunity as much as they aborted the possibility of it and made sure to activelly stop anything interesting forming.
 
After an entire season of stupid quirky teen drama, the show then proceeded to attempt to pivot and be a Lore Show where they slowly revealed the main villain's deal (him and his nephew/brother/son/clone Hunter
I didn't know Owl House was about the Bidens
 
Dishonored. Neither game had that interesting of a plot but there's loads of completely superfluous world building and supplementary materials that make me wonder what could have been. The Empire only existed for ~150 years (I think) at the point of when the games happen and information outside that window is limited but it's still enough to establish how stupidly small and insignificant The Isles are. Each major island is fairly distinct culturally and geographically with recognizable artifacts that make appearances in game. The religions are smart well thought out; the Abbey of the Everyman is one of the most distinct fictional inquisitorial factions I've come across. Shame Arkane is pozzed and talentless and Harvey Smith is a stinkditch sucking fag.
 
If someone hasn't said it already:

Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss.

Shame the creator is a rich millennial liberal woman from SoCal with the mind-bogglingly effective capability to waste, ignore, or outright ruin every good or unique idea, instead prioritizing unfunny safe-edgy humor and lame fujoshi drama.
When a crossover fanfic starring Yoshikage Kira from JJBA has better worldbuilding, maybe consider hiring another writer to keep you in check.
 
If someone hasn't said it already:

Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss.

Shame the creator is a rich millennial liberal woman from SoCal with the mind-bogglingly effective capability to waste, ignore, or outright ruin every good or unique idea, instead prioritizing unfunny safe-edgy humor and lame fujoshi drama.
When a crossover fanfic starring Yoshikage Kira from JJBA has better worldbuilding, maybe consider hiring another writer to keep you in check.
No, no, no, she's actually a deep cover Kiwi agent. At the end of the series, she'll point out that there isn't a single rapist or murderer in hell, only tons and tons of gays.
 
The recently, relatively I guess, cancelled show Inside Job was one of my more favorite series premises. Felt very SCP foundation but they're actually in control of the situation and not constantly ending the world.
Unfortunately it suffers from the same thing every other modern show suffers from, and therefor was unable to develop the plot points as well as they could have been before its inevitable early death.

Ugly Americans is another show that had a good premise, instead of every conspiracy being real, every mythical figure/fairy tale creature was real and had to deal with the modern world and all its idiosyncracies. Rather unfortunately told from the perspective of a bland and uninspired social worker (who quite obviously is modeled after Jim from the office), but had a lot of promise and an interesting set of characters to play with all things considered. Worth a watch if you're into that sort of thing, despite its shortcomings.
Inside Job had my favorite 2D Western science woman waifu.
 
God Reagan was unhinged, probably smelled like fish and booze, and would either be a starfish in bed or want to peg you.
Basically your average sperg, so I can't disagree. Top tier waifu material.
Starfish
I know a squirrely neurotic statistician woman and I suspect she'd be the kind to just lie their motionless and expressionless while I die inside. But the female autism drove me wild like concentrated pheromones.
 
I was always intrigued by the plot of Body Harvest. The basic idea is that aliens riding a comet harvest humanity in a four-day series of attacks. Due to the comet's trajectory they can only attack every 25 years.
The timeline is as follows:
  1. 1891 - A battalion of British soldiers disappear without a trace. No word reaches the UK for three months. The disappearance is blamed on plague
  2. 1916 - Aliens beam down in the Greek archipelagoes. Due to the war and advances in radio communication this is the first recorded attack. The aliens erect a shield wall, impenetrable by any means. Responders can only watch helplessly as victims inside the walls are dragged away to be harvested. Other parts of Greece are attacked over the following days.
  3. 1941 - A US military installation on the island of Java is attacked by the aliens. No communications are received during the attack. When the walls disappear, the entire island is devoid of life. In this timeline, this is the pretext for the US entering the Second World War
  4. 1966 - The aliens attack the continental US. After the attack on Java, the US has spent the last 25 years preparing for the aliens. On July 2nd, the aliens attack a fictional Midwestern city and surrounding national guard installations. Even the combined might of the US army is no match for the aliens. The human tissue harvested from the previous attacks have allowed the aliens to grow their numbers exponentially. In desperation, the President launches a nuclear strike. The strike fails and by the end of July 5th, 75% of the US is wiped out. The aliens are captured on film for the first time during the attacks.
  5. 1991 - Their cover blown, the aliens alter course to attack Siberia several months earlier than expected. This attack is the most concentrated seen yet. The Russian military proves inadequate in the face of such large numbers. A united world force rallies in central China. Everything from heavy weapons, armor and WMDs are used, to no effect. With the US and Russia destroyed, the aliens attack the remaining population centers. Life on Earth is all but wiped out. There is a small glimmer of hope. In the years leading up to the attack, the remnants of humanity have built a space station. The scientists on board are hard at work developing a last Hail Mary secret weapon...
  6. 2016 - The scientists on board Station Omega have developed a time-traveling machine and have succeeded in genetically modifying human soldiers for an assault on the past. The aliens attack the base, but two soldiers, an infantryman and a pilot, manage to escape and go back to 1916.
The idea is that, since the organic matter harvested on the first day of each attack powers the subsequent days and the matter from those fuels subsequent attacks, halting the aliens on the first day will prevent the subsequent attacks and prevent the aliens from growing stronger.
This is a great concept for a game IMO. The game itself though is clunky and boring. It has no side content and combat is a chore.

Sorry for the long spergpost. I really do like the concept. It's just a tragedy that the game couldn't really do it justice.
 
I saw the title of the thread and I came here to say "Steven Universe" only to find out it was the reason the thread was made in the first place lol. I'll just copypaste the comments I made on it:
Steven universe has awful main characters, dialogue, side characters, scripts, writing, art, themes, messaging, arcs and stories, but the setting/deep lore on the gem empire is (or rather was) genuinely fucking amazing, I watched the entire thing + the movie + the extra series because I was desperate to learn more about it even if it was being drip fed while rebecca was busy making tranny allegories every other episode or whatever.

The gems themselves are one of the few actually "alien" alien civilizations I've seen that are actually "alien" to our concept of a sentient being by being not strictly biological, the only other species I've seen achieve the same effect are sentients from warframe but those have 0 development beyond aesthetics and won't get any for the forseeable future anyway.

Someone should take this setting from the talenless hack that is rebecca and give it to an actually talented writer and set of artists, they could do SO MUCH with it.
Steven universe is a fantastic series if you exclude the characters, the scripts, the writing, the art, the plot, the message and the themes.

Someone should take the setting, the backstory and the aesthetic and give it to someone who can actually write and draw, then we might actually get a good show.
 
I've always liked Star Wars less for the story and more for the insane worldbuilding, cool droids, and cool spaceships. That was my favourite part of it as a kid, but I came to appreciate the stories when I was older. I remember spending hours when I was 14 digging deep into obscure lore bits, especially from the far past and far future of the timeline, the most mysterious areas of the lore, and the weird metaphysical Force religion stuff. I'll have to check out those Star Wars: Legacy comics; I personally love the Dark Empire comics and consider it the best Star Wars story I've experienced, even if it does focus on the Skywalkers.
I loved the old EU, the way they’d have to give equal weight to everything, from the Lucasfilm games to the Marvel comics from the 70s written by guys who didn’t give a shit if it matched the look and feel of the one existing film. Articles on Wookiepedia that would have to put deep lore about Mon Calamari diplomacy on the same level as a green space rabbit bounty hunter. I want a universe like that.
 
After an evening spent going down a rabbithole, I've found another one...

Splatoon is a game about a post-apocalyptic earth where two species of humanoid cephalopods consisting mostly of liquid and nightmare fuel fight a race war with music (that brainwashes people) and ink as their weapons. Popular hobbies amongst teenagers from both of their species include literal warfare, shady population-control work, buying fashion optimized for efficient murder from back-alley dealers (using gastropods as their currency), and playing Nintendo-branded Tetris.
While fighting this war, these species buy their weapons and armor from various other forms of anthropomorphized sea life- all of whom are drastically different from their modern-day counterparts, none of whom can transform between a squid/kid form like the two race war participants can.

This batshit insane premise with probably one of the best ideas for a world i've heard of in recent memory comes to us in... a live service game about doing the same thing over and over and over again, with a campaign consisting of doing the exact same thing as in multiplayer (just with more platforming) over and over again.
Most lore is stuffed away in shitty scrolls you pick up during levels for doing well, the entire game revolves around "getting good" at one specific thing and no-lifing to make sure you don't miss any of the limited-time event shit or have your ranking drop, and you might as well throw your $60 cart in the trash if you can't pay another 20 smackaroos (minimum) for the Online services required to play 90% of the game.
And to top it all off, you can't even go to the fandom for this shit because it's completely chock-full of troons and predators.

I'm not mad, I'm just salty. Splatoon's still a very fun game in its own right, but the fanbase is terrible and the game itself absolutely squanders the setting it built up for itself... and since I'm not one for (competitive) shooters, I have been sitting here grumbling to myself about how I can't enjoy the absolute shit out of this world like I want to (without seeing a bunch of terrible top-scar art or tearing my hair out for being bad at a vidya game) since the first game's launch.
 
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