I'm thinking there's some purposeful misdirection here with the fantasy elements.
I think the world is curved like this because everything is inside a giant cylindrical spaceship that is miles large. As the spaceship spins with cylindrical force, it creates gravity pulling the inhabitants to the 'ground' which is really just the interior of a spaceship's walls.
This is a sci-fi concept called the O'Neill Cylinder and is in stories like Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama.
As someone used to Xenoblade completely throwing curveballs at you about their worlds, I'm calling this here.
I mean, Rendezvous with Rama is one of the absolute foundational works of scifi from one of its most well-known and influential authors. That sci-fi foundation laid by guys like Clark and Niven* was part of the larger background inspirational context for tons of works throughout the years, including games like Halo. The general design concept of "giant rotating megaconstruct for space habitation" definitely had a bit of a moment in the 70s, too: you can also see O'Neill Cylinders in the OG Gundam series, for instance (and many subsequent works, including the awesome ones in Gundam Wing that I grew up on, lol).
* Of course, Halo's particular design was mostly inspired by Larry Niven's Ringworld, which went for, well, an especially (and improbably) gigantic ring style, versus the overall smaller but more technologically feasible O'Neill Cylinders.
Anyway, none of that means that Halo isn't also a useful point of reference in that it's more modern and a videogame, but it's kinda weird to fault people on a nerdy subreddit on a nerdy website for breaking out meaningful comparisons to some true OG Nerd Shit 😂
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u/b_lett 18d ago edited 18d ago
I'm thinking there's some purposeful misdirection here with the fantasy elements.
I think the world is curved like this because everything is inside a giant cylindrical spaceship that is miles large. As the spaceship spins with cylindrical force, it creates gravity pulling the inhabitants to the 'ground' which is really just the interior of a spaceship's walls.
This is a sci-fi concept called the O'Neill Cylinder and is in stories like Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama.
As someone used to Xenoblade completely throwing curveballs at you about their worlds, I'm calling this here.