History Main / BeautifulVoid

* ''Film/{{Gerry}}'' (2002) is just two men lost in the New Mexico desert.

* The dungeons for the first ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles FFCC]]'' game. Gorgeous rivers, lakes, forests, and ruins. But the whole world is covered in poisonous gas so there really are just ''very'' few people outside of the sheltered towns.

* This is a logical outcome of Fumito Ueda and his VideoGame/{{Team Ico|Series}}'s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmSBIyT0ih0 "design by subtraction"]] philosophy:

* Played with in ''VideoGame/{{Knytt}}''; there are people and other creatures, but you can't interact with them.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' uses this trope to really sell the story of what happened [[AfterTheEnd after the Hero of Time departed Hyrule.]] The ocean is vast and almost completely uninhabited, except for the small islands scattered throughout the area you spend most of the game exploring. And it's gorgeous.
*** Special mention to [[spoiler: the sunken Hyrule Castle which, after the MultiMookMelee, is completely empty but is very peaceful.]]

* ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' - the opening sees you traverse an otherwise empty area, discover something, then backtrack through the same, now populated, area.

* ''VideoGame/ManifoldGarden'': Oh YES. The game's environments are not only massive, but loop upon themselves, and you can see each individual loop echo into the distance to the maximum of your draw distance and beyond. There's no NPCS, no enemies, just you and this limitless expanse.

* ''VideoGame/{{Naissancee}}'': Angular, stark, brutalist, inhospitable architecture as far as the eye can see. No living inhabitants may be found.
** WordOfGod states that the game's visual inspiration is the manga ''Manga/{{Blame}}''.
* ''VideoGame/TheNeverhood'' is a half-sculpted and barely-populated world.

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'': Just [[HeroicMime you]] and a [[AIIsACrapshoot lying computer voice]] in a starkly-designed testing centre, with windows to empty offices and implications that something really went wrong.
** ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' adds precisely ''one'' more major character to the cast, not counting the three personality spheres that show up only for the last chapter, and not counting [[PosthumousCharacter the long-deceased Cave Johnson]], who shows up only in pre-recorded messages. Plus there's the heavy implications that the game, set an unknown (but probably very long) time after its predecessor, takes place AfterTheEnd, which was really plausible in the first game, as ''Portal'' is set in the ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' universe and as such would be affected by the Combine invasion of Earth - however, the ending of ''Portal 2'' shows Earth with normal shorelines (the Combine drained the oceans) and [[spoiler:after exiting Aperture, Chell emerges into a crop field,]] so perhaps some civilization survived in the USA.

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* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'': Lordran, aside from all of the undead nasties, is all but devoid of actual life.
** This is a running theme with the Dark Souls Series of games. In each one, the world is dying slowly. The only hope is someone like the player character continuing the age of fire by offering themselves up as kindling. There are some NPC's around, sometimes in dark dingy dungeons, sometimes just in the middle of nowhere, but generally, it's all empty and dead, save for the undead that are running around. And it is all amazingly gorgeous.

-->-- '''[[VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri Sister Miriam Godwinson]]''', “We Must Dissent”

* The Universe has thousands of stars, but mostly it's a black abyss, staring into our eyes. Then again, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image has shown that even that "darkness" is ''full'' of light from distant galaxies - human eyes just aren't sensitive enough to see it unaided.

%%* The pristine forest surrounding ''Film/TheVillage'' works this way, and is critical to TheReveal.

%%* ''VideoGame/TheDig'' - actually a double example, with both Cocytus '''and''' [[spoiler:Spacetime Six]].

* The song "Connection" by "Double Echo" is about a desert-like place the singer feels an intimate connection with.

* The ''LightNovel/{{Bakemonogatari}}'' series is nominally an UrbanFantasy set in a modern city. Yet it adheres to this trope in how it presents the characters: a dozen named characters are ''the only people seen'', and the urban landscape is entirely immobile and deserted (except for ''identical'' cars passing by). The nearest it comes to acknowledging others is a crowd in episode 14 that is rendered by something resembling pop-up figurines.

* All the non flashback locations that Rin creates in ''Anime/{{Shelter}}'', [[spoiler: as she is living in a life support machine with her mind linked to a virtual reality generator]], so she can create any landscape she wants, only she is the only person in it.

* This feeling seems to be evoked in ''Film/MaryPoppins'' as Mr Banks walks alone through the deserted, sodden streets of London to the bank even if it's only because it's night-time. Especially to modern viewers for whom London is rarely completely deserted ever. The gorgeous instrumental version of 'Feed the Birds' helps.