Are TES/Fallout games unique in the tangibility of loot? [closed]

There are many games with heavy emphasis on loot like Diablo / Grim Dawn or "Looter Shooters" along the lines of Borderlands and Destiny. Loot drops are also a pretty heavy part of the formula of some MMOs (WoW, ESO, etc). Despite how much of an important role loot plays in these games, in nearly all cases this loot ends up playing a backseat role in the game world confined to just a tile in the player's inventory/bank.

In TES & Fallout games however, loot has a physical form in the game. Players can even collect decapitated heads from enemies without the use of mods (it looks like the video has since been made private, but I remember this from when it first happened almost 10 years ago). Another player in a Reddit post shows off skulls they have collected:

And in fact, not just skulls/heads, but any item that can be looted from an enemy, container, or obtained as a quest reward can be placed in the game world. I used to put unique items like the Dragon Claws/etc on display in my playerhome. Further, while the previously mentioned games generally drop random gear that the enemy wasn't necessarily using, in TES/Fallout games every piece of equipment or item held by an enemy can generally be looted in full (there are some exceptions like with Draugr, but most human-like NPCs provide full loot).

This loot tangibility doesn't seem to be part of the primary game loop for these games, but because of its UGC nature offers a high degree of immersion/control even in the vanilla game. Are TES/Fallout games fairly unique in this regard, or have they influenced / are influenced by other 3D games with similar loot mechanisms? I imagine there aren't many MMOs that could offer this even if they wanted to due to data storage / physics perf, but it's possible there are singleplayer or player-hosted-server -based games that could support this.

Minecraft might be another example, but it is fairly borderline as item drops are just sprites dropped in 3D space rather than anything that has physical form, and it's only player characters who drop their entire inventory (equipment drop of mobs is only a % chance).

the-elder-scrolls-series fallout-series

Best Answer

There are a couple of games which spring to mind that have these elements. Minecraft initially came to mind: you can place all blocks within the world, and more item-like pieces like weapons or armour and so on can be displayed on mannequins or in item frames. As you say though, this is probably more honourable mention than a true example.

Then I got to thinking further and Divinity: Original Sin 2 might meet your requirements. It's isometric in design so you don't have full control over your view like you do in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, but it is 3D. That game allows you to place and move items in-world and they are represented as such. In fact there are many strategies that revolve around placing and then moving large items (typically portraits) to hit enemies with, or speed-run strategies involving the warp stones to skip around/through the environment.