Baroque (video game)/Scifi/Sandbox

Baroque Scifi is a subgenre of Science Fiction depicting an advanced, futuristic world that nonetheless is marked by a stratified class system that promotes decadence and drives much of the conflict. Works in the Baroque Sci Fi genre tend to fall on the soft end of the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness. Technology is often vaguely described, and may even resemble Magic From Technology, though the stories themselves will make it clear it's supposed to be explainable by science.

Often a Feudal Future, Baroque Science Fiction works contain an upper echelon that is something akin to nobility, whether their positions are indeed hereditary or a matter of intelligence, position, money or something else entirely. These are The Beautiful Elite, capable of throwing lavish parties that show off, and take advantage of, their considerable wealth and power, as well as revealing the kinds of debauchery their position and their access to technology has allowed them to partake in. At it's most extreme, the ruling class may resemble the worst of Caligula and Countess Bathory, with advanced space-age tech to make them better at ignoring common decency and humanity, and reveling in the Seven Deadly Sins.

On the flip side, is everyone else. While it isn't necessary for the lower classes to be oppressed and dirt-poor, living in a Cyberpunk-esque Dystopia, they often are, and many stories revolve around a lower class individual infiltrating the upper class or attempting to upset the status quo. However, if this isn't the case, the storyline is usually one of intrigue between members of the upper class, with many of the same elements that make up thrillers.

Anime and Manga

 * Speed Grapher
 * Last Exile

Movies

 * In Time