Games with cities that actually feel big?

Click here and disable ads!

(note: Games with large cities created through procedural generation like Daggerfall are out, not really being the point of the topic)

Imperial City is fucking tiny and the game makes that blatant, so what are games that do it right?

Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon was pretty cool at it. It featured non-interactive NPCs (of which there were an actually passable variety) walking down the streets, the areas of the city were linked by "overworld" map where the game only zoomed in on areas of interests and the game uses a boondocks village to contrast it, plus is plays the 1920s atmosphere extremely well.

Assassin's Creed cities are somewhat big, but they're all similar.

Considering the format, I think the Tales series tends to do cities very well. I think a big part of the trick is having the right mix of utility (weapon shops, inns, etc. that you expect to be in every city and need to use regularly), unique useful content (things like sidequests or item stashes, or unique stores that sell useful items or services not found elsewhere) and fluff. An example would be an ice cream vendor in one of the cities- ice cream is a food like any other, but not particularly efficient and serves no special purpose, but it reminds the player that the world doesn't revolve around him. People like eating ice cream, and people sell it, and it has fuck all to do with your adventure, but you can buy it anyways.

If a city is missing any of those things, no abundance of the other things will be sufficient to make it seem like a large, real city (or village for that matter.) The issue is less one of size and more one of 'completeness'. Imperial city didn't feel small because of how quickly you could walk from one end to the other, it felt small because it felt like everything there was for your benefit. A bunch of shops conveniently gathered in one place, a bunch of repetitive banter from people that didn't have personal lives, and a bunch of quests that conspicuously required you to solve them even though you have no special talents or connection to the people asking you for help. And the layout of the city was far too orderly. It reminded me of something I'd make if I were playing Theme Park. It had far too many things that were in every other town in exactly the same way, giving that bad metagame aftertaste.

A good city has stuff thrown in because the designer thought it should be in his city; not because he thought the player would expect it. Cities feel most alive when they surprise you with something and you think 'Oh yeah, they should have one of those here shouldn't they?' as often as possible.

Baldur's Gate, the city, fit a lot of what I'd consider a good, large city in an RPG. Lots of stores, not just crammed in one area, but spread out all over the place and it's clearly designed as a city and not a pit-stop. It's too bad you really don't spend that much time there in the game.

Unless there's a good reason, I hate it when cities are barren places or non-existent.

GTA4's Liberty City felt quite large.

Tarant from Arcanum is probably the biggest one I've seen in an RPG. It's still just a small town compared to real world cities/towns though. But yeah GTA cities were probably the biggest, being pretty much modeled on real cities.

The city in Mafia feels pretty big because you can't travel that fast. Sim City 4 if you connect several regions.

Yeah ok when you show it like that, it's tiny...

I wouldn't call it tiny, but I'm not sure if it's larger than Baldur's Gate.

GTA4 derp

Summoner. The city of L'ennele.

Half-life 2's City 17. Okay it's no free roaming city, but when you're playing the game, you really feel like you're in a city with actual streets and sewers, trainyards etc.

If only RPG's are allowed I'd say Baldur's Gate and maybe Taris from the first KOTOR.

as far as cities go, Tarant is better than Baldur's Gate.

BG is a cities of shopkeeper. No manufacture of any kind. Tiny port and no big roads going through.

Tarant got three kinds of transport: port, train, and road. Lots of manufacture. Museum and artisans. City Hall. Library. etc...

Tarant is simply more lively.

Why hasn't Sigil been mentioned yet?

It only has the one major city, but DS:RoT does a big city well.

It's broken up into zones that make me think of shit console games, but Honk Kong in DX was interestingly big. The seedy bar where the man was to meet Paul with blueprints, the scavenger dude's abode, the ship with woman selling mods, etc. A shitload of varied locations and NPC2NPC conversations.

because it doesn't feel big

GTA IV + Expansions (same city, but it is all so big and detailed that some areas in the expansions feel like brand new places when they aren't, you just probably never had time to explore them in the original).

Mafia, large city but not very detailed.

Mafia 2, large city but the gameplay is so dull there's not much reason to explore it.

The cities in the Assassin's Creed games are great, especially the historical landmarks. Very big and atmospheric, one of the reasons I love all those games.

The town in Bully is pretty cool, I imagine it would feel big if you're just running around, even with the skateboard it takes a while to go all around it. Best way to travel is with the go kart you get for completing all the races. Really good game and well designed location.

Because I always wanted MORE of Sigil and it always ended too fucking soon.

In addition to some of the things already mentioned (Baldur's Gate, some of GTA cities - always felt GTA1 and 2 had the biggest ones though) of recent stuff there's Guild Wars 2, the capital cities are really pretty massive. It's more of MMO territory of course, but still.

Let's go oldschool:

No mention of Prototype yet. Too bad the game was a soulless piece of shit, but the city was nicely done - would've been AEWSUM had there been destructible environments. Pity really how barely any sandbox games pay attention to that - Mercenaries II was fun because you could blow shit up without limitations.

Damnit, Infinitron, I was going to mention U7's Britannia. MaroonSkein also mentioned Sigil, which felt pretty big too. I think in both cases, the reason for this isn't so much the size (neither Sigil nor Britannia are that big) but the wealth of interactive parts. Both in PS:T and U7, you can find lots of interesting things if you explore the cities, talk to the npcs, go through their stuff, etc. Good eye for detail here is more important, I think, than sheer size.

Britain. Britannia is the name of the entire world.