Your favorite cities

[Erebus]

Urban environments are common in CRPGs, but most cities are so very generic as to be utterly uninteresting and forgettable. When you enter them, you already know pretty much what to expect ; when you leave them, you don't care (or you're actually relieved). I'd be interested in knowing what cities Codexers consider to be exceptions.

In my opinion :

- Sigil, obviously. Curst is also nicely designed, but its relative lack of interesting encounters is frustrating.

- Athkatla is an enjoyable environment.

- Westgate manages to be enjoyable despite its rather ordinary architecture.

- Almraiven (NWN1 module) is surprisingly good.

- The cities in Fallout 1 and 2 were rather good.

As for the rest, Baldur's Gate sucks, Neverwinter sucks, the cities in M&M and Gold Box games are forgettable, the cities in Arcanum... well, I can't say they're truly generic, but I still don't like them.

 

[Inziladun]

I actually thought Baldur's gate was handled pretty well. Although admittedly Athkatla was much better.

 

[Ancient]

None , most if not all cities are rather shallow and small with not much thing's to do.

But my favorite would be Vizima from TWitcher as almost whole game was in/around this city it was rather big and well designed

 

[Ruprekt]

I can't think of any crpg that does this well.

The worst has to be oblivions imperial city... especially given how awesomely it was described in morrowind's in-game books (imperial rome meets tenochtitlan).

Actually Shadows over Riva wasnt' bad.

 

[dragonfk]

Obviously LA from Bloodlines.

 

[Phelot]

Ultima 6 and 7 had nice towns (do towns count too?) that at least tried to simulate a real economy.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The Hub, Tarant

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Cities are pretty much my favourite locations if they're done right, which is damn rare. Most of the time, they boil down to being a hub of quest/item dispensers with a mandatory sewer dungeon.

Khorinis/Khorinis with Bloom from Risen were both pretty awesome. Just chock-full of stuff to do and with a real sense of character and life about them.

Daggerfall from, well, Daggerfall was excellent. It suffered from being a bit too big, but that was also its charm... and who can forget climbing over the walls at night, unwitting and ignorant, only to have a giant fucking ghost scream VEEEENGEEEEEAAAANCE and rape your face?

Tarant was good, but visual blandness and having to walk so fucking much killed it a bit. Holistic design is underappreciated.

There've been loads of great ones in various mods over the years, can't be bothered listing them all

 

[mariog]

There've been loads of great ones in various mods over the years, can't be bothered listing them all

Why don't you list at least some of them? You just made me curious.

 

[Chuftie]

Hyllis.

Because it's umm filled with water everywhere and I like the general aesthetic of it?

 

[DalekFlay]

New Reno... yes, I know, and I do agree Fallout was better than Fallout 2, but something about New Reno makes me love it.

Vivec... just blew my mind the first time I played Morrowind, I think I spent days exploring it.

New York in Deus Ex... it was the future, yet it just seemed like a dirty present to my young mind. Kind of an introduction to cyberpunk for me.

Not CRPGs but:

Rapture, for obvious design reasons, whatever the game might lack.

The City, in Thief, a steampunk paradise. Thief introduced me to steampunk like Deus Ex did to cyberpunk.

Mirror's Edge's city, unnamed but perfectly realized and beautiful. Despite the narrative sucking the story of the city and the imagery was very well done.

 

[PorkaMorka]

I think part of the reason that I'll likely never ever re-play BG1 or BG2 is because of the cities.

They're big and rich in content but...

I'm the kind of guy who is obligated to search every area I can access in order to check every NPC for quests and check every barrel, cabinet and crate for loot.

And I don't like to use using spoilers.

So reaching one of those mega cities is exhausting, we're talking hours and hours of rather uneventful exploring (but you can generally get some pretty important items by checking each house, so you have to do it.)

I rarely find exploring a city to have as high a fun factor as exploring a dungeon, so the mega cities are something I kind of dread.

Frankly, I'd rather have a small village.

I'm going to vote for Britain, Trinsic and Vesper in Ultima Online. MMORPGs are awful nowadays but in theory MMORPG cities are neat as they actually are full of people (and you generally don't have to search them inch by inch for a barrel with gauntlets of weapon expertise) and in pre mega decline UO those cities were the scenes of many great PVP battles.

 

[Ruprekt]

If we're considering MMOs, everquest 2 has far and away the best cities, nothing else even comes close.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlAQAAw6AuE

 

[roll-a-die]

Urban environments are common in CRPGs, but most cities are so very generic as to be utterly uninteresting and forgettable. When you enter them, you already know pretty much what to expect ; when you leave them, you don't care (or you're actually relieved). I'd be interested in knowing what cities Codexers consider to be exceptions.

In my opinion :

- Sigil, obviously. Curst is also nicely designed, but its relative lack of interesting encounters is frustrating.

- Athkatla is an enjoyable environment.

- Westgate manages to be enjoyable despite its rather ordinary architecture.

- Almraiven (NWN1 module) is surprisingly good.

- The cities in Fallout 1 and 2 were rather good.

As for the rest, Baldur's Gate sucks, Neverwinter sucks, the cities in M&M and Gold Box games are forgettable, the cities in Arcanum... well, I can't say they're truly generic, but I still don't like them.

I agree with most of your choices and would append my own.

In terms of city design and gameplay use, in non-RPGs, I'd say Ass-screed 2 is probably the best out there, I haven't seen anything that was quite as fun to just jump and run around in finding shit. If it had better controls I'd personally congratulate them for designing my favorite game of that decade.

As far as RPG additions go, hmm, this would be hard, Bloodline's LA suffered from the fact that it all feels like a corridor or occasionally more of a 900 sq foot house than an city. It just didn't have the scale down well, it didn't have the awe, or the openness with the sense of oppression that a real city has.

Really most RPG's suffer from the bog standard, I am using this city just as a place to distribute quests, this is nothing more. It needs to have a sense of exploration to it.

 

[deuxhero]

cRPG
Sigil (obvious)
Tyrant (Arcanum) managed to pull off being bigish with without being hard to get around, making it fairly unique in that aspect.
Whatever the town in MoTB was called. Pretty neat that.

Non cPRG
Phenac City from Pokemon Colosseum and XD (yes yes get on with it) had a fairly neat visual design idea. It's a typical jRPG town with no clear reason to exist beyond being involved in the plot (which stands out because the game's other city is established as being a mining town) and silly small, but it looks neat.

Inaba from Persona 4 has a lot of effort given to make it an interesting location.
Shibuya from The World Ends With You was pretty beliveable (which is to be expected when you rip it wholesale from real life, but not the point).

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I'm the kind of guy who is obligated to search every area I can access in order to check every NPC for quests and check every barrel, cabinet and crate for loot... I rarely find exploring a city to have as high a fun factor as exploring a dungeon, so the mega cities are something I kind of dread.

Same here.
BG1 was worse than BG2 in this aspect, so many empty houses in those cities...

Frankly, I'd rather have a small village.

Hello my friend, stay a while and listen.

 

[Erebus]

If we include non-CRPGs, I'm also very fond of the city in Thief 2 (the same as in Thief 1 and 3, obviously, but I think the second game develops it best).

 

[CrimHead]

Sigil-Planescape Torment (DAT ARCHITECTURE)
Sadrith Mora-Morrowind (DAT MIX OF NORMAL AND WEIRD)
Hell's Kitchen-Deus Ex (DAT GRIMDARK)

 

[Baron]

Vizima. Distinctive suburbs within a tightly designed city. Functional and pleasing to the eye just like my nuts.


Retro architecture! Either Sundog or Autoduel. Both are pretty neat although crime was pretty rampant in Sundog, best to keep your Mk III laser by your side in case you get mugged by small circles ...those bastards.

 

[SCO]

Many cities in ultima 7 part 2 gave such a feeling. Though it is primitive, the scheduling gave a still revolutionary felling of activity to what was a very limited number of npcs, there are little stories/narratives about most characters, and those little stories are actually spread out not only limited to the 3 immediate npcs around. There was even a little multi-city plots, like that poisoner tattooist being the sister of the exiled mage from moonshade, things like that. Also liked the fact that there were two possible results of the courtroom scene etc.

Still a classic worth playing.

 

[flabbyjack]

Vivec... just blew my mind the first time I played Morrowind, I think I spent days exploring it.

Interesting fact: Vivec was initially designed by these guys

 

[SCO]

If we include non-CRPGs, I'm also very fond of the city in Thief 2 (the same as in Thief 1 and 3, obviously, but I think the second game develops it best).

Life of the party forever man.

 

[CrimHead]

Vivec is a shitty city. Much too the same all throughout. The Telvanni towns are where it's motherfucking at.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Athkatla was good and felt like a large city. Sigil felt well done in PS:T, though I felt it could have been larger. Still, the detail in what WAS there was quite good.

And after typing that, I sat here and thought about it and looked at the other posts and I don't think I'd list any others. There are certainly city/town locations that I've enjoyed in other RPGs and games, but none that really gave me a particularly good city vibe. Even The City in the Thief games for the most part didn't give you much feeling of a city, since it was primarily just levels. Thief 3 gave you the open roaming bits but those weren't fleshed out enough to really help.

As a special mention for a city that should have been awesome but wasn't, the Citadel in the Mass Effect games. Gigantic space station complete with fancy upperclass areas and slums, and it's boring as shit. Mass Effect 2 did a better job with it than 1, but even there it didn't live anywhere near the potential it has.

 

[DalekFlay]

Vivec is a shitty city. Much too the same all throughout. The Telvanni towns are where it's motherfucking at.

It just feels like a fantasy New York, like it's packed with eclectic misanthropes and the equivalent of big business. Plus it has a living God.