You're playing a videogame, and you finally come across a city
>you can rest there and restore your HP
>you can sell your items or buy new ones
>you can find new quests given by characters
But what else? What else can you do in a vidya city? What would you want to be able to do? How would you handle a city in your dream game? Which games handled cities well i.e. what are your favorite vidya cities and why?
explore, talk to npcs, find secrets, side activity mini games, buy houses and decorate them
a brothel
Invest in a shop to make money
>secrets
>minigames
>character fanservice and lore titbits
this
>jumping rope ff9 minigame
Trails in the Skies did it exceptionally well. In any case, this post already encapsulates most of what I want.
Mundane stuff to do in a form of minigames.
Comfy places to chill at with ability for MC to just sit there and look around
NPCs to talk to and do non serious quests for. Something that won't be connected to saving the world.
Chorinis in Gothic 2 was amazing for immersion. It felt like a city. People did their thing throughout the day, then they would go do some other business in the evening.
And it was absolutely comfy.
fuck
Have sex.
>safe haven, the city should feel like a completely different place from the wilderness, where you're never in danger and any problem you have can quickly be solved, with enough money of course
>hub, the city should feel like a hub for both the story characters and gameplay elements, some of the people you meet inside should reference and acknowledge the smaller villages and places outside, and things like merchants and trainers should be better and more plentiful and diverse in the city
>travel center, in the case of gameplay travel, the city should be a stop for almost all main transports, the carriage route between two small villages should take a detour to the city, the main way of reaching islands should be through the city port
>urban exploration, to contrast with the complete freedom of exploring the wild, urban exploration should have you gated from certain places despite them being in reach, until you progress enough with the story/characters
>catchy, memorable town music
>comfy inn to save my progress
>interesting town folk to talk to
>place to sell crap and restock survival items
>a fancy fountain to sit by
Gran Soren is the best city in vidya, prove me wrong. It's comfy, has all the necessary amenities, many secrets, quests, a dungeon, looks good too. It doesn't need much more to be amazing.
>Has interesting locations to explore
>Has comfy music
>Has secrets
>Has some reason to come back to it later
Not enough trees, it's good conceptually but it's cancer to look at, completely non-comfy
I like how New Vegas in FNV turned from destination into your hub and base of operations, it was especially great if you walked everywhere and never fast travelled
>minigames like playing cards, dart throwing, or something like that
>secrets/easter eggs/pretty landmarks waiting to be discovered
>buy house & it's furniture to decorate it, expand your house, storage, etc.
>send merchant to the next town to sell/retrieve goods
>buy/manage your mounts and such
>NPC dialogue flavor text, even better if they talk about recent events and change after certain point in the game
>archive or library for DEEPER LORE
>city management like zoning, what shop to be added or removed, resource management, etc., depending on the game genre
>random/fixed monster/bandit raids where you can participate to defend the city, etc.
For me, it's Beregost.
Favourites...
- Traverse Town, super comfy crossroads between worlds and perpetual night (in a good way)
- Stormwind, IF. I spent so much time in vanilla just walking around drinking up the atmosphere. The main appeal was watching other players go about their tasks and running around. Was never the same after MoP when they became ghost towns.
- Vizima from TW1. One of the comfiest vidya cities ever, probably because of the sense of danger juxtaposed with security. Fleders actually spawn at night and NPCs actually fight them.
>Flotsam, Vergen TW2. Both feel super safe and fortified.
>Novigrad, Toussaint TW3 the most realistic cities in terms of scale to date.
My perfect vidya city would be full of quests, like Novigrad. I actually like the fetch quests we had in Stormwind where you delivered thread or wine or cheese, or the Legend of Stalvan quest, so fill it with those. Secrets of course, especially shortcuts that make it easier to get from one place to another. Maybe you can take on a job as deliveryman, shopkeeper, or security guard and have quests associated with those for instance on your third night shift as security guard you encounter a ghost and have to get to the bottom of the mystery. I'll have shops and decorations change from day to day, like a fishmonger will have a different selection of fish from day to day, new flags will fly if there's a new holiday coming up etc. I'd not have very many minigames I think those are too lazy. Also I want to make it so you can directly influence the wellbeing of any given district if you do quests, and upgrade their appearance and apparent wealth just like you can upgrade your house in TW3, but with entire districts. Say for instance like in TW2 there was a kraken type monster plaguing the estuary. In my ideal game if you killed such a beast all of a sudden the fishing ships can go out to sea and the wharf becomes much richer and nicer looking for it, murals are repainted etc.
everything a city in that time period would have
>sell swords
>guilds
>bounty hunting
>church
>get involved with nobles
>get involved with thiefs/gangs
>millitary
>smithy
>boatyard/dock work
>guarding warehouses
>bakery
>farmers outside the wall
then there's the shady shit like occult and devil worshipers is you're smart and pay attention
I liked Clock Town. You could play minigames, rent a room, get drunk, bank shit or get robbed by a bird. All the stuff you'd expect in a half assed tourist mecca during the apocalypse,
Some basic physics play like forming stairs out of crates, forts out of cardboard boxes, putting various objects on statues and whatnot, throwing bricks at people, setting things on fire etc. It'd be cool in a well-designed in a city because it allows for many ways to fuck around with in-game objects using very basic mechanics.
Saint Denis... home....
Pro tip, if your vidya city doesn't have a scenic overlook over it, or a scenic overlook at the outside from somewhere high in the city, it's fucking trash
I don't want cities. Cities are lame filler bullshit.
Fag
Being able to get "lost" in a city is a cool feeling, not necessarily literally lost, just that it's sprawling enough where you can feel it's actually separate from whatever is outside. So for example not a single TES city makes the cut since they're all just tiny walled off villages where the wilderness is one roof climb away, whereas the cities in San Andreas, while not exactly big by today's standards, are extremely well designed and you can feel like there's urban areas stretching around you for miles, when in reality the countryside is two blocks away.
retard
jump on roof buildings
>Side activity mini games
Should include jobs. Fucking loved Fable for that
>getting drunk at taverns
>playing games of skill and chance at taverns
>underground fighting ring
>clearing out drunks and vagrants for the local constabulary
>participating in melees for the glory of the local baron
>participating in jousts for the glory of the local baron
>going to see the travelling circus thats there for the glory of the local baron
Hire a courtesan
This but unironically
>fuck local baron for the glory of local baron
Make love
>you can rest there and restore your HP
>you can sell your items or buy new ones
>you can find new quests given by characters
.
.
.
>you can observe the political or commercial divide in the city and choose sides
>you can recruit based on your maneuvering
>you can change the political scape not only based on fighting but also based on commerce and robbery by affecting the economy and business
>you can find secret areas
>you can find special quests in those areas that are not only NPC quests but also exploration/mystery quests depending on your perception levels
>you can buy property and manage it and defend it depending on its location within the city and dynamics of your influence upon the political/economic situation
>you can defend the city from an outside invasion force
>you can be part of the invasion force
>you can overthrow the city
>you can help someone else overthrow it
>you can research shit in the city
>you can accumulate researchers in the city through property and politics which give you massive research buffs
>slave trade
>prostitution
>other contraband
>police/guard force
>official inspector/detective
>other law&order shit
There's plenty to do in a city.
Lots of minigames and some jobs specific to big cities.
Awful.
Balmora felt lived in for its time, and was the first proper settlement the player usually arrives in. And it rained fairly often.
It had potential, but felt very, very half baked. Like much of the game.
Novigrad is overall the best realized urban space in games to date.
>Novigrad is overall the best realized urban space in games to date.
Maybe in a medieval setting, but GTAV's Los Santos is truly impressive when it comes to modern settings, especially if you judge it by its potential and things we know Rockstar is capable of from their previous games rather than its bafflingly limited execution
Work at McDonalds
Carnivals
Carnival dates
Minigames, secret items hidden in every nook and cranny, party banter when you rest at the Inn.
Denerim