Looking for the Foursides, Goldenrods, whatever village or town or city you remembered from video games and that can be thoroughly explored and that are considered “big”
Kinda funny but I remember how vast Minniopolis seemed in The Urbz Sims in the City for GBA and DS and I saw a map this year that looked so tiny, amazing how big it felt at the time
Xenoblade chronicles X, especially back in 2014 on Wii U. But today it’s just middle sized - yet still created by hand and not procedurally generated.
Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 blew me away, its probably the most memorable location of any significant scale I’ve ever experienced in a game. I’ve experienced bigger, but forgettable, and equally memorable, but far smaller.
Paradise City from Burnout was pretty amazing, especially given you were supposed to navigate it at 250km/h. Lots of three-dimensionality about it too, with tunnels, overpasses, rooftops, etc.
Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas from GTA San Andreas. I loved to spend hours just exploring, looking for the secret items, and finding the funny little easter eggs and references.
The cities in Assassin’s Creed. Can’t remember the names. Are they “big”? They seemed to be at the time. I only ever played the first game in the series; again, I loved wandering around and exploring.
Yeah Florence was awesome. The little historical building notes around the city really added to the depth, like a virtual guided tour. That’s the only AC game I’ve played properly though.
Been a while since I played them, but wasn’t the original GTA3 one big city spread across 3 islands, or something?
I don’t recall much in the way of countryside, but Vice City definitely added that in, and then San Andreas had a ton more
Correct. GTA3 had Liberty City which was spread over 3 islands. It was essentially New York so no real countryside but there was one part that was a bit greener.
Ark from Enderal
Vivec from Morrowind
maybe Washington DC from Fallout 3, depending on how you define “city”
What was the name of the city from the Tribunal expansion? That was probably roughly the size of Vivec, but less repetitive
Mournhold, capital city of Morrowind
Which was the seat of Almalexia, but the expansion also featured the Clockwork City, seat of Sotha Sil.
I don’t think either were as large or as explorable as Vivec, though, unless you count the Dwemer ruins under Mournhold as part of the city.
Agniratha in Xenoblade chronicles and Lazulis City in The Last Story, both are for Wii and both are great games Edit: I confused between Mechonis field and Agniratha.
Paris from The Sabetour absolutely deserves a mention. It’s a big city that you mostle travel by car, but it still feels rich and detailed on foot.
From a while ago I’d say GTA San Andreas, but I really want to shout out Boston from Fallout 4. It’s easily the biggest city in a game that really fills out its size with interesting places and distinct neighborhoods. There’s an amazing verticality to it as well in the central districts, and the mix of real historical buildings with new retro-futuristic ones is great as well.
The City of Paris in Assassin’s Creed Unity was something. I mean that was impressive. City was huge felt very lived in and vibrant. Unity and to a lesser degree Syndicate were the last two Assassin’s Creed games where the world felt vibrant. Partly because they did the walking tour bullshit and they killed the History part of the series. I mean I played a little bit of Valhalla and they just couldn’t give a fuck anymore.
I imagine The Crew (2014-2024) somewhat qualifies - it’s got the entirety of the US in its map. While its servers were shut down last year, it was just relaunched by the community a couple weeks ago
It’s not big in an overall area sense but it’s so dense that it can feel massive. Kamurocho from the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games. Seeing it evolve over 20 years in real time and about 35 years in game time has gotten me quite attached too. Each new game I do a loop to check what has changed and see if old friends are still there.
Bonus with having so much in game time in it is that since it’s essentially just Kabukicho in Tokyo, all that in game exploring translates to the real world pretty well.
The Imperial City from Oblivion was big-ish but not huge. Blackreach in Skyrim was big too, but stretches the definition a bit, because it depends if you count all the dungeons as expansions of the ‘city’, what with them being underground
The Imperial City comes to my mind too, especially if you’re a theif. It’s not big like a modern city, but there’s hardly a single door you can’t enter, and I just love how so many basements connect to the sewers, it’s like you can almost navigate the whole city underground, except you’re more likely to get lost down there!
The various mods available more than double the size, too.
I’ll always remember Night City. Over the years I’ve basically learned to navigate it without a map.
San Francisco from Watch Dogs 2 was great
Tp me Lindblum from FFIX felt really huge as a kid and it felt like there was so much to check out which i only noticed later.
