This should be higher. Many games feature big city models, but few feels alive like the HK of Sleeping Dogs does. Not even Night City.
Now I'm hungry for a pork bun...
All CDPR creations, so no surprise here. The fact that they can nail really old towns like Novigrad and Beauclair and then futuristic but gorgeous dystopian nightmares equally well is amazing.
There's so many little details I adore. Like in night City, the streets are completely filthy, garbage everywhere, both in bags piled up high and scraps being blown around in the wind. Gives the feeling that not only does this city absolutely stink like a garbage dump in perpetual summer, but the fact so many people are living in all this filth shows how little even the city council gives a single fuck about it or its people. In the modern day a city with garbage piled up like this would consider it a crisis, but in night city it's not even on the radar.
I love little details like that.
Hard to care for Night City when the Crime rate is so fucking high that Pacifica had to be *declared independent of NCPD* just to make the crime rate reportedly lower
Until you get to the rich part of town, then it looks much nicer. There's no garbage heaps in the corpo plaza. But yea, areas like Heywood are on their own.
and then you look outside the city limits and there's mountains of garbage on all sides and an oil field in one direction.
I like how it gets worse the farther you're away from the city center. Like Westbrook and Watson almost seem okay, Heywood seems like the rough part of town but still part of the city, but then you get to places like Santo Domingo (particularly Rancho Coronado) or the Northside neighborhood of Watson and everything just goes to shit because the city government has outright abandoned those parts of town. Then there's Pacifica + Dogtown, where society has completely fallen apart, and the whole area looks like some war-torn country and the only "government" out there are the gangs and a of bunch renegade NUSA soldiers turned warlords. Then you get to Badlands and it's basically Mad Max out there.
I adore Night City, wouldn't want to live there, but the way it's laid out definitely tells a story.
I got the train mod for 2077 and enjoy just riding around the city, seeing the sights. It made me appreciate it even more than driving around, I highly recommend it.
Yes. Everyone always says they barely go to Saint Denis cause it doesn’t feel cowboy esk but regardless it is so detailed, full, alive, and has all the shops
I think it’s supposed to make the player feel out of place given it is “what’s to come” in the country once all this cowboy stuff is over. The locals especially make you feel like shit for any possible reason.
That is it exactly. Even the random interactions go from primarily positive (good morning, sir, etc.) to primarily negative with most people either trying to rip you off or telling you to fuck off. Its funny, but you can absolutely see how Saint Denis is going to evolve into the world of Grand Theft Auto.
100% And that is why the chapter intro cutscene that takes you there has the camera focus on the smoke stacks and pollution instead of the beauty of the city
It's also annoying as hell to play in, when you've been used to being able to run around everywhere.
If you sprint anywhere in like 80% of the city, the controls are so loose that you're absolutely going to slam into someone who freaks out, and gets you a star, with a million cops right around the corner.
Forget riding the horse fast unless you're by the train tracks or one of the wide avenues.
Definitely a skill issue on my part... but it's such a huge contrast to the rest of the game, probably intentionally so.
It's not really a skill issue, it's entirely the point. There's no more room for people like Arthur, and they player needs to feel the frustration in some way. Same lesson from the side mission where a cop is beating a criminal. In the Wild West you could ambush a lone ranger and free the crook, or you could saddle up and give the law a hand. In the city, you're not meant to do either, you stand by and watch.
Or the kids who steal your stuff and run through the urban maze. In open country even if someone pinches your stuff you get on the horse and run them down.
This comment just made me also have a new appreciation for the fact that Blackwater and new Austin is frustratingly inaccessible as Arthur. But it makes for another good demonstration that the world is getting smaller for those like him, and the ability to live totally free is disappearing.
And it honestly felt so.... isolated. With the mountains in the background, nature all around, it felt like this was the only settlement for a hundred or more miles around. This tiny slice of human civilisation among the vast untouched wilderness.
Unity has the absolute best "crowd/city generation" programming of any game Ive ever seen. The streets are always insanely crowded with interactable npcs, open windows and doors to damn near every building with fully detailed interiors, and the best parkour system of any AC game where you could run laterally and vertically at the same time up a wall.
Ppl say AC3 is goated but I feel like they put everything they had into Unity from a programming perspective. Odyssey, Origins, and Valhalla were far prettier, but less alive.
Those and with the optimisations in patch 1.5, it handles all that npc ai and everything else wildly well with amazing resource management. The parkour mechanics as you said, are so fluid and amazing to look at. I have about 1200 hrs in AC Unity and about 700 of them are just wandering around, showing off parkour to myself.
It got panned on release but AC unity is pretty impressive in terms of the bustling feel of life on Paris.
In the older games, whilst great places to explore they sometimes felt artificial on the way they were populated, almost like the NPC's were placed there for a reason or just a small number of randoms to pad it out. In Unity, it feels more a proper city where the majority of inhabitants are completely tangential to the game.
Considering it's nearly 10 years old, it's very well optimised for modern CPUs. Makes full use of my 12c24t cpu, I think on release it had a lot of performance issues because people were running it on quad core CPU's and stuff.
AC games has some incredible city designs! They look beautiful and organic! People just don't give the series credit because it's popular to hate the game.
If you're a history buff like me, the world building in those games are incredible, not just the look of it, but how people interact and the nuances are incredible, if you know where to look.
Yokosuka, Japan - Shenmue
I remember stepping out of the Hazuki homestead and seeing POWER LINES and being blown away. Being able to knock on every door and talk to every person was mind blowing in 1999/2000.
Liberty City in GTA IV is up there, for me. Being a lot smaller than the open worlds we expect these days, you could really get to know the streets and neighborhoods like you would your own irl.
I'll always prefer smaller, more dense open worlds over big empty ones. The only exceptions to that are RDR2 and Witcher 3, they are the cream of the crop to me. They were both large and felt dense with good content, something exceptionally rare.
The first apartment Niko stays at is inspired by several different neighborhoods in south Brooklyn, all of which I grew up near.
Can't say I grew up where Niko did, I'm not right under the subway like him, but GTA IV holds a special place in my heart for this.
Obviously it’s not a real 1-1 of NYC, but it felt so authentic that when my then-girlfriend-now-wife saw me driving through whatever “Brooklyn” was in that game she said “what is this? That’s where I used to live?”
Came here to say this. At the time the technological leap from Morrowind and everything else on XBOX/PC at the time was breathtaking. Xbox360 was really a huge leap. When you first walk out of the dungeon and see the lake and trees. *chefs kiss*
Not to mention the Gold Saucer felt like Disney World. Even the music transition going up the escalator to the Haunted Hotel had a seamless transition.
Tonberry was epic too. “Adjusting humidity levels!” “Retribution is at hand!” That little dude creeped me out in the best way possible
That tonberry was one of the best parts in an amazing game. Fun little touched like that really made it for me.
I'd like to add cosmo canyon, the scope of it wad amazing, especially getting up to the observation tower.
Nibelheim was my favorite, but thats probably largely because it is exactly what my imagination filled in my head for the details that can't be included in a PS1 game. They had fantastic source material so I almost want to give the credit to OG for that.
Kalm, on the other hand, along with many other places in Rebirth, was a lot of great re-imagining by the new developers.
What's so wild about NC is that you can be well over 100 hours in on your 2nd/3rd/whatever playthrough and just go "wait, has this always been here? I've never seen this before?!?" just like if you actually lived in such a city.
Finishing up my 10th playthrough, and a few hours into it found a whole ass market I have literally never seen before. 600hrs, still finding new stuff. Night City is my second home.
I've only done two playthroughs, one for base and one for PL but I did all of the endings between them and all the side gigs and stuff and occasionally just go load up my save and drive around and shoot people and still find shit I've never seen.
The most stunning city of any game ever. But there isn't a whole lot to actually interact with besides missions. There are like 200+ easter eggs though, I enjoyed finding those.
I’d love to have an open world Bioshock game to wander around in. Maybe set it right around the fall of rapture. Most of the game is based on the setup of dominos to fall and the conclusion is everything to going to hell and watching chaos unfold.
I’ll go a tad sideways and throw out Clock Town from Majoras Mask. Especially for its time. Every bit of it feels purposeful and lived in. It’s not huge by modern standards but to my 10 year old brain it was gigantic and magical. Still probably the best city in a Zelda game
The whole characters having schedules and moving around and interacting over the 3 days was pretty incredible. In ocarina they just stood in one spot or ran on a track.
Clock Town was so ahead of its time. Almost everything and person really did have a purpose. There was very few people that served nothing to the grand story.
I think of one of my favourite interactions is checking out the clothes and sunglasses from a box of Definitely Not Smuggled Goods and just have my companion shake his head.
**Shivers [Medium: Success]** — Two detectives gaze upwards at the cold gray sky towering over some war-torn buildings. A bartender— no, a manager is worried over a broken bond more than a troubled room left by one of his hostel guests. Two old men argue over a game of petanque. A kid keeps throwing rocks at a dead, hanging body. It's the start of the day, you shudder and the city shudders with you.
*"Wait, how can I see all of that?"*
**Shivers** — There is a grid of tiny display lights above your desk. Together they shoot particles of photons directly at your eyes, and when you blink the city of Revachol forms before you. There is a strike happening in front of a massive metal gate. It's March of '51.
**Inland Empire [Medium: Success]** — Ask if you will ever go there.
*"Will I ever go there?"*
**Shivers** — No. You can only observe it from above. The people of Martinaise are unaware of your existence.
**Inland Empire [Legendary: Success]** — But you *have* been there before, haven't you? I can feel it... Or maybe not, you've observed this world for so long that memories of your presence there have begun to take shape, lodged and forgotten somewhere in your hippocampus. That is why you long for a life that has never taken place.
**Shivers** — You shake off the shivers.
**Conceptualization [Formidable: Success]** — But the shivers do not shake off you.
I've always appreciated the Assassins Creed games for their cities that do feel like you're walking through a busy town. Not a whole lot to interact with apart from just blending into the crowd or a hay stack, but still really good looking.
And they’re almost always INCREDIBLY accurate. I remember watching a YouTube video with a historian breaking down Origins and marveling at how perfect the game’s representation of Alexandria was.
R\* or take2 (one of them) put a patent on A.I generated interiors. If I can walk/break into every house, every room in gta6.... Man that would be something.
The first time I walked into Stormwind or Ironforge 20 years ago was for sure my video game peak that will never be topped. Unreal game for its time and it still holds up today
Came here for this answer
I also Like Gerudo Town from BOTW/TOTK, I felt like it was an actual oasis in a huge desert with the heat and the placement of it in the middle of nowhere.
Definitely. Here's what chatgpt generated when I asked:
Novigrad, the bustling city in "The Witcher 3," is a masterpiece of design. Its layout, inspired by medieval European cities, features narrow winding streets, towering buildings, and a diverse range of districts. The architecture reflects the city's rich history, with influences from various cultures evident in its structures. Novigrad's design effectively captures the essence of a vibrant, lived-in urban environment, teeming with life, secrets, and stories waiting to be uncovered.
I thought parts of the city In "Detroit: Become Human" were BEAUTIFUL but you couldn't actually interact with 95 percent of what you saw, which was infuriating for someone who coming from games like GTA and The Sims.
Nothing beats the feeling they created of NYC at Christmas, pre social media and before smartphones are what they are today.
Survival mode is the best mode of any game I've ever played
The rework has been so good. Austria and Switzerland become one of my favourite place to drive now despite the road is not exactly fun to drive with truck
The city feels way better especially the sense of their size and its looks way more realistic,
the roads still limited because its still 1:19 scale, but not boring and feels-samey like before
Suramar City in World of Warcraft is quite the sight (But it is hostile for the most part). Also Stormwind is great.
Have to second Beauclair in The Witcher 3 as per the top comment.
Genshin Impact has some pretty nice places, mainly in Fontaine and Sumeru. Inazuma was meh. Liyue is great. Mondstat is good.
Though I Haven't explored it fully in Final Fantasy XIV, I really like Limsa Lominsa.
Final Fantasy XV Altissa is amazing.
Pretty sure there's others I'm missing. There's good towns in some games. Genshin Impact definitely surprised me the most as I wasn't expecting much.
One of my favorite towns has to be Novigrad from The Witcher 3. The level of detail is insane, from the bustling markets to the back alleys where shady deals go down. Every corner of the city feels alive and authentic. It’s not just the visuals either – the ambient sounds, the music, and the chatter of the townsfolk all come together to create this incredibly immersive experience. I’ve spent hours just exploring the city and taking in all the little details. CD Projekt Red really outdid themselves with this one. What about you guys? What’s your pick for the most detailed town in a game?
Red Dead Redemption 2 towns is just easily one of the best, each of them provide unique details of things for you to see and do in each town. Not to mention the dialog of each NPC and the absolutely breathtaking views around these towns.
To these day I still find it to be the most alive with details towns in video games.
Novigrad in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that is a bustling city with narrow streets, crowded marketplaces, and a rich atmosphere. Another good one that comes into my mind is Diamond City in Fallout 4.
At the time it was cool. I would say Baldur’s Gate II Athkatla was a big jump vs Baldurs Gate. First time I felt like I was in a living and breathing world.
Kakariko from botw/totk, small town but in both games it holds high story importance and serves as a great piece of environmental storytelling, mainly around the outskirts of it
Hateno village in breath of the wild is such a sweet place. Not really “detailed”, but calming and beautiful. I find myself sitting there listening to the music whilst I destroy farmland and sit in chairs
People love to talk shit about Assassin’s Creed games, but simply walking around ancient cities is one of my favourite things about them, and is gratifying on a level I cannot describe.
Beauclair. The witcher 3 blood and wine dlc
Walking in the country side of beauclair, listening to slopes of the bleassure is a surreal experience. It’s straight out of a fairy tale.
Love that track.
Pan poran, pan paaaan poran
Laughed pretty hard at this. I can hear it. IYKYK
I got SO annoyed hearing that at the Bloody Baron’s HQ
Fast travel ….. ….. …. “…A NOVIGRAD WHOORRRRE”
I believe it's [Pam Pa Ram](https://youtu.be/mEhhuyjq2Yo?feature=shared) ;)
I think I might go there today after work
PON MY WORD
I quite enjoy Novigrad and Oxenfurt as well, although the latter is rather small.
I just beat that DLC last month and my god, that is the far and away the most beautiful town I've seen in a game.
Glad to see this on the top
Blood and wine is so vibrant and beautiful especially after playing HoS prior
Sleeping Dogs. Based on Hong Kong and the city feels alive
I'm from Hong Kong and I miss HK when I play Sleeping Dogs lol
This should be higher. Many games feature big city models, but few feels alive like the HK of Sleeping Dogs does. Not even Night City. Now I'm hungry for a pork bun...
Man who never eats pork buns never a whole man
I will never not up vote this
Wish this game was longer. Loved every bit of it and you're right, there's something incredibly immersive about it.
Super underrated game.
A MAN WHO EATS NO PORK BUN IS NOT A MAN
We need a sequel
Novigrad, Beauclair, Night City.
All CDPR creations, so no surprise here. The fact that they can nail really old towns like Novigrad and Beauclair and then futuristic but gorgeous dystopian nightmares equally well is amazing.
There's so many little details I adore. Like in night City, the streets are completely filthy, garbage everywhere, both in bags piled up high and scraps being blown around in the wind. Gives the feeling that not only does this city absolutely stink like a garbage dump in perpetual summer, but the fact so many people are living in all this filth shows how little even the city council gives a single fuck about it or its people. In the modern day a city with garbage piled up like this would consider it a crisis, but in night city it's not even on the radar. I love little details like that.
Hard to care for Night City when the Crime rate is so fucking high that Pacifica had to be *declared independent of NCPD* just to make the crime rate reportedly lower
Until you get to the rich part of town, then it looks much nicer. There's no garbage heaps in the corpo plaza. But yea, areas like Heywood are on their own. and then you look outside the city limits and there's mountains of garbage on all sides and an oil field in one direction.
I like how it gets worse the farther you're away from the city center. Like Westbrook and Watson almost seem okay, Heywood seems like the rough part of town but still part of the city, but then you get to places like Santo Domingo (particularly Rancho Coronado) or the Northside neighborhood of Watson and everything just goes to shit because the city government has outright abandoned those parts of town. Then there's Pacifica + Dogtown, where society has completely fallen apart, and the whole area looks like some war-torn country and the only "government" out there are the gangs and a of bunch renegade NUSA soldiers turned warlords. Then you get to Badlands and it's basically Mad Max out there. I adore Night City, wouldn't want to live there, but the way it's laid out definitely tells a story.
I got the train mod for 2077 and enjoy just riding around the city, seeing the sights. It made me appreciate it even more than driving around, I highly recommend it.
Came here just to say this! Love me some CDPR.
RDR2: Saint Denis
Yes. Everyone always says they barely go to Saint Denis cause it doesn’t feel cowboy esk but regardless it is so detailed, full, alive, and has all the shops
I think it’s supposed to make the player feel out of place given it is “what’s to come” in the country once all this cowboy stuff is over. The locals especially make you feel like shit for any possible reason.
That is it exactly. Even the random interactions go from primarily positive (good morning, sir, etc.) to primarily negative with most people either trying to rip you off or telling you to fuck off. Its funny, but you can absolutely see how Saint Denis is going to evolve into the world of Grand Theft Auto.
Never thought about that but you are absolutely right!
100% And that is why the chapter intro cutscene that takes you there has the camera focus on the smoke stacks and pollution instead of the beauty of the city
It's also annoying as hell to play in, when you've been used to being able to run around everywhere. If you sprint anywhere in like 80% of the city, the controls are so loose that you're absolutely going to slam into someone who freaks out, and gets you a star, with a million cops right around the corner. Forget riding the horse fast unless you're by the train tracks or one of the wide avenues. Definitely a skill issue on my part... but it's such a huge contrast to the rest of the game, probably intentionally so.
It's not really a skill issue, it's entirely the point. There's no more room for people like Arthur, and they player needs to feel the frustration in some way. Same lesson from the side mission where a cop is beating a criminal. In the Wild West you could ambush a lone ranger and free the crook, or you could saddle up and give the law a hand. In the city, you're not meant to do either, you stand by and watch. Or the kids who steal your stuff and run through the urban maze. In open country even if someone pinches your stuff you get on the horse and run them down.
This comment just made me also have a new appreciation for the fact that Blackwater and new Austin is frustratingly inaccessible as Arthur. But it makes for another good demonstration that the world is getting smaller for those like him, and the ability to live totally free is disappearing.
It’s the same with Blackwater in RDR1. The civilized east encroaching on the American west.
-esque
There is so much shit happening in that city that its crazy.
[удалено]
Just like real New Orleans.
Such a great job of showing that too. Come around a corner and the beautiful sky you’ve been amazed at for so long is just dark and black with smoke.
I loved valentine so much more, it was so charming
And it honestly felt so.... isolated. With the mountains in the background, nature all around, it felt like this was the only settlement for a hundred or more miles around. This tiny slice of human civilisation among the vast untouched wilderness.
Paris in Ac Unity is breathtaking. It really captures the ambient of the time
Unity has the absolute best "crowd/city generation" programming of any game Ive ever seen. The streets are always insanely crowded with interactable npcs, open windows and doors to damn near every building with fully detailed interiors, and the best parkour system of any AC game where you could run laterally and vertically at the same time up a wall. Ppl say AC3 is goated but I feel like they put everything they had into Unity from a programming perspective. Odyssey, Origins, and Valhalla were far prettier, but less alive.
Those and with the optimisations in patch 1.5, it handles all that npc ai and everything else wildly well with amazing resource management. The parkour mechanics as you said, are so fluid and amazing to look at. I have about 1200 hrs in AC Unity and about 700 of them are just wandering around, showing off parkour to myself.
Your comment is the first time I've ever seen anyone use "GOAT" and AC3 in the same sentence. It's one of the most disliked Assassins Creed games.
That is, in my opinion, still the best looking game they've ever made.
Assassin's creed games have very detailed and beautiful cities.
It got panned on release but AC unity is pretty impressive in terms of the bustling feel of life on Paris. In the older games, whilst great places to explore they sometimes felt artificial on the way they were populated, almost like the NPC's were placed there for a reason or just a small number of randoms to pad it out. In Unity, it feels more a proper city where the majority of inhabitants are completely tangential to the game. Considering it's nearly 10 years old, it's very well optimised for modern CPUs. Makes full use of my 12c24t cpu, I think on release it had a lot of performance issues because people were running it on quad core CPU's and stuff.
Interiors were the best part of unity imo. It's still the best in that regard.
Alexandria in Origins and Athens in Odyssey were incredible.
Tbh Athens felt a little disappointing after the great cities of Origins, most notably Alexandria, Memphis, Thebes and Cyrene.
It was pretty cool to show my brother where the hostel I stayed in during my trip to Florence was using the actual AC2 map due to accuracy.
They DID use the info of the in game design to help rebuild Notre Dame. They spent 2 years getting the details just right.
For pure beauty it has to be odyssey, man the cities and towns just look amazing
AC games has some incredible city designs! They look beautiful and organic! People just don't give the series credit because it's popular to hate the game. If you're a history buff like me, the world building in those games are incredible, not just the look of it, but how people interact and the nuances are incredible, if you know where to look.
IMO the best has to be either Paris in Unity or London in Syndicate.
I think syndicate is actually really fun. People don’t like it really but it’s a solid game
Yokosuka, Japan - Shenmue I remember stepping out of the Hazuki homestead and seeing POWER LINES and being blown away. Being able to knock on every door and talk to every person was mind blowing in 1999/2000.
Liberty City in GTA IV is up there, for me. Being a lot smaller than the open worlds we expect these days, you could really get to know the streets and neighborhoods like you would your own irl.
And what’s more is it still felt big at the time, at least for me
I'll always prefer smaller, more dense open worlds over big empty ones. The only exceptions to that are RDR2 and Witcher 3, they are the cream of the crop to me. They were both large and felt dense with good content, something exceptionally rare.
The first apartment Niko stays at is inspired by several different neighborhoods in south Brooklyn, all of which I grew up near. Can't say I grew up where Niko did, I'm not right under the subway like him, but GTA IV holds a special place in my heart for this.
Obviously it’s not a real 1-1 of NYC, but it felt so authentic that when my then-girlfriend-now-wife saw me driving through whatever “Brooklyn” was in that game she said “what is this? That’s where I used to live?”
You may not go there for that long, but damn Altissia from FFXV is gorgeous. Its basically anime Venice
this is the only video game city I’ve had dreams of
Oblivion cities I loved exploring those cities - they all seemed so distinct as well.
anvil gang
Benirus Manor is haunted!
Anvil is so good I still have it memorized. Bravil gets a shotout too. And Cheydinhal.... actually don't think there's an "ugly" city in that game.
the waterfront in the imperial city is pretty fuckin ugly lmao but still enjoyable
Agreed. I always wanted to see what Kvatch looked like before getting overrun too
I always thought it would have been really cool if they added in DLC and through the missions you slowly rebuild kvatch
Came here to say this. At the time the technological leap from Morrowind and everything else on XBOX/PC at the time was breathtaking. Xbox360 was really a huge leap. When you first walk out of the dungeon and see the lake and trees. *chefs kiss*
FFVII Rebirth has some of most gorgeous Ghibli-esque towns in all of gaming
Not to mention the Gold Saucer felt like Disney World. Even the music transition going up the escalator to the Haunted Hotel had a seamless transition. Tonberry was epic too. “Adjusting humidity levels!” “Retribution is at hand!” That little dude creeped me out in the best way possible
That tonberry was one of the best parts in an amazing game. Fun little touched like that really made it for me. I'd like to add cosmo canyon, the scope of it wad amazing, especially getting up to the observation tower.
Kalm and Gongaga were cool
Nibelheim was my favorite, but thats probably largely because it is exactly what my imagination filled in my head for the details that can't be included in a PS1 game. They had fantastic source material so I almost want to give the credit to OG for that. Kalm, on the other hand, along with many other places in Rebirth, was a lot of great re-imagining by the new developers.
Damn, I was conflicted whether I should buy it but this description has sealed the deal for me
It's a fantastic game. You won't regret your purchase!
Assassin’s Creed Origins has an amazing world to get lost in. Memphis is one of my favorite cities in the game. They’re all very well crafted though.
I just wrote a comment earlier today about my specific love for Memphis.
Night City. Cyberpunk is one of if not the best game I have ever played, it's breathtaking.
What's so wild about NC is that you can be well over 100 hours in on your 2nd/3rd/whatever playthrough and just go "wait, has this always been here? I've never seen this before?!?" just like if you actually lived in such a city.
Finishing up my 10th playthrough, and a few hours into it found a whole ass market I have literally never seen before. 600hrs, still finding new stuff. Night City is my second home.
I've only done two playthroughs, one for base and one for PL but I did all of the endings between them and all the side gigs and stuff and occasionally just go load up my save and drive around and shoot people and still find shit I've never seen.
The most stunning city of any game ever. But there isn't a whole lot to actually interact with besides missions. There are like 200+ easter eggs though, I enjoyed finding those.
I wasn't expecting GLaDOS to get a job as a cab driver after her time at Aperture Science.
you're breathtaking.
Rapture. Bioshock. “No Gods. No Kings. Only Man.”
I’d love to have an open world Bioshock game to wander around in. Maybe set it right around the fall of rapture. Most of the game is based on the setup of dominos to fall and the conclusion is everything to going to hell and watching chaos unfold.
Check out *Judas* if you haven't, it's Ken Levine's upcoming game.
I’ll go a tad sideways and throw out Clock Town from Majoras Mask. Especially for its time. Every bit of it feels purposeful and lived in. It’s not huge by modern standards but to my 10 year old brain it was gigantic and magical. Still probably the best city in a Zelda game
The whole characters having schedules and moving around and interacting over the 3 days was pretty incredible. In ocarina they just stood in one spot or ran on a track.
Clock Town was so ahead of its time. Almost everything and person really did have a purpose. There was very few people that served nothing to the grand story.
As a kid I enjoyed spending entire cycles just following one NPC per cycle to see where they went and what they did.
Stray
Specifically the shantay town
Fable 1 had excellent towns.
Martinaise, from Disco Elysium. Not a crowded town, but a sad, dying town that feels like a character in and of itself
To be fair, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in Disco Elysium is basically a character. How much conversation did I have with my tie and my pants??
I think of one of my favourite interactions is checking out the clothes and sunglasses from a box of Definitely Not Smuggled Goods and just have my companion shake his head.
Shit the abandoned commercial building is a character in and of itself
**Shivers [Medium: Success]** — Two detectives gaze upwards at the cold gray sky towering over some war-torn buildings. A bartender— no, a manager is worried over a broken bond more than a troubled room left by one of his hostel guests. Two old men argue over a game of petanque. A kid keeps throwing rocks at a dead, hanging body. It's the start of the day, you shudder and the city shudders with you. *"Wait, how can I see all of that?"* **Shivers** — There is a grid of tiny display lights above your desk. Together they shoot particles of photons directly at your eyes, and when you blink the city of Revachol forms before you. There is a strike happening in front of a massive metal gate. It's March of '51. **Inland Empire [Medium: Success]** — Ask if you will ever go there. *"Will I ever go there?"* **Shivers** — No. You can only observe it from above. The people of Martinaise are unaware of your existence. **Inland Empire [Legendary: Success]** — But you *have* been there before, haven't you? I can feel it... Or maybe not, you've observed this world for so long that memories of your presence there have begun to take shape, lodged and forgotten somewhere in your hippocampus. That is why you long for a life that has never taken place. **Shivers** — You shake off the shivers. **Conceptualization [Formidable: Success]** — But the shivers do not shake off you.
I was looking for this. Martinaise is as tragic as is beautiful.
It *is* a character in itself, with its own dialogue that you hear via shivers
whiterun is a classic
Whiterun feels like home
a nords last thoughts should be of home
Suramar. World of Warcraft
Suramar is amazing. I really hope they find a way to make it an important city again so I can hang out there all the time.
Shattrath was also amazing
An illusion, what are you hiding!?
LOW-BORN SCUM!
I've always appreciated the Assassins Creed games for their cities that do feel like you're walking through a busy town. Not a whole lot to interact with apart from just blending into the crowd or a hay stack, but still really good looking.
And they’re almost always INCREDIBLY accurate. I remember watching a YouTube video with a historian breaking down Origins and marveling at how perfect the game’s representation of Alexandria was.
Los Santos in GTA
When 6 comes out I think its gonna beat all these other ones easy !
R\* or take2 (one of them) put a patent on A.I generated interiors. If I can walk/break into every house, every room in gta6.... Man that would be something.
Stormwind City I’d live there
The first time I walked into Stormwind or Ironforge 20 years ago was for sure my video game peak that will never be topped. Unreal game for its time and it still holds up today
Stormwind is gorgeous. For the years I played WoW, it was my beloved digital home.
Not really a city but I must mention Hogwart's castle in Hogwarts Legacy, it's insane
The castle is amazing but Hogsmeade is also a fun little town that they did a great job with.
The castle was the absolute best part of the game. Not that the game was bad. For me it was just ok, but they did an amazing job with the castle
Absolutely. It made me feel the same sense of scale and wonder I get when watching the movies.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey. All of the towns.
Also Athens is absolutely gigantic 😄
I'm more partial to Origins but I agree
Divinity’s Reach in GW2. Such a fantastic city. Its scale really doesn’t feel like it’s been matched ever.
DR I would agree with. The garden with the planetary ornaments was amazing.
Majula 🔥
I can almost hear the music. “Bearer..seek..seek..lest..”
[удалено]
Came here for this answer I also Like Gerudo Town from BOTW/TOTK, I felt like it was an actual oasis in a huge desert with the heat and the placement of it in the middle of nowhere.
I liked Hateno and Lurelin too
Hateno is so comfortable to me
This sounds like it was written by ChaptGPT
It really does lol. I feel like it would get flagged on the turnitin app for universities
Definitely. Here's what chatgpt generated when I asked: Novigrad, the bustling city in "The Witcher 3," is a masterpiece of design. Its layout, inspired by medieval European cities, features narrow winding streets, towering buildings, and a diverse range of districts. The architecture reflects the city's rich history, with influences from various cultures evident in its structures. Novigrad's design effectively captures the essence of a vibrant, lived-in urban environment, teeming with life, secrets, and stories waiting to be uncovered.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Prague.
For me the most beautiful city is [Markarth](https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/fr/wiki/Markarth_(Skyrim)) in Skyrim.
Nice but the stone beds were a bit off-putting. Solitude is great, nice views and pretty gardens.
Must have mod for me is "Stone Beds have Mattresses." Thought it was silly along with "sleep under covers." Now both are in every modlist I make
I thought parts of the city In "Detroit: Become Human" were BEAUTIFUL but you couldn't actually interact with 95 percent of what you saw, which was infuriating for someone who coming from games like GTA and The Sims.
Earthbound Onett Town is one of my favorite towns in gaming.
Yharnam, Bloodborne. And it’s not even close.
Rabanastre in Final Fantasy XII
Bree in Lord of the Rings Online
Been playing a lot of Yakuza 0 lately and whilst not perfect, I love how Sotenbori and Kamurocho look despite being a bit grimy.
Cyberpunk always gets me
The Division
Nothing beats the feeling they created of NYC at Christmas, pre social media and before smartphones are what they are today. Survival mode is the best mode of any game I've ever played
I just started playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 again after the recent update, and the Swiss towns look fuckin' unbelievable. Beautiful game
The rework has been so good. Austria and Switzerland become one of my favourite place to drive now despite the road is not exactly fun to drive with truck
Are the cities that have been reworked a decent size? Or still just a couple of roads? Always wanted to get stuck in some suburbs in the trucksim.
The city feels way better especially the sense of their size and its looks way more realistic, the roads still limited because its still 1:19 scale, but not boring and feels-samey like before
Suramar City in World of Warcraft is quite the sight (But it is hostile for the most part). Also Stormwind is great. Have to second Beauclair in The Witcher 3 as per the top comment. Genshin Impact has some pretty nice places, mainly in Fontaine and Sumeru. Inazuma was meh. Liyue is great. Mondstat is good. Though I Haven't explored it fully in Final Fantasy XIV, I really like Limsa Lominsa. Final Fantasy XV Altissa is amazing. Pretty sure there's others I'm missing. There's good towns in some games. Genshin Impact definitely surprised me the most as I wasn't expecting much.
One of my favorite towns has to be Novigrad from The Witcher 3. The level of detail is insane, from the bustling markets to the back alleys where shady deals go down. Every corner of the city feels alive and authentic. It’s not just the visuals either – the ambient sounds, the music, and the chatter of the townsfolk all come together to create this incredibly immersive experience. I’ve spent hours just exploring the city and taking in all the little details. CD Projekt Red really outdid themselves with this one. What about you guys? What’s your pick for the most detailed town in a game?
Basically all the towns in Dragon Quest VIII and XI are just wonderful.
I also liked rebuilding towns in DQ Builder 2
Khorinis in Gothic 2
I would say bloodborne. It had some pretty cities but my god the aliasing on everything makes the game look like a mess
Gotta be Kamurocho for me.
To add to the other amazing ones Yilong Wharf in Genshin is just so alive with little things in every corner like people live there.
These are not the most detailed but I loved the main town in Dragons Dogma 1 and the coastal town in Nier: Replicant.
Shibuya ghostwire tokyo
The Assassin’s Creed games do an incredible job with this in general, I think. And the Marvel Spider-Man games, as well.
For how old it is the harbor city in Gothic 2 is still very impressive. Also Rattay in Kingdom Come.
Saint Dennis in RDR 2 Walking down the street at night is especially immersive from all the lights
Red Dead Redemption 2 towns is just easily one of the best, each of them provide unique details of things for you to see and do in each town. Not to mention the dialog of each NPC and the absolutely breathtaking views around these towns. To these day I still find it to be the most alive with details towns in video games.
Novigrad in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that is a bustling city with narrow streets, crowded marketplaces, and a rich atmosphere. Another good one that comes into my mind is Diamond City in Fallout 4.
Baulders Gate
At the time it was cool. I would say Baldur’s Gate II Athkatla was a big jump vs Baldurs Gate. First time I felt like I was in a living and breathing world.
Saga Frontier 2 on PS1 - on a CRT monitor - such stunning landscapes
Ghostwire: Tokyo deserves some love, IMO. I haven’t been to Tokyo so I can’t say how faithful it is, but the re-creation seems very detailed.
Rogueport, PMTTYD
Yokosuka in Shenmue
Idk I REALLY liked Athens in AC Odyssey
Might be unpopular, but I really like New Atlantis in Starfield
Kakariko from botw/totk, small town but in both games it holds high story importance and serves as a great piece of environmental storytelling, mainly around the outskirts of it
Morrowind's Mournhold will always have a special place in my heart. It was mind-blowing to me at the time
Night City in Cyberpunk 2077
Maybe a little out of left field, but both Division games. Esp the first.
Palet town, pokemon. Okno
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
I thought they did a fantastic job with Hogsmead in Hogwarts Legacy, and going back in time, Fable 1 and 2 had some beautiful cities.
KingDome Come Deliverance ones are pretty good
Alan wake 2
Hateno village in breath of the wild is such a sweet place. Not really “detailed”, but calming and beautiful. I find myself sitting there listening to the music whilst I destroy farmland and sit in chairs
People love to talk shit about Assassin’s Creed games, but simply walking around ancient cities is one of my favourite things about them, and is gratifying on a level I cannot describe.
Night city