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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
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.
Xenoblade chronicles X, especially back in 2014 on Wii U. But today itβs just middle sized - yet still created by hand and not procedurally generated.
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.
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.
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.
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
San Francisco from Watch Dogs 2 was great
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.
Manhattan from TMNT Trouble in Mahattan on the NES.
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.
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.
I actually went to kabujicho after i played the first 5 yakuza games (zero to 4) and it doesn't looks exactly as in the game but yet it was weird how a place in a city i have never been to felt so familiar, it probably didn't help that it was a rainy may afternoon but yet, some things were exactly at the same place, like the corner don quichotte at the map border
After Kabukicho I was pretty confident doing the same in Dotenbori in Osaka. Once I got south of the river I got very lost and the whole thing fell apart. It was hilarious. It probably is the same but my memory definitely wasn't.
Novigrad from witcher 3 is pretty big,especially for a medival setting. Games like cyberpunk or GTA have huge cities but they feel smaler because you get around in cars and motorbikes. In novigrad you walk.
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 universe in Star Flight. Which fit on a 720k floppy disk. Nothing else has really measured up to that lost in a huge place feeling since.
I'll always remember Night City. Over the years I've basically learned to navigate it without a map.
City of Heroes had some large areas.
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.
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.
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. Canβt remember the names. Are they βbigβ? 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.
The ones I actually remember in detail are the city locations from FF7: Crisis Core, Rogue Trader and Pillars of Eternity. Not sure why those three.
The one that really impressed me was the capital on Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. At one point I was walking on top of the walls surrounding it and looking around for a nice screenshot and I was just in awe of how great that city was.
Any Need for Speed game is pretty large, especially those from MW 2005 and Carbon (two of which my producer and I played).
Los Santos in GTA San Andreas. Heck, their versions of San Francisco and Las Vegas were awesome too.
Currently playing Project Zomboid and I know their Louisville Kentucky will be etched into my nightmares for decades to come, lol.
i remember exploring potos in secret of mana either before they banished me for life just because a drink old man told me to save the town from a giant ant
I realy like Las Venturas, GTA SA and the Hong Kong map of Sleeping Doge since it feels so alive and dense.
Holtburg in Asheron's Call there was a Tavern there that was a great hangout spot in Dekarutide
Asheron's Call. My first MMO experience.
There's still private servers running. When I hopped in one a few years ago there were maybe 5 other people playing. So, still there to explore, but not much in the way of people to play with.
Mine too was in the beta and was blown away by the graphics and scale. I tried the private servers after the official ones shut down had a lifetime sub. But it was a bitch to install and patch to work with private servers on linux the last time i tried.
Britannia from Ultima Online
I was going to say fourside, but you beat me to it, and the emptiness of it definitely played on the feeling of largeness.
There's also Castellia city in pokemon b&w, the people wandering and the 3d buildings made it look like a real city, alive and busy.
Idk if it counts, but in Professor Layton, when i didn't know what to do, i would desperately walk across the locations of the city and then realise it's quite big for there to be buses and streets.
Minniopolis was peak design. I think notune from xenogears felt massive as well.