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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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’ll always remember Night City. Over the years I’ve basically learned to navigate it without a map.
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.
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.
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.
