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 serious. I mean I played a little bit of Valhalla and they just couldn’t give a fuck anymore.
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.
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.
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.
Britannia from Ultima Online
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.
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.
Any Need for Speed game is pretty large, especially those from MW 2005 and Carbon (two of which my producer and I played).
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
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.
San Francisco from Watch Dogs 2 was great
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.
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.
Manhattan from TMNT Trouble in Mahattan on the NES.
City of Heroes had some large areas.
