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”
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.
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.
San Francisco from Watch Dogs 2 was great
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.
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.
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.
I’ll always remember Night City. Over the years I’ve basically learned to navigate it without a map.
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.
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.
Britannia from Ultima Online
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.
Manhattan from TMNT Trouble in Mahattan on the NES.
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.
