It's 2024. Why are videogame cities still so small?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Two decades ago we had smallish playhouse sized cities in CRPGs and in MMOs where it's just six or 20 buildings and three plazas max. You would have think you would have gotten more game as technology evolved, but apparently not. Fast forward a decade later and it seems like game cities have hardly increased in size, with only a handful of really large ones like in Rockstar or Ubisoft Assassin's Creed games. Well, that's if you can explore the whole city; for games like Dishonored or Trails of Cold Steel/Daybreak you get big cityscapes in the background but you can only walk around a few streets.

[J1M]

Contrast with something like Cyberpunk. Is that any better? Games should represent a concept so that the game can take place in the player's head. It doesn't need to be to scale, like Microsoft Flight Simulator.

A city is one of the least interesting places a game could take me. I'd much rather be exploring the temple of a dead civilization.

[rusty_shackleford]

Archolos has a better town than any city in big budget games because it actually feels like a city. I got lost in it repeatedly, it feels like something that grew rather than designed.
KCD represents its towns well, I suspect KCD2 will have at least one larger 'city'.
Enderal's city is also quite big when you consider the undercity.

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I don't consider things like GTA or RDR to have good 'cities', they're just geometry with a bunch of 3D models wandering aimlessly. It's more lifeless than even Skyrim's 5 house "cities"

[Yankee Zulu]

If someone would have told you 20 years ago that games would require 100GBs or more of disk space would you believe him?

[Tweed]

Daggerfall's generic cities are more convincing than Skyrim's 2 cell wide cities.

[Vergil]

Complexity, graphics, and having to run on consoles.

[Decline]

Because I want my games to run at 60 FPS on a Steam Deck.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Really don’t care about how big a city is since I’m burnt out in open world games. I would prefer a small location that’s packed with interactivity within a block rather then huge city that’s merely window dressing.

Warren Spector had interview on this idea a while ago.

[WhiteShark]

I'm not sure improved technology makes designing large cities any easier. It may make procedurally generating them easier, but that's not the same thing. Design simply takes man hours. Designing a whole city is a big heap of creative work unless you just copy a real city, and, again, that's not really 'designing'. Designing a city is like designing a dungeon, except it has to be much bigger, make a lot more sense, and have many more actors that behave like people and not monsters.

[Xenich]

Two decades ago we had smallish playhouse sized cities in CRPGs and in MMOs where it's just six or 20 buildings and three plazas max. You would have think you would have gotten more game as technology evolved, but apparently not. Fast forward a decade later and it seems like game cities have hardly increased in size, with only a handful of really large ones like in Rockstar or Ubisoft Assassin's Creed games. Well, that's if you can explore the whole city; for games like Dishonored or Trails of Cold Steel/Daybreak you get big cityscapes in the background but you can only walk around a few streets.

Console's suck don't they?

[Tweed]

actors that behave like people and not monsters.

This is where Gothic whups Morrowind hard. Morrowind has some really nice towns and cities, but nobody does anything. No one seems to care if you break and enter until you actually steal something and then it's a generic fight to the death unless a guard gets to you and gives you a scripted chance to surrender. In Daggerfall at least people clear the streets at night and shops close. The HALT! Squad will get after you if you try to break in somewhere after hours and again you get one chance to surrender. Meanwhile, in Gothic people go about their tasks, chat with one another, and go home at night. People get ****** off if they catch you trespassing in their home, but you get a chance to clear off. Justice is dispensed personally, but murder is frowned upon even in a colony full of criminals so expect to get your ore swiped instead in most cases.

[Xenich]

Because I want my games to run at 60 FPS on a Steam Deck.

Exactly why I hate the gaming industry these days.

I liked when they constantly pushed the limits and playing the newest game meant making sure your PC had the right upgrades to handle it. Now everything is constrained to tech that is years old in capability.

I went from tweaking a new machine 6 months to a year to stay up to date to not changing anything out for years because everything runs on limiting hardware and all the games show it.

[gerey]

Scale could be achieved if developers were willing to sacrifice graphical fidelity for it. Realistically, there's no reason why they shouldn't.

We've reached the point at which any attempt to increase the quality of graphics is met with big spikes in hardware requirements, and all for minimal, almost imperceptible improvements. We're likely to see breakthroughs in the future that may change the current paradigm, but even then, not every game needs to be pushing the graphical envelope quite so hard.

[J1M]

Really don’t care about how big a city is since I’m burnt out in open world games. I would prefer a small location that’s packed with interactivity within a block rather then huge city that’s merely window dressing.

Warren Spector had interview on this idea a while ago.

Mankind Divided is the execution of this idea so you don't have to talk about it like it's hypothetical.

[Orvas Dren]

Archolos has a better town than any city in big budget games because it actually feels like a city. I got lost in it repeatedly, it feels like something that grew rather than designed.
KCD represents its towns well, I suspect KCD2 will have at least one larger 'city'.
Enderal's city is also quite big when you consider the undercity.

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I don't consider things like GTA or RDR to have good 'cities', they're just geometry with a bunch of 3D models wandering aimlessly. It's more lifeless than even Skyrim's 5 house "cities"

Enderal did a really good job at making technically small-world spaces seem like a massive city, should be learned from

[Decline]

Now everything is constrained to tech that is years old in capability.

[porthos24]

I think Rockstar and CDPR do a pretty good job creating convincing big cities. You also need to take into account that its a video game and maybe taking 30 minutes to reach the other side of town for a mission doesnt make for very fun or engaging gameplay.