Architect Compares Cyberpunk 2077 vs Starfield vs Star Citizen Cities

#cyberpunk2077 #starcitizen #starfield #cities

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[Morphologis]

As many are sure to begin pointing out, I slipped up and said the Kowloon walled city was in Korea, when in fact it was in HK. Every video must be accompanied with at least one mistake to make it a Morphologis video.

[crystallkingh]

Cyberpunk 2077 may genuinely be the most gorgeous game i have ever played.

[Qaztar]

Cyberpunk obviously wins this given that the game is built around a single city, whereas Star Citizen is about scale planets and Starfield is ass.

[wojtek]

What impressed me in Night City is how complex are sometimes footpaths and roads. It is not just a one level simple grid, but some districts create strong feeling that they were not planned by government in one go, but they just grew for many decades with buildings being enlarged and remade, levels being added, new roads being added, areas being rebuild. I have no idea how they pulled off the designing of all of this. Really impressive!

[FigmentHF]

New Atlantis felt more like an Arab Airport than a city. It’s like a Dubai transit hub with hotels and stores and some administrative buildings.

[housediablo]

One of the biggest problems I had with starfields cities is that they feel like the cities they sent tourists to in North Korea where everyone is just an actor and nothing is actually real and it's sparsely populated for apparently how many humans are supposed to be living there

[ArchOfWinter]

Even if you take away from gameplay activities, Night City still feels more real. It feels lived in, even compare it with other games set in a single city. Night City feels more lived in than Los Santos in GTA5 or the city in the latest Mafia game.

[rhodes]

Night City has got to be my favourite video game map of all time. It almost feels like a second home

[kithsakhai]

night city was genuinely the first city in any video game I forgot it was designed to be a GAME and not an actual city simulation. GTA tried this several times, as did others like Mafia and more, but for the first time the sheer level of granular life and design choices make Night city organic enough to be believable.

[tetsatou]

I will say, while giving a buddy who was new to the game a tour of New Babbage, we were heading to the promenade, and while we were going through the little windowed bridge area, and she glanced outside and noticed a ring of lights that seemed really out of place. I told her to zoom in on it, and it blew their mind that they could make out the vague shape of Port Tressler, and the light ring that they spotted was the navigation lights demarking the armistice zone around it.

[Clawstorm]

Night City is hands down the most immersive city I've ever had in a video game. All other game issues aside, the level/world design is a freaking work of art

[Scorpia]

I think that another interesting pillar of city design to remember about Star Citizen is that seamless flight is a core part of the game. The cities are also supposed to look good from the air and even from upper atmosphere and orbit. Debatably even more important than the on-foot experience.

[Luxorcist]

I played through Cyberpunk for the first time last month, and Night City is one of the coolest environments ive ever existed in when it comes to video games. I put 80 hours into it in just under 2 weeks and im still in awe over the design.

[Denilson]

I love Night City so much, and one thing I love is that the city is not idealistic, an example of this is that I live in São Paulo, and in NC there is Pacifica and Dogtown, these places are conceptually very similar to Cracolandia in SP, Places like these make the city much more realistic, and this makes a lot of sense when Mike Pondsmith himself says that both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are cities that he draws inspiration from when creating Cyberpunk lore.

[moustachiomoustache]

CD projekt red was always the best at crafting cities. Novigrad, Oxenfurt and Beauclair all feel very realistic and alive despite their rather small scale. The architecture is beatiful, the city plans are incredibly convincing and there is just always something to do in those cities.

[Real_MisterSir]

Also you feel like everything in Night City has its own individual story, from whole districts down to individual streets and buildings - whereas many other big game cities seem to have been planned from a single template to "be a big city". They feel planned and constructed as a whole, whereas Night City feels like it has evolved over many decades and morphed and twisted and adapted to the lives that people have been living in it for over half a century.
Buildings overarching other buildings, some districts growing while others are decaying. Some buildings clearly stand out in a way where it's obvious their existence has influenced the lands around them over time, rather than everything just magically coming into existence at the same time.

[franek.kedziorek]

Kawloon City was in Hong Kong and not Korea!

[stevieboymkii]

Personally, Cyberpunk is the only game where I spent about 2 hours simply walking around and admiring the local architecture like a tourist, without really thinking about it or realising. It has plenty of flaws but from an aesthetic standpoint, nothing hits like it. This was in the Japan Town area of Westbrook mostly, spreading out into surrounding areas. In terms of other games that compare well, the rendition of Prague in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or Serkonos in Dishonored 2, whilst split into smaller districts, offer up something pretty special as well.

[GodsPower]

Driving around Night City at night is a vibe, even better if it’s raining too

[logicblock]

You mentioned Disney when talking about New Atlantis, and that was the impression I had when walking through it. Particularly, the World Celebration portion of EPCOT in Disney World. For anyone unfamiliar, it's the part of EPCOT with the various rides and attractions, including Spaceship Earth (aka the Big Ball Thing). There all the different things to see and do are off in separate futuristic-looking (for 1970) buildings, separated by gardens, water features, and lots of walkways.

It's all NICE, but if you've ever been there during a low season, there's something... offputting about the place. Because everything's relatively spread out there and contained within a few distinct buildings, there's a ton of walkways that get little foot traffic outside the central thoroughfare. Giving the whole thing this... not quite soulless, but strangely empty liminal space vibe where the architecture style makes everything feel out-of-place or even out-of-time.

New Atlantis has this same feel. Despite the NPCs and things to DO there, it still feels strangely empty and simultaneously too big and too small. Not necessarily like it's fake, but that there's something not quite right about it's setup in a way that Akila and Neon don't suffer from.