Summary
- Massive cities make unique fantasy settings in video games, offering players crowded streets and markets to explore.
- Games like Jak 2, Dragon Age 2, and Guild Wars: Factions immerse players in sprawling, intricate urban environments.
- Urban settings like Dunwall in Dishonored and Midgar in Final Fantasy 7 Remake blend magic and technology for immersive gameplay.
Fantasy doesn't just have to mean rolling hills and enchanted forests. A huge, sprawling metropolis of stone walls and wooden roofs cradling a magical or alchemical industry is just as at home in the genre as swords and sorcery. However, due to their social and architectural complexity, massive cities can be hard to depict in fantasy video games.
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However, a few studios have taken on the monumental task of offering players an urban setting for their magical adventure. These games don't just feature a large city hub in a large fantasy world, but instead the city takes up most of the world's playable space, with players traversing crowded, bustling streets, markets, and slums for most of the game's duration.
Jak 2: Renegade - Haven City
Prophecies, Inner Demons, And Ecopunk
Jak II
- Released
- October 14, 2003
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- t
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure, Third-Person Shooter
After knocking out a memorable, fluid platforming adventure in The Precursor Legacy, Naughty Dog took inspiration from what they believed was the future of video games: Grand Theft Auto's open world city sandbox. In a grand shift from the fresh beauty of Sandover Village and its surrounding natural environments, Jak 2 saw the duo travel through a mysterious portal into Haven City.
The sprawling magitek (or perhaps ecopunk?) Metropolis brought notes of the world as seen in The Precursor Legacy, such as zoomers, eco, and primitive monsters, but remixed it all in a dingy, oppressed dystopia ruled over by an iron fist. Jak can jack flying cars, wield magic guns, intuit ancient prophecies, and traverse the sticky network of mob bosses and underground renegades to save a city and free its people from a dictator and an impending invasion.
Dragon Age 2 - Kirkwall
The Highs And Lows Of Urban Living
Dragon Age 2
- Released
- March 8, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- Mature // Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Content, Violence
- Genre(s)
- RPG
In a bold departure from the first game, Dragon Age 2 takes place almost exclusively within the confines of Kirkwall, a large city state that is comprised of the very richest and poorest. Some Dragon Age fans have expressed that the walls of Kirkwall are somewhat too confining, especially compared to the freedom they were given in Origins.
Players will undoubtedly become intimately familiar with the "City of Chains" and its inhabitants, as there is plenty to explore and rediscover in multiple runs, from the lowest, poorest workers of Lowtown or Dawktown to the lordly, well-to-do merchants and politicians in their mansions and stately homes in Hightown.
Guild Wars: Factions - Kaineng City
Urban Sprawl To Extreme Levels
Guild Wars: Factions
- Released
- April 28, 2006
- ESRB
- Teen // Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Developer(s)
- ArenaNet
- Genre(s)
- MMORPG
When most people hear the words "fantasy city," the first image that comes to mind might be a city cut from white marble, towering turrets, and magnificently designed streets. However, others might picture a squalid, medieval slum with peasants toiling away in the dirt with the occasional manse set up on high. Guild Wars Factions' Kaineng City decidedly sits in the latter category, but the city is far from small. In fact, Kaineng's size is realistically huge, even for today's modern standards. Dirty, confusing, oppressive, and poverty-and-bureaucracy stricken, the city explodes in every direction.
Buildings are stacked like Jenga blocks and streets pooling across and around nature faster than nature can retreat. The smattering of extreme wealth here and there, while many have taken to living in the vast sewer system. Worst of all, a plague of mysterious origins has consumed many of its districts, killing the denizens and turning them into horrific, tumor-warped, wandering monsters. As most of Factions' story takes place in Kaineng, excursions to the frozen waves of the Jade Sea and the stone tree cathedrals of Echovald Forest are like breaths of fresh air.
Dishonored - Dunwall
Steampunk And Void Magic Collide
Despite being on the bleeding edge of industrial and technological innovation, the real-life Victorians were deeply obsessed with the supernatural, including ghosts, spirits, and magic. Dishonored's Dunwall is a dark reflection of London at its sooty height, although this empire is powered by whale oil instead of coal and steam. Thanks to the whales' processed blubber, the city is filled with impressive (if nightmarish) steampunk creations.
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While technology is on the rise, the ruling elite still concern themselves with spirits and superstition, and rightly so. Through Corvo's eyes, the player is shown early on that a power beyond mortal comprehension, the Outsider, has great influence over the physical world. As an agent of the Outsider, Corvo is able to use his magic to traverse the high rooftops of Dunwall's buildings, monuments, factories, and plague-infested streets.
Legacy Of Kain: Blood Omen 2 - Meridian
The Vampire Underground Versus The Nosgoth Capital
Blood Omen 2
- Released
- March 20, 2002
WHERE TO PLAY
The Legacy of Kain series has some of the most mind-bending (and well conveyed) lore. Long story short, Blood Omen 2 takes place in an alternate timeline where Kain is for various reasons denied his vampiric godhood and is on the back foot. Kain awakens from a centuries-long sleep surrounded by the produce of a technological industrialization borne out of glyphic magic.
Faster industry means more urbanization. As a result, most of Blood Omen 2 takes place across a sprawling city, as Kain burns his way through vampire hunters and traitor vampires alike, draining rivers of blood, ultimately in the pursuit of vampire supremacy his self-interested dominance of Nosgoth.
MediEvil 2 - London
Taking A Spooky Tour Of London Town
MediEvil 2
- Released
- April 21, 2000
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T For Teen // Blood, Crude Humor, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure, Platformer
After spending five hundred years as a relic in the British Museum, Sir Daniel Fortesque is resurrected for the second time in MediEvil 2 by a wild storm of necromantic magic. The skeletal knight is swiftly caught up in a war between the demon-conjouring sorcerer, Lord Palethorn, and a brilliant scientist, Professor Kift, and his ghostly companion, Winston.
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Sir Dan and his new friends set out to thwart Palethorn and his ambitions of domination by collecting the spellbook pages of Zarok, Sir Dan's former immortal enemy, before the demon-faced industrialist or his henchmen can get their hands on them first. The adventure takes place across iconic Victorian-era London locales, including the streets of Kensington, Whitechapel, Greenwich Observatory, and Jack the Ripper's stalking grounds.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Midgar
A Metropolis Leeching On The Soul Of The Planet
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
- Released
- April 10, 2020
WHERE TO PLAY
Despite having the genre in its name, Final Fantasy 7 Remake pushes the limits of what can be considered "fantasy" with its urban fantasy setting, Midgar. In the original FF7, Midgard and the ecological and economic conflicts dominated the first of three discs. Its prominence and physical boundaries were greatly expanded in the long-requested remake.
Although the city is populated by motorbikes, workers in business attire, trainlines, and power station reactors, it is powered by magic, or the lifeforce of the planet. The party can use crystalized Lifesteam energy to cast bolts of lightning, shards of ice, or fiery explosions at enemies, among other spells. Monsters crawl around in the sewers and abandoned areas, and while not a common sight, greatswords can be seen being hefted around on the back of mercenaries.
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