Prebuilt cities for next gen game development?

[ricois300]

After reading about all the detailed graphics, physics and AI that we are expecting from the next gen systems, how likely is it that some middleware companies could be designing full cities, real life or fake, that can be built super detailed, with all the streets, buildings, interiors, moveable/breakable objects, and pedestrians/civilians?
From what we've seen as far as size and scope, we have Liberty city(GTA), Vice City(GTA), LA(True Crime/Midnight Club), London(Getaway), NY(Midnight Club), Miami/Istanbul/Nice(Driver3). They are fully explorable as much as possible on the current hardware. Many of these games have taken years to complete and haven't even been that great because so much of the time was spent on creating a lifelike city. What I'm saying is that if a middleware company does this and game makers don't need to spend all the time making it and can focus on story, missions, and gameplay.
They could create multiple cities, super detailed, streets, alleys, interiors, furniture, cars, pedestrians on the streets, people working in stores, people living in homes. I know it's been done to an extent with GTA, True Crime and Getaway, but almost any game developer could use the city and it would be on such a large scale, you might not see every part of the city for every game. Look at how many movies are made in LA and NY (usually because of cost concerns I'm sure) and they still have credibility because of the story and directing, etc.
Why not be able to have LA fully explorable(not like True Crime) where you could have one game maker make True Crime, another could use it for Need for Speed, another for Xmen, etc. Different genres could still have the same backdrop, but a completely different game. Save on time and production cost.
What do you think?

[ultimategamer2004]

I hope it doesent happen i wouldent like to see alot of games lookoing similar thats what gives a game what it has it is unique...

[Matt]

While that sounds like an interesting idea, I don't really think that it would be a good idea. It could be practical, I just don't think that it will happen.

The developers design everything the way that they want it. If another company was to design an element of a game, then it would be almost disjointed from the rest of the game. The developer is trying to create an experience for the gamer, or at least that's how I see it.

It's an interesting suggestion though.....

[ricois300]

In the case I was talking about is in a realistic looking world. Of course cartoonish or alien worlds would be done differently. If you look at games that are trying to capture a real city, they want great looking buildings, good lighting, try for photorealistic layout of the city. This all takes time. I loved The Getaway, but the gameplay was lacking for some people and it took over 3 years to make. True Crime took a long time and I finished it, but hated the gameplay and thought the city was monotonous and boring.
With the high level of graphics coming, it will take longer for designers and artists to build a city or cities. To get the detail down it will take more artists and level designers to place everything and create the world.
My example is if you have a realistic version of LA, you could make a game about "24" with Jack Bower running and driving around saving the world in 24 hours.
In that same realistic LA, you could make Midnight Club 3 and have the checkpoints be placed through the same streets, but have more souped up cars with faster driving dynamics.
You could make the skies darker and more shadowy creepy feeling and have Resident Evil: LA with zombies in the streets and buildings.
Spiderman 3: LA, etc. You get the idea. Make a bunch of cities through the world and let game designers buy the city for their game, same idea as licensing a game engine except it's more complete.

The point is, one GT2 car took a day to make, one GT3 car took like 2 weeks to make, the better graphics get the longer it takes to design with details. If you want decent gameplay along with the story, the missions, and all, some things will have to be shortened... like this post.

[Matt]

I suppose with the amount of detail that is required now, there is a little strain on the developers to get everything right. For some reason I just get the feeling that handing over responsibilities to another team of developers seperate to the developers assigned to the game isn't a good idea.

I'm not saying that the idea isn't a good one, and for all I know, it could work really well, that's just my own opinion. It would be interesting to see what everyone else thinks of the idea.

[ultimategamer2004]

No it is not a good idea the game could be copyed by other developers with ease and the detail and over all feal would be ruined.

[ricois300]

OK, I get the idea.
So if graphics, AI, physics, etc. will be so detailed in the next gen, how are the devs going to put out high quality games in a reasonable amount of time without doubling or tripling their staff. The Doom/Half Life/Stalker(high profile, great looking games) development time is ridiculously long and the games start to look average by the time they are actually released.

[ultimategamer2004]

they will find a way or we will just have to be patient..

[Matt]

If a developer was to get someone else to do it, they would still have to pay them for it. So they may as well just pay for extra staff in their own team to do it.

[slayerx]

I think to solve the problem how about a map designer been used like THPS :lol:

No i agree it would abe nice to have this done savin them time to develop a city and spend it on gameplay and other such essentials but i cant see companies sharing this among themselves as stated it would ruin the feel even if they could tweak it as they liked.

[Matt]

It just wouldn't have the same feel as the rest of the game would it?

Knowing that the scenery was developed by somebody else, it would just feel odd.

[solidus]

Why not let other company's tweak it, if they pat royalty fees. Let's say a couple of game developers are all making different city's of a certain country (state) and they have the copyrights of all those source codes but they let other company's (game developers) use it if they pay a royalty fee. They can tweak it the way they want, as long as they pay.

[SunDevil]

Good Bye

[Omega Blue]

they wont need pre-built cities, thats a stupid idea. what they do need is a bigger budget, and a bigger team consisting of more modellers and coders. both of which will happen. much like how the movie buisness has grow from 2 or 3 million per movie to now 20 to 30 million per movie.

[ultimategamer2004]

Yes they need a biger budjet only thing is they dont have it thay cannot have a biger budjet but hey everyone starts somewhere.

[the legendary ice man]

The city in True Crime is seriously 'life-less' There is no real feel to the area you are in, becausde you pass the same building in nearly EVERY district - why, the construction of TC's LA is zoned, so as you cross the line, it generates the next part of the city and erases the last part.

Renderware is a leading platform and the whole of GTA3 was made in 6 months, with the team having absolutely no idea how to use Renderware - brilliance? YES, on renderwares side.

Renderware is something you should definately read up on. Driv3r is made using it and there have been reports that a fair bit of Burnout were made using it. www.renderware.com

[SunDevil]

Good Bye

[the legendary ice man]

Very True, Renderware is nearing that kind of accessibility you are thinking of.

I only just recently started learning c/c++ and do so through my school who have the Renderware SDK. I see where you are coming from and the ideas are brilliant. But a whole city?

Variants of the Linux OS take on average about 2 years to create and that is with nearly 10'000 people working on it (spread over the world). Item databases are acceptable, but there isn't any need for them now - at the moment companies try and put their money into playability. In the future, a few years into the PS3's existence when people realise there is only one console that is good enough to do what they want - they will realise that something like this will be needed and they will set up Modellers who just sit around, working at home(cheaper and often more efficent) designing builings, forks, spoons, floor tiles etc

[SunDevil]

Good Bye

[ricois300]

I agree with Ice man, True Crime's LA was a boring and repetitive city. And even though I liked The Getaway, the city didn't have alot of character because you were limited to the streets and occasional parks only. No alleyways, backyards, or extra areas were accessible even in free roam. Interiors were only selectively open depending on mission. That game took over 3 years to get it all down and the city might have been pretty accurate as far as streets, but it wasn't completely open. GTA3 was great because it was all open, but it was easier because of the more cartoonish nature and not having to stick to real world construction.

We all agree that the level of graphics will increase, not all agree on the extent, but as they get more detailed, the build time will increase.
It might be PS4 before an engine might need to have a library of fully built cities, but I thought it was an idea to develop in the next gen.

The game designers have even said that graphics are not the pure focus of next gen systems, although that will be one thing that benefits, but they will need to focus on interactivity to immerse the player in the game. Better AI, truer physics, cleaner animation, etc will need to be focused on, not just how many strands of grass are on the ground. When you were a kid, you always played in the same sandbox, but with different toys, you had different adventures.

[SunDevil]

Good Bye

[the legendary ice man]

Well yes I agree - I agree to a lot of things :roll:

But from what I read companies will soon be able to implement an image onto a side of building since it's an inanimate object and then use the program to fully render it. I think renderware has something similar.

I guess the main point is nobody knows how games will be developed in the future consoles era - perhaps eventually they will create a mind map and have a program interpret it all...

[The Outspoken]

I hope it doesent happen i wouldent like to see alot of games lookoing similar thats what gives a game what it has it is unique...

Not if the middle company just made the AI machine for NPC's, (alterable of course for specific games), and a skinable, or rather, wireframe rendering of the entire city. The coders just have to put their graphics on the city, but the city is already there, so to speak.

[KlawHammer]

It would get boring though if 10 games used the free-roam city theme.

[ultimategamer2004]

I agree i would hate to see the gaming industry come to this you buy games and you want them to be uniqe..

[KlawHammer]

Thats one of the reasons we buy games too.
Look at the FPS market - so many companies are offering all these games and they are becoming a tad bit boring.

[Matt]

True, but now that means that PC FPS developers are adding in more innovative features to differentiate themselves from the crowd of samey FPS games.

[KlawHammer]

Like Battlefield 1942 - no script just pure war.

[Matt]

That's what annoyed me about MOHAA. All very scripted, and it was a bit rubbish how one person did everything in the game. Patterson, superhero extraordinaire! :)

[ultimategamer2004]

The GT series seems to have gone a bit zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. ..

But GT4 might be a bit better with the customization back...

[Matt]

Lets remember what the discussion is about here.....

[KlawHammer]

Ah yes the cities, imagine if GT had a whole city to drive about in?

[Matt]

As in a race, or just generally driving around?

If you meant the latter, that would be pretty boring.

[KlawHammer]

In a race, you would have to find your own way to the starting track (like SSX3) and you'd find your own route to the finish (MC2 style)

[the legendary ice man]

your avatar suits that comment :D

That sounds like Midnight Street Club Racing.

I like the idea, but what would be good is you drive around, you can get challenged by 'townies' and boy racers all over the cities and occasinallyyou see them racing and then you follow them and they ask if you want a race etc. Then you get to build your own little rookie traning centre and train rookies up.

Good Idea?

[ricois300]

In the current generation of systems, the same city might get boring after a while of free roaming, but with the next gen there will be an increase in the level of interactivity. With peds, buildings, vehicles, etc. There will be more to look at, explore, get in trouble with. This gen of games has started seeing an increase in the numbers of games using free roam because the technology has finally allowed it. When the next gen comes, gamers aren't going to stand for the old type of hallway shooters that take you from one room/area to another by hallways, valleys or a single street.
Of course every game wouldn't be done with a prebuilt city, fantasy, alien, cartoon worlds would be built for a specific game, but many real world games could rely on real world cities of higher quality than it would take them to design.
We already have lots of games that take place in the same cities, London, L.A., NY, Miami. I'd rather have it look close to picture perfect and have the games play well, than have a great looking city with bad control or story because the developers spent all their time on the city.

[the legendary ice man]

Even the imaginative City for NFS: Underground 2 is roamable and thats how you find your races.

[ultimategamer2004]

Yes the free run thing should be very good.. I loved NFSU and i am sure this will be a load better although it will be hard to beat NFSU.

[the legendary ice man]

I like the look and previews of NFSU2 and hope that it will be as good as they say it is.

[KlawHammer]

Knowing EA and there trademarks™ they'll probably add something like Fastblur™ or something...

[ultimategamer2004]

YEs,

I can garenty it will be the best street racing game yet like NFSU was and still is :wink:

[KlawHammer]

True, lol one day the others like Midnight Club 2 will eventually catch on ...

[the legendary ice man]

Midnight Club 2 was a great improvement over the orginal, but compared to NFSU it looks like a somwehat over-rated, under-powered concept.

I'd like to see in PS3 games, All or most buildings enterable.

Also the following:

Say you explode a car, fire a rocket or blow out windows of a building a Construction crew come along, build scaffolding etc and refix the window and stuctural damage to the builidng, but stay there for a somewhat authentic time.

I think something similar was supposed to be in The Getaway...

[KlawHammer]

Nice, i've wanted that to happen in GTA for a long time...

[Matt]

Say you explode a car, fire a rocket or blow out windows of a building a Construction crew come along, build scaffolding etc and refix the window and stuctural damage to the builidng, but stay there for a somewhat authentic time.

Not a bad little idea actually. GTA would be the best place for that. You drive past a building one day to see people refurbishing it because you drove your car through the front window. :D

[slayerx]

A little off topic but surely you guys remeber the great effects in Red faction with the Mod technology used to destroy walls etc what happend the second game was no where near as good, that kind of engine should of been developed further can you imagine what they could of had by now with the developments made since Red faction 2 ?

I tend to agree with some of the points that this, could be helpful for some games as the design process for cities can be long expensive and so it could benifit game designers in the long run the only problem is who would hold the rights to the prebuilt stuff? Surely every company would want to be that company

[the legendary ice man]

It could be a variable based thing, where you enter the amount of buildings, parks etc and it generates a sensible looking city, based on zoning technologies to map it out, then the development artisits colour it in, add roads and trees to the parks etc.

Then, the project remains the property of the inventors and the city can become licensed by the company.

[ricois300]

I tend to agree with some of the points that this, could be helpful for some games as the design process for cities can be long expensive and so it could benifit game designers in the long run the only problem is who would hold the rights to the prebuilt stuff? Surely every company would want to be that company

I would think the company that creates the cities would license it to the game developers, just like middleware.
Maybe pay different fees for use of more extensive parts of a city. Driving game might only need access to street level and no interiors. A spy game might only need certain neighborhoods of a couple different cities. A free roam like GTA might use the whole city with interiors and all.
Then the devs would tweak the AI, add their own story, special cars, enemies, etc.
You could even offset the costs of production by selling advertising, use real products(cars,soft drinks,cell phones,hotels,dept stores, etc), advertising signs and billboards where they really are. Although this is kind of already happenning.

[L3XO]

I like your idea, but i think that cities may be alittle too small, since they'll be in every game. If you had said "World" then mabey it would work, but cities would kinda suck. That would basically be like playing a different sport on the same oval.

However, if renderware could make all objects which are in real life, that would work. e.g. 1000 different light posts, 10,000 different road textures, millions of different trees and plants and grass and weeds and shrubs and flowers. lots of wall, ground and sky and building textures. Every single car done exact as in real life and having a generator where people get chosen a specific gender, eyes, mouth, face shape, body shape, weight, colour etc. as well as random colour shirts, and the type of shirt, and random logos in random location, and so on with pants and other things. If renderware could do this, then building a city would only take a short time.

As for AI, i think that should be done by the actual game developers, as some people are very different to others.

anyhow, PS3 wont cope with all this. 25Gb is nooooo where near enough space. They'll need at least 1Tb (1000Gb) if they want to achive a fully realistic environment.

[KlawHammer]

You can fit alot in 23GB my friend...

[L3XO]

You can fit alot in 23GB my friend...


i guess it depends on how u look at it.
If you want a decent game, then,....

If PS2 has 4Gb discs and PS3 has 25Gb discs then PS3 can only be about 6 times better. Sure it might have graphic capability over 6 times, but just image trying to get realism out of somthing thats only 6 times better than a ps2.

if u share the amount equally, then graphics are improved X2, audio and physics X2 and 3d Models and architecture X2, and thats not a HUGE improvement at all.sure they could keep the size of a city such as vice city at the same size, to boost the space so they can improve graphics or somthing else, but there will always be a (+) and a (-).
I admit that GTA seems big at first, but its not. after playing for like a week, it shrinks which really ruins the "City" effect.

graphics will still be fairly poor. theres no way you could get everyone in a city to have 100,000 strings of hair each. Also perfect RayTracing is kinda doubtfull.

has anyone noticed that in GTA people are respawned from everywhere? kinda dumb since u see a nice car, and as soon as u turn around to folow it, its gone or replaced by another ( same with people )

however, we all need a lille bit more info.
however, dont feel that im against you. 23Gb is alot, especially since typical games today are around 5 Gb.

however, my point is, if anyone expects the sun, mercury venus earth mars etc then they will be disappointed for a very very very long time.

[ricois300]

I agree with you that a simulated world is a way off from what the next gen will be able to handle. The detailed graphics, AI, physics will be too complex to all be together in one, maybe in another 2 or more generations.

I was thinking more along the lines of the evolution of dev kits. Middleware and engine sharing has just started to become more common in the last 5 years or so.
Your ideas of say, Renderware, doing a huge library of common real world objects is the type of thing I was talking about. It was more of a shot at increasing the speed of game development since the worlds will be so much more complex.
Once game worlds look better and are more convincing, I think many people would rather see a variety of genres in a city that they really like. If I was playing a next gen Getaway in a more realistic London, after I finish it I might think, now if only I could play 28 Days Later and fight zombies all over the city, or if I could play Sims: London, or Driver 4: London, different devs could put out their own game without designing it all and taking over 3 years or so.
I think there will be certain cities in the world that will have a lot of games based in them.

[Makaveli_786]

By 2007(a year after PS3's release) Sony plan to release 100GB BD-DVD's, much bigger than 25GB.

You can bet your ass theyll make something with more capacity by 2010(half way through the PS3's life).

[L3XO]

i am very bad at maths... lol sorry.

then graphics are improved X2, audio and physics X2 and 3d Models and architecture X2

ITs actually X8 (25Gb -:-3)

PS2 Graphics= 1.3Gb
PS2 Audio+Physics= 1.3Gb
PS2 3D Models + Architecture= 1.3Gb
Add up to around 4Gb

PS3 Graphics= 8Gb
PS3 Audio+Physics= 8Gb
PS3 3D Models + Architecture= 8Gb
Add up to around 25Gb

Basically Graphics are 8 Times Sharper ( not forgetting 3D Mapping )
8 Times more sounds, music and physics and Game Info
and 8 times more Architecture + 3d Models (Basically GTA X 8 )

[Ress Cor]

Realistic Cities.... chee lets give terrorist the fucking map to my house, good job!

how about NO. There is a company that does city mapping but not for games.

Game companies want to create a unique product that makes money, and why pay someone else if they can do it themselves?

3 to 4 years from now Game development will turn into Hollywood and the majority of games are going to suck, like they do now, and everyone is going to be fucking bored and wanting something new and cool like having a baseball bat broken over head kinda cool, so maybe the controller will schock you until you black out when you die in a game, certainly would make the parents happy when their kid plays for only 5 minutes and sleeps for hours afterwards.

Welcome to crap. With few exceptions, games from now on are going to suck.

[Dreamcastmagic]

This idea is like asking every website to use the same set of pre-made web page templates, it will never happen and its not really practical in the real world. And the streets of a sim game like the Urbz will be different from a game like GTA's, not to mention games in late gen games have better graphics so it would need to be upgraded all the time. Not to mention games would look glab if not massivly customed to the game ...

[SunDevil]

Good Bye

[ricois300]

Sun devil's idea of the object library is great, but I think the others are missing the point.
You say that games are going to suck if they're all made in the same place. That's true, many games right now do suck because they take so long to make the impressive city that they take place in. There is little time spent on gameplay and story.
The prebuilt city idea would NOT be used for most games, you wouldn't use New York for a Final Fantasy, but you could use it for a racing game, action game, etc.
There are some cities that have been used in many, many games and some of them have taken years to make because of the city having to be built from scratch by each and every company. Miami, NY, LA, London, Tokyo are examples.
I'm sure you don't hate every movie made in LA because so many others are made there. It just saves money and production time.
Some games are just gonna suck, can't change that, but for the developer that doesn't have a big budget, but a great idea, it would be helpful. Consumers can weed out the crap.

[the legendary ice man]

In my experience - Low budget games CAN and often ARE remarkably entertaining.

Since Sony have developed a 1TB HDD, portable storage mediums can't be that far behind in their list 'look we can do it too mommy' things.

[Aderick]

After doing something once, it becomes easier.

[KlawHammer]

ITs actually X8 (25Gb -:-3)

PS2 Graphics= 1.3Gb
PS2 Audio+Physics= 1.3Gb
PS2 3D Models + Architecture= 1.3Gb
Add up to around 4Gb

PS3 Graphics= 8Gb
PS3 Audio+Physics= 8Gb
PS3 3D Models + Architecture= 8Gb
Add up to around 25Gb

Basically Graphics are 8 Times Sharper ( not forgetting 3D Mapping )
8 Times more sounds, music and physics and Game Info
and 8 times more Architecture + 3d Models (Basically GTA X 8 )

Well 8 times seems rather uniform to me. 8 times everthing, more like:


PS3 Graphics 4Gb (mostly textures,engine etc, not too much needed here)

PS3 Audio+Physics= 10Gb (quite a bit - physics will take a bit)

PS3 3D models + Architecture = 11Gb (this we need alot of space for)

[ricois300]

That would be if most games max out a DVD and I'm not sure that they do.
Speaking of the increased size that games will take up and it requiring such higher capacity media to hold it all. Doesn't that tell you something. All that extra information and detail on all aspects has to be built by someone.
If the current game companies aren't going to increase their headcounts by several times, how will they put out these higher quality games in reasonable amounts of time. That is what I'm trying to base my point on.
It sounds like many industry experts are saying that the games are going to take incrementally longer time to make than the previous generations because of this. Yes, there are kits, Sony developed and XNA, but will they speed up the development process or just save it time so that it will still take 3 years for a large production game on the next gen.

It's time for Unreal Real Cities 1.0

[the legendary ice man]

That would be if most games max out a DVD and I'm not sure that they do.
Speaking of the increased size that games will take up and it requiring such higher capacity media to hold it all. Doesn't that tell you something. All that extra information and detail on all aspects has to be built by someone.
If the current game companies aren't going to increase their headcounts by several times, how will they put out these higher quality games in reasonable amounts of time. That is what I'm trying to base my point on.
It sounds like many industry experts are saying that the games are going to take incrementally longer time to make than the previous generations because of this. Yes, there are kits, Sony developed and XNA, but will they speed up the development process or just save it time so that it will still take 3 years for a large production game on the next gen.

It's time for Unreal Real Cities 1.0

It'd be pretty pointless spending ages on making some software that does nothing much.

The idea of the pre-built SDK's is too make the most of current research into consoles and put that out, as time goes on, newer versions come out and then in a few years a company finds a way of utilizing every last bit of memory, power, graphics processing available to them, and everyone tries to follow.

[dagwin]

I didn't read this entire thread, so if this has been said already, I apologize.

I think the "engines" that other companies make will be getting better and better, and they will have phenomenal "city engines" to better facilitate the creation of cities in minimal amounts of time. As far as a company selling pre-rendered cities, I don't see that ever happening. I think it can only go as far as a very good "city-rendering engine." That way, each developer can maintain their own feel to the games.

Also, with the advent of the new consoles (PS3 and XBox 2), games will take much longer to produce (in my opinion). Because of this, just like the movie industry, prices will be going UP, UP, UP for games (and the consoles, of course). What does everyone think games for PS3 will start at when it comes out? Certainly not $49.99! No one ever expected we'd be paying almost $10 to go see a movie in 2004, but we are. That's because technology costs money, and that has to be passed on to the tech-hungy consumers.

[Fats]

Honestly, I try to shy away from people that come on here to do nothing but bother other people. But Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you really have that much time to waste? Can you not see that there is absolutely no point to what you're doing AT ALL?

[ricois300]

I guess I'm missing your point specialpro. Dagwin had a valid point and if "city building engines" are what might be a part of development tools, that would be great if they can speed up the dev process. If you read any developer comments on next gen, they all talk about increased production time and investment due to more powerful systems. The money and people power need to come from somewhere. I'd rather pay a couple bucks more and have more programmers so we can get the games sooner.

P.S. Being cynical doesn't make you sound smarter.

[Fats]

I guess I'm missing your point specialpro. Dagwin had a valid point and if "city building engines" are what might be a part of development tools, that would be great if they can speed up the dev process. If you read any developer comments on next gen, they all talk about increased production time and investment due to more powerful systems. The money and people power need to come from somewhere. I'd rather pay a couple bucks more and have more programmers so we can get the games sooner.

P.S. Being cynical doesn't make you sound smarter.

Tisk, tisk... My comment wasn't directed towards Dagwin at all. There was someone by the name of RickJames posting spam, which I was pissed off with. My message was directed at him, but the mod's have deleted the posts which he has made meaning that my post may have came across the wrong way. In your case, it clearly has came across the wrong way.

[ricois300]

My bad, sorry specialpro. It seems like you have good posts and I was wondering why you were attacking the guy when he was making a good point.

By the way, anyone play Driv3r yet? I love it so far, and I can't imagine something like this on the next gen. And the time it will take to build a city, let alone 3 cities this size with the detail that will be available with the power of the future systems.
Can't wait, hopefully the next gen free roaming games won't take forever to complete. 3+ years of development for Driv3r and getting trashed in the reviews.

[the legendary ice man]

I found it pretty good so far. I hate the fact you get put facing backwards in some of the chase missions in Istanbul.

hopefully when they finally do this kind of game on PS3 etc, you can go in most buildings and do missions your own way.

[ricois300]

I'm really impressed with the size of the game and the graphics for being PS2. If and when Driv4r or whatever comes out I hope they can get the in game graphics to look as good as the cutscenes.

The cities in Driv3r is an example of what I was basing my post here about. If a company spent alot of time building an even better looking and maybe bigger city on PS3/next gen, wouldn't that city be good to have more than one game in it. There was so much time spent building it, length of mission development and some other parts might have been cut short. I like playing Driver in it, but if you opened it up with more detail and more interiors which should be easily doable next gen, you could have more free roam games, fighting games, driving games or any other game you could think of that would take place in a real world city, each with it's own controls, characters, story, etc. A dev with a great idea, but not enough resources to spend 3+ years building cities or locations could still put out a great game, just in a familiar setting. It could be more about game design instead of location design.

I love GTA's concept of designing their own cities, but I also like real world citites and exploring a place I might never get to. It wouldn't be so bad to play more than one game there and know the city already, because some games are so big, you feel lost the whole time anyway, this way you know how to get around and can focus more on gameplay.

[KlawHammer]

Well you know its easier to make fantasy cities than it is to make real life cities.

[The_One]

Well you know its easier to make fantasy cities than it is to make real life cities. Er... not really. I'm quite sure designing all those Final "Fantasy" cities would take as long as designing a real city.

[Brad]

Not really. Real life cities would consist of buildings, every building would have a serveral floors with mass rooms in every floor...boy that could take a long time. The final fantasy games only show you the cities but the path you can actually walk on is no where near those cities.

Yea sure you could design a small town in detail, but a full scale city....