BEST CITY MAP?

Oh Estrana, easily.



(Just ignore the voice acting)

Very cool thread.

excluding shadowrun on snes cause it's isometric the most immediate commercial examples I can think of are Parasite Eve (but they're abandoned), Yakuza (PS2), Yakuza 2 (PS2) and maybe that one "city" in Saga Frontier 2 where you had to play tag with a couple of kids at night time in order to advance the story or something? I'll have to look it up again though, the maps in particular. also Koorang in Saga Frontier 1 (the night distinct)the market in secret of evermore was another really cool one

I think part of the reason why we haven't seen more of this type of map design, is because like, as you mentioned, perspective is a problem -- but also another problem that isn't immediately apparent, is explorability and functionality: this was part of the reason why I didn't like playing through Theia. you're struggling between creating a densely populated city, but also one that's easy to navigate through, but remains functional. If it's not easy to navigate through or there's no purpose to these areas the player is exploring, it quickly becomes something the player has to contend with.

You'll notice with stuff like FF7/Saga Frontier/Legend of Dragoon that, most of these maps are stitched together - but on every one of these maps they usually have a really strong/interesting landmark that acts as a focal point for the rest of the area and the players perspective, and then they create entryways leading away from that focal point, or complimenting it. (if i have time i'll try and scan/upload some maps as example in a future post; but i definitely think this is something that devs of that era were struggling with)

But like, similar to creating movie sets or shooting at a particular location, these aren't real city locations but idealized, composed, pieces of one, so they consistently remain as something that the player can easily navigate through and explore, while still trying to look somewhat, interesting.

Having said that, I did not like FF9's lindblum. Because I felt like, what was the point of creating this illusion of this really big city that you want to explore, if you're only going to allow the player to continue to explore one part of it over and over again (Saga Frontier 2 also had this problem; fantastic water colored maps but you're only allowed to explore one area, or spend 5 seconds in it) - I thought something like FF12 was more appropriate, because you're actually going through and interacting with every district and trying to find out what to buy and gather information etc. Not only is it a big city, but it remains functional and explorable to the player on every level, everything has a purpose.

Yakuza is an interesting mention, because I thought it was neat how Yakuza on the PS2 kind cheats, but also fixes the problem with using an overhead perspective in a city area: by having the camera constantly follow the player's movement, from overhead, but also adjusts, as the player moves into the distance, before switching to another overhead perspective, so everything remains readable and explorable - this is really cool, but also I think part of the reason why we didn't see more densely populated city areas in games, because either the tech wasn't there yet or it's really hard to make it look interesting (The beginning city area of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water for the Sega Genesis, comes to mind).

(another neat thing about Yakuza was how, as you walked into crowds of people, air bubbles of gossip discussing the current conflict in the story would pop up; like after a big a event, they'd talk about whether or not this section of the city was still safe, stuff like that - this was really cool feature and I wish more games did that)

But yeah, I'll try to upload some examples here.

EDIT: some commercial examples:


Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Paris) (1991) Mega Drive. this is a bad example for more than one reason, but it's an example that i know of. and I think it's part of the reason why we didn't see more inner city populated maps during the 16-bit era.


Secret of EverMore (Nobilia Marketplace) (1995) SNES with Evermore because all the stands in the market place are kept at a relative equal height. it's a bit more easier to see and easier to navigate through and feels a bit more lived in, but unfortunately we don't get that sense of scale from the large buildings yet.


Saga Frontier (Koorang) (1997) with Saga Frontier it's prerendered 2D, but there's a slight isometric perspective, to the backgrounds, but as they start to incorporate larger buildings, we start to see some of the problems with layers overlapping.


Saga Frontier 2 (1997) (Infiltrate Alexei!) - City of Night (1999) with Saga frontier 2, it's still 2D but with water colored maps, we see that it's slightly even more isometric. but it's trying to keep everything neat uniform and readable.


Yakuza / Ryu Ga Gotoku(2005)(PS2) with Yakuza on PS2, it's 3D, but what was neat about the PS2 entry is how it tries to stick to that overhead perspective, the further the player goes into the horizon. yes, sometimes it switches to a non overhead perspective - but to retain the most information for the player for where Kazuma is on the map among the buildings, they continue to use that overhead perspective, to help achieve that lived in feeling; because it's important to see where the player is in relation to other characters among the buildings - for interior shots it switches to a regular 3D camera - this is the PS2 version.

...For RM games the ones I can immediately think of are:
-Theia,
-Zero Shift Reality (the demo of Mog's/Feld's 2k3 game before turning into chronicles of the last era; it had a really cool map where a girlfriend was tossing out a boyfriends clothes after a break up and crisis core midgar music was playing over it)
-and maybe oldpat's Karma Flow for rm2k3.

If I remember anymore I'll mention them.♥
great stuff as always.

bumping this, cause I really wanted to see where this went. Will probably upload a few more examples from console games.