Architect Compares Cyberpunk 2077 vs Starfield vs Star Citizen Cities
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- Come find out what makes each work well, and where they might fall a bit short. 🌏 Get exclusive NordVPN deal here ➵ NordVPN.com/mo... It’s risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!✌
#cyberpunk2077 #starcitizen #starfield #cities
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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.
Your videos wouldn't be as fun if we couldn't complain about something.
I see your point. Thank you, for doing this video.
was just about to angrily type a message about your slipup, but then saw your comment. Glad you corrected!
as the Indonesians say, same same, but different, but still same.
Lol beat me to it re: Ki-moon walled city. Great video! I'd love you to do Lonely Planet guides of scifi locations with an architects eye like this video but also Bespin, Ariel, or Mega City One.
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
Like that Mega city in china that was build to house millions, but only has thousands of residence.............
I mean I don’t think it’s fair to assume those cities are anywhere close to done, esp when you consider the game is a space flight sim.
@@Degenevesting Starfield is done
@@Degenevesting todd Howard loves people like u…people that blindly accept Bethesda’s 30fps , 16 times the detail , 8 years in the making…trash...
yeah, I'm really disappointed by the scale of the few cities they have and comparing it to the concept arts they show, example is the neon city was giant city in the ocean and in the concept art with several decks and floors but ingame its like a size of a 1 building in that concept art.
Cyberpunk 2077 may genuinely be the most gorgeous game i have ever played.
Hands down. I can't think of anything that even compares. Can you?
@@immutablecantrip A Plague Tale Requiem was pretty
@@immutablecantrip Red Dead, but that's in a whole other direction with the focus on nature and the subtle
GTA probably or Red Dead
@@danieldkland You are right! Both games are amazing
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.
What? You don’t appreciate how much Starfield innovated the game space in 2024 by reintroducing a fan favorite feature from older games: Loading screens for everything.
🤣@@ROFLWAFFLELAWL4
@@ROFLWAFFLELAWL4 lol i was almost going to angrily answer until i read the end of the sentence
@@ROFLWAFFLELAWL4 😭😭😭
Star citizen has trains and cyberpunk promised trains. Also in SC you can fly through the city and cyberpunk promised it.
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.
I agree thats where it shines the most; Star Citizen was (and still kinda is) originally designed as a Space dogfighting sim with some extra features, on-foot experience was never a priority and it still outshines Starfield's. If SC nails it with building interiors, the gap between the two games will be immense. Not that im a SF hater, its just frustrating that a new gen space game can even get the insides of a city in the same instance.
Don't forget that SC is suppose to add base building plus replication layering tech to improve servers this year (hopefully).
So it's going to be a whole other gaming experience later on.
Exactly. SC's cities are meant to immerse you and give you a feeling of awe as you arrive or depart in your space ship, on your way to go play the game.
Agree, YET CIG Decide to make we can enter every(most) building in future somehow.... D:
not hate it, but just WOW they decide to do that 👏
@@rinkaemina Well, maybe. See the thing about that is that may be too much freedom for newer players. they'll get hella lost in area 18 for instance. However, having a player able to buy a small base in one of the skyscrapers and land on top to get in would work.
I doubt we'll be able to enter every building. that's way too much work to make. but the world will expand.
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.
Reading about the thought processes behind the design was incredibly fascinating! They blended four different and relatively uncommon architectural styles to achieve the city’s iconic look. I’ve heard they also made it noticeably impractical in certain ways to give it more of a dystopian feel.
@@furiouslydashing290 it looks great! I actually made it a point to run in foot to objects within 1km so i could actually see what was going on as i moved. They did an excellent job
Would you please link this article? I'd like to read it.@@furiouslydashing290
I never even fast travel when I’m playing cyberpunk. Just shows you how immersive Night City is, I genuinely just love driving around
I have 700 hours in CP2077, and still haven't done all there is to do in the game.
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.
Bala demais
As someone who used to live in SP but moved back to Chicago, Night City almost gives me saudades for Brazil lmao. São Paulo even has the most helicopters in the world and the biggest Japanese population outside Japan which definitely play into that feeling.
Sempre tem que ter um brasileiro carente Attention whore, todo vídeo de estrangeiro tem um, os caras acham que alguém se importa com esse pedaço de terceiro mundo.
Kawloon City was in Hong Kong and not Korea!
You're absolutely right, that's my mistake. Not sure why I remembered that incorrectly.
!
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.
I think the thing that really stood out to me with Starfield's cities is how small and low population they feel. They're supposed to be the centers of an interstellar community and they only feel like they're sized for 10-20k people. Even The Well, the slum area that was supposed to be packed with people was the size of a city block and had maybe 100 people in it. Granted, some of that might be engine limitations, but I think they could have done something like what SC does and have set-pieces showing more city that you can't go inside to make the cities feel reasonably large and populated.
bethesda cities are meant to be more like Main St. America at Disneyland than actual simulations of cities. They're just supposed to be a vibe. In fact, a LOT of bethesda game design comes from theme park design. The dungeons are structured just like rides, for example.
@@crimsonhawk52 Yeah, and that works for a medieval or post-apocalyptic setting where you expect populations to be small but falls apart with empires spanning large parts of the galaxy where you expect to have multiple Trantors. A player can only suspend their disbelief so much before they realize that something just feels off and it falls into the uncanny valley.
Cyberpunk 2077 imo i by far the most beautiful game I've played. The amount of detail is incredible. The City is alive.
Nothing comes close to Night City. I feel like I'm in a living breathing city that is loaded with both the old and the new, unbelievable beauty and stark brutality.
Since they're not in the category it makes sense.
Cyberpunk is the only game out of these 3 with an actual city. Starfield and SC have city locations, but accessible space is very limited, so neither is really a full city in terms of player access.
Night City just feels so alive to me, and having experienced all three, absolutely wins for me.
Night City feels like a childhood home. The bustling streets, crowded slums and garbage everywhere, hostile architecture, the obvious divide between social classes, and the constant noise pollution. It captured the very worst of what real life has to offer. The fear of leaving the city and going into the unknown poses too much uncertainty that you'd rather be swallowed whole by the place that made you who you are.
Feeling like disney main street is a great way of putting the feeling of some video game cities. One of my favs is new alexandria from halo reach, and its a city that has a little bit of that. During most of the level, the level design and the fast paced nature of Reach as an fps make it really easy to fall into the environment and appreciate the realism of it. Halfway through the level exodus though there's a moment where you fly in a drop ship to a different location that shows you some of the cracks in new alexandria as a city. Some of the buildings have no visible entrances and exits, let alone roads (the city itself has none), and there are a lot of dead ends that take make sense for an fps level but take away the realism. On the other hand, the scale at every point feels spot on. Almost nothing in the distance ever feels miniature, the spaces are large and well appointed with signage and maybe shops that feel usable, in that they make sense for the space and besides the carnage the city itself looks like what a city should look like and be laid out like. I love it as a setting and its held up as level design overall, especially for a game that came out in 2010, just had never found the right way to describe those few pitfalls until you mentioned the way a theme park can feel. Great video!
New Babbage needs more walkable glas tunnels between the domes so you can feel the scale. Also the large windows in SC usually hang slightly too height so you can't see easily. I'm the spawn hab on the other hand the windows are too small to see something (to save heating costs hehe). Both is a bit wasted opportunity to impress players :)
Im Really hoping they add "Player housing districts" to each of the citys when they put in permint player persistent habs in the game. That way the habs we log into now, will be like the hotels of real life. a place you stay at when your out of town. While players with a permint residence will log in in their hab in a completely different district of the city. and even better yours will ALWAYS be on the same floor and room number. as well as a different building from say your friend, who lives in a different building across the street or across the city! the Same with Hangers. Locate their physical spaces away from the existing space port and make them different places for different players! We have 4 ENTIRE planets and at least 9 different moons to work with here! :)
get an environmental suit, and try walking between the buildings. those trams are incredibly fast.
Probably to keep framerates from tanking more than they already do. The sky is easier to render than the city so windows that are too high probably prevent preformance drops.
@@the_omg3242 ya, but performance decreases when we are all gathered together, by spreading us out we reduce that problem by A LOT. and it wouldn't be hard because of how dam huge the play space is to go back to the original idea of personal hangers in different areas of the planets. Arc Corp might be the easiest to do this with, as with a city sized planet it would be stupid easy to add a giant ground to surface door where ever you want, and it not seem out of place on the world. For Hurstin. big ass ware houses spread out all over the world. Crusader is MASSIVE with no features at all but clouds. adding in personal floating plat forms for players might not even be noticed by anyone to begin with. Micro Tech is essentially one Gigantic Mountain Range. putting in "Hoth" underground hangers all over the planet wouldn't even be noticeable to "space Tourists" if you didn't know where to look. And of course there is A MASSIVE PLAY "SPACE" filled with absolutely NOTHING that would be perfect for player owned mini space stations that are a combination of hanger and hab, and in fact if you go back to the early days of SC the 5 player hanger types would work perfectly for each location!
@@dracussdarkweave112 as far as I know that is the plan and I think there was an ISC last year that showed some of the nicer Habs/apartments.
I think Star Citizen has so much potential, not just from the standpoint of what the studio can provide as far as gameplay but what foundations that can be created for the players to create their own stories a la the true mmo environment. Once we can have a truly populated world of players, I think things rapidly show the scope and scale of whats possible.
too bad its a scam, id even take starfield over it tbh
I would say that Night City is probably the most realistically crafted city for a game ever made, and it could pretty much translate one to one to a real life city that could easily house millions of people with all the accompanying benefits such as various stores and night life spots. The other two options don't really feel to me like they could sustain such a big population and feel more like small towns for maybe up to a few thousands rather than millions
I remember being completely blown away when they showed the first extended gameplay for Cyberpunk 2077. The moment when you first walk out of your megabuilding and get to see and hear the city. I couldn't believe it was real. Played it on day 1 with a mix of high/ultra graphics at 4K and it was simply mindblowing and exactly like in the video. First playthrough I'd say I spent about 3/4 of it walking, rarely driving, simply absorbing the sights and atmosphere. Night City is incredible and a monumental achievement in city and game design in general.
Current state of cp2077 phantom liberty shits all over those other games.
I have a couple of years of experience in 3d modeling, and let me tell you, when i think about the amount of work that went into just modeling night city i get serious anxiety... Tremendous amount of work and thought put into that game, such a shame that many people will not notice it because of the media shitstorm that happened when it launched, i only hope that it will be remembered as a classic in the future.
"Breathtakingly well done"
I saw what you did there 😄
Also correction, the Walled City was in Hong Kong, not Korea
Squadron 42 was not the big limiting factor with Star Citizen cities. Todd Papy has talked about this in some detail. The cities were intended as backdrops to space action. Development of interiors came later in small steps.
Do you remember where he said that??
Very good analysis!
Cyberpunk is all about the city. Therefore, Night City does feel like a real city.
Star Citizen is all about spaceships. Thus, "airport like" cities are somewhat expected.
Starfield is all about engine limitation. Nothing more to say here...
Starfield is one of the most fun games I’ve played in years. The level of hate is totally disproportionate
@@psychoticchemistyes loading screen simulator is a fun game
@@markh9755 I’ve literally seen broken unplayable buggy messes get less hate on release than starfield is getting amongst the online gaming community. After 115h in starfield I still can’t wait to play it every night
@@psychoticchemist subjective but who wants to play loading screen simulator in 2024 💀💀
@@markh9755 Me! Plus a record breaking number of other people according to the sales and extremely high average steam play time
Love, that you’re able to navigate through Night City only with street signs, since they all make sense.
Turned off the minimap in my second playtrough and always find plazas, districts, etc just by using street signs. Now that I have to pay attention to that I remember which roads lead to which areas and noticed sooo many details about the city too. Highly recommend doing that!
New Babbage was designed to be viewed from farther away. It looks so cool and thematic, with the spaceport built into the side of the mountain and the "islands" of building activities. When you are flying towards it in your spaceship, it has an epic feel! When you are inside, it does feel less real than the other two, as you pointed out.
Lmao I clicked on this video just thinking it was another comparison video that popped up in my feed, then I was like wait a minute I know that voice.
If they do a Cyberpunk 2 they should keep night city and just increase its size. Would love to see how far they can take it with sticking to only current gen and having more time.
"Architect by day and youtuber by night." - Love it and definitely made me smirk ; )
Hope you'll do something similar again when they've added plenty of interiors to buildings and underground interconnected infrastructures in Star Citizen.
unfortunately it will never reach the level of Night City. Out of necessity a lot of SC's city content is going to have to be procedurally generated, so there's going to be a lot of sameness. Nothing in Night City feels generic except the NPC's and that's out of necessity because their so many in the city u're bound to see repeats, but even that has improved significantly
Maybe in 30 years.
With persistence they can make it so players and npcs just organically fill out and alter the existing environments to add personality to the procedurally generated skeleton.
I haven't played Star citizen or starfield but I just got Cyberpunk77 and what I love the most about Night City is the environmental sound of it... Feels so realistic that I had to pause the game to differentiate if it was the game or the real life city am in that was making city sounds.
I think the scale issue in New Atlantis may be less of an engine limitation and more of a design limitation. Bethesda rpgs have always been classified by their open-endedness. The scale of cities in their games are tiny compared to pretty much any other rpg, but the percentage of explorable space is considerably higher in most cases. And while Starfield sacrifices a bit on that end compared to previous entries that often had 100% of the city accessible in some way, it's still quite a bit higher. Most of the inaccessible areas just require some questline to gain access to them, instead of just being unimportant areas you can't access. Because that design philosophy in their game prevents them from just pasting a bunch of buildings with little or no accessible area, and their design efforts are split between multiple cities and other locations, the cities end up being considerably smaller.
I do think they should have taken it further though. More space for just visuals and scale. While the illusion kind of held up in the Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, the illusion is just a lot harder to maintain when you're seeing the entirety of two spacefaring civilizations. Though maybe Starfield should have just gone for a smaller scale on its world. Like maybe have the game set on the frontier space between the UC and FC, where New Atlantis and Akila aren't the capitols of each faction, but just the main hubs in the region for each faction, with mentions of a bigger world than the player can see. Starfield gives us just one notable offscreen location, and it's implied to be at best on a comparable scale to the places we can visit.
What I especially enjoy in cities in games is the believability of it. Night City is riddled with advertisements, you see them on buildings facades, you hear them in public elevators and small alleyways. There’s also an amazing soundtrack that plays on radios around the city with musics in them that literally make reference to Night City. It’s much more immersive to walk through a city that feels as though it actually has existed before you came around.
I'd love to have Cyberpunk detail (and more!) within Star Citizen
One major thing with these cities is.. Night City is an actually believable space for the population it tries to represent. There's homes, apartments, there's workplaces and industry. There's rail lines and a constant stream of freight moving in and out. There's crowds going about their business, thugs in alleys, kids playing in hallways. Everywhere you look, there's people. Eating, talking, struggling, walking. A city is people! Architecture is the frame that the city can be experienced in.
Bethesda.. with Starfield they yet again rolled the trope of "This is the largest city in the country/world/galaxy! It's entire economy is a 4x3 patch of cabbages and a few pawn shops". There's no commerce, there's no housing, there's no kids, no transit, no economy. It's just another movie set turned into a gift shop. However, Starfield does offer a good balance between the concepts of fidelity and quality!
There's a somewhat satirical game called "Coin Game" where all the NPC's are lifeless boppem robots with various clothing and eyewear glued to them. These actors are more human and have more personality than Starfield's. They give so much more of an impression of life, of motion, of economy and struggle.
CIG's take on cities is in some ways fantastic, it provides a great illusion of density, trade, commerce, humanity.. from a distance. Which should be perfect! Fidelity at that scale is impossible, even with today's tech and not just a stressed out, overworked copy of cryengine from the early 2010's. But the presentation of Star Citizen is to always look closer - there's always more detail. You can count the stitches on your spacesuit. See the twists in the threads and fibers. But if you get within a few kilometers of any cityscape, it rapidly inverts that presentation. They're lifeless, empty. It's very easy to understand why! It's just so awfully jarring from the presentation that the rest of the game offers.
I.. don't want to really comment on Star Citizen's humanity of their cities. There's nothing there. They're not even setpieces like Starfield, they're just T-posing obstacles. If a city is it's people, then nothing in star citizen can be fairly called a city, in my mind.
Night City has one thing that impressed me quite a lot, and something I have not yet noticed in any other game besides GTA 5. There are very fluid transitions between the districts, and sometimes you barely notice that you have left one already.
Whenever a video about cyberpunk 2077 does not have a single night-scene, somewhere, a small puppy dies...
Took me a month of playing Starfield to realize.
There's no personal transports for civilians. Like no cars or hover vehicles for the people to get around. There are rover type vehicles. One that looks like a drone and another with a single chair and steering wheel.
I find it hard to believe that people in this time period are more okay with walking around than riding. They're still human. And we are lazy lol. Love all three of these universes
loved the video! but a small correction. 10:17 , the Kowloon walled city was in Kowloon, Hong Kong
Respect for this well intentioned doc on three significant gaming cities! Might have helped to approach each city as individual case studies (since all three of their development strategies and phases were drastically different) but the extent of editing and narrating this video was much appreciated nonetheless!
I think you could attempt a in-depth video 40+ min all on Night City alone. Going into depth on districts, governing amenities, gang affiliations, and the rest of the city such as housing/markets/services. CDProject Red really outdid themselves on the city so much so I think they lost sight of their scope along the way. Portions of the city are extensively detailed and others less so. Would make a great video documentary!
I'm impressed how you managed to compare three cities that can not be compared, while still being fair to every single one! The way you pointed out what is good and what could be better while explaining why things are the way they are was really great! Thank you.
Would love to see a review of the maps in darktide, some missions you can just get caught up in looking up at the sheer scale of the ‘roof’ as the absolute monstrosity of the hive city’s size takes hold
Its not because they are changing engines that it means we wont ever see Night City again. Night City is literally the heart of Cyberpunk, i wouldnt be at all surprised if Cyberpunk 2 takes place in night city again, just a bigger and expanded version of it with more districts, bigger scope and scale and all that
if the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 is gonna be set in Night City I wouldn't complain if the city was the same size as its right now because it's already big and there's A LOT they can add without expanding it in width but in height or even underground so I'm pretty excited for what the future has in hold for Night City. Or even the past😱
I looove night city, I've spent hours just driving around and it FEELS big, but there is times when it kinda breaks and you realise it's quite small. I do really hope that New Babbage expands on the internal spaces and give us a chance to get lost in there, especially if we get the tech with one server etc, otherwise it will be too crowded
Cyberpunk probably has the best city I've played in any game. Especially including the larger metro area and desert
cyberpunk's night city is a gaming milestone imo , i finished the game and dlc and i still go back to it few times a week because of the city , it's so imerssive and if you're like me where you restrict your self to walking only , i'm telling you that world is so cool
i know you said we'll never have this in star citizen but i'll say this , why not , with server meshing and if star citizen dev team keeps growing , i would love for cig to try and pull smth beautiful like this , but not for stanton , for terra or a major system in sc , like mission givers , cars , roads etc full out similar to NC in cyberpunk but for terra.. it would be soo nice
I love the city of London in Watchdogs Legion, feels so real.
CP2077 and Star Citizen are just another level to everything else. RDR2 is probably very close, but them two take it for me.
More than anything, Starfield's New Atlantis feels so terribly empty and unfinished. Every business and office has a single employee behind a single desk. Every apartment building has a single unit that can be entered. The SSNN building - which is supposed to be the news hub for all of the Settled Systems (including the Freestar Collective) is a single, wide open room with a desk at one end and the 'announcer' on the other - no recording equipment, no interns or journalists, just a big empty room in a massive building. There aren't even inaccessible doors or stairways or elevators giving the illusion that there are other parts of the building - it's all just empty. Starfield's cities feel so very lazily empty, where the illusions are only half-baked, and the payoff is pure
disappointment.
Cool video Morph! Love the perspective you bring when it comes to architecture. I want more!
Zootopia, when one introduces different species and environments into a city.
All the location on Starfield feel like they are small outposts. The spaceport at New Atlantis is not much bigger then any other location in game.
I once watched a video in which the author encouraged.... to walk slowly around the city, instead of using vehicles or other ways to fast travel. And in fact, only after I tried walking around Night City did I see how complex and well-prepared this location is. I began to notice the density of the crowds on the streets (yes I know that in reality NCP are just moving around with no real purpose), the traffic jams that form on the streets, the lights and traffic announcements. How the weather influences what we see: once it's a beautiful sky and a sun-soaked skyscraper, and other times it's just the immediate surroundings covered in fog illuminated by thousands of neon lights. We see kids telling who they want to be in the future, groups of monks meditating on benches or residents pissing on vending machines or slammed doors. This city is alive, this city is complex and complicated, this city allows you to feel that you are one of its elements. And that's what I encourage you all to do - slow down, take a break between passing missions, look around, listen and observe. Instead of taking a quick trip, take a ride on the subway or car. It may take you a bit longer to get to the mission marker, but you won't regret that "lost" time.
I haven't played Starfield and Star Citizen so I won't comment on those cities.
Bethesda can never make a believable city. Never.
Before the video started, I already knew how bad Starfield is gonna fair against the other two cities, barely any bigger than a town.
Cyberpunk is a masterpiece. Starfield is a piece of shit.
Night City comparatively small footprint is also offset but its insane verticality, there's so much more layers to Night City than to your average contemporary city.
This is a strange comparison
Cyberpunk 2077's Night City actually feels like a city from the well thought out district designs, the density of NPCs and traffic changing based on where in the city you are and time of day, changing weather, unique NPC dialog happening, and the sheer amount of Easter Eggs scattered everywhere if you know where to look. I did hope the addition of the rideable metro would be more like Star Citizen, able to board and get off where you wanted, but it's still a nice addition. The original launch of the game might have been rough, but since 2.0 and Phantom Liberty it's become the new standard for games for me.
You mentioned CDPR was moving away from their in-house REDengine but I just found out the next Cyberpunk game from them will be done in Unreal Engine 5, which I'm overly excited to hear!
as a game for me it's Star Citizen > all of em... and it's still an Alpha. For Cities.. well let's wait for Star Citizen to finish
The problem is that this can not be a fair comparison do to each game having a completely different scale.
Cyberpunk developers only needed to focus on one map. And that entire map is just the city that's it nothing more beyond its borders. Compare this to Starfield, and there are 100 different star systems around 1000 planets, and within the game, there are around eight different cities/settlements you can visit which all have to have their own personal look and feel.
The same can be said for star citizens with multiple planets and multiple cities. There's just no way for these massive space games to hyper focus on making multiple cyberpunk sized cities for each one of their planets.
Cyberpunk is incredible especially with phantom liberty
I'm not sure how much more gameplay we will see for SC's cities, but i also agree that, compared to something like Starfield, i vastly prefer the way it handles these things. I don't particularly need to explore every single inch of a city, but i like it when they feel sized correctly. I understand that, from a gameplay standpoint, we are sequestered to a tiny section of each city, and that's fine.
Although i assume that there's a lot going on underground in NB, including some form of road system, but that's all assumptions.
I think people forget that starfield is like 300 years after people left earth so the people of starfield are just in the beginning of colonization that’s the lore reason for the smaller city’s tbh besides new Atlantis they are more like towns
The US isn't 300 years old, yet you wouldn't say New York is tiny.
What I'm really missing from Star Citizen cities right now is that they don't feel like people actually live there. The cities really feel like what they basically are right now, quick stops to refuel, repair and sell your goods. Even as a tourist destination they fall short. There's a bar here and there, sure, but there's no convincing nightlife. No touristtraps, no entertainment or musea that draw people in. No busy streets for shopping and dining.
Also, the few NPCs that we see move back and forth and seemingly just work at the city. There's no supermarkets or local pubs, no schools.. nothing when it comes to the day to day living of families. It all just feels like a big factory or office space.
Now, I know CIG doesn't have the time or resources to make every city into a "Night City", and I dont expect them to, but I hope with the coming updates on cities they'll at least add some more stuff that makes them feel more alive.
I have high hopes for Terra Prime.
more than one form of arrival and departure sure can help.
In comparaison,
Night city look like a city
The two others are small towns may be even villages but with ultra modern settings
Star Citizen: empty decoration.
Starfield: space mod for fallout.
Cyberpunk 2077: a GAME?!!
Night City feel like the most genuine city in any game I've played, ever, including GTA5, Star Citizen cities do feel more like colony "cities" rather than full on population centre... Star Field feels like some parks loosely tied together by a small train, I didn't even realise it was meant to be a city and I'll probably forget it later.
Starfield is the perfect example of a corporation just phoning it in, not doing the work, and just relying on their slowly crumbling reputation for sales
Thanks for sharing this comparison. I must correct you, though, on the location of Kowloon Walled City. It wasn’t in Korea, it was in Kowloon City in British Hong Kong and was demolished in 1994.
Peace.🌸
Funny how the New Atlantis skyline is literally all 8 buildings in the city. They should have looked more at Mass Effect, the citadel is tiny and just a few indoor spaces, but it feels huge because you can see the other arms when looking out of the windows, you can see the inner ring trail off into the "horizon" in the embassy district etc. but i guess that wasn't an option since they created the whole planet around it and the player could have easily looked behind the curtains if they had a fake scenery set up.
but, at least there are another city that was way more detailed and lively than New Atlantis.
it just people was mad because it was supposed to show how over the top the city in the Future look like,
but it was sparse and look like a Mall somewhere in Asia.
they put their weakest city at the beginning of the game.
maybe they don't want to overload people brain, or something like that,
but the first thing that people compare when they talked about Starfield is the New Atlantis.
I thought your comments were spot on. I would also add, we know there is going to be more game play at the cities in SC, as they've already said as much. It's just we won't get that until they have the interiors of the buildings ready to go. I also do agree that they need more sight lines from inside the buildings to see the city. The only time we get great sight lines at New Babbage from the interior are at the space port, at the windowed bridge in the commons, looking out the small apartment window by the bed (Really, the only apartment window is by the bed?!). and when you're on one of the floors/balconies in the apartment building. That's in terms of looking straight out. There is a nice sight line when looking up from the roof windows the common area between the hospital and the apartment building there as well. I don't include the top of the dome where the bar is, because all you see looking out of that is sky.
Architect to architect, gamer to gamer, love your vids. I'm curious about your take on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's city. Not as large as the rest, but densely packed with almost all spaces playable.
The Kowloon Walled City was in Hong Kong.
Kowloon Walled City was in Hong Kong 🇭🇰
Kowloon Walled City was in Hong Kong not Korea
Star Citizen and Cyberpunk 2077 have so gorgeous cities, cyberpunk might have ONE city wich has such impact even storywise it can be seen as its own charcher, while star citizen has notable planets like ArcCorp and Lorville wich are respectable places of their own,
I played cyberpunk 2077 since release and i have started SC in November last year, and i can tell you, both games are awsome.
I just wish for Cyberpunk 2077 coop mod
Night City is my favorite video game city of all time hands down
One thing I don't think you touched on directly, is the lack of infrastructure (in SC/SF) support for moving cargo etc... all the shops need some way to get stock, all the fast-food joints need some way to dispose of their garbage, and so on.
Walkable cities (with good public transit) make a lot of sense for customers / pedestrians / workers, etc... (those that can walk, at least) - but there still needs to be infrastructure support for bulk goods delivery etc. Night City uses delivery vans on the road network, but SC/SF show no hints of an alternative mechanism - whether that be freight-trains (from the space port - but no freight lines or secondary train terminals), automated/switched conveyor system, underground delivery network, or something else.
Personally, this is something that catches me eye in many scifi games - and contributes to the feeling (for me) that places/locations aren't 'real', but only set dressing, etc.
I just reloaded the loading screen for the NC metro is one of if not the only in game loading screen aside from time skips as it makes more sense to use a loading screen instead of just jumping between day and night
i experienced the great variety of spaces in a very small space in lego batman 2 freeroam. it had so many distinct areas, but when i switched to superman and flew the highest to get an overall view... and it wasn't that big
New Atlantis is a shopping mall garden or private sheltered residence site. Akila is a small third world country village. Neon is an oil drilling platform. Hopetown on the planet Valo is just a factory. I didn't know where town is. Starfield doesn't have cities. They are all some kind of movie set. If you don't pay attention to these while playing the game, there is no problem.
I think the biggest problem of SC is lack of windows everywhere or at least windows below human eye level. Their cities and planets would look and feel 10 times better if you would be able to actually see it trough windows. The only place you can actually look at the city and feel the scale is problably a glass corridor in New babbage or trains but they move so fast so you dont have the time to enjoy.
Everything else has distinct lack of windows:
Ships windows almost nonexistent or placed that way so you can only look up,
Stations near planets only have ONE window to look at the amazing planetary view and its mostly obstructed by the station disc
City places mostly has windows in habitats which are way to high or 1-2 windows at spaceport or couple buildings and half of these mostly at the ceiling so you cant see the landscape or city
Night City doesn't have that much windows and theyre not needed since you can travel everywhere but imo for cities that are mostly wallpapers you need to see them to feel immersed
I just wanted to say..
Kowloon City is Hong Kong, not Korea. Night City took a lot of inspirations from the city state of Hong Kong. Great video!
"Can't stop digging Night City"
I've played a lot of Cyberpunk 2077 and started enjoying the open world a whole lot more when I stopped using fast travel. You can really appreciate all the details when riding on the road systems or using the intended walkways or tunnels for pedestrians.
Stations and even cities in Star Citizen feels odd. Stairs, stairs everywhere. In many cases just few steps down and after few meters again few steps up. People without legs are doomed.
Also one tight stairway to subway in Commons just feels bad. There should be two separated ways - one for down and second for up. Or one but much wider.
oh now this i'd watch a video essay on, accessability with-in star citizen's universe.
i like the best how it looks like when flying around above the city with a shace ship... this is awesome and looks great...
Cyberpunk could be a slice of gameplay on arccorp if they would insert a few more street level buildings and game mechanics that opens up part of the city to ride with vehicles to do bounty fetch or hack missions with a bit of narrative, just like in CP. If I run around in cyberpunk, i often have the feeling... this could be Area 18! Not that the "on the street / ground vehicle" gameplay has to be as granular in star citizen... but I feel the vibes, and the possibility :)
When you can explore in space like Star Citizen, then fly down to cities as alive as Night City, then when you leave the city you could explore a wilderness as detailed as RDR2...then THAT would be a true masterpiece of a game.
star citizen isnt made yet to visit cities they're here but they arent alive, it will come later
"It's more of a fast travel system with an animation."
You could literally copy and paste this statement to describe multiple things in Starfield.
Imo Crusader city, Orison would be much better comparison here, because it has everything MT does, but there is a bit of extra there. For example you do have outside spaces, you have parks, you have different districts that have different styles (basically every platform is a bit different, with the industrial platform as a prime example). It still has a limited amount of things to do, because the most of it just buying, selling or hanging around (and waiting on a shuttle), but IMO, it feels better than MT. Additionally, in MT there is the Siege of Orison mission, which is the first and only example of sort of "on foot", localised mission in SC cities.
The microtech tower is called the Aspire Grand
If new babbage had a lot more of what cyberpunk uses by making sure something is always happening would I think make it a lot more enjoyable especially if there were more areas to explore . but I agree Night City is the best even if its one city in the game the amount of things happening outside of the character is super cool! just like GTA when random stuff happens that you can watch or get involved it. keeps the player on their toes
CIG not letting us fly in close to Lorville and drive/race around on the street should be a crime against the law. JAIL
I've always thought New Babbage was a beautiful city but it's striking how drab it looks in comparison to New Atlantis and especially Night City. It makes sense given the environment but here's to hoping we can get a bit more color to it someday.
Star Citizen stuff can be so sterile, and both new babbage and port orison are examples of this.
@@richardconway6425 Yeah that tends to happen when you can't have more than 2 npcs without the server crashing
Bethesda went from being the standard of how to create an open-world experience that begs to be explored, to a company that refuses to adapt and change their "style" to meet modern gaming standards and haven fallen so far behind it's pathetic at this point.
New Atlantis might be the biggest joke of a "city" I think I've witnessed. Especially when you consider the fact that most of the game was made using procedural generation.