Realistic Scale? Fuck you!

[Dracos]

Man, it's been a long time since I've written anything.  Something about grindingly long school hours did that, but a poke encouraged me to look into my folder and jot up another article.  Bothersome pokers.  Anyhow, today's article is about realistic scale in games, something that has been sought after by a number of games, and more and more of late, games are actually getting close to it... which sucks.  Of course, I'd like bash it, but that'd be unkind since the reverse of it, mini-towns, also tends to suck and there are some good points, but I think there's better ways to do things which I'll go into in a bit.

   First off, why do realistic scale?  Well, it sure helps contribute to the grandness of a city.  There's something lost in the miniature when you're walking through 'the holy capital' in two screens.  It also gives you a lot more room to place things in and have interesting events.  It allows for a strong difference between larger cities and smaller ones.  Folks appreciate it, even when it's not very good.

   Of course, there are far more relevant reasons to avoid realistic scale or facsimile thereof.   The first part is that it is huge.  It's one thing when the entire game takes place in it, such as a grand theft auto, but I've seen a number of RPGs that have ridiculously sized towns.  Suikoden V had some so large I got lost in them looking for the exit.  Sol-Falena definitely felt like a royal city... one that was so large I wanted to avoid ever going back there because it took forever to get anywhere in it.  Scale results in travel time growth by nature and as much as it might be realistic to spend a half hour going across a city, it doesn't do the flow of game excitement much good usually.  The worst offender within Suikoden V had to be the bridge of Sol-Falena, which was this massively long bridge with pretty much nothing on it that took a few minutes to walk across and was, frankly, boring as could be.  It added little to the game but loading time and a particularly good incentive to avoid going over it.

   Large scale cities also provide the problem of making things hard to find.  I know many find it interesting to see several shops with different inventories, but really all this means is that any given shop is harder to find when you have money to spend usually; not to mention when there's only one of x type of shop or inn and it blends in naturally with the other fifty enterable buildings in the city.  This provides an interface problem to interact with the city.  It requires additional tools to mitigate the extra size overhead of interaction.

   Cities sized to imitate realistic scale also provide a very intimidating front.  I sometimes will stop for the day before the start of one because I'll recognize that it's going to take an hour or two to learn the new city in front of me.  Rather than having an overall feeling of what's there, they often convey a sense of 'there's more than you'll ever discover' which can be as much a negative of 'you'll be here for ages" as a positive contribution of more than the sum of its parts.  Xenosaga cities often I felt had this problem, and while I've not played it, folks tell me that FF12's cities have the same issue of being overwhelming rather than inviting.

   Overall, I think realistically scaled or pseudorealistically scaled cities are a crude solution to the problem.  As a point in favor of controlled environments enhancing entertainment over sprawling disorganized 'real' cities, I'd point to Disney World and how its emphasis on controlled design and minimal views both helped it overcome other theme parks of the time and maintain a generally easy to traverse setup.  It's also large enough to demonstrate as well a few various techniques for making large cities less obnoxious.

   Ideally, cities that are small and provide a grand sense of scale with a clever interface are best.  An example of one technique to accomplish this was used in Xenogears, suggesting that the cities had other areas you didn't go to.  Another way to do it is to transition such that it hints that you're not simply going block to block down the city and that the travel time is hidden.  This way more can be hinted at with less without cluttering the area.

   For sizable towns, another good trick is to use maps (especially teleporting maps) to help folks get around quickly.  Maps both direct and give a sense of scale of the place.  They let folks know what they're dealing with and give them an axis that they can trust to navigate with.  Good maps with good labeling systems can even help them make decisions.  It's not by accident that most cities that thrive on tourism provide plentiful maps at easily accessible points in real life.   Keep merchant districts or what you'd identify as the most important parts of the city easy to access from entrance and easy to exit from.  Most towns and cities, shockingly, do that in real life to help with commerce since the main roads are much more profitable to be on than some side street people have to find.  Basically, consider it as an interface as much as a city to experience.  Control where the player wants to go while also making sure that if they're going to use the city, it is pleasant and well constructed for the primary uses of cities: the shops and the exit.

   Finally, I'd not forget the real solution: People make a city.  One of the more entrancing cities in a game I've played goes to Quest for Glory V's Silmaria.  It maintained a very powerful city presence largely driven by the characters that made up the city.  Indeed, on reflection I find that the characters and nature of setting define significantly better than the size and leave a more lasting impression.

EDIT: Because readability is not a city in France.

[thepanda]

About Xenosaga, yeah, the cities can be huge. It isn't so much a problem when you're fighting through them, but when you're shopping around it can be a pain in the ass. Second Miltia comes to mind instantly. Storywise it makes sense that the city is so big, but when you're going around trying to complete GS Quests to size really takes away from the experience.

Fortunately they don't make you walk through the whole city, you access it by choosing certain on the overworld map and going there. Unfortunately most of the game takes place in cities or city-like ships so it all starts blurring together after a while. They were going for the future look but didn't vary it up enoug to give any place it's own identity. That might haave made the whole thing feel bigger than it actually was, now that I think about it.

[Dexie Oblivion]

A small gripe I have, since you brought up FF12: NPCs who don't do anything and can't be interacted with.

FF12 and Twilight Princess instantly jump to mind here. Both Rabnastre and Hyrule Castle Town are just loaded with tons of NPCs wandering around, most of which can't be talked to or anything. Yeah, it makes it feel like a real city or whatnot, but it's annoying to have them in the game and not let the player interact with them.

So yeah, fuck that. :P

[Sierra]

Dexie: Oh, I've seen worse. Story mode on Phantasy Star Universe (don't ask me why I played this, I still haven't figured that out) does the same thing, with hordes of NPCs you can't talk to--only, to emphasize this point, these anonymous citizens vanish when you attempt to get close enough to talk to them. So you're walking through a city and the multitude of drones is constantly turning transparent, disappearing, and reappearing within a certain radius around you. It's like the main character's in a perpetual Twilight Zone episode.

Having NPCs you can't interact with doesn't necessarily bother me, but that was silly.

Anyway, largely in agreement with Drac's conclusions. For cities which, realistically, should be larger than what you actually have time to explore thoroughly, having a few important sub-areas you can explore after selecting them from a larger map seems a reasonable way to make the scale of the place apparent without making you trudge through neverending streets.

[Dexie Oblivion]

Dexie: Oh, I've seen worse. Story mode on Phantasy Star Universe (don't ask me why I played this, I still haven't figured that out) does the same thing, with hordes of NPCs you can't talk to--only, to emphasize this point, these anonymous citizens vanish when you attempt to get close enough to talk to them. So you're walking through a city and the multitude of drones is constantly turning transparent, disappearing, and reappearing within a certain radius around you. It's like the main character's in a perpetual Twilight Zone episode.

You expected any less from modern Sega? :P

[Dracos]

A small gripe I have, since you brought up FF12: NPCs who don't do anything and can't be interacted with.

FF12 and Twilight Princess instantly jump to mind here. Both Rabnastre and Hyrule Castle Town are just loaded with tons of NPCs wandering around, most of which can't be talked to or anything. Yeah, it makes it feel like a real city or whatnot, but it's annoying to have them in the game and not let the player interact with them.

So yeah, fuck that. :P

Yeah.  So I heard =)  I didn't include it only as I concluded it didn't really have much bearing on the problem itself and was merely a subpart of a bad solution =)

Dracos