RPS Feature Streetwise
From the fractured festivities of The Division’s Manhattan to the lo-fi confusion of Bernband, urban spaces in games are drawn from many reference points and they all communicate their own ideas about cities. What they are, on what terms we relate to them and how they behave. Thomas McMullan explores how game mechanics attempt to make sense of cities.
French detectives, shopping centres and terrorist acts: how games deal with the systems that make up the city.
RPS Feature A city means the end of the simple life
I get this knot in my stomach at around one-third of the way into any RPG. I know what’s coming: it almost always does around about then. I’ve been happily following gentle questlines, roaming across open countryside and being glad to bump into one or two traders here and there, but now the time has come: time to go to a city, and everything will change.
I was a little bit mean about Sleeping Dogs last time I saw an advertrailer for it. The message I took away was ‘this is a game in which men will hit one another in a generic setting’. In what I can only assume is a response to that post, the developers have released a new video in which they talk about why they chose Hong Kong as the location for the game, taking time to explain the details they’ve tried to capture, the variety of the place, and the fact that exploration and idle wandering are possible in between the bopping and chopping. Let’s take a tour.
