Since I played City of Heroes for a while, and the whole game was basically a single city, it is hard for me to feel strongly about cities in other games.

I think Darklands had some really cool cities. The cities are a bit more abstracted than most games but there was a curfew at night, and interesting things to do like trying different ways to sneak into the city to avoid the toll, breaking into places, visiting the Cathedrels in search of prayers, there was just a ton to do. The different factions were cool too, the Hanseatic league, the Toutonic Knights, The Archbishops and Nobles. Really cool stuff, the places felt alive.

Edited March 21, 20178 yr by MeteorBear

Neo-Paris in Remember Me, (not an RPG but has RPG elements.)

 

 

 

The developer of Remember Me, DontNod, has made one other game, the critically-acclaimed Life is Strange.  DontNod is currently working on its first "Bioware-style" RPG, Vampyr.  

Edited March 24, 20178 yr by ktchong

Not a huge fan of cities focusing on quantity over quality (which certainly encapsulates procedurally generated towns in Daggerfall or, sadly, even Tarant - even tho in case of Tarant I think it's more of a case of Troika not having enough time to properly fill it with content more than anything.)

 

Novigrad is a good one, altho when we're talking Witcher 3, I'd say Toussaint instead - it's certainly smaller, but also a lot more interesting to explore - bonus points for the city having a lot of verticality.

 

Then there's Vivec from Morrowind, one of the most visually striking locations in RPG games with a huge boulder looming over it.

 

Dunwall from Dishonored if Dishonored can be considered an RPG, for how eerily familiar it feels.

 

Anor Londo from Dark Souls is a city you'll never forget, that's pretty much guaranteed.

 

Actually, Yharnam from Bloodborne is quite worth mentioning as well.

 

Does Citadel from Mass Effect count?

 

Fallen London from Fallen London and Sunless Sea for how utterly fascinating it is, with background that could fill several lore books.

 

Hell's Kitchen from Deus Ex for presenting strangely believable future (with a little detail born from lack of memory, but made frighteningly real later on)

 

Sigil from Planescape Torment goes without saying.

Novigrad and Beauclair are two of my favorites as well. And loads of both depth and explorability. Novigrad does have verticality though, from the harbor to the top of Temple Isle, and then down into the catacombs again. Beauclair is more noticeable from beyond the walls, I will grant that. Vivec was impressive as well. 

 

New Vegas from FO2 was fun. And I'll grant the Citadel in ME1. Less so in the subsequent games, when the snippets never seemed as alive as the original. One of the clearest signs to me that ME3 was below the standards of ME2 was how the Citadel was a smoking ruin for weeks or months after the coup. Even when people were saying how beautiful it looked. 

Meridian in Horizon: Zero Dawn - Part 1 of 3

 

 

Time lapse, notice the people moving below:

 

Edited March 25, 20178 yr by ktchong

Part 2 of 3: Meridian got its own soundtrack.  Well, two soundtracks, one for day and one for night:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGNQd7P6heU

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KYGN4-npiU

Edited March 25, 20178 yr by ktchong

Part 3 of 3: The canal into Meridian:

 

Edited March 25, 20178 yr by ktchong

Athkatla ftw.

I'm looking to something bright and colorful, yet haunting... how about that place from Bastion?