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Game developers and researchers put a lot of thought and hard work into recreating actual cities in video games, especially when they take place in a different time period. It’s only right to appreciate their work better as they bring some significant chunks of the world to our computers or consoles. It just so happens that these games recreate some real cities well enough that they can double as digital vacations.
10 Boston In Fallout 4 - The Beaten-up Beantown Is Recognizable
This one falls into quite a niche, especially for those who prefer to see real-life cities reduced to ashes. But despite all the rubble, Boston in Fallout 4 is pretty faithful to the actual counterpart. It’s a decent glimpse into pre-war Boston, with several major and minor streets appearing on the map.
On top of that, some of the locales in the game, such as the Freedom Trail, look structurally accurate compared to the real thing. It’s not 1:1, of course as even Bethesda has its limitations for the open-world. Still, the similarities are fascinating.
9 Pripyat In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - A Well-Preserved Nightmare Town
Not all cities in video games are based on bustling and currently functioning communities. Places like Chernobyl or its nearby abandoned town of Pripyat have inspired many media. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was one of those, and it presents a bleak and detailed version of Pripyat in two of its missions.
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The area isn’t open-world though, and movement is rather limited. However, the atmosphere is intact and one can almost sniff the irradiated moisture of the overcast skies. Sure enough, iconic locations such as the Soviet brutalist architecture apartments and the Ferris wheel are present. S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat gets an honorable mention for giving its Pripyat a similar treatment, but Modern Warfare’s graphics give this city a more crisp representation.
8 Washington DC In The Division 2 - Washed Up, But Whole
Another Ubisoft game set in the not-so-distant future, The Division 2 also doesn’t shy away from portraying a real-life city so hauntingly close. In this case, it’s Washington DC. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), playing the game is like a violent escapade to the US capital.
Take away all the broken and rusty cars, clean up the streets of mercenaries, and bring back the functioning economy and it might as well be a digital field trip. Even apartment buildings present in DC today were included. Other landmarks or streets such as The Plaza and Old Main are also intact in the game.
7 New York City In Marvel’s Spider-Man - A Cut-Down Manhattan
Speaking of intact, New York City in Marvel’s Spider-Man gets praise for displaying a relatively clean, shinier, and habitable Manhattan. The game did take some liberties though, such as incising the northern part of Manhattan.
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The streets are also a lot less populated with people and automobiles, and everything is more cramped. Even so, the game captures the spirit of Manhattan commendably, Avenger Tower and Wakandan Embassy notwithstanding. The parks, squares, and the Empire State Building’s scale are all there.
6 Hong Kong In Sleeping Dogs - Spot-On Streets
It’s rare for a contemporary GTA-style open-world game to be set in East Asia, which is why Sleeping Dogs is quite a rare gem. Its locale, Hong Kong, is even more. The atmosphere is spot-on, down to the colors of the trash bin and the neon.
Don’t expect it to function as a digital tour, however, as Sleeping Dogs changes up its Hong Kong layout drastically. On the macro-level or zoomed-out view, it doesn’t look like Hong Kong at all, but the streets, buildings, and small businesses provide a lovely counterbalance on the micro-level.
5 San Francisco In Watch Dogs 2 - Scaled Down But Intact
Watch Dogs games have always competed well against the GTA franchise for open-world cities. Chicago in the first game was stellar, but San Francisco in the second was even better. The most iconic locations such as Silicon Valley and the Golden Gate Bridge are present in their radiant glory.
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The only common complaint among Bay Area gamers is that the recreation was cramped. The districts and landmarks were too close to one another. However, that’s more of a game development limitation than an artistic choice. Otherwise, it’s a classic case of art imitating life.
4 Seattle In The Last of Us 2 - Down To The Distance
The Last of Us 2 might have ditched the open-world structure, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t adhere to Seattle’s district and distances. Some of the city’s mainstays were even surprised just how identical some of the walking and traveling distance is for some of the game’s locations.
Even the details of the parks and rides are astonishingly precise, from the color of the railings to the motion of some machines that are also present in real life. Anyone who has played The Last of Us 2 can safely say they’ve experienced some of what Seattle has to offer.
3 Tokyo In Persona 5 - Hyperstylized, But Still The Same
While on the topic of experiencing a city that’s nearly 1:1 in scale, Tokyo in Persona 5 is dizzyingly authentic — if one takes out the anime aesthetics and the super-powered high-schoolers. Most areas, such as Shibuya and Akihabara, were designed to look structurally like their real-world counterparts.
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It’s a more hyper-stylized version of Tokyo, but the game still uses the modern-day semblance of the city as a blueprint. Some of the areas in the game were given different names, but still take after actual places in Tokyo.
2 Los Angeles In L.A. Noire - A Vintage Visit To The 1940s
L.A. Noire prides itself on being a realistic game and even incorporates motion capture reactions so that its players can tell who’s lying based on facial cues. That sort of attention to detail was also extended in the game’s map, which is Los Angeles in the 1940s.
Rockstar Games even claimed to have used vintage aerial photographs of post-war 1940s Los Angeles for references. Thus, the major streets and buildings are all there. However, they had to condense all of 1940s L.A. into eight square miles for easier development.
1 Paris In Assassin’s Creed Unity - Nearly 1:1
As far as realism and likeness go in digital reproductions of cities, Assassin’s Creed Unity takes the cake (or lets its players eat the cake, considering the French Revolution setting). Ubisoft did something most developers wouldn’t dare: make an almost 1:1 scaling of Paris.
The result? Just about any screenshot players take in the game can be overlapped to any photo of modern day Paris, and make it look like a seamless picture-in-picture contrast of past and present. Consider this game a discounted visit to Paris, except several centuries early and with more riots on the streets.
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