The Story Change That Broke The Forgotten City
24,216
Published 2022-07-24
The Forgotten City is a murder mystery, stuck in a time loop, set in an intricately designed Roman City. It's so well realized, that if you didn't know, you might assume the game was built from the ground up to always be that way. In actuality, it started as a Skyrim mod set in an underground Dwarven city.
The original mod was a huge success, amounting in millions of downloads and garnered several writing awards including Best Interactive Media from the Australian Writers' Guild. Designer/writer Nick Pearce enjoyed making the mod so much that he left his established career as a lawyer to pursue game development full-time and bring the mod to life as a full-fledged standalone game.
What was intended as a two year endeavor to remake the game in a Roman setting turned into a cascading list of problems that would cause Nick Pearce and his development team, Modern Storytellers, to rewrite and rebuild the game from the ground up.
This is the story of how changing the setting broke The Forgotten City.
#gaming #forgottencity #gamespot #modernstoryteller #skyrim
All Comments (21)
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I hope games like The Forgotten City, Outer Wilds and Return of the Obra Dinn end up becoming a whole genre with many titles. I really like these types of mystery-solving games.
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GREAT game. I liked the way it handled the rogue type elements without having to repeat the same actions/discussions over and over again. Very engaging story. Well worth playing until you unlock the best ending.
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Although this game is on game pass, I actually bought it when it was on sale and I don't regret it at all. Such an underrated and complete surprise of a title. This and guardians basically had my two favorite stories of any video game of 2021
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Terrific game, can't Imagine how hard it was to make all the actions work.
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One of my favourite experiences EVER.
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Fantastic game, and fantastic expose. I dig your reporting style, Kurt. It's obvious you put a lot of time and research into your pieces, so whenever I see one of these videos pop up in my feed I know I'm not wasting my time. Keep up the great work!
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Such a good game. I’m glad it came together. I really appreciated all the work. And the ending really got me. Can’t wait to see what he does next.
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A city built upon a city built upon a city. Thats exactly in the theme of the game!
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I'm commenting a year after this video came out and I have to say that this game is great. I started and finished it in one day because very few times I have seen a game made with such effort, by a really small team, and with this palpable care. Thank you!
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Love the domino metaphor re: both doing it over and over as well as how elements are linked together and one change can have a… domino effect. Nice!
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This game is legendary in my eyes. Loved it from start to finish, all that hard work truly showed.
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Awesome game, finished it today with the best ending without any help, bossmode 😎👌
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Fantastic presentation from Gamespot, what a wonderful idea for a video!
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This game was so incredibly well made! Very impressed. The attention to detail is amazing and made the game such a pleasure to play
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Forgotten City, CONTROL, Life Is Strange and Outer Wilds are the most creative games I've played in the last 10 years 👍
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One of the best games I’ve played
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Downloaded this game last week, haven’t slept since.
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Great expose! Appreciate the highlighting of the domino effect that is (unfortunately) common in game development. The moustache and toga combo is A+ as well.
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Loved this game! And this video is an awesome look at the development of it!
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4:50 hehehe thank you
