Gaming architecture

[Dog Pants]

I had an idea for a front page article ages ago and just remembered it. What amazing architecture have you seen in games? Buildings and locations which have really stood out? A couple of examples off the top of my head are Rapture from Bioshock, which is an obvious but very good example, and Lion's Arch from Guild Wars 2. Anyone any suggestions?

[fabyak]

For the time, I would have to throw Final Fantasy VII into the ring. Great detail on a staggering range of environments

[Joose]

Bioshock Infinate, but not the external stuff strangely. The floaty buildings and balloons stuff wasnt actually all that impressive to me, but some of the interior spaces were bloody lovely. Not so much in a crazy architecture way like your examples, more just a really, really nicely put together places. I suppose that is more interior decorating than architecture though.

For more architectural stuff: the big tower from HL2 is my first thought. When it all shifted open and started spewing out stuff it was one of the first times I had ever seen anything in a game that not only looked cool and alien and scary, but actually looked convincing too: It looked like a bigass heavy thing moving around in the distance.

Does the Halo from Halo count? Its kind of more an artificial planet than a building I suppose.

The Myst series, especially Riven, had some amazing architecture. The games sucked ass, but they were almost worth playing just to look at the things like the tree-building.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

pripyat and the cnpp from stalker.

It's not that either are really amazing or impressive in a classical architecture sense, but they just looked and felt so very real, everything that was there made sense.

[Dog Pants]

Oh! I remembered a more recent inspiration. The buildings from Planetside 2 all look like they're from an RTS. If you stop and look at them you can see they're all deployable, from the little buildings which look like ISO containers, to the huge plants which have pistons and feet and thrusters and things, all folded away after deployment.

[Legoshoes]

Florence in Assassin's Creed 2 was particularly lovely. Not only well presented but perfectly engineered to take advantage of the freerunning. I enjoy those spaces that allow you to just explore the developers' handiwork.

[Mr. Johnson]

Florence in Assassin's Creed 2 was particularly lovely. Not only well presented but perfectly engineered to take advantage of the freerunning. I enjoy those spaces that allow you to just explore the developers' handiwork.

This, it was a stark contrast with the bland cities of the first game.

My personal favourite in game architecture has to be brütal legend. Tim Schafer's team made a game about heavy metal, but it's not just limited to the soundtrack as everything in the game is metal including your surroundings. Giant anvils, enormous engine parts coming out of the ground, chrome trees, a wall of amps, a temple made of bones and many, many more. From the smallest flower to the biggest mountain, everything in this game is metal themed and it's done with such care and devotion that even someone who doesn't like any type of metal will still gawk his eyes out at this love testament to a musical genre.

[FatherJack]

I guess the GTA games, WoW and Ico would get obvious mentions. There's a Flickr group dedicated to GTA V screenshot taken using the in-game camera feature: http://www.flickr.com/groups/2289079@N24/ but most of the best ones seem to be countryside views. Like WoW, Fallout and Red Dead there's a lot of places to explore, such as a cable car you can ride to the top of a mountain where you can punch some people off the edge and ride the motorcycles they helpfully left there before getting eaten by a cougar, but the city is just as impressive.

Dishonoured, Mirror's Edge, Prototype and Infamous all had Assassin's Creed-like architecture which was integral to the gameplay. Others have just had fascinating places to visit, such as many JRPGs like the Tales of series, Mass Effect, The Witcher, Saint's Row, Mafia, Fable, Sleeping Dogs, Zelda and the Elder Scrolls.

Here's a rather lovely video someone's drawn of a lot of them (one for each letter of the alphabet):
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlD-Sufzrh4[/media]

[Grimmie]

I find most building based RTSs to be visually appealing, all the teeny tiny details are really important seeing as you're going to be staring at them for most of the game, and they need to be instantly recognisable.

Rise of Nations had some beautiful architecture, and did it especially cleverly by incorporating cultural differences in all of their buildings whilst still keeping the buildings similar. A French town centre and an Aztec town centre looked similar enough for you to recognise the building, but the Aztec ones are slightly more angular, the French city has a fountain, the Spanish market sells different food to the others.



And I could stare at Anno 2070 all day. Oh man.

[Mr. Johnson]

Do they worship Morgan Freeman in 2070?

[Grimmie]

They worship him in 2013 too.

[HereComesPete]

Titty Sprinkles

[deject]

I was going to suggest HL2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well. My other suggestions are Dreamfall, which has a few really great examples of futuristic takes on a lot of eastern architecture as well as just straight up fantasy stuff, and Warframe's Orokin architecture is quite visually appealing and I think quite beautiful.

[friznit]

Oblivion had some great architecture which made you stop and stare in wonder when coming over a hill for the first time. Out of left field, Mount & Blade Warband is the only game that's created castles that feel authentic. Sadly the game never managed to utilise them fully but there's hope for the next installment yet.

[randomgazz]

I love the NOD buildings from C&C, just something about them has a real presence to it.

[buzzmong]

I was quite taken by Metro 2033, but a lot of that is simply reflecting real world architecture for the most part. It's very detailed though.

It's actually quite hard to specifically single out game architecture I find, as a lot of memorable moments are either spectacular views (ie, Oblivion when you get out the prison/Skyrim when you look down off the mountains for the first time) or are just impressive because of the real world links, like the Chicago/New York-esque Lost Haven from Mafia.

Seeing the Citadel in HL2 is definitely up there as a big stand out game architecture moment for me though.

Rapture was impressive but it did draw very heavily from Art Deco, and now I think about it, that sort of puts it in the same territory as Metro/Stalker/Mafia/GTA in that it's replicating real world rather than being its own thing.

[Mr. Johnson]

You could argue that bioshock took a look at art deco and said to themselves: "That's pretty cool but how do we make it even art-deco-er?" A specific art style is always something only the very rich can afford, so things like hotels and mansions got kitted up whilst the rest of the people got to live in plebeian houses that were so last decade. Since Rapture was meant to be a perfect world, everything was built in an art-deco style, something you'd never encounter in the 30's or the 40's where things were a bit mixed up which is what makes it such an interesting world.

[Joose]

I think claiming that bio shock is copying the real world because it uses an art style that exists is being a little extreme. The other examples of this you give are pretty reasonable, as there are places in the real world that you could mistake them for at a glance. I don't think there is anywhere in the real world that I could mistake for a vast Art Deco underwater metropolis. I would absolutely love to be proven wrong though.

[Dog Pants]

The artistic theme is a different thing anyway. I loved the neo renaissance of Deus Ex HR, but the architecture of the buildinvs themselves wasn't of particular note.

[Anery]

Dishonoured deserves a mention I think.
The exterior styling is done incredibly well, sure it is Victoriana but it is done well nevertheless. The interiors, especially of the more affluent areas, are well designed and I quite often find myself wandering around looking at the artwork on the walls.
Perhaps not architecture as such but the unique elements to Dishonoured, the crazy whale oil powered electric fences, the guards booths and the rest are distinctive and brutal. Not something I would want to stare at but they do draw your eye.