Best city in the geneforge series[G5]

[Spddin Ignis]

I want to know everybody's favorite city in the geneforge series and why?

[Goldengirl]

The longer the series go on, the worse the cities get. Most of them are supposed to be big, yet seem the same size as the original cities of Sucia Isle.

 

Vakkiri always seemed like the most realistic, to me.

[Spddin Ignis]

Personally,my favorite city is Dhonal's keep from G3. 3 whole areas of amazing shaper culture and there were alot of things to do. Shops, quests, the library, Lord Rahul. It was great. Too bad the rebels utterly destroyed it or took it over.

[Men are from Slars]

Dhonal's Keep is easily my least favorite city, because you had to walk through more than half the city to get into -- or out of -- the keep itself. You couldn't even use EXITZONE as that would warp you to island 1 (and possibly mess up your game). Not quite as bad as the boats, but definitely not good.

[Spddin Ignis]

what happened with the boats?

[Øther]

My favorite city? I don't have one. An ideal city would be where all the shops and important places in the city are located right around the exitzones, and where all the unimportant things or the things that I do not need to go to repeatedly are farther away from the zones. I really hate it when it is the other way around, and I have to walk all the through and back to talk to a person.

[Alorael at Large]

Geneforge has never been particularly impressive on the city front. The zone structure and the engine don't lend themselves very well to cities that are anything more than functional. Avernum is slightly better. Height adds a lot, and with outdoors everything just seems larger.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the biggest flaw is the fact that none of the cities really seem like cities to him. Hamlets, definitely. Small towns, maybe. The term "city" and the size of the zones don't match.

[Milla]

Well I like the coastal cities you see on the map in G5. You can't visit them but they look like what Shaper Cities are supposed to be but can't be shown in the game engine.

[Student of Trinity]

The hamlets were perfect for G1, and still more or less credible for G2. But from there on, it got a bit silly.

 

If you think of the urban zones as just a few selected blocks in a much bigger offstage city, it's suddenly completely fine. But the games do nothing to encourage this rationalization, which I think is a shame.

 

So as it stands, the entire economy of the Shaper empire seems to consist of about two dozen one-person businesses. Maybe this is just Jeff's own fantasy — a world on the shareware scale.

[Men are from Slars]

The problem is that it's all Avernum style. That worked for Avernum, which originated as a small, stone age culture. And it worked for the serviles on Sucia for similar reasons. It worked for the backwoods peasants of Valorim. It doesn't work for the Shapers, though.

[Spddin Ignis]

That's why i like ities like dhonal's isle beceause the fact that it was 3 zones did help alot with the city concept.

[shaper_medej]

Dhonal's keep is the best in my opinion, sure you need to walk a lot to get anywhere in the city but thats the fun part for me.

[Acky]

I liked Medab the best. Not for any particular reason; just for the fact that it's Nostalgic.

 

The Great Archon

[Potato]

Penta and Kaz in G5 were rather nostalgic to me. I found it sad how the story of the serviles on Sucia island have been reduced to myths by now, and odd how the obeyers' town (Pentil) was used instead of Vakkiri. The poor Awakened are not remembered in anyway.

[Acky]

The Awakened themselves aren't remembered, but their morals are. Penta is the exact same thing as Vakkiri, just 80 or so years later. It is a little sad to see them gone for so long, but at least the essence of their belief's remain.

 

The Great Archon

[Dikiyoba]

I like the towns in G1 and G2 far better than the towns in G4 and G5, probably due to familarity and being closer to a realistic size.

 

As always, Dikiyoba has not played G3 and so cannot comment.

[Sleeping Dragon]

The Magus Complex will always be the place in the Geneforge series I feel the most at home in. It probably has to do with my Awakened sympathies, but it as lots of other neat things in it as well. It made sense that every area has little buffer zones protecting it from every other area (refreshing to see the Shaping art taken seriously outside of the Empire). There were also interesting people at the complex, an NPC that would join your party, a library, and humans and serviles living in harmony. Good times.

[Artemis~]

if you're underground somewhere and you exitzone, then the game takes you to south end, with the map still being of the previous island. i had to blindly navigate my way to harmony isle so that map would pop up, and it made the maps back to normal. i wouldnt reccomend doing that if you're in somewhere like a basement, dhonals keep [the inside], or if you traveled down a ladder.

[Velzan]

My fav city is Dhonals keep What with 3 full areas and a dungeon (Inner keep) It gets a thumbs up