by Geir Gunnarsson
The Forgotten city started as a mod for Skyrim, originally released back in 2015 by Nick Pearce under the mod name "Modern Storyteller". The mod was downloaded over 3 million times and even won a national Writer's Guild award.
It was so popular and successful that it was made into it's own game and Modern Storyteller went from a mod name to a Studio name, a studio that Nick Pearce left a legal career of 10 years to pursue.
Now that game has been finally released and I have dived headlong in. I never tried the mod even though I love Skyrim and playing mods on it, but this one went completely under my radar and I went into this game entirely ignorant of the story except that the premise is you've found a hidden and forgotten city and have to solve some mystery or something. If you can play this game completely spoiler free it will be the best experience.
The script has been re-written and is twice the length of the original at 80.000+ words. There are new twists, endings and surprises, making the stand-alone game good for new and old players.
The story is really interesting and captures your attention from the start. This is a very dialogue heavy game with multiple choices regarding your replies and it seems every character you meet has a quest for you or is somehow related to a quest you get somewhere else.
After an hour of playing, I had talked to maybe 10 characters and had nearly as many quests. It was starting to look quite daunting but somehow, they all work with each other and even lead to other quests sometimes. It all feels very natural and might seem cluttered, but never overwhelms you. I do not want to talk too much about the quests and story as this is such a story heavy game, I wouldn't want to enter spoiler territory.
The game plays very much like Skyrim. The game is very pretty and runs very smoothly on my aged rig. I manage to run it on the highest settings 1080p @ 60 fps with my 1660 GTX super, i7 4790k CPU, 16GB ram.
The environments are really pretty, lighting effects and particles are all top notch. The character models are very well made too and a lot of emotion is conveyed through their facial expressions they give when listening to your responses.
I really enjoyed trying to gage what everyone’s motive was, what they were trying to hide or tell me with their eyes and emotions displayed on their faces. The voice acting is pretty good, not the best around, but very serviceable and believable. Very immersive. It was a joy to talk to everyone and see what they want or need or what they are hiding from you.
There is some combat in the game but the focus is on dialogue and puzzles. Combat will only get you so far. Then there is a time loop mechanic which you can use by leaving and entering the city again, which comes in handy when a quest fails or you need to explore a different solution. The only time the game gives you a game over is when you die, otherwise you can pretty much just leave the city and re-enter to restart the day to try again.
This game is probably one of the better games I’ve played this year and will definitely play again for one of the different endings available.
In conclusion I highly recommend this game for anyone that likes story heavy games with some puzzles and deduction mechanics. Personally I can't wait to see what Modern Storyteller will do next.
Check out the Steam page to add "The Forgotten City" to your Wishlist for it's July 28 release.
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