Most ridiculous real life location mistakes in games

Mindfreak191 · Feb 21, 2020

So I was watching a retrospective on Medal of Honor Games and I suddenly remembered playing through Warfighter and one particular moment that made a dumb game seem even worse. I don't think there's need for a spoiler tag here, but unless you plan on playing this game (why?) you should be fine. So one of the missions in Warfighter takes place in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and for me (being someone from that country) I always get excited to see some virtual recreations of my country in bigger games (even though it's always tied to the war).
So I finally get to that mission, loading screen passes and I'm booted into the mission and I see this:

What's so weird about this you might ask? Well, you see, that bridge up there is this bridge:

So what's the problem, looks like a pretty well recreation? The problem is, that that bridge up there is almost 3h away from Sarajevo in a completely different city called Mostar which is known for that particular bridge, but in the game you literally take a small stroll down a street and end up in the center of Sarajevo.

All that got me thinking, I've been playing so many games that recreate real life cities, but I don't recall seeing something this ridiculous, living in NYC now I've noticed that usually recreations of NYC tend to cut down some blocks, but that's about it. So era, what prime examples of video game geography do you have to offer?

EDIT:

Just to make it more clear, I have nothing against bigger cities being more condensed for gameplay purposes, I'm talking more about literally completely messing up a location of a landmark as per example above. I doubt anyone would enjoy a 1:1 recreation of big cities unless it's a drivers license simulator lol

_zoipi · Feb 21, 2020

Resident Evil 4, i refuse to elive there's really a place like that in Spain.

Platy · Feb 21, 2020

Does franchises that get everywhere wrong like street fighter counts?

Deception · Feb 21, 2020

Pretty much all of Watch Dogs is a bad recreation of Chicago. I'm still waiting for a game to nail the look and feel of Chicago.

Santerestil · Feb 21, 2020

_zoipi said:
Resident Evil 4, i refuse to elive there's really a place like that in Spain.

Or in South America.

Mindfreak191 · Feb 21, 2020

Deception said:
Pretty much all of Watch Dogs is a bad recreation of Chicago. I'm still waiting for a game to nail the look and feel of Chicago.

This is what I was talking about, having never been to Chicago I always thought that Watch Dogs had probably a good recreation of the city lol.
Personally, one of the best real life recreations is NYC in the Division, obviously is not 1:1 but it's pretty damn close.

Voyevoda · Feb 21, 2020

Paris surrounded by mountains in The Saboteur. Also, Le Havre is like a 5mn drive from Paris.

Ridiculous.

Thera · Feb 21, 2020

What about the mountain in the background ?
Maybe the mixed location, intentionally.

CyborgNumberBlue · Feb 21, 2020

_zoipi said:
Resident Evil 4, i refuse to elive there's really a place like that in Spain.

There is its fucked up

Rocketz · Feb 21, 2020

The opening of mission of The Crew made me laugh out loud being from North Central Ohio

ClickyCal' · Feb 21, 2020

Deception said:
Pretty much all of Watch Dogs is a bad recreation of Chicago. I'm still waiting for a game to nail the look and feel of Chicago.

Yea, unfornately Chicago was a total bust. They got a few specific spots good, not much.

Rookhelm · Feb 21, 2020

Condensing large locales into smaller spaces is what comes to mind for me.

I live not too far from Washington DC and have been there many times, so it was neat to see that stuff in Fallout 3. Except Bethesda, MD is a biiiit farther away from DC than what is portrayed in the game.

Swift_Gamer · Feb 21, 2020

Santerestil said:
Or in South America.

There are places like that in South America.

Ragnorok64 · Feb 21, 2020

What was going on in The Last of us where you find Ishi's boat in Pittsburg by what appears to be the ocean?

Monsterqken · Feb 21, 2020

Thera said:
What about the mountain in the background ?
Maybe the mixed location, intentionally.

Yeah, pretty obvious that it's intentional. Mostar is iconic and never returned to its former glory after the war.

Tawpgun · Feb 21, 2020

Voyevoda said:
Paris surrounded by mountains in The Saboteur. Also, Le Havre is like a 5mn drive from Paris.

Ridiculous.

I swear to god every game dev artist in charge of skybox/background puts mountains in. It's like the default background.

Rookhelm said:
Condensing large locales into smaller spaces is what comes to mind for me.

I live not too far from Washington DC and have been there many times, so it was neat to see that stuff in Fallout 3. Except Bethesda, MD is a biiiit farther away from DC than what is portrayed in the game.

Did you play Division 2? Supposed to be very accurate. Like basically 1:1

Dogzillaboot · Feb 21, 2020

I feel like all of Metal Gear Solid 3 fits this. Lush jungles in Russia with crocodiles and other exotic wildlife lmao.

Yunyo · Feb 21, 2020

_zoipi said:
Resident Evil 4, i refuse to elive there's really a place like that in Spain.

albert_re4hd

Deception · Feb 21, 2020

Mindfreak191 said:
This is what I was talking about, having never been to Chicago I always thought that Watch Dogs had probably a good recreation of the city lol.
Personally, one of the best real life recreations is NYC in the Division, obviously is not 1:1 but it's pretty damn close.

Really, all they did well was the downtown landmarks but everything else is bad. Like for some reason, the downtown Loop area and Lakeview is an island and then there's some random nature type area of the top left of the city when in reality there isn't really any places like that until you hit the suburbs 10-15 miles out. They didn't even attempt to recreate any of the famous neighborhoods either and just went with generic "Southside is the poor people area" take. As a Chicagoan, I remember being super excited for Watchdogs and then immediately disappointed lol

Rookhelm · Feb 21, 2020

Tawpgun said:
I swear to god every game dev artist in charge of skybox/background puts mountains in. It's like the default background.

Did you play Division 2? Supposed to be very accurate. Like basically 1:1

I played the demo, and the little I saw seemed pretty good. Though I'm not so familiar with DC that I know each street. Just general layout of the Mall and Capitol area and such.

Mendrox · Feb 21, 2020

The new Yakuza did this with Yokohama. It's bigger than past games but the important parts of the city (and not all of them of course, some of them you can see from afar) are suddenly all well nearby without having to walk through the city like in real life.

Deadpool_X · Feb 21, 2020

I lived in Fort Collins, Colorado when Homefront came out. Everyone I knew was super stoked because there was a level in Fort Collins. Upon playing it, it was painfully clear that they created a generic level and slapped the Fort Collins name on it and had never even so much as stepped foot in town. Shoot, the brief moment when Cartman goes to Fort Collins to attend the Pube Fair in South Park was 100x more accurate than Homefront was.

sku · Feb 21, 2020

The recreation of Seattle in Infamous First Light was very odd to me. Gave Seattle more of a small city vibe than that of a metropolis. Also way too many fall colors to be realistic. Not sure if it was the same in Second Son.

Mozendo · Feb 21, 2020

Dogzillaboot said:
I feel like all of Metal Gear Solid 3 fits this. Lush jungles in Russia with crocodiles and other exotic wildlife lmao.

Never played it but I always thought the game took place Central or South America.
Wow

Deleted member 7883 · Feb 21, 2020

western-made games featuring signs/words written in a language that isn't based on Latin (chinese, korea, afghanistan, greek, russian languages etc.)

idk how many times I've seen articles about some level in a CoD game taking place in Afghanistan, with the sign for the pub essentially being written in gibberish bc none of the devs know the language, or similar instances.

Granted, I haven't seen this issue pop up nearly as much in the past three or four years (outside of poor localization jobs thru google translate)

11037 · Feb 21, 2020

In Tomb Raider you visit Greece and one of the locations you end up going to is the the Colosseum. Obviously, the real Colosseum is located in Rome but the developers got the locations mixed up.

Aurc · Feb 21, 2020

_zoipi said:
Resident Evil 4, i refuse to elive there's really a place like that in Spain.

Santerestil said:
Or in South America.

CyborgNumberBlue said:
There is its fucked up

The entire series kind of asks you to suspend disbelief at various points in order for them to be able to create some pretty crazy locations for the player to be in and explore. There are secret labs beneath mansions and sewer systems, lava rooms in huge castles, complex catacombs beneath the cathedral of an American city, and more. That's not even going into how each location seems to have been designed by an eccentric with a strong affinity for bizarre puzzles. From that perspective, a rural village of farmers in Spain seems comparatively tame.

erlim · Feb 21, 2020

Deception said:
Pretty much all of Watch Dogs is a bad recreation of Chicago. I'm still waiting for a game to nail the look and feel of Chicago.

I said this in the other thread about cities you'd want to see in games. Watch Dog's Chicago is ridiculous, like the team never visited. The team made just outside the city completely hilly and made it look like some ridiculous pre ww1 era industrial factory world.

FoolsMilky · Feb 21, 2020

Someone more knowledgeable than me will have to chime in: I thought that developers weren't allowed to make 1:1 recreations of significant (IE: cities) real-life locations. I'm not sure if the ones already posted would all qualify but I believe the Watch Dogs cities specifically were not allowed to be 1:1 and many things had to be misplaced.

I believe the reason I heard was that 1:1 recreations are prone to being used for malicious means, terrorist attacks, etc. But I don't want to spread misinformation, maybe someone else knows about this because I definitely heard it as an explanation. Doesn't really explain how some games apparently were absolutely trying to get a 1:1 scale going, so I could be mistaken. Maybe it's only cities that exist today fort exactly that reason?

The best example is probably Assassin's Creed: Unity, which recreated Paris during the French Revolution at a 1:1 scale with the help of a hired team of historians.

(https://www.geek.com/games/exploring-real-world-cities-in-video-games-1741408/)

Host Samurai · Feb 21, 2020

GTA 4 had no MSG

justiceiro · Feb 21, 2020

What a dumb complaint. If you gonna put a city on the game, the landmarks is all it's really needed, no point in padding because of realism.

We get zombies and post nuclear creatures, but the localization of stuff is the dealbreaker?

Altazor · Feb 21, 2020

Arica doesn't look like Arica Harbor in Battlefield Bad Company 2:

This is not Arica:

This is Arica:

71949183-arica-chile-20-de-octubre-de-2013-vista-a%C3%A9rea-de-la-ciudad-de-arica-y-el-puerto-de-la-colina-el-morro-.jpg

as a northern Chilean, I think I should feel insulted :P

but, hey, at least a town that isn't Santiago appeared on a videogame. It's something.

Santerestil · Feb 21, 2020

Swift_Gamer said:
There are places like that in South America.

That used Spanish pesetas instead of local pesos? /s

Xero grimlock · Feb 21, 2020

lewissk said:
The recreation of Seattle in Infamous First Light was very odd to me. Gave Seattle more of a small city vibe than that of a metropolis. Also way too many fall colors to be realistic. Not sure if it was the same in Second Son.

Yeah infamous's Seattle is bad. It's gets a few ascetics right, but otherwise it's like no attempt was made. Particularly baffling from a Seattle studio. I'm not asking doe1 to 1, but a better attempt needs to be made then having post alley as some small dingy back alley.

Javier23 · Feb 21, 2020

Swift_Gamer said:
There are places like that in South America.

Medieval castles included.

qatak · Feb 21, 2020

The two cities I've lived in for extended periods of time are Boston and Pittsburgh - TLOU did a decent job with Boston (still some egregious discrepancies) but Pittsburgh was a bit more unrecognizable and the layout in relation to bridges that they showed made no sense.

On the other end, I visited LA for the first time right after I played GTAV in first person and was pretty blown away. Obviously a game world but that was crazy impressive.

I'm living in TX now - are there any good games that are set here that capture the locale well?

BarryFishFinger · Feb 21, 2020

I forget which Resistance game it was (Fall of Man?) but there was a level where you have to run through Cheddar Gorge which is not far from me. Looked nothing like Cheddar Gorge so what's the point.

Deleted member 17207 · Feb 21, 2020

The "Canada" level in Tony Hawk comes to mind lmao. Not even because visually it's super inaccurate in terms of it looking like SOME places in Canada, but because the level is called "Canada" and a shit ton of Canada doesn't look anything like it lmao. Not to mention Canada isn't..whatever the hell this level is - it's an entire country haha. Fuck this cracks me up.

I imagine it was a joke and not ignorance at play - but at the same time, I've definitely seen and heard a ton of Americans' impressions of Canada as being homogeneous and something like this haha.

P-MAC · Feb 21, 2020

justiceiro said:
What a dumb complaint. If you gonna put a city on the game, the landmarks is all it's really needed, no point in padding because of realism.

We get zombies and post nuclear creatures, but the localization of stuff is the dealbreaker?

Nobody in this thread has complained lol. It's interesting how things need to be adapted

Nephtes · Feb 21, 2020

11037 said:
In Tomb Raider you visit Greece and one of the locations you end up going to is the the Colosseum. Obviously, the real Colosseum is located in Rome but the developers got the locations mixed up.

To be fair, there were a number of gladiatorial colosseums in the ancient world built all over the Roman Empire...approximately 230 according to Wikipedia...including several in Greece.

The colosseum in Rome isn't even the best preserved Roman amphitheater. That distinction goes to the Arena of Nîmes in France.

The Catholics gutted the Colosseum in Rome for the marble to build places like St. Peter's Bascilica.

Edit:
Fixed best preserved Colosseum comment to refer to the correct one in France, not the one in Britain. Whoops. Thanks Google.

Nome · Feb 21, 2020

Altazor said:
Arica doesn't look like Arica Harbor in Battlefield Bad Company 2:

This is not Arica:

This is Arica:

as a northern Chilean, I think I should feel insulted :P

but, hey, at least a town that isn't Santiago appeared on a videogame. It's something.

Damn, I always assumed that was some dusty Middle Eastern port. The real place is effin' gorgeous.

The Argus · Feb 21, 2020

Host Samurai said:
GTA 4 had no MSG

GTA IV is Liberty City though, not NYC. That said they nailed the NYC feel better than most games taking place in NYC proper. Nice that they focused on the other boroughs and even NJ.

Chojin · Feb 21, 2020

The USA stage in Fatal Fury 2. Mt. Rushmore is apparently in the Chihuahuan desert among the plateaus of New Mexico.

NeverWas · Feb 21, 2020

I know Watchdogs has been brought up, but I wanted to specifically point out that there is no windmill farm off Lake Shore Drive, nor are their mountains on the North Side.

Chojin · Feb 21, 2020

NeverWas said:
I know Watchdogs has been brought up, but I wanted to specifically point out that there is no windmill farm off Lake Shore Drive, nor are their mountains on the North Side.

Ahhh the majestic Minnehaha Mountains in Wisconsin right next to lake Michigan. I've climbed Culver's Peak many times.

Mindfreak191 · Feb 21, 2020

justiceiro said:
What a dumb complaint. If you gonna put a city on the game, the landmarks is all it's really needed, no point in padding because of realism.

We get zombies and post nuclear creatures, but the localization of stuff is the dealbreaker?

The issue isn't recreating a city 1:1, the issue is that they put an iconic landmark from one city into another, it would be like seeing the Golden Gate bridge next to the Empire State building....I think the topic title is pretty clear about that.

SolVanderlyn · Feb 21, 2020

11037 said:
In Tomb Raider you visit Greece and one of the locations you end up going to is the the Colosseum. Obviously, the real Colosseum is located in Rome but the developers got the locations mixed up.

This is actually hilarious.

dtamago · Feb 21, 2020

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare comes to mind, I remember they made a big fuss about the game being in Juarez, it was a really flattering representation of the city, to be honest. Having lived in Juarez most of my life I can tell you it's much uglier in real life.

Restored · Feb 21, 2020

lewissk said:
The recreation of Seattle in Infamous First Light was very odd to me. Gave Seattle more of a small city vibe than that of a metropolis. Also way too many fall colors to be realistic. Not sure if it was the same in Second Son.

This was my first thought as well, despite the devs living here in Seattle is was very jarring. I guess it was needed for game design.

Adryuu · Feb 21, 2020

But the thing with Resident Evil 4 is not the looks or layout of the place, it's not based a real town or anything. What is ridiculous about RE4 is that it's set on a real country (Spain), but then everyone native to it speaks like a Mexican, which is, let's remember, like several thousand kilometers away literally in a different continent. It's very funny to me anyway but it's the most ridiculous "locale characterization" ever, period.

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