What do you take when you get ancient ruins in the vein of Indiana Jones, time travel, the Roman Empire, a mystery involving people turning to gold, and an atmosphere remnant of they heyday of 1990s adventure games mixed with modern RPG dialogue interaction? Say hello to developer Modern Storyteller’s The Forgotten City, a game oozing with atmosphere and player choices wrapped up in a modern adventure-mystery package.
Playing as a featureless protagonist, save for your name and skin color, you are fished out of the River Tiber by a woman named Karen (oh yeah, they have plenty of jokes about that for days), who pleads with you to find her friend Al, who disappeared near these seemingly undiscovered Roman ruins recently. With no real explanation of how you got there, you begin your journey towards the ruins. A nice little choice I enjoyed at the start is what your background is. You can choose from an archaeologist, a special ops soldier/spy, or even a runaway convict, each with their own perks. In keeping with the Indiana Jones theme, I went for archaeologist, which grants certain intelligentsia dialogue options, as well as the very neat world-building ability of being able to read the Latin inscriptions present throughout the game.
Soon, you fall feet first into the ruins of an ancient Roman city – complete with long dead, golden statue-turned citizens, and the revelation of your new good buddy Al as well. Finding a portal through time (more like a wormhole), you are flung back two-thousand years to the past to meet the citizens of the time, where you will soon learn your purpose for being there. I will not spoil anymore, as the initially mysterious and creepy atmosphere sets the stage for a really engaging plot as you must unravel the secret behind this lost city, and hopefully, prevent the present fates of its citizens.
From the moment the game began, I was hooked on the atmosphere and narrative of the game. The emotions of the characters that you interact with are well portrayed by their voice actors and animations. In a game all about talking to other characters, they all need to be solid and confidently portrayed, and I am happy to say that not only is each character here fun to talk to, you will quickly relish the opportunity to talk to the next one and continue plot threads or further add more to your quest log. Each dialogue choice furthers you down a rabbit hole where each choice of word matters. A bad tone taken towards a character may mean they tell you to, in a variety of ways unique to their characters, to go to hell, whereas other dialogue choices may have you enlisted in a quest for them, or at the least, further come close to solving the mystery of the city. Ironically, for a game based on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, there are no generic NPCs here, and you will only find a wealth of character interaction.
The Forgotten City will be released on July 28th, so if you are interested in a good mystery, with plenty of secrets and dialogue trees to explore, I would highly recommend checking it out. Developer Modern Storyteller and publisher Dear Villagers encourage you to break the mystery of the golden rule before it breaks everyone this summer!
Check Out The Forgotten City Trailer:
You can wishlist The Forgotten City for PC via Steam. For more information, please visit: https://dearvillagers.com/project/forgotten-city/
Related: THE FORGOTTEN CITY Time-Hopping Murder Mystery Releases New Narrated Gameplay Trailer
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Your local neighborhood nutjob, gamer, and teacher! I'm an avid fan of many genres such as platformers, shooters, horror, etc. I am also an avid tabletop gamer - hugely into the worlds of Warhammer and all of their spinoffs. I'm a big believer in being objective - even if something is not my cup of tea, I want to talk about it on the objective level - is it well made, crafted with love, and with care for the fans? If so, that's a good game in my book for someone and well worth their hard earned dollarydoos!
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