[Glam Grimfire]

So I've been playing Sleeping Dogs lately, in an effort to actually finish and 100% an Open World Game (which I have never done before.)
I know we have some China-bound SBers here, and I've seen them remark before that Hong Kong in Sleeping Dogs doesn't seem to be based on actual Hong Kong at all, but is a fictionalized simulacrum of different areas and locales with maybe a little inspiration from the real place.
I wanted to make this thread so some folks could chime in about REAL LIFE Hong Kong and the things to do in it vs. videogame Things To Do In It and how every activity in Sleeping Dogs is probably illegal and also for people to talk about Open World Cities in general.
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##SKELETON PARTY (new article as of 04/26/14)Grim

[evnvnv]

This is a fun topic!

Basically I don't think Sleeping Dogs is any less accurate than most other open world games based on real cities, it's like a miniature theme park version of the city that preserves a lot of the general feel of various neighborhoods and recreates a number of actual landmarks, but also misses a lot of nice details and even more iconic locations that would have made the game feel a lot more like Hong Kong.

The main weird detail about the design is that the entire thing is based only on Hong Kong island. This is basically like doing a NY-like game, but having the whole thing take place in Manhattan. Like Manhattan, most of the neighborhoods on HK Island are pretty upscale. There are more dubious neighborhoods on the island but doing a game about gangsters without featuring more of the city is really strange. Of course you still get a good amount of variety, but leaving out Kowloon and the New Territories and the more mountainous open spaces beyond that feels like a missed opportunity. Kowloon in particular feels like a vital neighborhood for this sort of thing, and they also miss out on the opportunity to do a setpiece inside the Walled City (even though it doesn't exist any more).

Also, even though the game is set entirely on the island, there aren't a lot of scenes inside elaborate multi level shopping malls, which is basically IMO the main thing to do in Hong Kong. Maybe a hardware limitation about not being able to do very complicated indoor areas, but again it is a prominent feature that could have helped make the game a little more interesting.

One thing that I think is kind of well done about the game (at least in the beginning) is how rare guns are. Later on in the game there's a lot more shooting stuff, but you kind of have to go out of your way to have a gun in any of the open world wandering around scenes. I mean it's not like in the US, where guns are legal, you have guys wandering around with bazookas all day a la GTA, but it does seem like they've tried to make the relative scarcity of hand guns in HK part of the game mechanics. It also means they have to think a little more about the hand to hand combat, which, yeah, it could be better, but it's still more intricate than in a typical open world game (AFAIK).

The countless street vendors and tea shops and convenience stores are obviously accurate. They are only missing a jewelry store on every corner and they'd have the typical hong kong city block to a T.

I liked the martial arts side missions, but I would have liked the game a lot more if they had made that a stronger part of the narrative. When that subplot started I got my hopes up, thinking that the game would end up as a kind of mash up between a classic martial arts movie and a modern johnnie to style triad picture, instead they just sort of meander around somewhere near the middle. I still think Sleeping Dogs is a cool game, but honestly rather than more accuracy to the city of Hong Kong, I would have preferred more attention to little details of HK cinema, in the same way the GTA games seem to be kind of a collage of homages to various moments in American crime movies. Instead it kind of just felt like a collection of stereotypes. But I still liked it, and I hope they make a more ambitious sequel soon.
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[scratchmonkey]

I was going to say, this is very similar as to how GTA treats American cities and really, if we're going to go there, it's also extremely similar to how Disneyland and Vegas operate by creating hyper-real simulacra, in the sense that no actual castle looks like Sleeping Beauty's castle, yet it somehow is indicative of the very nature of castle-ness.

The one city that I've spent enough time in to really feel confident talking about regarding its representation is San Francisco, which features in GTA: San Andreas. I'd like to do a more comprehensive overview of which neighborhoods disappeared and which changed in size/location; that would require an extensive sitdown with the game itself -- hmm, it is on Steam, I might have to sit down and do that sometime.

[chevluh]

[scratchmonkey]

A quick readup indicates that while you can run into Disney characters in the park, they appear in their "real" forms, i.e. maintaining the proportions and basic appearance of how they appear in Disney media, rather than people in costumes.

[Glam Grimfire]

These are some really great replies, guys! I'd never really thought of Open World games in the kind of "Themepark" way before.
Now that I do though, there's definitely a contrast between open world RPG's and open world action games, which usually take place in some kind of city.
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##SKELETON PARTY (new article as of 04/26/14)Grim

[Gironika]

I think it was here on SB where someone talked about scale of buildings and what this means for the game(s), e.g. that real world blueprints for buildings would have lots of "empty"/useless rooms that offer no "value" aside from being a real world depiction, whereas a fps-building should serve the purpose of being a good "stage". That, I think, is one of they main problems that sandbox games face, re theme parks.



Anyway, I still love SD for letting me drive around in rooms with scooters or motorbikes. There's nothing like waking up and having a story-cutscene start/end while sleeping next to a scooter!
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