The Forgotten City
Release Date Developer Publisher 28 Jul 2021 Modern Storyteller Dear Villagers
Overview
First off, let me say that I’ve been enjoying the game. I will try to avoid any major spoilers, though if you consider things like diving into the mechanics or addressing themes of the game spoilers, then go ahead and play Modern Storyteller’s The Forgotten City before reading on.
Going into the game spoiler-free helps add to the atmosphere and gives the game a chance to weave its narrative for you on its own, rather than being affected by your preconceived biases of what you’ve heard or seen about the game.
While some of the physics, logic, or animation can feel clunky at times, the game’s core of well-written, fully voice-acted dialogue and wide array of choices center the player on what’s important while pioneering new ideas in the genre.
Key Mechanics
At it’s core, The Forgotten City is a walking simulator. The player meanders around the town, talking with the inhabitants of the city to uncover many of the mysteries that lie hidden within the city walls.
Some of the mysteries are aimed at helping the player better understand the Golden Rule and how it works, while some focus on highlighting philosophical questions about the society you have found yourself a part of. Others let us glimpse into the gloomy, past lives of the town’s inhabitants.
Meticulously Crafted Routines
The inhabitants of the city all play an important part in the story. And, for good reason, their daily routines are well defined to make them feel like a real part of the world.
Some of the shopkeepers, found in the Forum, selling their wares.
Characters are split up, based on occupation, to move throughout the city. Shopkeepers are posted at the forum during the day, often shouting thoughts or questions across the square at one another. The city guards patrol the streets, with two of the guards often found outside their respective noble’s residence (Horatius in front of Sentius’s villa, Domitius in front of Malleolus’s). Meanwhile, the rich nobles stay inside, lazing around on the assortment of klinai found in their lavish houses.
Not knowing exactly where each of the town’s NPCs are going to be encourages the player to explore the city, taking note of the various locations and how they connect. Without a map, it can be easy to get lost, but this only serves to further encourage player discovery, since key areas are often hidden away in the “nooks and crannies” of the world.
Save-Focused Gameplay
I would argue that the game plays best when the player is making frequent saves. This isn’t a strict requirement, but you will have much better success saving before major events rather than trying to restart the time loop to get back to trying a different outcome with an interaction. Since there’s no limit to the amount of saves — another hint to its Skyrim roots — players should feel empowered to try a variety of approaches, just as people would Quicksave in Skyrim before looting a city, fighting a giant, or pickpocketing a shopkeep.
The save menu, which I encourage you to use frequently!
Movement in the game can be tedious, with the player needing to traverse the beautiful yet sprawling city to reach key locations or inhabitants, like Ulpius at the highest point in the city. Forgetting to save and choosing an incorrect dialogue option might mean having to make another long journey from the Shrine of Proserpina.
Since new dialogue options are “unlocked” via certain paths and actions, players won’t always be able to save and reload to push through the game at a fast pace. Instead, after uncovering a few new pieces of information, the player is able to choose whether to continue exploring, maybe exposing something new, or resetting the time loop to continue an existing lead.
This is a well-architected part of the game, since the power is in the player’s hand, and both options feel like good choices. The player can really be immersed in the exploration, but it can be made better with frequent saves to avoid replaying the same scenes over and over.
Whispers from the Golden Statues
Throughout the game, the statues scattered around the city speak to you as you walk by, helping you follow up on various leads or planting the seeds of an idea on your journey to uncover the truth. At least, unless you disabled that option in the settings, like I did.
One of hundreds of statues found throughout the city.
The toggle switch mentions that “off” is for, “Players who want to solve and uncover puzzles by themselves,” but I recommend keeping the whispers on, as some of the answers to these puzzles are pretty big “gates” to content, rather than a puzzle to be solved, such as:
(Minor Spoiler)
Jumping from the bluff near the Great Temple to get into Malleolus’s villa. (After re-enabling the whispers, a statue said “Jump”, which I never would have thought of.)
In my experience with the whispers disabled, I was left stumbling into various doors, all of which were locked, and not having a great path in mind to moving forward. Due to the large scope of the city, it is not a great experience to wander around without some goal in mind.
While it can feel bad as a player to know you’re being helped by the game, given how the whispers factor into the lore of the world (one of the townspeople is also known for speaking with the statues), I think they are best left enabled to just give you that extra push when you’re already on the right track.
Discovery of Controls
Unless I missed something big (which is a very real possibility) there was no indication of how to use other items that you acquire during your adventure. For example, the game shows you how to use your flashlight very early on, but not how to draw your weapon.
This led to a scenario where I believed I had discovered a way out, but no way to enact my vision, since I thought the path forward would be via a dialog option, much like the rest of the game.
With the game’s roots originating from Skyrim, it makes sense that drawing a weapon would be a part of the gameplay. But it wasn’t until I was playing around on the d-pad trying to pull out the flashlight that I accidentally drew my weapon instead, leading to a new discovery.
Themes
The Roman setting helps the game to bring in themes around Stoicism, the punishment of Sisyphus, and the balance between trusting the populace to do the right thing versus enacting draconian laws to ensure everyone’s survival.
Since this section will highlight more examples from the game, there may be more spoilers in this section. You’ve been warned!
The Myth of Sisyphus
The game highlights multiple times the “Sisyphean task” you are faced with. Continuously trying to save the city from something that always seems to happen, anyways.
A not-so-subtle hint at a key theme in the game.
The first problem most players solve in the game, dealing with the assassin, ends much like Sisyphus. Once you get the boulder to the top of the hill — or in this case, deal with the intruder — it falls right back down, since someone else will now break the Golden Rule, instead.
Stoic Philosophy
Many of the townsfolk bring their philosophical, spiritual, and religious perceptions from their time into The Forgotten City. In particular, many of the inhabitants treat their experience under the Golden Rule as a test of their stoicism.
What is Stoicism? (from Wikipedia)
Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to understand the universal reason.
The city is meant to thrive if everyone were Stoic. By leading a life of virtue, the members would never break the Golden Rule, and thus, everyone can continue to lead their lives happily, or at least, happily under stoicism where, “virtue is sufficient for happiness”.
However, the reality is more nefarious. The townsfolk are not able to change their lives much under the Golden Rule. Galerius, a humble farmer with a heart of gold, complains to the player that Sentius takes his crops to distribute to the townsfolk, though keeps the best pieces to himself. While the town could vote for a new Magistrate, perhaps one that would distribute food more fairly, there is naught to be done in the short term to enact justice, since it would likely break the Golden Rule.
As a result, many townspeople must double-down on their Stoicism in order to bear the burden of worse food, physical affliction, or living in the slums, lest they break the Golden Rule.
The Balance of Personal Freedoms
Sentius demonstrates that he doesn’t trust everyone to maintain the order under the Golden Rule. By locking up Duli, a charming yet disoriented inhabitant of the town, seemingly afflicted with dementia of some kind, Sentius showcases a difficult moral dilemma of the city: How much should the government interfere with personal freedoms for the good of the people?
Duli, in custody under the rule of Magistrate Sentius.
It’s clear that Duli might break the Golden Rule, due to his forgetfulness and reports of him wandering into other people’s houses, but he hasn’t yet, by the time we meet him. Is it fair that he is imprisoned for something he has not done, even if it would mean the destruction of everyone in the city? That’s something for you, the player, to decide.
Since the game was released in 2021, well after the start of the CoViD-19 pandemic, the themes of trusting people to make the right choice versus expecting the government to enforce the rules for general prosperity are even harder hitting. We’ve seen from experience that we can’t trust people to always make the right choice, but that pertinent question remains: Where should the line be drawn between personal freedom and the good of the people?
Conclusion
While the game doesn’t have the polish of walking simulators like The Witness or What Remains of Edith Finch, the slow drip of content via exploration throughout the game leads to a satisfying journey to unwind the mysteries of the city that you, the player, get to control. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a relaxed game focused on intrigue and discovery over combat or technique.