The Forgotten City was originally a Skyrim mod, telling an intricately woven story about a time loop in a lost city. The mod won its creator, Nick Pearce, an Australian Writer's Guild Award, making it one of the first mods to win such an accolade and drawing even more attention the its world, interesting characters, and writer.
Now The Forgotten City is being transformed into a fully fleshed-out standalone game. In a recent interview with Game Rant, Nick Pearce revealed the changes that fans of the original mod can expect in the standalone version of The Forgotten City. With a significant expansion of the game's world and story, as well as the return of some familiar faces, Pearce feels fans are likely to be pleasantly surprised.
The Changes
The Forgotten City mod saw the Dragonborn run across a woman whose brother had gone missing in a mysterious cave. Attempting to help, the player ends up descending into a long-lost Dwemer city, now inhabited by lost people, overseen by a mysterious Jarl, and controlled by a curse known as the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule meant that if any person in the city committed a sin, the entire population would die. Throw in a time loop, and the player had the chance to get to the bottom of the city's mysteries by manipulating the world using their knowledge from previous attempts.
The standalone game's trailers reveal it will be making some big changes to the original mod. First, the new version of The Forgotten City takes place in a Roman city, not a Dwemer one, moving the story to a version of the real world rather than Skyrim's Tamriel. Not only that, but the new game will see the acclaimed story of the original significantly changed and expanded upon.
"It’s been completely re-written, with a bunch of massive twists, new characters, puzzles, and four new endings. To give you an idea, the new script is well over double the length of the original at 80,000+ words. I really wanted to make sure that anyone who played the mod – even recently – will be surprised and delighted by all the new content."
This is great news for fans of the original, who can expect something quite different in the reimagined story. Pearce also mentioned that the game will use the Unreal engine, add new gameplay mechanics, and make use of professional voice acting. To top it all off, Pearce described the "achingly beautiful" soundtrack created for the game by composer Michael Allen, known for his work on Armello.
The world of The Forgotten City's standalone game will be about 30 percent larger than the city found in the Skyrim mod. According to Pearce, it takes eight-to-10 hours to go through the new game once and get one of its four endings, with subsequent playthroughs potentially taking longer.
Skyrim is an archetypical open-world RPG. The Forgotten City told a tightly-woven story within Skyrim's world, but it seems the standalone version of the game will move away from those RPG roots to some degree. "It does have some light RPG elements," Pearce said, "like allowing players to choose their own name, gender, origin and backstory, and gather an inventory full of items." He has confirmed, however, that the game will not have a skill tree like Skyrim, and will instead encourage players to progress by collecting items and knowledge between time loops.
The Similarities
Fans of the original mod will still find some key similarities between it and the new version of The Forgotten City. The mod was known for its well-written characters, and Pearce said fans can expect many of those characters to return in different forms.
"Dooley, Gulvar, Vern, Hjormund, Dwemora, Rastasia, Luki, Jeshol, Domitus, and others – they’ve all been re-imagined as ancient Romans and re-named accordingly. For example, Dooley is Duilius, or Duli for short. But they’ve evolved, and some of them aren’t what you might expect, and across the board they each have about twice as much dialogue as they had in the mod. I’d say they’re deeper, more nuanced and more reactive - more like real people."
Many fans should be happy to hear that some character concepts from the original will return. While Pearce said he would not describe The Forgotten City as a roleplaying game, players will be able to choose from four different background options that call back to the game's RPG origins. The Forgotten City's hero can either be an archeologist, a soldier, a fugitive, or an amnesiac. These backstories have advantages. The soldier gets a gun with ten bullets and the archeologist can access their knowledge of Roman times. Pearce also claims these backgrounds will affect how characters react to the player, who will learn more about their own backstory as the plot unfolds.
The Forgotten City's standalone game aims to bring Pearce's original concept to life on a grander scale that will hopefully make it feel like new, even for players of the original Skyrim mod. Fans can expect a huge amount of dialogue, making it great for those who want to dive head-first down the rabbit hole and solve the city's mysteries without resorting to violence. If the creator's comments are anything to go by, the new game aims to feel fresh but still familiar for fans of the original. Whether or not that delicate balancing act will be achieved remains to be seen, but based on the mod's legacy, many fans should be excited to rediscover the story in this standalone game.
The Forgotten City releases in July 2021 on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.