Why RPG Cities Are Development Nightmares: Expert Insights

If you have ever wondered why we see so few massive urban sprawls in role-playing games, you are not alone. Obsidian Entertainment’s design director, Josh Sawyer, recently pulled back the curtain on why RPG cities are a developer’s worst nightmare, revealing that they are roughly four times as expensive to build per square foot compared to standard dungeon environments.

The Astronomical Cost of Designing RPG Cities

In a recent Q&A, Sawyer highlighted that the sheer density and verticality required to make a city feel alive create a massive disparity in development resources. Unlike a dungeon, which relies on repeatable assets and linear paths, a believable city requires:

Unique architectural assets to avoid repetition.
Complex NPC pathing and social systems.
High-density interactivity that creates the illusion of life.
Optimized performance to handle vast, interconnected spaces.

For developers, these requirements mean that for every hour spent building a sprawling wilderness, a city block can consume nearly four times the budget and dev-hours, making it a risky venture for any studio.

Why Urban RPG Environments Are So Challenging

Sawyer noted that titles like Disco Elysium and Zero Parades managed to craft incredible urban settings, but they benefited from a lack of focus on traditional, large-scale combat encounters. When you force a studio to integrate complex fighting mechanics into a dense city—as seen in Cyberpunk 2077 or the third act of Baldur’s Gate 3—the technical seams begin to show.

The inherent challenge of RPG cities is balancing narrative density with functional game systems. When combat is added to the mix, the technical debt skyrockets, often leading to the notorious development cycles seen in industry heavyweights like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

The Impact on Modern Gaming

The practical consequence of these high production costs is that we will likely continue to see fewer fully-realized cities in open-world games unless the technology for procedural generation improves significantly. When a game does commit to a city-wide setting, it often results in either a compromised final act or a development cycle plagued by crunch and delays.

While cities like Novigrad in The Witcher 3 remain industry benchmarks, they stand as monuments to both artistic ambition and the extreme financial and technical cost of urban-focused RPG design. As players, we love the depth of city-based adventures, but we must acknowledge that building them is arguably one of the most difficult feats in software engineering today.

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