Hello! This week we’re trying something a bit special. It’s Video Game City Week!
Video games are filled with cities, and one of the great pleasures of a certain kind of game is getting to explore an urban environment that’s been designed especially to intrigue you and keep you busy. So we started to wonder: what are the best video game cities, including both real and imagined places? And what are the best individual pieces from those cities?
And what would a city look like if you pulled it together from your favourite elements of other video game cities? Which game would you turn to for the perfect rooftops, the perfect coffee shops, the perfect use of statues and freeways? (In a beautiful piece of synchronicity, Skyfaring author – and airline pilot – Mark Vanhoenacker’s luminous Imagine a City was released last week – do track it down.)
So that’s the idea: a couple of short pieces each day in which writers argue for their favourite video game city and their favourite aspect of that city. First up are the Stagways from Hollow Knight, converging in the glorious Queen’s Station.
Last thing: special thanks to Lucy Grimwood for the absolutely stunning Video Game City logo art. It’s just gorgeous.
We hope you enjoy these pieces, and have a think about your own favourite cities.
Queen’s Station
They say the best way to arrive in a city is by train. I think that probably holds true even when the train is actually a giant stag beetle, summoned by the ring of a bell. Actually, it’s perfect – Hollow Knight’s fast travel Stagways system blends the best of trains and hansom cabs. Victoriana of a certain kind – the pre-raphaelites, Christina Rosetti – shimmers through this world.
And this is never clearer than at the Queen’s Station, the jewel of the Stagways system. When I think of Hollow Knight, a delicate, brutal metroidvania set in the moonlit world of insects, I always think of this place. It feels like it’s the centre of something vast, the way that Grand Central feels like it has arteries and veins open to the whole of New York. It’s a place you pass through, and yet it’s also a place that rewards stopping to take a break. Of all of the railway stations in video games, The Queen’s Station is my favourite.