The Forgotten City

In both the full 2021 game and the 2015 mod, the story of The Forgotten City explores the existential relationship between humanity and its laws. The game begins with the protagonist waking after being rescued from floating down the Tiber River by a woman named Karen. Karen asks them to look for her friend, Al Worth, who disappeared whilst investigating some nearby ruins. As the player explores said ruins, they are sent towards the era of the Roman Empire towards the now-restored city. As the plot progresses and the player continues exploring it's elaborated that the city is under the conditional protection of the gods, where if anyone is to commit sin, all citizens of the city would be equally punished and turned into gold in a system referred to as the Golden Rule (originally Dwarves' Law).[5] These gold statues, depicting previous inhabitants and residents, can be heard by seemingly only the player whispering towards them. The specific sins that are criteria for the Golden Rule to be enacted are not clear to any resident of the city, with numerous records of contradictions. The player is able to re-enter the portal they had entered from and restart the time loop if the Golden Rule is ever enacted, allowing them to keep both physical and mental objects such as important items and information.

The plot was significantly altered from its original story in the mod; with the setting of a Dwemer ruin being shifted towards that of ancient Rome as well as much as the script being updated and rewritten. Multiple endings were both added and expanded from the original story.

Each character in the game has a strong background story and argument, complicating the decisions players make in the game. In the future, the developer plans to provide expansion through mods.[6]

The long development progress of The Forgotten City, spearheaded by lead developer and writer Nick Pearce, began from the beginning of Skyrim's release in 2011. Prior to this, Pearce has stated that his inspiration for creating mods came back from his experience with mods from Fallout: New Vegas, specifically New Vegas Bounties by Someguy2000. The Forgotten City took over 1700 hours for Pearce to develop, and was his first ever major development project.[7] The mod later released on console releases of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Special Edition, remaining one of the top Xbox One mods for the game.[8]

In 2016, after the release of the mod, Pearce quit his day job as a lawyer and hired several other developers to form Modern Storyteller. The resulting development process took four and a half years, with much of the harsh development conditions laboured by Pearce himself to avoid crunching fellow developers, with Pearce working 80-hour weeks to the point of hallucination.[9] During the process the original mod was entirely overhauled; the setting was changed and numerous improvements were made, such as professional voice acting, unique gameplay mechanics, an original orchestral score. In the end, the original script was doubled from roughly 35,000 words to over 80,000.[10]

Both the mod and the full video game received critical acclaim upon release, itself being one of the first video game mods to receive any official accolades outside of the modding community, specifically being awarded by the Australian Writers' Guild.[18] The mod had garnered large success within the modding community, remaining one of the top mods for the game and becoming one of the most curated items on Mod DB itself.[19]

IGN awarded the game a 9/10 stating: "The Forgotten City does a fabulous job exploring interesting moral quandaries through excellently written dialogue and characters."[20] Luke Holland of The Guardian gave it 4/5 stars, writing that despite minor technical issues, "The Forgotten City is a tremendous achievement, a labyrinthine little sandbox packed with interpersonal mysteries", which "unravel further and further with each pass."[21]

• Official website