The Forgotten City is an upcoming first-person game where players will find themselves trapped in a lost Roman city ruled by a curse - if one person sins, everyone dies. To make things even more complicated, the player is stuck in a time loop. Armed with items and knowledge from past loops, it's down to them to unravel the city's mysteries and save its inhabitants from their fate.
The Forgotten City began life as a Skyrim mod, and originally took place in a Dwemer city that had been repurposed by new inhabitants. The remake's Roman city, however, is a big change for the game. Game ZXC recently sat down with The Forgotten City's award-winning writer Nick Pearce to discuss why the setting moved from Skyrim to Ancient Rome.
The Empire's New Clothes
The main reason for The Forgotten City's move to Ancient Rome is simple - Bethesda owns the rights to Skyrim. Tamriel provided a useful backdrop, and Skyrim a useful engine and creation kit for developing the original story. Fortunately for the game's creator, that story did not heavily rely on much that was exclusive to The Elder Scrolls lore, instead opting to introduce its own magic in the form of the city's "Golden Rule" to tell a self-contained story.
According to Pearce, the story of The Forgotten City is more suited to an ancient Roman setting than it was ever suited to Skyrim, which already used Roman derivatives like the Imperial Legion as stand-ins for the ancient civilization.
"Most people are surprised to learn the story works even better in an ancient Roman setting , steeped in Greco-Roman mythology. As you know, at the center of the story is The Golden Rule, a mysterious ancient curse which means that if one person sins, everyone dies. It’s a form of collective punishment, which has striking parallels to Roman military customs like decimation, and fables like Baucis and Philemon, whose city was destroyed because the gods were angry about the moral failings of its residents. It also allows us to explore some really fascinating real-world history, mythology and philosophy, as well as re-create a beautiful game world full of historically authentic art, architecture, and costumes."
When In Rome
Decimation was a Roman military practice reserved for rebellious legions or other capital offenses like desertion. Commanders would punish the entire group by killing every tenth soldier, with the aim of reestablishing discipline among the survivors while losing as few soldiers as possible. In the story of Baucis and Philemon, the two peasants are the only couple in a village to offer the disguised Zeus and Hermes hospitality. The gods then reveal themselves, destroying the town but saving Baucis and Philemon.
Real-world examples of "collective punishment" as the Roman religion would have seen it also include natural disasters like the destruction of the city of Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. While The Forgotten City's inhabitants die frozen in place as they turn to gold, the ruins of Pompeii are well-known for the way the eruption's pyroclastic flow preserved its inhabitants' last moments in ash.
Pearce's association between the Romans and his own story of collective punishment has many ties to the civilization's history and culture. Pearce even said players will be able to "steal a mythical golden bow from the shrine of the Roman goddess Diana," showing just how deeply the new Roman theme has been interwoven into the original Skyrim mod's plot.
Lend Me Your Eras
Ancient Rome won't be the only era from history at play in The Forgotten City. In one trailer, the player can be seen using a gun, while other characters appear to have more modern clothing than their Roman counterparts. It seems likely the player character is from a more recent period, and that either the time loop or The Golden Rule itself is keeping the city in a form of stasis, allowing people from different times to arrive and end up trapped there.
Pearce confirmed the gun has limited bullets and is attached to a soldier backstory available to the player character, suggesting that the character brought it with them from the modern era.
"We let [the player] determine their own name, gender, and origin, and pick one of four backstories: an archaeologist, a soldier, a fugitive, and an amnesiac. Each backstory has a subtle advantage. For example, the archaeologist gets occasional insights into the ancient world, and the soldier has a handgun – but only 10 bullets, ever, which they’ll have to ration carefully."
The Forgotten City won't take place in Roman times exactly. Roman times themselves appear to have been preserved exclusively within the city. Just as the Dwemer are already long-gone by the time Skyrim takes place in the Elder Scrolls timeline, the standalone version of The Forgotten City will see different time periods clash as the player attempts to solve the mystery of a city unstuck in time. When exactly the more modern characters are from remains to be revealed in the game's story. However, it appears that the player character will be thrown back from some time in the last hundred years to a city that still operates under the Draconian rules of a civilization long past.
Overall, The Forgotten City and its story could actually flourish in a Roman setting in a way that Skyrim's lore may have restricted. Only time will tell, but fans of the original mod have reason to hope that the upcoming standalone game will take the experience to new heights.
The Forgotten City releases July 2021 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
