The upcoming city builder game Cities: Skylines 2 just got a new gameplay trailer. In there, some new in-game mechanics were shown. One of them is particular dark and might remind players of Tropico.
Paradox Interactive's upcoming city builder Cities: Skylines 2 will feature a wide variety of new in-game mechanics and possibilities. Some of them were presented in a new gameplay trailer. One of them might be a thing from the real world, but doesn't really fit the wholesome vibe of the franchise and could remind players of Tropcio.
New Cities: Skylines 2 Feature Takes A Surprising Turn
Cities: Skylines is one of the most popular city building games of recent years. Countless updates, add-ons and DLCs have kept the game alive since 2015. The successor Cities: Skylines 2 is set to be released on October 24, 2023, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC.
In the last couple of weeks, Paradox Interactive has releases several "Feature Highlights" videos, to show some of the in-game mechanics and graphics. For example, the new upgrading systems for schools and hospitals. Also, internet and telephone connections are a thing now and has to be dealt with.
Communications is a new service category in Cities: Skylines II and includes the familiar Post service as well as the new Telecom service which provides the citizens and companies with an internet connection.
Imagine a modern town without them. Gruesome, right? Also in the trailer, there is a totally new feature, which might not really fit the wholesome vibe of the game. For instance, there is the new "Welfare Office", which increases the overall happiness of your inhabitants.
Telecommunications is all about providing citizens and companies with a high-speed internet connection. Each citizen, be it a resident in an apartment building, a worker in a company, or a student in a school, uses a small portion of the available network bandwidth (1 Gbit/s) and each telecom building has a bandwidth capacity and range describing how many citizens it can service and how far its service reaches.
Prison Labor Introduced in Cities: Skylines 2
Another new feature regards the prison and prison systems in Cities: Skylines 2. As stated in the "Development Diary #5" prisons are way more than just places to put the bad guys into.
Prisons function also as production facilities, producing resources used by manufacturing companies in the city.
So that basically means, that prison labor is a thing in the game. It might be a procedure from the real world, but we never expected it to be in a game like Cities: Skylines 2. The game was just too wholesome so far, and the baddest thing players could do was to erupt a massive volcano with sewage water.
And now there is a fleshed out prison system and prison labor. Well, we just have to hope it's not as bad as prison labor in other games like Tropico (At least that game is called "dictator simulator", so what did we expect).
Under the Development Diary, one user named "OnTheMap" felt uncomfortable with the new mechanic and wrote:
I'm super uncomfortable with them using the slave labour system from American prisons. Is there a way to turn this off? With it off, are there any bonus to having local prisons over exporting them?
It will be interesting to see, if Cities: Skylines 2 will have the same amount of success as its predecessor and how many DLC's might be there in the future. Maybe one of them will provide further mechanics for the prison labor system.
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