Paradox Interactive has shared the first of 13 developer diaries for Colossal Order’s upcoming sequel to urban city builder Cities: Skylines.
Cities: Skylines II showed a release date trailer that hinted at some new gameplay elements, but now we’re getting some deeper breakdowns of how the new game is improving on the 2015 hit. Starting with roads.
The road tools available in Cities: Skylines II looks vastly improved to what’s available to the base game, and some of these features were available as mods, but now it’s all baked in as a proper sequel should do.
Some of the biggest changes is how it’s easier to make aesthetically pleasing roads, and do it fast. If you want to plop a city grid, no need to manually count the cost of the road and make the boxes of roads one by one anymore. The Grid mode in the Road Tool lets you create a bunch of roads with three clicks. First for the starting point, second for the width of the grid, and third for the length.
The Road Tool also now has Parallel mode, which allows you to build two roads simultaneously and are parallel with each other. This is highly useful in making highways so that they curve and bend equally the same, not an easy task to do using the base game tool of Cities: Skylines.
Roundabouts are also now easier to plop. Previously, you can create one manually, so if you need to make a roundabout at an existing junction that requires a lot of bulldozing and making the roundabout yourself and then connecting all the junctions.
In Cities: Skylines II, roundbouts is something you can plop to any existing intersection. Simply place one of the four different size roundabouts to an existing intersection. Making a city like Shah Alam has never been easier.
Here are other cool new features the road tool now has available as part of the base game:
- Replace tool lets you customise roads to add trees, sidewalks, sound barriers (instead of having multiple road types with any of these features)
- Road tool has multiple snapping options and road guide with details of current elevation, slope steepness and more
- Roads can be placed across multiple existing roads
- Elevated roads- placed roads on top of other roads
- Cut roads- roads that cut through elevation
- Making highway exits is easier
- Roads can have bus lanes and tram tracks on them
- Roads that only allow service vehicles and buses can be made- you can make Bus Rapid Transit routes
- Pedestrian streets where only service vehicles and delivery trucks can drive through are available
- Premade intersections will still be available
- Parking lots are now a gameplay feature. Citizens require parking to access parts of the city, some having more tolerance to walking far from their parking spot than others.
- Road maintenance is a mechanic. Road Maintenance Depot sends out service vehicles to maintain road conditions and decrease the chance of traffic accidents. Also deploys snowplows during winter
- Manual adjustments to intersections, like placing traffic lights, crosswalks, stop signs, control turn lanes is available
In addition to all of this, the video feature for the Road Tool also mentions that all roads, except for highways, automatically include electricity, water and sewage lines. That alone is a major game-changer, and should make the early-game less brutal. No more forgetting to complete the electric, water, or sewage line at the start of the game and have to restart the save again.
These improvements to the Road Tool alone should be something to be excited about for Cities: Skylines II. It’s a game that’s hard to sell in your typical game reveal trailers, but deep dives like these, where we get to learn how particular the changes to existing systems can be, is what players of the game would love to see more. Thankfully, there’s twelve more of these to come.
Cities: Skylines II will be available on October 24 for the PS5, PC (Steam, Microsoft Store) and Xbox Series X|S. The game will also be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass at launch.
Source: Paradox Interactive