Where is Cities Skylines 2?

 

Cities: Skylines is a city-building simulation game developed by Colossal Interactive and published by Paradox Interactive. After 2013's historically bad launch of the massive SimCity brand of city-simulation games developed by Maxis Games and published by EA, Cities: Skylines was poised to take over the city-building space when it was released in 2015. Fixing the massive amount of issues that plagued SimCity 2013, the underdog Cities: Skylines became the premier series in the city-building genre and simulation genre as a whole. However, since it was released, almost 7 years ago, the base game has stayed the same.

The only question on many fan's minds is, especially after Skylines' overwhelming success, there is one question on everyone's minds, "where is Cities: Skylines 2?"

On May 11th of 2021, Paradox Interactive announced they were working on a new game with Colossal Order. No details on what game it is were revealed other than that.

While what's broken usually does not need to be fixed, the ever-increasing pace of technological improvement has left the game a bit dated. A dedicated fanbase has kept the game fresh, mods, assets, and media content bringing something new to the table everyday. Large amount of DLCs that have been created since. These DLCs add aspects that the base game lacks, like modular universities, parks and realistic airports. 'Content Creator' DLCs add assets created by content creators of the game, usually passionate fans of the game. 

Free updates have also added over ground metro lines, the ability to change the trees lining streets, and fixed various bugs or issues that have presented themselves throughout the course of the game's lifetime. Yet, there is only so much a community can do with the same thing. You can't squeeze blood out of a stone. 

Cities: Skylines (2015); Held Back by Technological Limitations

A neighborhood from my city with the unity logo imposed on it.

A university I created using community assets and mods

A view of my city created using community assets and mods

When released back in 2015, the game had specific bottlenecks that were not too much of a worry, in terms of actually reaching them, with the common consumer computer at the time. However, in 2022, we have ray-tracing capable consoles and ultra-powerful computers available to the average consumer. 

Specific limitations in the game that bar you from creating giant regions spanning cities or metropolitan areas. These are hardcoded in the game, and occur when you reach a certain threshold of objects (such as cars, pedestrians, buildings) that the game has to simulate. These limitations were difficult to reach, not only because of the power of systems around at the time, but also faulty optimization of the game. The game registers every single agent in it separately, quickly creating a large demand of computing power to process. It runs on a modified unity engine. 

Since 2015, there have been 5 main Unity versions, with many smaller updates in between. 8 years in technological time is centuries. You could say that as soon as the game was released, it was going to suffer the fate of becoming dated. The game only supports a max of 9 tiles on the computer. The version that was released for consoles, was constrained to only 9 tiles of in-game buildable area, due to what can only be assumed to be performance concerns with the less-powerful machines. 

In the present day, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X can play the game smoothly with backwards compatibility. But, the limit of 9 tiles still exists, as it does on the computer. Even with no actual performance issues, the game does not allow for your city to expand past the border. 

The Community Cares

A view from my city with the words Community imposed on it

These limitations have caused controversy in the small console fanbase of the game, even recently, with a small 'petition' gaining attention on the game's subreddit, which has almost 400,000 subscribers. Others post their wishlists of features they’d want in the new game.

The limitations are the only thing holding the game back. Many mods exist to circumvent this, such as the '81 tiles mod' or the 'All 25 Areas Purchasable'. Others serve to fill in the gaps Colossal Order left in various departments, with 'Move-it' which helps you manually move objects with more precision, and 'Traffic Manager' which allows you to manually tweak the traffic paths of entities in the game. Others allow for the game to reach real-life levels of realism, like 'Ultimate Eyecandy'. These mods only exist on the PC, which unfortunately means console gamers are stuck with what they have. 

the view with a mod that lets you purchase all 25 tiles 

Even with all of these issues, the community-at-large still enjoys the game on a daily basis. Many members are so passionate that they make long form videos of them playing the game, with a focus on clean production and informative dialogue. The most popular, two dollars twenty, Biffa Plays Indie Games, Flabaliki, and City Planner Plays boasting hundreds of thousands of views on many of their videos. There is a definite audience and demographic that loves the game, and are looking forward to a Cities: Skylines sequel, that can hopefully fix the problems that are very apparent now. 

The Takeaway

A screenshot from the new Airport DLC.

We have not received any concrete news on Cities: Skylines 2, other than the Paradox announcement where they said they were "working on a project with Colossal Order." We have not received any concrete news on Cities: Skylines 2, other than the Paradox announcement where they said they were "working on a project with Colossal Order."

With DLCs still coming out for Cities: Skylines, it seems that Paradox knows that there is still a sizable interest in the game, i.e. it's not a dead franchise. But, DLCs cannot fix the game's underlying structural problems. With 7 years since Skylines' launch, there is a decent likelihood that Paradox will come out with news or another announcement detailing what that new project could be. To that, I say, please hurry up, but please, take your time. I want another masterpiece.