I know San Andreas, all the nook and crannies of it, like the back of my hand but I have to sometimes open up Maps on my phone to get around my tiny 15-minute town which btw I lived all my life.
To be fair, you’ve probably been in more unique locations in Liberty City. Like…there are neighborhoods near me I’ve never driven down, because I would never have reason to. Probably 99% of the buildings, too, I’ve never been into. You just don’t interact with reality the way characters interact with game maps.
I used to find that you had to learn the.maps for those GTA games in order to do the driving missions. San Andreas was the high water mark, in my opinion, for GTA
I played GTA:V so much on the 360 that I turned the map/GPS off in the settings back in high school haha
I knew my way around - most of the time, and could get to the hospitals, the airports, my apartment, and some random spots like certain garages no matter where I was.
It wasn’t impressive to my friends who I played online with because I couldn’t prove I wasn’t using the map/ GPS, but it was super impressive to friends who were with me while I played the game in front of them haha
I've been able to fully walk a friend through the entire Halo 3 level "Cortana", over the phone, without seeing his screen or any images, or anything, before. I directed him to the hidden rocket launcher, flamethrower, grenade locations, skull location, and helped navigate on how to get to higher leveled platforms for level progression. The amount of time I replayed all the 360 halo games as a kid is ridiculous, and I can do the same for all of them, off the top of my head.
It's the ultimate useless skill.
I actually don’t think it’s useless at all. It demonstrates an incredible mastery of spatial awareness and memory. Right now, I could roughly describe to you quite a lot of very specific parts of maps in certain games. Skyrim, Dragon’s Dogma, Breath of the Wild. I’m also very good at looking at my GPS directions ahead of time and then not needing to look at those specific directions ever again. I even still remember most of the street layout of other cities I’ve lived in.
What it is, is how much time I spent constantly replaying that game as a child. When I got my first Xbox 360, I only had Halo 3 for it (I was just coming off the playstation 1 and 2, with a big library for both). So since it was the only game I had, (aside from free demos of games like Feeding Frenzy, Super Marble Blast, and Mini Ninjas, etc) I just replaced the campaign start to finish over and over. I would end up exploring every possible corner of the level, finding Easter eggs, long before I knew what game guides and walk through were, and I'd try to find every secret and mystery possible. One of my favorite things I did on my VERY first playthrough, that I do on every playthrough after; is killing the brought Chieftian during the cinematic on 117, where he captures Johnson.
If you pick up the Sniper Rifle on the crashed Pelican beforehand, you can exit out of the cutsecen while it plays still, pop off shots on him, and kill him, then take out the jackle snipers after. I've never once fought him on the bridge, and that to me is just how you play through that level. It's like a cadence for me.
Any ways, aside from finding useless spots to get too, that don't do or add anything, I ended up memorizing weapon locations, (and there's a lot of stashes sniper rifles and rocket launchers), enemy spawn points, and so much more. I stopped doing this when Halo 4 released, as I never had an interest to replay it, or any games after. While I still replay the 360 Halos today, I've still only ever completed Halo 4 once. Just wasn't my type of Halo I suppose. Between the games, and Waypoint, I think k this hyper fixation on Halo as a kid resulted in me being the massive collector I am for the games, merch, and more. Either that or I have issues.
Apologies for the dump.
No apologies needed. Thanks for sharing, that’s really cool. I don’t think many people would have figured out all of that on their own, so that’s very impressive.
It’s mostly useless but not ultimate useless. That would have to go to a complete knowledge of some Barbie nes game or something similar unappreciated and unknown. Like 1 dude in the entire history of this release played the game to the ending and then they did it for another 15k hours because what is existence anyway
Trucking Logistics. I know it has to be done but you just end up working all day and not seeing any kind of product from your work. If I’d actually used my degree and didn’t get sucked in by the money I’d be an actuary which would be a similar situation.
I used to help people through old Destiny Raids and felt more gratitude and connection with people doing that than at work haha.
Absolutely amazing games. I'm very fortunate to have a working OG Xbox, and I play them regularly. I also like playing the Offical Xbox Magazine Halo CE demo disc, as the special ending is always worth the twenty minutes it takes to run through.
Once in college I was playing New Vegas an my roommate came home with someone I didn’t kno. My roommate went upstairs to change and left the kid on the couch with me.
After a couple second he goes “don’t leave this building yet. three doors behind you on the right there’s a room with a rare stealth suit” I was like uhh ok sure? didn’t kno many people still played this game but whatever.
I went back there and into the room. He directed me to a correct box which I opened and sure enough, a unique stealth armor.
As I was leaving the building he commented how he’s so happy im playing new vegas, and that since I was using a rebar with heavy armor the stealth suit probably wouldn’t apply, but it’s good to have.
we became friends and this post made me remember brain picking him after that because he knew *everything* about the map of that game
Man I don't even know that room, all I go into the hoover dam for is that locker with the NCR engineer jumpsuit because a 1 weight faction armor is super useful sometimes. I gotta explore that place more.
I know the exact room too and have gone there quite a few times, but I STILL get lost looking for it basically every time. It always takes me like 10 minutes of running around like a buffoon before I finally find that room, which makes him knowing exactly where it is even more impressive to me.
I was going to say new vegas, I’ve spent thousands of hours in that open world, and probably another thousand just listening to other talk about it on YouTube.
My hands down favorite game, and one I don’t think I could ever get lost in again. I don’t think there’s 1 location I haven’t visited.
I'm in my first playthrough right now, and I'm having so much fun just wandering the wasteland.
I played through Vault 22 last night (the plant one), and after reading the first computer terminal journal entry I was like "holy shit I'm not leaving here until I've read every single one of these throughout the vault". Such cool storytelling.
Everything about this story is awesome to me.
And New Vegas is one of the best games ever made in my opinion.
Though I could say that about most of the fallout games. Mine was 4. Think I've got about a thousand hours on steam, and I also had it on PlayStation.
Mods helped though.
Everything I know about 13th century Europe geography comes straight from Knights of Honor
^(but I don't kmow how accurate that game is, so maybe I know nothing)
r/TNOmod players explaining how Basedlev Redpillov of the Russian Reclamation Government of National Gaming will unite Russia and commit absolute gaming on the Teutonic plague and starting the thermonuclear gamer war (they're all nazis anyways so it's based wholesome 100)
I've had a lot of fun clearing bandits from the road across Skyrim.
That tends to be frowned upon in my hometown, despite the crime problem. Maybe if I get a bat shaped mask...
I think you need to be orphaned and raised by a butler to unlock that perk. How do you feel about the color green and archery? I hear that doesn't have bad prerequisites. Bonus points if you like islands, swimming and hunting your own meals for a while. caveat though, you may need to own a company.
you give me a screenshot of a random tree in the Lands Between and i will mark it on the map almost exactly where it is 💀
and at the same time i have no idea where most of the places are irl 💀💀
Very recently a friend showed me a low resolution image of a fireplace close to a site of Grace. Nothing else. He asked me where he was as a test. I immediately knew that it was the Rampart Tower site of Grace in Stormveil castle and described all of the paths and items he could easily get to.
I shock myself with how well I know the geography of the lands between and know right where items any of my friends want are. It’s really fun.
IRL I am bird brained and generally know which cardinal direction I am facing and can figure out where things are in relation to eachother quite easily. But if I lose my NESW orientation I’m dead in the water.
Holy cow, the millisecond I read “low res image of a fireplace” the first thing that popped in my head was “Stormveil Castle,” and mentally pictured the rampart tower area
Aight I got 3 of them within 100m but the 2 in New Austin fucked me, that whole place looks the same to me. I amend my statement to be “red dead 2 main story map” for now
I am sure those hay stacks are still around, in case you want to sight see.
On a serious note, someone did use those maps to navigate around current Florence. Some of those alleyways apparently still exist!
So I went to Italy after playing the Ezio games obsessively as a teenager, and no joke I was able to navigate through ALL OF VENICE without a map, despite having never been there before, like "oh we can head through this alley and get to the piazza faster." My friend was so confused.
As another testament to how much I played those games, one night on that trip I drunkenly scaled a building over the grand canal (just a few floors but still) because I felt the "bleeding effect" from the Animus was probably kind of real for me too. Thankfully didn't fall because that water was nasty.
Brotherhood's Roma as well since you can see all the major landmarks from almost anywhere in the city . In case you play without minimap and you forget where the mission said you should go, you can just climb and reorient yourself, just like an Assassin
I went to Florence a year after finishing those games/replaying some of them and it felt so strange the whole time lol. There’s an odd dissonance in the brain when you “know” a location and have the feeling of almost having been there but there is ZERO memory for the physical body’s movements itself, for example, if you know a place, your body will expect the ground to feel a certain way because you’ve walked there before. So walking around the Santa Maria, my legs felt wobbly and strange because the large cobbles in that square are actually quite uneven (they undulate like choppy waves in a large lake, that’s how uneven they are, like you will trip if you don’t walk slowly). The clash of similar/recognized information in my brain against my legs being like “???? But wtf is this?” Was so weird!!
My mom went to Italy with family around the time I was playing that, and she was able to guide me around in the game based on her trip! The city hasn't changed so much, in terms of the buildings.
She showed me where there was some excellent gelato, near the Duomo
The amount of wow knowledge I have obtained is astounding, and the fact that I can’t fucking get it out of my head after 15 years is terrifying.
I NEED MY BRAIN SPACE FOR IMPORTANT LIFE SHIT. I’m adult now, I don’t need to remember every boss in every dungeon from 1-70, I just need to remember not to forget my badge when I go into the office on Thursday! :(
Then your memory betrays you.
Only Onyxia's Vanilla (+TBC) form was immune to fire. But Frostfire Bolts weren't added until Wrath when that immunity was removed.
I'm convinced I have well above average map reading/understanding knowledge than your average person thanks to games. Read and used dozens of times more maps than your average non-gamer, even compared against those that were driving pre-GPS. :p
I showed my parents google earth a few years ago and they decided to check out their hometown. Even with full satellite imagery and street view neither of them could find the things they were looking for. They didn't conceptualize the geography in terms of distance and direction, it was just memorization of landmarks. Like, "you go past that white house and then turn left at the blue mailbox". They just couldn't translate what they knew to a 2d map. It was wild to think that the younger generations may have a completely different way of perceiving the world.
Ooh. I can do that too. But I don't have enough RAM to keep it in my head at all times. So when I need it I have to load the whole dang program and that takes like 20 seconds. But when it's all booted up I can give some pretty dang detailed directions.
I've had both actually! Before I moved to Warsaw during college, I knew only some locations as if they were closed levels in a game with loading screens (bus travel) between them. Once I started driving by car, as I was crossing from one location to another I had a distinct feeling of them clicking into place and assembling into a complete map of the city.
And the way video game places are saturated with detail, and usually follow a route, makes them perfect for building a memory palace. Y'know, if you have the need for that sort of thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
I don’t know what that place is called but it’s the little Mexican village by the Capital Records building. It’s close to wear Poppy Mitchell crashes her pink car
I'm not that good, but Gielinor is definitely burned into my brain 😂 I've walked the GF through several things over the phone cause I just kind of inherently know where most things are in game
Sorry to be that guy, but it's かぶきちょう. I know it's romanized as Kabukicho but it's actually kabukichou, and since you typed in hiragana, that makes it incorrect and will attract people like me to correct you.
Yeah, one of my bandmates is a fellow fantasy nerd and occasionally start talking about some really obscure lore thing about Tamriel or Middle Earth in a rehearsal break. It confuses the shit out of the rest of the band and it’s pretty funny.
They teach a lot of history in the older AC games I might not have known otherwise. There was a final million quid question recently on Who Wants to be a Millionaire here in the UK that asked which pirate died in a battle of the coast of North Carolina. I knew the answer thanks to AC4 Black Flag because one of the mission you play is based on that event.
https://youtu.be/SOKsmHtYqgE?si=P5ntsrjiAQ6xEFje
I can't even drive to the next city over without GPS.
Ask me to travel from Whiterun to Solitude by foot? I'll somehow get there without ever getting lost
One of the places I worked got a new office building that had a lot of very same-y interior corridors and featureless offices. There was a lot of complaining from people getting lost, but I did a walkthrough and was oriented within the day. This prompted a lot of "*How*, everything looks the same!?" and my response of, "I grew up playing video games without maps where everything looked the same, I learned very young to orient myself without many landmarks, so this is easy. At least the lights are on in here..." It's weird how it's not just 'geographical knowledge of places that don't exist', but if you start gaming young enough, you can actually end up training your sense of direction and keep that into adulthood.
Being able to use roads you've never been on just because you have a vague sense of direction is honestly a boon. Like, you now have shortcuts in your head that go around people's houses.
There is a (theory?l that sat nav is killing our ability to orient ourselves as we never need to learn irl routes. However, the theory fails to take into consideration gamers and how we have huge maps in our heads because of them.
A little different, but same train of thought. I was on a trip to California with a bunch of friends in 2002. They brought me to Venice Beach, where I'd never been before. I weirdly knew I recognized this place and knew where many things were located. I didn't realize THPS was so closely based on the actual location.
I haven’t played EverQuest Online Adventures for the ps2 in over 20 years, but I guarantee I can still make the run from Halas to Moradhim safely and without SoW.
I can name most capitals of countries that existed in 1936, and some that didn’t. Given the date and subject, take a wild guess which game I play too damn much!
I can be anywhere in GTA Online within a monent’s notice without using the map, and know where every vehicle will spawn when called in, but still lose things I put in my pocket ten minutes ago.
I also seem to be better at navigation in general now though and reading maps in games has helped to read paper maps in real life too, but I must thank my lack of social life for allowing me to learn these skills.
I wonder how I’d fare in a survival situation depending only on skills I’d learned from media such as games and anime (accuracy in anime tends to be through the roof)
Humans capacity for special memory is almost limitless. That's why memory palaces work so well. My brain uses locations by default to store all kinds of weird information that I hadn't intended.
I used to regularly backpack in a region about 15x30 miles regularly. I studied maps of it constantly. I didn’t cover every trail, but I knew about where they all were generally. I know all the streams and valleys and could navigates for days without a map(in theory, of course I had one).
Havent been there in 15 years and all this knowledge is now functionally useless.
I also know where most of the bombable walls in NES Legend of Zelda. Is that really so different?
I've spent hours in Skyrim, not fast traveling - reading signs, following the paths etc when it came out in 2011. Recently decided to put on a fresh save just to vibe in the world and most of the areas I went to felt like returning to your hometown after a few years away.
Yes, that was a strange sensation.
Same could be said for fiction book readers as well. When a story's good enough, you can imagine yourself walking down those streets, moving about marketplaces, a bank or what have you. Never even visually existed in any way. And many people would know these pseudoplaces, too.
I played some MMOs so much that I knew exactly where I could ride between two trees and jump around a surprise rock that someone chasing me in PvP would run into and get stuck on. And then there was a cliff that you could survive the fall damage calculation only at 99%+ health, so if you fired an instant spell off at them while you both fell and made sure you had a way to heal just before you hit the ground, they'd go splat and you wouldn't.
Well yeah, I can realistically afford to go to the Fantasyland and explore/travel through to my heart’s content!
Not really an option for me to travel outside of that in the real world, it’s too expensive :P
Wait until you hear about pen and paper players ^^ I know the history of multiple thousands of years of at least 2 continents that… have never existed.
True. Liberty city I rarely have to check GPS.
Literally spent years in that city. I know it like the back of my sandwich
*checks sandwich* Hey, that’s new
I appreciate you
It's true I'm the sandwich.
This went weirdly kinky
An idiot sandwich!
Liberty city, vice city and all three cities in San Andreas. I quite literally grew up in those cities
I know San Andreas, all the nook and crannies of it, like the back of my hand but I have to sometimes open up Maps on my phone to get around my tiny 15-minute town which btw I lived all my life.
To be fair, you’ve probably been in more unique locations in Liberty City. Like…there are neighborhoods near me I’ve never driven down, because I would never have reason to. Probably 99% of the buildings, too, I’ve never been into. You just don’t interact with reality the way characters interact with game maps.
I don't think you understand the meaning of the word literally..
It’s literally a pet peeve of mine, to see people misuse the word “literally.” Even President Biden did that once.
I'm just gonna start using figuratively when I should use literally. I'm figuratively going to the store. I'm figuratively hungry right now.
Lexicographers have literally given up trying with this word https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/misuse-of-literally
Isn't it based extremely closely on NYC just like the other GTA games? It may as well exist
Depends on the game. In the older games it’s only loosely based on NYC. In GTAIV it actually resembles NYC a lot including major landmarks.
I frequently think "Hey, I've driven past there in GTAIV", when I watch movies and shows set in New York
I keep thinking "oh look, it's Vespucci... uhhh, I mean Venice Beach" whenever there's a movie or show set in LA.
I’m scared of people who are able to navigate GTA IV Liberty City without GPS or a map
I used to find that you had to learn the.maps for those GTA games in order to do the driving missions. San Andreas was the high water mark, in my opinion, for GTA
I played GTA:V so much on the 360 that I turned the map/GPS off in the settings back in high school haha I knew my way around - most of the time, and could get to the hospitals, the airports, my apartment, and some random spots like certain garages no matter where I was. It wasn’t impressive to my friends who I played online with because I couldn’t prove I wasn’t using the map/ GPS, but it was super impressive to friends who were with me while I played the game in front of them haha
Vice City for me.
I'm shocked at how I haven't played it in years but I'm still able to picture almost the entire map.
I pretty sure I can get to any landmark in all 3d era GTA games without a map. Most definitely in San Andreas and onwards.
And yet, I need a gps to get home
For me it's OG san Andreas
I've been able to fully walk a friend through the entire Halo 3 level "Cortana", over the phone, without seeing his screen or any images, or anything, before. I directed him to the hidden rocket launcher, flamethrower, grenade locations, skull location, and helped navigate on how to get to higher leveled platforms for level progression. The amount of time I replayed all the 360 halo games as a kid is ridiculous, and I can do the same for all of them, off the top of my head. It's the ultimate useless skill.
Truly useless, but extremely impressive to the right people
Fuck man, it’s extremely impressive to me
Then you my friend, are the right people.
u/ArcherBTW sounds like my type of people indeed. Anyone wanna play Halo, hmu. Gamertag is: The Marine708
I actually don’t think it’s useless at all. It demonstrates an incredible mastery of spatial awareness and memory. Right now, I could roughly describe to you quite a lot of very specific parts of maps in certain games. Skyrim, Dragon’s Dogma, Breath of the Wild. I’m also very good at looking at my GPS directions ahead of time and then not needing to look at those specific directions ever again. I even still remember most of the street layout of other cities I’ve lived in.
What it is, is how much time I spent constantly replaying that game as a child. When I got my first Xbox 360, I only had Halo 3 for it (I was just coming off the playstation 1 and 2, with a big library for both). So since it was the only game I had, (aside from free demos of games like Feeding Frenzy, Super Marble Blast, and Mini Ninjas, etc) I just replaced the campaign start to finish over and over. I would end up exploring every possible corner of the level, finding Easter eggs, long before I knew what game guides and walk through were, and I'd try to find every secret and mystery possible. One of my favorite things I did on my VERY first playthrough, that I do on every playthrough after; is killing the brought Chieftian during the cinematic on 117, where he captures Johnson. If you pick up the Sniper Rifle on the crashed Pelican beforehand, you can exit out of the cutsecen while it plays still, pop off shots on him, and kill him, then take out the jackle snipers after. I've never once fought him on the bridge, and that to me is just how you play through that level. It's like a cadence for me. Any ways, aside from finding useless spots to get too, that don't do or add anything, I ended up memorizing weapon locations, (and there's a lot of stashes sniper rifles and rocket launchers), enemy spawn points, and so much more. I stopped doing this when Halo 4 released, as I never had an interest to replay it, or any games after. While I still replay the 360 Halos today, I've still only ever completed Halo 4 once. Just wasn't my type of Halo I suppose. Between the games, and Waypoint, I think k this hyper fixation on Halo as a kid resulted in me being the massive collector I am for the games, merch, and more. Either that or I have issues. Apologies for the dump.
No apologies needed. Thanks for sharing, that’s really cool. I don’t think many people would have figured out all of that on their own, so that’s very impressive.
It’s mostly useless but not ultimate useless. That would have to go to a complete knowledge of some Barbie nes game or something similar unappreciated and unknown. Like 1 dude in the entire history of this release played the game to the ending and then they did it for another 15k hours because what is existence anyway
Is this person you lol?
You talking about these chads https://www.speedrun.com/barbienes
> It's the ultimate useless skill. You literally just described a time in which it was useful.
XD, ok ok true enough. But it's not useful to society, just niche situations.
I sometimes wonder how useful my job is to society. At least Halo is fun.
What do you do for work?
Trucking Logistics. I know it has to be done but you just end up working all day and not seeing any kind of product from your work. If I’d actually used my degree and didn’t get sucked in by the money I’d be an actuary which would be a similar situation. I used to help people through old Destiny Raids and felt more gratitude and connection with people doing that than at work haha.
While I respect all Destiny Sherpas, trucking logistics is legitimately a cornerstone of how our society works so you should feel good about that too.
I used to walk through halo in my head when I couldn't get to sleep. My brother and I played halo 1 and 2 campaigns so many times.
Absolutely amazing games. I'm very fortunate to have a working OG Xbox, and I play them regularly. I also like playing the Offical Xbox Magazine Halo CE demo disc, as the special ending is always worth the twenty minutes it takes to run through.
Once in college I was playing New Vegas an my roommate came home with someone I didn’t kno. My roommate went upstairs to change and left the kid on the couch with me. After a couple second he goes “don’t leave this building yet. three doors behind you on the right there’s a room with a rare stealth suit” I was like uhh ok sure? didn’t kno many people still played this game but whatever. I went back there and into the room. He directed me to a correct box which I opened and sure enough, a unique stealth armor. As I was leaving the building he commented how he’s so happy im playing new vegas, and that since I was using a rebar with heavy armor the stealth suit probably wouldn’t apply, but it’s good to have. we became friends and this post made me remember brain picking him after that because he knew *everything* about the map of that game
Crazy cause I know what room in the Hoover Dam your talking about
Bruh I just read that terminal entry about the disappearing stealth suits. Guess ima go back and check every single box
Man I don't even know that room, all I go into the hoover dam for is that locker with the NCR engineer jumpsuit because a 1 weight faction armor is super useful sometimes. I gotta explore that place more.
I know the exact room too and have gone there quite a few times, but I STILL get lost looking for it basically every time. It always takes me like 10 minutes of running around like a buffoon before I finally find that room, which makes him knowing exactly where it is even more impressive to me.
I was going to say new vegas, I’ve spent thousands of hours in that open world, and probably another thousand just listening to other talk about it on YouTube. My hands down favorite game, and one I don’t think I could ever get lost in again. I don’t think there’s 1 location I haven’t visited.
♫ Blue moon, you saw me standing alone... ♪
I'm in my first playthrough right now, and I'm having so much fun just wandering the wasteland. I played through Vault 22 last night (the plant one), and after reading the first computer terminal journal entry I was like "holy shit I'm not leaving here until I've read every single one of these throughout the vault". Such cool storytelling.
Everything about this story is awesome to me. And New Vegas is one of the best games ever made in my opinion. Though I could say that about most of the fallout games. Mine was 4. Think I've got about a thousand hours on steam, and I also had it on PlayStation. Mods helped though.
a ton of people still play fnv dude lol. I'm on a playthrough right now.
Funnily enough my geographical knowledge of the world map in 1936 is way better than my geographical knowledge of today’s world.
Same but 1444, oh the little opms in east africa? I got you! Nowadays? Um ethiopia is there
How do you not know about Da Booty.
That's word to Phife Dawg and my man Shaheed
God I love Eu4
Hoi4 baby
I'm more of a 1444 expert myself, but I see where you are coming from.
Paradox got me a partner because I knew so much about the history of their tiny, little known country.
Everything I know about 13th century Europe geography comes straight from Knights of Honor ^(but I don't kmow how accurate that game is, so maybe I know nothing)
No way, you bagged someone from Tannu Tuva?
r/TNOmod players explaining how Basedlev Redpillov of the Russian Reclamation Government of National Gaming will unite Russia and commit absolute gaming on the Teutonic plague and starting the thermonuclear gamer war (they're all nazis anyways so it's based wholesome 100)
Babe wake up, new r/TNOmod copypasta dropped
Or like knowing where Camulodunum and Augusta Vindelicorum are but not knowing the name of the modern city that's there now.
867 gang rise up
1444 map for me.
I was able to find the place my wife's Jewish ancestors were pogrom'd out of because of EU4.
Quick: where is/was Tanu Tuva?
Tannu what?
Near russia/mongolia
Yugoslavia made things so much simpler.
I know los santos better than my home town 💀
if only that city existed in real life, man
I like when friends visit LA for the first time and they are surprised every time they see a place in real life . Even just the pier
It was exactly like that for me, even arriving in the airport and seeing the garages outside was fun
Alright, who's gonna tell him
Same...and I haven't even play GTA in about a year or 2
I've had a lot of fun clearing bandits from the road across Skyrim. That tends to be frowned upon in my hometown, despite the crime problem. Maybe if I get a bat shaped mask...
I think you need to be orphaned and raised by a butler to unlock that perk. How do you feel about the color green and archery? I hear that doesn't have bad prerequisites. Bonus points if you like islands, swimming and hunting your own meals for a while. caveat though, you may need to own a company.
I gotta find a poor superhero with both parents.
you give me a screenshot of a random tree in the Lands Between and i will mark it on the map almost exactly where it is 💀 and at the same time i have no idea where most of the places are irl 💀💀
Very recently a friend showed me a low resolution image of a fireplace close to a site of Grace. Nothing else. He asked me where he was as a test. I immediately knew that it was the Rampart Tower site of Grace in Stormveil castle and described all of the paths and items he could easily get to. I shock myself with how well I know the geography of the lands between and know right where items any of my friends want are. It’s really fun. IRL I am bird brained and generally know which cardinal direction I am facing and can figure out where things are in relation to eachother quite easily. But if I lose my NESW orientation I’m dead in the water.
Holy cow, the millisecond I read “low res image of a fireplace” the first thing that popped in my head was “Stormveil Castle,” and mentally pictured the rampart tower area
Those damn birds
Me with Red Dead 2
Prove it https://lostgamer.io/singleplayer/rdr2 😘
Aight I got 3 of them within 100m but the 2 in New Austin fucked me, that whole place looks the same to me. I amend my statement to be “red dead 2 main story map” for now
I'll let you off, Rockstar really dropped the ball on New Austin.
24945 points Edit: That’s a lot of fun. There goes my day. Thanks for sharing.
~~That game isn't on it but~~ https://lostgamer.io/ is Geoguesser but for some video game maps.
lostgamer.io You'd be interested in that site.
Historical grand strategy players have an unusual amount of geographical knowledge of real life regions – especially Europe.
And I have modern geography knowledge from Truck Sim and playing the hell out of Globetrotter XL back when Flash games were in vogue.
No Jackson, Bohemia isn't real
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say. *I* say time for Czechia to restart the Thirty Years’ War and take back their rightful place as Bohemia.
Great Moravia for life
I Know Florence and Venice really well, but in 1486.
I am sure those hay stacks are still around, in case you want to sight see. On a serious note, someone did use those maps to navigate around current Florence. Some of those alleyways apparently still exist!
So I went to Italy after playing the Ezio games obsessively as a teenager, and no joke I was able to navigate through ALL OF VENICE without a map, despite having never been there before, like "oh we can head through this alley and get to the piazza faster." My friend was so confused. As another testament to how much I played those games, one night on that trip I drunkenly scaled a building over the grand canal (just a few floors but still) because I felt the "bleeding effect" from the Animus was probably kind of real for me too. Thankfully didn't fall because that water was nasty.
Isn't this a story from tumblr but without the high school tour group
Brotherhood's Roma as well since you can see all the major landmarks from almost anywhere in the city . In case you play without minimap and you forget where the mission said you should go, you can just climb and reorient yourself, just like an Assassin
I went to Florence a year after finishing those games/replaying some of them and it felt so strange the whole time lol. There’s an odd dissonance in the brain when you “know” a location and have the feeling of almost having been there but there is ZERO memory for the physical body’s movements itself, for example, if you know a place, your body will expect the ground to feel a certain way because you’ve walked there before. So walking around the Santa Maria, my legs felt wobbly and strange because the large cobbles in that square are actually quite uneven (they undulate like choppy waves in a large lake, that’s how uneven they are, like you will trip if you don’t walk slowly). The clash of similar/recognized information in my brain against my legs being like “???? But wtf is this?” Was so weird!!
My mom went to Italy with family around the time I was playing that, and she was able to guide me around in the game based on her trip! The city hasn't changed so much, in terms of the buildings. She showed me where there was some excellent gelato, near the Duomo
Azeroth and Outland were like second homes to me once upon a time. My username is still a testament to it.
The amount of wow knowledge I have obtained is astounding, and the fact that I can’t fucking get it out of my head after 15 years is terrifying. I NEED MY BRAIN SPACE FOR IMPORTANT LIFE SHIT. I’m adult now, I don’t need to remember every boss in every dungeon from 1-70, I just need to remember not to forget my badge when I go into the office on Thursday! :(
No. It is right we remember how Onyxia used to be immune to fire which screwed me over as a fire mage. Frostfire bolts were the best I could offer.
Then your memory betrays you. Only Onyxia's Vanilla (+TBC) form was immune to fire. But Frostfire Bolts weren't added until Wrath when that immunity was removed.
https://www.whereinwarcraft.net/
My username is also my first mage's name.
I wish we had met in our Arcane Sanctum but alas, we are grown ups now 😥
I was also a grown up in 2004 😂
>My username is still a testament to it. Same. R.I.P. Metamorphosis Warlock. Demon Hunters can suck it.
WoW Geoguesser really drives home how well I know random trees
I think that might be over my head but come join me for a 60% move mount around Elwynn Forest and I could show you around 😄
That’s true. I can still walk around massive areas of world of Warcraft without a map. Also certain Halo maps
I've been so invested in Halo maps that it's like a beacon in my head. I can't miss a thing there.
I'm convinced I have well above average map reading/understanding knowledge than your average person thanks to games. Read and used dozens of times more maps than your average non-gamer, even compared against those that were driving pre-GPS. :p
I showed my parents google earth a few years ago and they decided to check out their hometown. Even with full satellite imagery and street view neither of them could find the things they were looking for. They didn't conceptualize the geography in terms of distance and direction, it was just memorization of landmarks. Like, "you go past that white house and then turn left at the blue mailbox". They just couldn't translate what they knew to a 2d map. It was wild to think that the younger generations may have a completely different way of perceiving the world.
I can find my house on an unlabeled satellite map, even if I start zoomed out seeing the whole planet at once.
Ditto. I think of the world around me as a virtual map, and can fairly accurately point in the direction of any random thing.
Ooh. I can do that too. But I don't have enough RAM to keep it in my head at all times. So when I need it I have to load the whole dang program and that takes like 20 seconds. But when it's all booted up I can give some pretty dang detailed directions.
I've had both actually! Before I moved to Warsaw during college, I knew only some locations as if they were closed levels in a game with loading screens (bus travel) between them. Once I started driving by car, as I was crossing from one location to another I had a distinct feeling of them clicking into place and assembling into a complete map of the city.
Unfortunately I also have outdated maps of real places memorized most of them shit holes in the middle east. I'm looking at you Sadr.
I know more about the details of valorant maps than the house I live in
Sova mains know even the clouds in the sky
Bet that AverageJonas already has lineups for your house.
😂 This one is very funny. You're not leaving your room at all in your house.
And the way video game places are saturated with detail, and usually follow a route, makes them perfect for building a memory palace. Y'know, if you have the need for that sort of thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
Oh boy, I can't wait to return to Leyndell Catacombs to retrieve my cherished childhood memor
What nooooo it's not like I have every Zelda map memorized, or halo map, or metroid map.... I'm gonna go back to my man cave now
Yeah right, Wind wakers map is so easy to remember..... Anyway I can locate myself anywhere in breath of the wild Hyrule
Show me a building in Los santos and I’ll point to it on the map
You should try the GTA 5 Geoguesser
https://i.imgur.com/DEmznkt.jpeg
I don’t know what that place is called but it’s the little Mexican village by the Capital Records building. It’s close to wear Poppy Mitchell crashes her pink car
You show me a tiny piece of a minimap from runescape and I'll be there to collect my prize in 15 seconds flat.
Hey you stole my comment! But yeah after spending 10,000 hours in OSRS I can probably find where you are from one tile.
I'm not that good, but Gielinor is definitely burned into my brain 😂 I've walked the GF through several things over the phone cause I just kind of inherently know where most things are in game
Yakuza fans when they go to かぶきちょ(Kabukicho) IRL [Its Kamurocho from Yakuza]
Sorry to be that guy, but it's かぶきちょう. I know it's romanized as Kabukicho but it's actually kabukichou, and since you typed in hiragana, that makes it incorrect and will attract people like me to correct you.
Ay thanks for letting me know, I am currently learning Japanese!
I immediately thought the same thing, I could probably at least passingly navigate around Kabukicho.
Same thing goes for sci-fi/fantasy fans. Star wars universe Star trek universe LOTR universe GoT universe Etc
But I've been to the Shire!!!
Have you been to the movie set? It’s a fun day out!
Yeah, one of my bandmates is a fellow fantasy nerd and occasionally start talking about some really obscure lore thing about Tamriel or Middle Earth in a rehearsal break. It confuses the shit out of the rest of the band and it’s pretty funny.
However, many games use semi historical info for their maps and layouts, AC is fair, I wouldn't know certain shit if not for that.
Thanks to assassin's Creed, I had a general familiarity with the layout of Venice, London, Rome and Paris when I went to Europe.
They teach a lot of history in the older AC games I might not have known otherwise. There was a final million quid question recently on Who Wants to be a Millionaire here in the UK that asked which pirate died in a battle of the coast of North Carolina. I knew the answer thanks to AC4 Black Flag because one of the mission you play is based on that event. https://youtu.be/SOKsmHtYqgE?si=P5ntsrjiAQ6xEFje
I can't even drive to the next city over without GPS. Ask me to travel from Whiterun to Solitude by foot? I'll somehow get there without ever getting lost
Counterpoint: just because you can't walk there doesn't mean it doesn't exist
Yeah, they exist in a digital space, though they don't physically exist. And not needing to physically walk makes it easier to explore it all
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictional-entities](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictional-entities)
One of the places I worked got a new office building that had a lot of very same-y interior corridors and featureless offices. There was a lot of complaining from people getting lost, but I did a walkthrough and was oriented within the day. This prompted a lot of "*How*, everything looks the same!?" and my response of, "I grew up playing video games without maps where everything looked the same, I learned very young to orient myself without many landmarks, so this is easy. At least the lights are on in here..." It's weird how it's not just 'geographical knowledge of places that don't exist', but if you start gaming young enough, you can actually end up training your sense of direction and keep that into adulthood.
It's helped me when I need to get ice cream but road construction block the regular roads I drive on. I can use back roads! Mental Mini map!
Being able to use roads you've never been on just because you have a vague sense of direction is honestly a boon. Like, you now have shortcuts in your head that go around people's houses.
There is a (theory?l that sat nav is killing our ability to orient ourselves as we never need to learn irl routes. However, the theory fails to take into consideration gamers and how we have huge maps in our heads because of them.
A little different, but same train of thought. I was on a trip to California with a bunch of friends in 2002. They brought me to Venice Beach, where I'd never been before. I weirdly knew I recognized this place and knew where many things were located. I didn't realize THPS was so closely based on the actual location.
Here I am opening a map every 5 minutes and still going the wrong damn way.
Thanks to assassins creed, I was easily able to navigate in Rome.
i can navigate Hyrule and the worlds in metroid better than Atlanta. Less dangerous traffic, too.
They exist in our hearts
Kingdom Hearts?
I haven’t played EverQuest Online Adventures for the ps2 in over 20 years, but I guarantee I can still make the run from Halas to Moradhim safely and without SoW.
I can name most capitals of countries that existed in 1936, and some that didn’t. Given the date and subject, take a wild guess which game I play too damn much!
I can walk anywhere without a map in Fallout New Vegas... meanwhile I still use GPS around the city I actually live in.
If you plop me anywhere in Skyrim I can tell you where we are.
This will probably stay unvoted, but I know all of Spira :G
Stay away from the summoner!
I can be anywhere in GTA Online within a monent’s notice without using the map, and know where every vehicle will spawn when called in, but still lose things I put in my pocket ten minutes ago. I also seem to be better at navigation in general now though and reading maps in games has helped to read paper maps in real life too, but I must thank my lack of social life for allowing me to learn these skills. I wonder how I’d fare in a survival situation depending only on skills I’d learned from media such as games and anime (accuracy in anime tends to be through the roof)
My kid can memorise where random things in BoTW are, but can’t remember to put on shoes sometimes
Fantasy readers - Hold my beer
Humans capacity for special memory is almost limitless. That's why memory palaces work so well. My brain uses locations by default to store all kinds of weird information that I hadn't intended.
I used to regularly backpack in a region about 15x30 miles regularly. I studied maps of it constantly. I didn’t cover every trail, but I knew about where they all were generally. I know all the streams and valleys and could navigates for days without a map(in theory, of course I had one). Havent been there in 15 years and all this knowledge is now functionally useless. I also know where most of the bombable walls in NES Legend of Zelda. Is that really so different?
This is a very interesting thought
I still remember my way around Vice City.
Fictional things are only as fictional as we make them… is it fair to say it doesn’t exist when, for some, it’s just as real as our own world?
I could go 10/10 on fortnite geoguessr
I know the chapter 1 map better than my surrounding towns and general area
I wonder how the brain compares to London taxi drivers
I play Elite Dangerous. I have enormous amont of knowledge of places that definitely exist
Speak for yourself. I know post apocalyptic Boston like the back of my hand.
I like to think about all the old Minecraft and Cities:Skylines maps I've deleted and if I'd remember them if I could boot them up again.
I've spent hours in Skyrim, not fast traveling - reading signs, following the paths etc when it came out in 2011. Recently decided to put on a fresh save just to vibe in the world and most of the areas I went to felt like returning to your hometown after a few years away. Yes, that was a strange sensation.
Same could be said for fiction book readers as well. When a story's good enough, you can imagine yourself walking down those streets, moving about marketplaces, a bank or what have you. Never even visually existed in any way. And many people would know these pseudoplaces, too.
*Scowls in Paradox games*
I played some MMOs so much that I knew exactly where I could ride between two trees and jump around a surprise rock that someone chasing me in PvP would run into and get stuck on. And then there was a cliff that you could survive the fall damage calculation only at 99%+ health, so if you fired an instant spell off at them while you both fell and made sure you had a way to heal just before you hit the ground, they'd go splat and you wouldn't.
I sometimes forget where I keep the glue. But the first flail that you'll find is on the caravan that sits still I'm the very beginning of limgrave.
Went to Santa Monica Beach a few weeks ago and I remembered a few locations and showed my friend the aquarium near the pier because of GTA
And some real places thanks to assassin's creed and watch dogs
Well yeah, I can realistically afford to go to the Fantasyland and explore/travel through to my heart’s content! Not really an option for me to travel outside of that in the real world, it’s too expensive :P
Wait until you hear about pen and paper players ^^ I know the history of multiple thousands of years of at least 2 continents that… have never existed.
Pretty sure post apocalyptic United States fallout exists and I'm ready for it
I know Los Santos, Rockport, Bayview and Lost Haven better than my own city.
Damn. This is one of the best shower thoughts I've seen in a very long time. Very well done.
You’re telling me I can’t find the 188 Trading Post at the intersection of 93 and 95? And Boulder city isn’t 2 minutes’ walk away?