Examining Galaxy City

Doing the new tutorial, which supposedly takes place in a destroyed Galaxy City, I was intrigued with exactly where everything was taking place in reference to the ordinary non-destroyed Galaxy City. The zone was largely gutted and designed as a sort of skyscraper-bounded channel that you're guided to from start to finish, but there is still a visible landmark: the statue of Galaxy Girl.

Most easily seen straight-on after you make the left turn, it seems Galaxy City had been renovating like Atlas Park and ultimately decided to pave over the top of an existing warehouse:

Guiding by landmarks, that's the location of the new area, but geographically (read: XYZ coordinates), it's actually smack dab between Nebula District and Constellation Row. The roads don't line up exactly (since the zone was gutted and redesigned), but it's pretty close:

It's worth noting that the statue of Galaxy Girl originally faced to the east, but now faces south, presumably to get a better view of the destruction.

When you're fighting the Giant Shivan, you're just north of the grassy area in front of Freedom Plaza. Or, rather, with the cardinal directions all screwed up, you'd be just east of there. The statue was mostly obstructed by an attention hog just as I took the picture, but the following images are still aligned:

Afterwards, I opted to be teleported into the Longbow safe zone, which as far as I know is just a different combat phase from the Arachnos safe zone. In any case, the statue is still visible from there if you jump over to the left:

Relative to the statue, if that can be considered canon, then the crater you're standing in with that safe zone is the exact former location of Cygnus Medical Center.

Later in the game, when you do Twinshot's or Dr. Graves's arcs, you end up in an instance of Galaxy City ravaged by meteors. It takes place in the northeast corner of the zone, and you can see some direct demolition between that map and the actual Galaxy City:

However, the west edge of that map is within spitting distance of the hospital and Yellow Line. There's just a big building in the way, distinctly not as destroyed as the same area apparently was in the tutorial. A little demo editing to move the camera to the other side reveals something interesting:

When Numina was lamenting the loss of the hospital in Galaxy City, I'd assumed it got squashed by a big alien rock, but as we can see here, it outright skipped town. Where did it go? It truly is lost!

The Architect Entertainment building suffered a similar fate, much to Dr. Aeon's dismay. There's a building at its location near the Arena, but it's not the AE building. Plus, that skyscraper immediately in front of the Yellow Line seems to have moved forwards 50 feet or so, so perhaps the Shivans can teleport buildings?

That's pretty nifty. Cool deal.

This is probably my one gripe about the whole Galaxy City thing: the fact that it looks scarely anything like Galaxy city, leading to a bit of a problem with revamping a place and destroying it in the same instance.
I briefly wondered, after my second run through, if Galaxy city really was being destroyed or if the freedom phalanx, Arachnos, and everyone else was playing a prank on me and at the end of the tutorial they'd all jump out and say: "GOT'CHA!"
I mean as you showed, there's no sign of the hospital, no sign of Freedom plaza, no sign of the AE building, no sign of the Arena, and given that Galaxy Girl's statue is actually a generic one that you can find dozens of others scattered throughout the city, not to mention Galaxy alone, it does make me question if that's supposed to be Galaxy Girl's statue in the background too.

Though your joke about Shivans moving buildings it pretty funny.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Expecting a one-to-one conversion of Galaxy City from the old map to the new tutorial surely wasn't too much. Even when Recluse took over Atlas Park for his Victory, the fundamental geography remained the same.

On top of launching this mismatched cityscape - surely no-one would have complained loudly if a brand new Ultramode zone replaced outbreak? - generic'ing and misaligning Galaxy Girl's statue is a downright disrespectful gesture toward the game's longstanding lore on the part of the devs.

The problem is that the tutorial is really a fence that keeps players penned into a small area. The buildings in the tutorial don't really represent anything like the actual buildings in the area where they appear to be located.

For my part, I had placed the tutorial just outside of the arena, based on the view of the statue. However, the tutorial is just the tutorial. It doesn't actually have any kind of one-to-one mapping with the real zone. It can't; at least not without using force fields to keep people in it instead of geography.

Conversely, Twinshot's "destroy the meteors" mission is based on the real map. Some minor details aside (there's a billboard missing next to the police station, for instance) that really is Orion Beltway. I wish that they had extended that to the rest of the zone but they minimized the work required by hand-waving the the zone was being reconstructed already. Including, apparently, the area that ought to contain the tutorial. :-/

On the plus side, the area in the Twinshot mission got the same graphical makeover that Atlas Park got. You can see it plainly if you compare the front of the Hotel Geneva from the real zone to the mission zone. I have a bunch of comparison screenshots that I took when I was considering a thread similar to this one during beta (It would have been a spoiler then, so I decided against.)

While I am all-in-favor of accuracy (and I would have gone for it, myself, given the ability to), I just see it as a common thing, especially among movies and such.
Here's the London skyline! See Big Ben, The Eye, Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge - all in one shot!!

Or the Empire State Building and the Statue Of Liberty and Central Park, woohoo!

But yeah... this post is not in defense of this being handled that way.
I'm often amazed when people inside of a project don't use the pre-existing work to build their ideas from with accuracy. And I say that as someone who struggles through his own original art, so I'm no copyist or anything. I just believe in doing what it takes within each and every project.
However, it is no big deal and that's just my opinion on it.

Regardless... I appreciate the original post and enjoyed seeing the actual comparisons!!
Thank you very much!!