Nobody likes to think too much about their personal living situation, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that not everyone gets to live in a nice house.
Both in real life and in many video game stories, large cities have slum districts where the downtrodden, disenfranchised, and generally down-on-their-luck live.
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If it weren’t for the geopolitical, intergalactic, and civil conflicts in these locations, I would surely move.
These districts can range from mildly unstable but generally livable with honest folk to lawless no-man’s land full of violent and unscrupulous criminals.
It’s not the cheeriest place to tell a story, but if nothing else, slums do tend to give rise to hardened characters and multifaceted narratives.
10Freeside
Fallout: New Vegas
Considering the titular city ofFallout: New Vegasis theclosest thing to a pre-war city in the Mojave Wasteland, it makes sense that those who can’t get in would try for the next best thing.
The district of Freeside is what was left behind of Las Vegas when Mr. House and his associates decided to wall off the Strip proper.
Freeside denizens are primarily those who can’t afford to meet the Strip’s credit check or otherwise went bankrupt gambling all their caps away and got chucked out.
While local groups like the Kings and the Followers of the Apocalypse do what they can to help and keep the peace, Freeside is full of thugs and punks looking to make a quick buck.
9Rogueport
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2024)
Rogueport is the central hub area ofPaper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. It’s your classic cesspool of crime and villainy, home mostly to salty sailors and shady pickpockets.
It might seem a bit mean to call the whole town a “slum,” but it’s not a nice place even in the best of times.
It gets worse the further east you go, with graffiti and trash covering the walls and streets and criminals out in broad daylight.
The west side of town is a bit nicer, with more infrastructure and less trash. It’s also in the iron grip of the Pianta Syndicate, though, which isn’t exactly an improvement.
8Sector 7 Slums
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
InFinal Fantasy VII’s steampunk city of Midgar, life is generally pretty okay if you live up on the plate.
If you liveunderthe plate, though, it is substantially less okay.
Under every sector of the city’s plate is a slum full of those who either can’t afford to live topside or don’t want to play by Shinra’s rules.
The slum under the Sector 7 plate is relatively safe, with probably the closest thing to proper town infrastructure any of the slums have managed.
It’s also the home of the Seventh Heaven bar, which is also the secret hideout of AVALANCHE.
7New Coventry
InBully, the town of Bullworth has several districts where the many cliques ofBullworth Academylike to hang out.
For the stereotypical Greasers, home is the district of New Coventry.
A working-class neighborhood, New Coventry is bordered by an industrial park that constantly pumps out smog.
Most of the residents live in tenements in various states of disrepair, and there isn’t much in the way of business besides a market, a tattoo parlor, and a pool hall.
On the bright side, thanks to the Greasers’ influence, there is a pretty happening bike racing scene, plus a makeshift BMX park.
6Gray Quarter
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
In the city of Windhelm inThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, there’s a ramshackle district populated almost exclusively by the Dunmer: the Gray Quarter.
The Dunmer first came to the city after fleeing from a volcanic eruption in Morrowind, settling the district as the “Snow Quarter.”
However, the residents of the city began to refer to it as the Gray Quarter as a derogatory reference to the Dunmers’ gray skin.
The city’s Nord population don’t pay the residents of the Gray Quarter much mind, while associates and fans of the Stormcloaks treat them with outright hostility and suspicion.
5Pauper’s Drop
BioShock 2
When the Atlantic Express underwater railway was being built prior to the events of BioShock, the line’s many workers needed temporary housing.
Flophouses were built under the rail lines, but when the Atlantic Express was finished, none of the workers could afford to move out into Rapture proper.
BioShock’s Rapture Is Still The Best Dystopia In Games
A city where the great would not be constrained by the small…
The result was Pauper’s Drop, one of the city’s largest slum districts and one of the few spots to look pretty lousy both before andafter the Rapture Civil War.
As Sinclair puts it when you visit Pauper’s Drop inBioShock 2, “there’s no side of the tracks more wrong than under them.”
League Of Legends
League of Legends
In the world ofLeague of Legends, the city of Piltover is a shining beacon of scientific progress and artistic expression.
Unfortunately, every light casts a shadow, and the shadow to Piltover’s shine is Zaun, home ofChampions like Jinx, Vi, and Ekko.
Zaun used to be a nameless undercity district of Piltover, a dumping ground for both industrial waste and the rejects of society.
Eventually, though, Zaun became large enough to rival Piltover in scale, ultimately declaring its independence.
Zaunites probably wouldn’t appreciate it if you referred to their city as a slum; despite being stuck in Piltover’s shadow, it does have its own culture and commerce, mildly unstable as it is.
3Saint’s Row
Saints Row (2006)
Saints Row
The titular neighborhood of the originalSaints Rowgame is a relatively small district on the east side of the city of Stilwater.
It used to be a pretty decent place to live, at least until Los Carnales started tearing everything up.
When the Vice Kings and West Side Rollerz sprang up in response and started divvying up the city, the Row became the focal point of a three-way turf war.
By the start of the first game, the neighborhood is borderline unlivable, with local businesses shuttered and houses in disrepair.
Julius founded the 3rd Street Saints to liberate the Row from gang control before ultimately moving on to the rest of the city.
2The Lower Quarter
Tales Of Vesperia
Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition
InTales of Vesperia, the story starts in the Imperial Capital of Zaphias.
The city is broken up into four districts: the imperial castle for royals, the nobles’ district for the upper crust, the citizens’ quarter for the middle-class, and the lower quarter for the bottom rung.
Not only is the lower quarter horrifically cramped, there’s only one spot in the whole district where you can get clean water: the Aqua Blastia in the center.
When someone swipes the core from the Blastia, the clean water stops flowing and the whole lower quarter begins to flood with sewage.
This is why Yuri begins his cross-countryvigilante voyageto get the core back: because his fellow lower-quarter dwellers won’t have reliable access to water until he does.
Cyberpunk 2077
Nearly all ofCyberpunk 2077’s Night City is in a constant state of violence and disrepair, so to call any singular part of it a “slum” would be making quite a statement.
If any part of the city were a slum, though, it’d be the seaside district of Pacifica.
Originally intended to be a sprawling vacation destination with shopping andamusement parks, the whole district was abandoned after the investors pulled out.
The remaining slum is so lawless, the NCPD doesn’t bother with patrolling it.
Pacifica isn’t even displayed on Night City’s official map. This is because the city’s mayor had it formally declared an independent district, so its crime statistics wouldn’t be included in the city proper.
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Having a great city to explore can make or break a game. These are the best fictional cities in gaming.
