• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Why do RPG's have sewer dungeons?

some positive things about sewer dungeons:

+ damp, mysterious atmosphere
+ secrets
+ treasure
+ cool slime monsters

I really liked the sewer in FFXII because of its many secrets and hunts. VIII's was also pretty cool due to the mood.
 
The optional sewer dungeon that you take because you chose to be stealthy is the best sewer dungeon.

The obligatory sewer dungeon that you take because you have to be stealthy is the worst sewer dungeon.
 
Sewers take inspiration from a lot of real life locations with huge sewer systems, many stories such as ones in Paris and illegal activity, alligators or "monsters" showing up in sewers, it's dark, creepy, people DO use the system to escape and hide.

It's sort of just a easy location to use, especially for a video game. You can make you dark creepy cavern under a city and get away with it pretty easy. And they use it to explain many situations that happen as well.

Large sewer systems have a rich history and tons of stories to pull from. All of which are a gold mine for game designers.
 
I always figured it was because sewers levels are probably some of the easiest dungeons to develop. On the Tech side there isn't really much going on in most sewer dungeons I've played, enemies don't need to be very complex (rats/lizards/poison etc), and in terms of story its easy to come up with a reason for the characters to have to go into sewers (generally to stealthily access another location).
Also I'd imagine developers feel that they can throw sewers into almost any game world and it won't look/ feel too out of place. A sewer from a western high-fantasy rpg and one from a futuristic Japanese rpg can look nearly identical, and it doesn't really feel that out of place (to me at least). If I was a game-dev I could see sewers as a pretty safe way to help pad a game.

I still hate sewer dungeons as well, but this is why I imagine they show up so frequently.
 
Metaphorically moving your way up from the (under)ground to something greater.
Come to think of it: don't a lot of JRPG's have the later sections take place in high in a tower, air/spaceship, floating island, etc?
 
Don't understand all this bias against sewers. In terms of being generic and lazy settings in cheap and poorly designed RPGs, sewers are no different from "mountain" and "forest" dungeons. Or even "volcano" or "cave" dungeons.
 
duckroll said:
Don't understand all this bias against sewers. In terms of being generic and lazy settings in cheap and poorly designed RPGs, sewers are no different from "mountain" and "forest" dungeons. Or even "volcano" or "cave" dungeons.
Click to expand...

I personally like them as well. In fact, I can't wait to see them in FFXV. Especially after exploring the cave in Episode Duscae. Definitely gave off such a dark / creepy vibe. I legit jumped out of my chair at one point!
 
For a lot of developers, it takes too long to go home during crunch time (for most RPGs that is very long). Because going him doesn't make sense, and to save money, those developers live in sewers, which are just right below studios such as Square Enix.

And I guess they put sewer dungeons into these games to make gamers feel what the developers' lives are like. Just imagine if there wasn't this much crunch time - who would want to have apartment dungeons?
 
Sewers are just an environment type. They are fundamentally no different from forests, mountains, caves, crypts, towers, fortresses, tropical islands, or volcanoes. Every single dungeon type you can imagine has been done repeatedly across a wide swath of RPG. However, that environment type is just window dressing. What makes a dungeon good or bad is its design and story role. So saying that "all sewer dungeons are bad" baffles me. It's just silly.

The sewer dungeons you see in Xenogears, Final Fantasy XII, and Chrono Trigger are three completely different dungeons with nothing in common. The Xenogears sewer is a long, labyrinthine slog designed to make you get lost. The Final Fantasy XII sewer segment is a fairly straightforward and linear dungeon. On a return, it is a puzzle dungeons that involves changing water-levels. The Chrono Trigger sewer is a short and clever sequence that involves avoided some obvious traps and creating shortcuts with switches. These three sewers don't even have any monster types in common. They are nothing alike whatsoever.

If you take the opening post and substitute "sewer" with "cave" or "imperial base" or "temple", it would both be just as true (in that these types of dungeon appear all the time) and just as silly. What would you rather have as dungeons? Flying techno-fortresses? Ruined castles? Haunted crypts? Foggy forests? Featureless deserts? The innards of some giant creature? Japanese shrines? Ancient stone temples littered with strange mechanisms? All of these have been done all the time, both well and poorly. What makes a dungeon good or bad isn't their theme, it is their layout, visuals, encounters, gimmicks, events, and story context.
 
I'm okay with them if they are done well. It's a potentially very atmospheric setting. But more often than not, they are designed lazily - just as many cave dungeons etc. in games.

Toxi said:
The Depths in Dark Souls aren't really hated or beloved. They're mostly just remembered for new players getting cursed and freaking out, and the Gaping Dragon.
Click to expand...
The Depths are actually one of the few sewer dungeons in games that I actually really liked. I liked the cruelty of the curse frogs and the way you could get utterly lost and disoriented in this dungeon. Very tense, loved it (I also love Blighttown for similar reasons).
 
Sewers tend to be drab, ugly, filled with annoying enemies, frustrating puzzles, maze like, come at a point when the plot is picking up thus being annoying for being a roadblock, and many are a combination of many of the aforementioned.

Eternal Sonata had a beautiful sewer though.
 
Should clarify that I don't inherently hate sewer dungeons for being sewer dungeons. The stealth, and mood/vibe aspects are cool.

It's when it becomes a long-winded maze you have to figure your way out of while dealing with random battles or on screen enemies that tough to avoid. That's when it feels like a complete chore and a nuisance.
 
Bladenic said:
Sewers tend to be drab, ugly, filled with annoying enemies, frustrating puzzles, maze like, come at a point when the plot is picking up thus being annoying for being a roadblock, and many are a combination of many of the aforementioned.
Click to expand...

All of that also applies to forest dungeons (omg we got lost i the woods!!!! damnit all these stupid plant enemies!!!!), mountain dungeons (all these rope bridges and paths look the same!!! ugh, not another bird type enemy!!!), and cave dungeons (which exit?! ALL LOOK SAME!!!!!! wow fuck these stupid goblin enemies!!!!!!).

Generic dungeons which offer nothing unique in art design, and have annoying and confusing maze structures which rely on copy-and-paste assets are bad. Regardless of the setting.
 
duckroll said:
All of that also applies to forest dungeons (omg we got lost i the woods!!!! damnit all these stupid plant enemies!!!!), mountain dungeons (all these rope bridges and paths look the same!!! ugh, not another bird type enemy!!!), and cave dungeons (which exit?! ALL LOOK SAME!!!!!! wow fuck these stupid goblin enemies!!!!!!).

Generic dungeons which offer nothing unique in art design, and have annoying and confusing maze structures which rely on copy-and-paste assets are bad. Regardless of the setting.
Click to expand...

Nah. Not on the same level across many games like sewers. Obvi it's subjective tho.
 
Bladenic said:
Nah. Not on the same level across many games like sewers. Obvi it's subjective tho.
Click to expand...

Yeah of course any dungeon, with any setting can be bad. Sewer dungeons just have a tendency to be an unpleasant ordeal though. They don't intrinsically have to be, but all to often, they are.
 
Toxi said:
The Depths in Dark Souls aren't really hated or beloved. They're mostly just remembered for new players getting cursed and freaking out, and the Gaping Dragon.
Click to expand...

Oh really? I went in and out of the depths so many times I lost count. I don't hate it, but I don't like the area either. It's the only way to get to Blightown, and then after that you have to return from blightown and that's the quickest way back to the firelink shrine.
 
I thought the sewer in Chrono Trigger was fine honestly. I dunno, sewers don't bother me in RPG's.

Water levels in platformers though? Purge that shit from the mind of all game devs please.
 
Why do FPS have obligatory stealth missions?

Why do platformers have lava levels?

Answer: They're all genre staples/tropes and sometimes they're actually pretty great.

I can't really think of a sewer section in a RPG that I actually hate. Usually they're pretty short and forgettable, but not bad.
 
You get used to it. I hate far more the mandatory desert walk and oasis town where you always hear the same"arab or middle east-like 1001 Nights music".
 
ZombiePlatypus said:
They seem to be universally hated, yet so many RPGs seem to always feature this trope and play it straight where it's an unpleasant labyrinth that seems to typically annoy players.

FFVII, VIII, X, Xenogears, Chrono Trigger
Click to expand...

You didn't like the sewers in CT? The sewers are where you meet Robo, race jetbikes and eventually get the Epoch. None of that was appealing to you?! What are you, some kind of monster? :(
 
The thing I hate about sewers is that they just look so.....boring and drab.

You seen one sewer you seen them all, there's only so much an artist can do to try and make a "sewer level" unique or artistic, and that's not much.

Only games I didn't mind going through sewers was the Metro games and The last of Us, but those aren't rpgs and they have a story/atmosphere to them you usually don't get in rpg fantasy sewers that are just so...generic feeling.
 
I just went through the sewers in Blood and Wine, lol.

I liked the ones in Vivec from Morrowind. Some crazy shit down there.
 
Sewers write themselves. They're huge, largely linear, and you know what kind of monsters you need to throw in there (slime, rats, some poison spewing jerk).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Why are developers so lazy with dungeon design in RPGs these days?
Opinion  2
56
641
Hudo replied
Why don’t more super heroes have their own games?
35
596
Griffon replied
Do you have Game Pass subscription?
2 3
135
1K
DavidGzz replied
Do you have any gayming tattoos?
2 3 4
154
1K
Team Andromeda replied
is the Zelda OoT dungeons just as complicated today?
35
248
Heimdall_Xtreme replied
Top Bottom