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Some video game developers could make for great architects, just as some architects would have made great developers. I yearn for a Call of Duty map pack styled after Le Corbusier, and I reckon Richard Rogers could work wonders if he was allowed to design the Martian space station that houses the next Doom.Video game developers, of course, try their hand at architecture all the time, and Bungie's Halo games have always sported the grandest constructions. In the vast Forerunner structures at the backbone of Master Chief's adventures you've got quite possibly the best approximation of what would have happened should Frank Lloyd Wright ever have found himself working in video games. It's no surprise then, that when they turned their hand to town planning, the results were fascinating.
Halo 3: ODST's New Mombasa is a strange, bewildering place. A counterpoint to the opulence and chilling optimism of the Forerunners' own creations, the city is grounded by swathes of angular concrete and starchy geometry, boasting all the faceless, stark appeal of brutalism at its best. 26th Century life in Kenya feels very much like life in 1970s urban England as seen through a Ballard filter, where broad avenues spill into winding walkways and up into dim high-rise corridors. Walking through New Mombasa feels like taking a night-time stroll through London's Barbican Estate - that living monument to Ballard, where his bleak vision finds itself cast into rough, exposed stone.
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