You remember Oblivion from back in the day. It's worse than Morrowind in a lot of ways but the real-time day-night cycle and the NPC movement was engrossing. Quests where you have to go find people, and they can be in tons of locations are so interesting. Sometimes you have to figure out when someone goes home, Idk. Also characters would occasionally exhibit quirky behaviours. Every subsequent Bethesda game diminished this aspect hugely, it's one of the things I hate about Skyrim most.

Another series where the games never hit an early height of world sim again is Pokemon. Gold & Silver introduced day and night cycles that would have NPCs appear or disappear, wild pokemon encounters change, radio stations come on or off, certain items show up. For a system with 32kb of ram, it slapped. Other games have the cycle system but it's easily the most pronounced in G/S/C.

The "life sim"/'you are a loser farmer' genre as pioneered by Harvest Moon (and now happily overtaken by Stardew Valley and its ilk) have always had this kind of system, and I do like those a lot but if a game's not "about" its scheduling, it seems like they're more likely not to have it nowadays. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and its sequels had day/night at least, Metro did not... So if you know of any recent games that have really cool scheduling or realtime or day/night mechanics, hit me up. Also don't say Cybertruck'd 2077, game is boring and stupid :)

  • large_goblin [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    9 days ago

    I just remembered Shadows of Doubt, I think that's the most recent game with this system that I've played. It has proc gen cities where every citizen has a job and a sometimes spontaneous daily routine. Every few days a citizen will murder another one and leave behind a trail of evidence. It's supposed to hit 1.0 this month as well.

    Very raw and buggy in places but in ways that leads to more hilarious outcomes. You hide in a freezing vent waiting for someone to head out to the club for them to apparently decide nah not tonight 2 seconds after leaving the building and catch you in the middle of reading their emails.

    • ashinadash [she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      9 days ago

      I wish I liked it more, it's pretty darn impressive, pretty cool.