Paradox has released the first Cities: Skylines 2 dev diary, showcasing ongoing development work on the hotly-anticipated city-building sequel. The first dev diary shows off improvements that are being made to roads, allowing you to build and customize your road networks in ways the original game didn't allow.
Cities: Skylines 2 is due to arrive in October, and over the next few months, Paradox will be revealing new information about the game's various improvements over its predecessor. First up, it's roads, which Paradox says are the "backbone of a city"; if you've played the first game extensively, you'll likely find it hard to disagree with that assessment.
Cities: Skylines 2 will introduce a new Grid system for roads, allowing you to define the start and end point of a road grid so that the game can automatically construct the grid for you. A new Replace tool will allow you to fine-tune roads, adding accouterments and changing their layout with the click of a button.
Other road improvements include new building options that let you build intersections across existing roads, as well as cut-and-fill construction for roads that dig through the terrain and the ability to elevate roads above other roads easily. Excitingly, you can now also create proper on- and off-ramps for highways with proper acceleration and deceleration lanes. Now you can watch your motorists swear at each other as they fail to use those lanes properly!
Roads are organized into various categories by size, and you can even create pedestrian roads, which will disallow all traffic besides service and delivery vehicles. You can now also build dedicated parking lots, and pedestrians will weigh up whether it's worth using a parking lot that's further out versus one that's closer to their destination.
Lots of other road options will be introduced in Cities: Skylines 2, from road maintenance forces through to the ability to add stop signs and crosswalks to roads. It's well worth reading through the full dev diary to see everything Paradox is planning to introduce when it comes to road creation in Cities: Skylines 2, and if the studio shows the same attention to detail in all other areas of the game, this one's going to be special.
Cities: Skylines 2 is due to arrive on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on October 24th. Several more dev diaries are planned between now and September, and they'll go over subjects like traffic AI, electricity and water services, and citizen simulation, so stay tuned for more info on this exciting city-builder.
