Cities: Skylines 2 gets real as hell with welfare offices, prison labor

pcgamer.com:

Over the past few weeks we've been getting an inside look at some of the new features coming to Cities: Skylines 2, like the road and traffic tools, changes to public transportation, and more. Today, Paradox Interactive pulled back the curtain on city services, and some of the new features look impressive. Some of them are also depressingly real.

The good news first: the video above and accompanying devblog highlight improvements over the original Cities: Skylines when it comes to the services available to your growing city. For instance, rather than building additional schools and hospitals when your population outgrows them, you'll be able to upgrade those buildings to create a wider circle of influence and cater to a larger population. That's a relief for anyone who's ever spammed a bunch of brand new elementary schools into a sprawling neighborhood in a desperate attempt to elicit a higher satisfaction score.

In addition to improvements on old features, completely new features are shown in the video, like the telecommunications service, which includes cell towers and server farms. It makes perfect sense—internet and phone service are incredibly important to any modern city alongside traditional services like trash removal and electrical grids. Residences and businesses alike will benefit from an expansive and well-managed telecom service.

But when it comes to city building, the closer you get to realism the darker things can get. «Life might still take a turn for the worse for some people,» the video's cheerful voiceover says before introducing the welfare office coming to Cities: Skylines 2. Oh, right. As lovely as my city looks from a god's-eye view, there's probably a lot of tiny little citizens struggling, just