Cities: Skylines 2 Just Solved One of the Original’s Biggest Problems

City builders don’t exactly dominate the industry like other genres, but the experience they provide is many times more captivating than the biggest RPG shooters and adventures on the market. Between delineating residential and commercial areas and making sure there’s enough power in a city to keep the lights on, it’s easy to lose track of time. Cities: Skylines 2 aims to join a long line of city builders that made players lose track of time, and following the resounding success of Paradox Interactive’s original Cities: Skylines, the developer is looking to expand the experience in almost every way. conceivable.

Cities: Skylines thrived on its wealth of core game features, as well as its deep well of DLC that made it even easier for players to build the city of their dreams. Cities: Skylines 2 is expanding on the core experience by implementing many of the original’s DLC from the ground up, as well as other brand-new mechanics. Many of these features simplify the Cities: Skylines experience, like having water pipes automatically run under the streets instead of installing them manually. One new feature in particular, however, takes the hassle out of landfills and solves some of their biggest problems.

While Cities: Skylines made building a glittering metropolis fun, it also didn’t avoid the dirty work that comes with running a city. As is the case with other city builders like SimCity, garbage collection was a core feature of Cities: Skylines. All players needed to do was purchase a landfill, place it in a favorable location, and let the bins roam around town collecting garbage and throwing it back into the landfill. On paper, it seemed as simple as Cities: Skylines’ other features, like providing all citizens with clean water. Unfortunately, garbage collection hasn’t always been a walk in the proverbial park.

Two problems used to arise from this landfill mechanic, especially in cities that grew a lot. First, they filled up quickly, forcing players to relocate garbage to a separate landfill or incineration plant. This would effectively render that landfill useless for garbage collection, forcing players to build more. Players were limited to just one landfill type, creating a sort of cyclic landfill saturation that could often get in the way of the generally accessible nature of Cities: Skylines. Fortunately, Cities: Skylines 2 implements an intuitive and deceptively simple fix.

In Cities: Skylines 2, developer Paradox Interactive seems intent on optimizing the first game’s experience. Landfills play a big role in this optimization, as players are no longer constrained to the same rectangular landfill shape. Players can now design their own landfill dimensions to suit their needs. Not only should this make garbage collection easier for many players, it should also give Cities: Skylines 2 players a greater sense of choice. Rather than mapping roads and other buildings around the dimensions of a landfill, city building enthusiasts can design their landfills to accommodate the surrounding area.

City builders as detailed as Cities: Skylines are few and far between since SimCity fell out of favor so many years ago, so seeing Paradox Interactive completely improve the sequel should be a good sign for the genre. The developer has spent the last few weeks detailing some of the biggest changes and improvements coming to Cities: Skylines 2 via feature highlights on YouTube, and these new landfill mechanics are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Time will tell if these improvements are enough to elevate Cities: Skylines 2 above the level of the original.

Cities: Skylines 2 will be released on October 24th for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.