Gaming safe havens aka the comfort of a cosy pub

[thelittlemango]

I'm late to the party but have been playing Witcher 3 on the Switch obsessively for the last couple of months and one of the things that has stood out to me the most is how lovely the pubs are in it.

You arrive at one after hours amongst mountains, tepid swamps and fields full of dead bodies, battling demons, deserters and everything inbetween and they feel like genuinely lovely places to be, with live music going on and people doing a jig, cosy lighting and the sound of people laughing and talking drunken rubbish or settling down for a game of gwent in a little nook, they seem so alive.

I realised that I don't get that from most safe havens in games (not just pubs, anywhere you can shelter from the gameworld for a bit), which tend to feel quite charmless, and thought I'd start a thread to see which places others have found comfort, or which you hate or which stand out in some way...

[El Unicornio, mang]

I always enjoyed popping in the pubs in GTA San Andreas to play a game of pool and listen to some 90s rock. Nice getaway from the mayhem going on elsewhere in the game. The tennis and golf in GTA V have similar appeal to me.

[Bazooka]

Have you been to Boston Crab's gaming pub?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The Irish pub in Yakuza.
Scabb Island in Monkey Island 2.
The Rubacava dockside and beatnik bar in Grim Fandango.
Animal Town in Link's Awakening.

[beanheadmcginty]

Used to love nipping into the tavern for a quick gamble on the dice in Moonstone.

[Pink Gregory]

there's more than one article about the Hound Pits Pub in Dishonored; but similarly to the hideout in Wolfenstein the New Order, I like how you're invited to familiarise yourself with a space and later you have to fight your way out of it.

[Zetetic]

The Dreadful Wale in Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider is very pretty. I like the way they manage to use it to generate quite a range of atmospheres, although that probably means it's not really really a comforting safe haven.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Have you been to Boston Crab's gaming pub?

There's a gaming pub round my way called 'Super Bario', which is just about the perfect name really.