I'm building ALIS, an early single-player UE5 survival prototype around a reconstructed real-world city location.
The question I want to test is whether familiarity with the place changes a player's decisions and sense of risk, instead of being only scenery. The current public release is an early Windows prototype, not a finished game.
Project context and ways to follow or take part: https://fall.is/community/
Would you prefer survival in a recognizable real place or in a completely fictional map—and what would the setting need to affect before it mattered to you?
The only thing it would affect is where I go first.