Which Real Locations Inspired Those Who Remain?

Walking through 'Those Who Remain' felt like stepping into a stitched-together scrapbook of small-town America and faded European suburbs; the developers clearly borrowed real-world textures and rearranged them into Dormont's uncanny layout. To my eye, the motel signs, neon diners, and gas stations echo places along old highways and the classic Route 66 corridor—those tired, off-the-highway strips where you always half-expect a late-night diner scene. At the same time, the blocky apartment buildings and industrial skylines carry a post-industrial, slightly Eastern European or Rust Belt vibe: cracked sidewalks, chain-link fences, and service roads that feel lived-in and neglected. I love that blend because it makes the town feel both familiar and wrong in all the best ways.

Beyond specific architecture, the game pulls from real-life micro-locations that horror and noir lean on: rundown motels, boarded-up storefronts, suburban cul-de-sacs with one pale streetlight, and an unnerving town center where a church steeple overlooks a closed-off arcade. I’m reminded of actual places I’ve driven through—sleepy Pennsylvanian boroughs, seaside towns with dead promenades, and industrial fringes of midwestern cities. Those locations inform the mood more than precise geography; 'Those Who Remain' borrows the smell of wet asphalt at night, the hollow echo of a supermarket after midnight, and the fluorescent hum of an always-open convenience store.

If you like tracing real-world inspirations, look for traces of ‘Twin Peaks’ atmospherics and 'Silent Hill' park-and-urban decay combined with ordinary modern America. It’s less about copying one town and more about collaging dozens of real places into a single, haunting setting—one that stuck with me long after I put the controller down.

I kept thinking of ordinary, real places while walking through 'Those Who Remain'—not famous landmarks but the small, easily overlooked locations that give towns character: aging motels with flickering neon, empty late-night diners, silent gas stations on the edge of town, apartment blocks with laundry on balconies, and industrial parks with rusting chain-link fences. Those micro-settings—the laundromat with a single humming machine, the churchyard cut off by caution tape, the arcade with its dead machines—are the kinds of locations I’ve actually stumbled upon on late drives and city walks, and they’re used in the game to great effect. That interplay between the mundane and the strange made Dormont feel plausible, like a place that could be pinned on a real map, and left me oddly nostalgic for the eerie thrill of exploring those same real-world corners.

I love how the atmosphere of 'Those Who Remain' manages to feel both familiar and unnervingly off-kilter, and that vibe actually comes from a mash-up of real places rather than one single town. The developers leaned into the look and mood of small American towns—think neon diners, late-night motels, strip malls with flickering signs, and the skeletal brick of old factories. If you’ve ever driven through New England or the Rust Belt at night, you’ll have a pretty clear picture of the haunting environment the game channels. It’s not a literal copy of a single location so much as a collage of evocative landmarks: diner booths that could be in Connecticut, motels that scream Route 66 Americana, and abandoned industrial complexes that call to mind Pennsylvania and Ohio mill towns.

Beyond the obvious Americana, there’s a strong cinematic influence drawn from places that already live in horror and mystery lore. The sleepy, uncanny small towns of 'Twin Peaks' and the fog-choked, desolate streets of 'Silent Hill' are spiritual cousins to the game’s Dormont. That cinematic lineage is rooted in real-world places—rural New Hampshire and Vermont villages, the Hudson Valley’s mix of quaint facades and decaying warehouses, and seaside towns in Maine where fog and empty piers create an eerie stillness. There’s also a bit of that lonely suburban/industrial border area you find near older American cities: the interchange where the suburban sprawl peters out and you hit service roads, power lines, and the occasional boarded-up storefront. Those transitional spots are perfect for the game’s themes of isolation and the thin boundary between light and dark.

On the architectural and design level, the inspirations are wide: 1950s and ’60s commercial signage, gas stations with giant price boards, mid-century motels with sweeping canopies, and municipal buildings that feel bureaucratic and worn. Developers seemed to study real signage, road layouts, and the way streetlights throw long shadows in small towns to nail the game’s mood. Even if you’ve never visited any of the exact places that inspired it, the composite feels authentic because it borrows from so many real-world textures—diner chrome, peeling paint on a motel door, the low hum of a distant heater in a closed factory. Those details come from places you can actually find across the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and the game simply remixes them until they feel dreamlike.

All that said, my favorite part is how the real-world inspirations make Dormont feel lived-in and believable, which makes the darker supernatural elements hit harder. Walking through those eerily realistic streets in the game feels like taking a late-night drive through a town you half-remember from a road trip, except now everything’s tilted just slightly wrong. It’s a brilliant use of familiar settings to amplify unease, and that blend of everyday Americana and cinematic dread is what keeps me coming back to wander Dormont’s streets in my head.

There’s a strong sense that Dormont in 'Those Who Remain' is a composite of recognizable, real-world places rather than a faithful depiction of one single town. When I played, I kept picturing the creaky motels and greasy spoons that dot state highways and the quieter, grimmer edges of older cities—places I’ve passed through on road trips. I wouldn’t be surprised if the devs pulled reference photos from Northeastern and Midwestern towns: think of small industrial cities where the downtown is a little hollow and the outskirts are full of anonymous strip malls and low-rise apartments.

On a closer level, the environments seem inspired by very specific types of locations: the motel room with its stained carpet and humming AC feels like dozens of roadside motels I’ve actually seen; the narrow alleyways and service entrances could be plucked from the backstreets of coastal towns that once depended on shipping or factories; and the boarded-up arcade and churchyard read like a real-town center arrested in time. The game also channels visual shorthand from other works—neon and shadow, warm domestic interiors gone cold—so even if the maps aren’t exact matches to particular cities, they absolutely feel grounded in real place-based details. For me that grounding made the horror more persuasive, because everything looked like it could exist on a map I could visit on a rainy afternoon.