Time for the next round of a city from The Crew compared to the real life city. Last time I had talked about Miami and how it actually fairly closely resembled the real city. The skyline is absolutely gorgeous and nearly identical to the actual skyline of Miami.

This time we are heading back to the Midwest to see how The Crew’s Chicago stacks up to the true Chicago. Is the city’s skyline by the lake shore? Does one of its most famous and tallest buildings resemble the real one? Is O’Hare International airport in the game? Read on to find out!

Chicago is America’s third largest city and also known as the city that gave birth to the modern day skyscraper. It is also nicknamed “The Windy City”. After the great Chicago fire of 1871, the world’s first skyscraper was built in 1885 which was the first time a steel skeleton was used to construct such a building. When Chicago’s population grew rapidly, so did Chicago’s skyline especially heading into the mid to late 20th century.

Now that we’ve got a little history lesson out of the way let’s talk about how The Crew’s version of Chicago compares to the real city. For one thing, where Chicago is on the game map is pretty close to where the city really is on an actual map of the United States. Chicago’s massive downtown skyline lies on the edge of Lake Michigan which is one of the Great Lakes.

The developers of the game recreated this perfectly as you can drive down what is known as Lake Shore Drive which is between the skyscrapers and the lake. Now a funny thing I do want to mention is that when you are driving south on Lake Shore Drive in the game from the north end of the city and you look out towards the lake, you will actually see the skyline of Detroit. I will tell you that you CANNOT see it if you are actually there as the 2 cities are really too far apart. As I’ve mentioned before though, the game map is not to scale so they can get away with it.

As far as the city’s skyscrapers go, The Crew gets it right with the city’s many tall buildings. In the game you will see many of the skyscrapers that exist in the actual city such as the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower, the John Hancock Center, Aon Center, Marina City 1 and 2 (These two buildings were featured in Batman Begins), and many more.

Driving through the downtown streets even feels and looks like it would in the real life city. You have the Chicago River running right through it as well as the many bridges that cross over it and you have the elevated L-Trains I believe they are called, also going through downtown.

When I talked about some of the cities from The Crew in the past and their actual counterparts, some I have mentioned that I have not been to such as Detroit and Miami. I have not explored Chicago before, but I have been to its largest airport which is O’Hare International Airport.

I’ve been there before to catch connecting flights to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington D.C (which will also be upcoming cities I will talk about from The Crew!). Believe it or not the city’s largest airport is in the game although it is named Chicago Airport probably due to not being able to actually use the real name without some sort of licensing or copyright agreement.

Like Miami and Detroit, I’ve seen what Chicago looks like from movies and television shows. Without a shadow of a doubt, the developers did an excellent job on the recreation of the city. You might be wondering about other famous Chicago landmarks besides its well known skyscrapers that could be in the game such as Wrigley Field.

Well sad to say, I have not seen or heard of anyone finding the famous Baseball stadium that the Cubs play in. On the other hand, believe it or not, the developers recreated the stadium that the NFL Bears play in.

It is known as Soldier Field, but in the game it is just called the Museum Campus which actually resembles where the stadium is located in the real life city. Now probably like O’Hare, the developers did not have permission to use the actual name of the stadium and so just made up the name of Museum Campus. Nevertheless, from the outside, the stadium looks decently close to the actual stadium.

Another pretty well known area that Chicago is known for is the Navy Pier. It is a pier that extends out into Lake Michigan that features a very large Ferris Wheel, Chicago Children’s Museum, shops, park space, an IMAX theatre, concert hall and many more. Parts of it are in The Crew most notably the Ferris Wheel and you are able to drive around it as well (Sorry, you can’t get out of your car to get on the giant Ferris Wheel).

Some of the park space is recreated in the game too so it definitely has a good authentic feel to it. I would have to say that Chicago in The Crew is a bit more realistic looking than the Chicago in another open world game known as Watch Dogs.

As far as freeways and highways go in the game, there are a few that flirt with the city.  There is an I-80, I-280, and an I-90/94 as well, but they don’t actually follow the alignments that they actually do in the real city. I will say though that I really like the I-280 highway as it is elevated and takes you towards downtown Chicago and runs right past the O’Hare airport.

I’ve said this before in other city comparison posts, but I’ll say it yet again, the highways are only 4 lanes and not 6 or more. Other then that though the highways that are there are pretty cool to drive on and you can get some good skyline shots of the city.

Well there you have it! Another city from The Crew compared to its actual counterpart. With Chicago, that pretty much wraps up the major cities in the Midwest that are featured in the game. I plan to move on next to the East Coast cities of New York City and Washington D.C. and once they are done, out to the last frontier, the western half of the US and its major cities featured in the game. Definitely check back for updates and in the meantime, here’s a 9 minute video of myself driving around The Crew’s Chicago.