New Imperial City Palace

[Ddeatth]

Now, I love Oblivion. It's a great game, the sandbox style makes for great gaming, but there are some things about Cyrodil that I just cannot stand. Here I'm gonna focus on just one of them: the palace.

 

I don't know about you, but I think it SUCKS. When I hear the words "imperial palace", I think of a great stone castle with turrets, high walls, dungeons, a crypt filled with the sarcophagi of ancient kings, a great throne room, and the list could go on and on.

 

What did we get in Vanilla? A huge PHALLIC SYMBOL. It's just one big cheesy looking drab gray tower. There's no sense of power, wealth, importance, action, and in general no excitement. You only need to go in it about four times, and you don't even do much three of those times.

 

I've tried to make myself a house mod before, and I stink at it. I couldn't use the CS to save my life. But if anybody out there is good at modding, and agrees with me, you'd make my wish come true by fixing this wreck.

 

Or, for that matter, if there already is such a mod and I've been ranting for nothing, please tell me.

:thanks:

[ChalkLine]

Because the palace is pivotal in quite few quests, especially The Ultimate Hiest, it'd mean redesigning those quests as well. Really, it's too much work for the pay off.

 

Thepalce is really Alessia's taking over the pre-existing White Gold Tower when she created the empire, it may not be what she'd have chosen herself.

 

The palace tower is one of the most important LOD items, meaning it's a landmark right across Cyrodiil and it defines the centre of the Imperial City. You can't really change it much without going though and changing lots of lore references (Umbacano talks about it) in game which we don't have the dialogue tools to do.

 

Conversely, you may be able to use some of the surrounding areas within the inner ring, and leave sectors as they are (such as two important tombs, for example) to keep quests and dialogue references intact. If you levelled alternate sectors and built some of the imperial bureaucracy there it'd look like the centre of an empire.

[David Brasher]

I sort of like how it can be seen from such a great distance. It doesn't seem like a very practical tower though. There don't seem to be the expected arrow slits, machicolations, and crenolations. I am not sure how defensible this tower really is.

 

Inside it seems extraordinarily dark and depressing. I always feel a bit silly when I light a torch inside an occupied building in town. I am not sure how modifications would effect the vanilla quests, but I wonder if certain aspects of the tower could be made nicer to look at.

[darkjaffar]

The tower itself would never really be in a fight of that nature. The idea would be that invading forces would first have to cross the bay, then break down the city walls before reaching the tower. Leaving archers in the tower itself compromises the entire city, unwise. The city guard towers and walls would be the locations of arrow slits and things of that nature, not a tall palace located in the core of the city. (this is, of course, assuming a normal invasion force. Nobody would have prepared for the type of invasions that occur during the main quest.)

 

I think a mod called the ImpeREAL City (I've never used it though) updates some of its appearance, particularly at nighttime. Nothing structural though, I don't think. It does add some night-time lighting, based on images I've seen.

[jemiari]

ImpeREAL City does upgrade the palace a bit, I think, but it's still pathetic. I think the problem is how much of it lacks windows... You step in and it's almost like you're walking into a dungeon.