Cities are kinda.. meh.

[NAPALM13092]

Not a hate post I love Skyrim but was wondering if I was the only one that felt extremely underwhelmed by the cities and number of NPC's living there.

 

Aesthetics wise Morthal, Winterhold, Dawnstar, and Falkreath are extremely disappointing. They are nothing more than villages at best. I can't even call them cities, all 4 consist of: Jarl's House, Inn, Blacksmith, General Store (some even lack this), and like 3 residences (some have less). Also Dawnstar's "harbor" is a wood plank with an over glorified fishing boat at the end. The others came out much better thankfully. Solitude, Whiterun, Markarth, Windhelm, and Riften are all very unique and well done if a little small. It is like everything went into the design of those 5 cities and the rest some dude from QA or something just plopped down a few thatch roofed houses in an hour and called it a day.

 

The last thing I think Bethesda dropped the ball on was size. 90% of the houses and NPCs in the cities play some part in some quest at some time and there are no fluff NPCs or buildings (or at least very little). You cannot rob or kill anyone without it messing with a quest later on, the house being "required key", or the NPC being essential. I think the cities should have been at least doubled in size even if they are copy pasted sections tacked on to the city and the NPCs are random faces with canned "arrow in the knee" dialogue. The world feels empty and don't give me the "But Skyrim is a harsh land with a lower population than other regions" because lower population does not mean 4 people in a pub is a city.

 

I think this all comes from Bethesda's Fallout 3 mindset. There were two major cities (Megaton and Rivet City) and both had a small populace which was fine being a nuclear wasteland. However I think this comes from the idea that they made all the NPC's that apply to quest and the rest don't matter so why bother, rather than trying to make the land feel desolate. It is a development shortcut if you ask me not a design choice.

 

Anyway that is my little gripe. The cities need to be bigger even if the additional stuff is useless fluff, the ports needs to actually be ports, and there needs to be more NPC's even if they are randomly generated nobodies.

[Guss]

bigger cities wow. i say x2 the size of oblivion's except IC. seem more realistic with richer and vendors in town and farmers and the etc outside. seem good to me. only thing i would like is to have a major city built somewheres else. :biggrin: Edited December 12, 2011 by Guss

[stars2heaven]

@Napalm

 

Watch someone do a Blackreach reborn mod or something. That place is simply enormous, 2 to 3 times the size of any other city in Skyrim.

[minngarm]

Winterhold is near perfect, it could use a few more houses crowded in to make sense. But other than that it fits the lore and style perfectly. Its not a major city, its just the most convient hold available ontop of a small mountain that time and life has worn down into a hillock. Most cities in the north should follow its general example, its the hold, the merchants, the armory, the prison, the barracks, and housing for the merchant class. Farmers and other village types would live out in the countryside.

[Brittainy]

I agree.

 

The cities are so puny one has to wonder why they didn't make them 'open'. (In fact, one has to wonder why - when Skyrim and Oblivion are such a similar size and the latter has long since had its cities opened with mods - we're still being given closed cities at all.)

 

Markarth probably impressed me the most...it really showed a hint of what Skyrim's cities COULD have been.

 

The rest just tend to feel depressing.

[Handofbane]

The cities are so puny one has to wonder why they didn't make them 'open'. (In fact, one has to wonder why - when Skyrim and Oblivion are such a similar size and the latter has long since had its cities opened with mods - we're still being given closed cities at all.)

One word: consoles. When a game is made to run on hardware that is outdated by 5 years or more, it will tend to have things like zoned cities, so some poor guy's 360 or PS3 doesn't erupt in flames when they first walk toward Whiterun from the Honningbrew Meadery as it tries to draw all those houses and NPCs on top of the bits outside the town wall.

[vertex23]

After being spoiled with Better Open Cities in Oblivion, yes, they need a lot of work. I just got out of Blackreach too...spent three days in game just trying to figure the place out. Would be amazing if all the cities had an area that large.

 

Gotta love consoles.

[OnlyOneWing]

Solitude is the largest city in the game... Not one city even compares to the imperial city... Over all Oblivion was a way huger game than Skyrim and the amount and quality of the cities reflect this. Edited December 12, 2011 by OnlyOneWing

[stars2heaven]

I think it's really unfair to compare any of the cities of Skyrim to the Imperial city in Oblivion. For one, it ought to have been bigger than anything in Skyrim. Further more, a lot more time was put into smaller villages in various areas that was not put into Oblivion at all. But let's compare Solitude to a closer approximation from Oblivion: Anvil.

 

Solitude:

 

Number of people within the city of Solitude and closely surrounding areas: about 79 not including any regular guards (could be more and there certainly are far more if you include the guards)

Number of quests starting in Solitude: about 11 (and there are far more if you include radiant AI quests and there are a several more that have you traveling to Solitude or near by)

 

Anvil:

 

Number of people within the city of Anvil and closely surrounding areas: about 73, not including any regular guards

Number of quests starting in Anvil: about 10 (and then there are about 6 more that are related to Anvil and have you traveling there)

 

I got all this info from the UESP wiki. I bet if we started comparing the actual numbers of all the other cities to comparable cities in Oblivion we'd get similar numbers. The cities do have a smaller feel to them, but they are far more detailed in general and by no means have any less to do. I think people should also remember what I mentioned about the smaller villages scattered about. They have far more detail to them and things to do in them than any of the smaller settlements in Oblivion did, so time was obviously take from some of the cities and put into them. Over all, I think it was a fair exchange and I don't agree at all that the cities are truly worse than those in Oblivion.

Edited December 12, 2011 by stars2heaven

[Brittainy]

The cities are so puny one has to wonder why they didn't make them 'open'. (In fact, one has to wonder why - when Skyrim and Oblivion are such a similar size and the latter has long since had its cities opened with mods - we're still being given closed cities at all.)

One word: consoles. When a game is made to run on hardware that is outdated by 5 years or more, it will tend to have things like zoned cities, so some poor guy's 360 or PS3 doesn't erupt in flames when they first walk toward Whiterun from the Honningbrew Meadery as it tries to draw all those houses and NPCs on top of the bits outside the town wall.

 

True, but again, no excuse not to open them up in pc version :thumbsup:

 

Anyhow, I do realise that Skyrim is supposed to have a specific feel. But I wish more of the cities had gone with more interesting layouts. Again, Markarth showed the most potential in that regard. Ignoring the fact I prefer the scale of Oblivion's cities, it also suffered from a lack of innovation regarding layout.

 

Even if a town is small, it can still be spectacular if you use enough natural features and man-made ones to make it interesting and unique. The towns in both Oblivion and Skyrim feel too generic.

 

I don't think they're bad, they're just a bit on the dull side.

 

If you have a fantasy game and a set of towns to create within that, why not actually go all out and make them as exotic as possible?

 

I had the misfortune to see Markarth as an example of the cities in Skyrim and I thought "Wow - cities perched in the mountains with waterfalls - this is going to be great!" but turns out that certainly wasn't the case.

 

:unsure:

Edited December 12, 2011 by Brittainy