Cities in Oblivion were bigger

[billyro]

Skyrim Cities: small sized, interesting NPCs, unique designs, personal crime gold

 

Oblivion Cities: medium sized, dull NPCs, fairly re-occuring designs, global crime gold

 

Morrowind Cities: small - large sized, interesting and generic NPCs, re-occuring designs, global crime gold

 

 

In summary, the way the cities are turning out now is that they are unique in design and meant to feel like its own city. The people there are given more individualism at the expense of less people. The size of the cities have been reduced in order for more detail.

[paldinws]

Speaking of which, why dont those cities have ownable houses? yes I know winterhold has the archmages room, and dawnstar has the dark brotherhood but come on, what if I liked those cities? or if my character was RP'd to be from there, anyway back to city size

 

You can't RP your character to have come from there. Your character is a border jumping immigrant. Even if a Nord, your character originally came from somewhere else. You could say born in Skyrim and emmigrated, then immigrating back; okay. But then you're putting a lot of special circumstance into an RP background. The rule is to be interesting and well written, not to be overly complex or lengthy.

 

Not saying that your complaint is completely invalid, it's just not realistic.

[AtlasS]

Speaking of which, why dont those cities have ownable houses? yes I know winterhold has the archmages room, and dawnstar has the dark brotherhood but come on, what if I liked those cities? or if my character was RP'd to be from there, anyway back to city size

 

You can't RP your character to have come from there. Your character is a border jumping immigrant. Even if a Nord, your character originally came from somewhere else. You could say born in Skyrim and emmigrated, then immigrating back; okay. But then you're putting a lot of special circumstance into an RP background. The rule is to be interesting and well written, not to be overly complex or lengthy.

 

Not saying that your complaint is completely invalid, it's just not realistic.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3428

start as any kind of character and spawn in riverwood having skipped the intro and main quest. once you spawn you coc to the city of your choice and THEN run the bat...

I've done it already, my character is a miner/smith in dawnstar, however I hate having to pay 10 gold constantly to sleep properly

[Balakirev]

Skyrim Cities: small sized, interesting NPCs, unique designs, personal crime gold

 

Oblivion Cities: medium sized, dull NPCs, fairly re-occuring designs, global crime gold

 

Morrowind Cities: small - large sized, interesting and generic NPCs, re-occuring designs, global crime gold

 

 

In summary, the way the cities are turning out now is that they are unique in design and meant to feel like its own city. The people there are given more individualism at the expense of less people. The size of the cities have been reduced in order for more detail.

 

"Medium sized" cities in Oblivion compared to "small to large" in Morrowind? Oblivion's Imperial City? Anvil? Far, far larger than anything in Morrowind or Skyrim. At least 5 times the size, probably more. You'd better check the games, again.

 

As for the reason for the reduction in size in Skyrim: cities weren't reduced in Skyrim to provide more "interesting NPCs." Some NPCs have as much detail in Oblivion and Morrowind as in Skyrim, and plenty of examples can be provided in support of this. What's more, than are quite a few of the typical Bethsoft "support NPCs" in Skyrim who have one or two comments to make, and nothing else to add. Skyrim also has far fewer merchants, temples, guild locations, etc.

 

We don't know why Bethsoft chose to make cities much smaller in Skyrim, in other words. I will take a shot at a guess, though, without any claims to authority: every comment in Skyrim is voiced. This takes a lot of memory resources to run. My guess is that the development team decided to cut back on the amount of time spent on building cities and populating them so they could have the resources in any given area to run each vocal comment.

 

And they still overused a small number of actors.

[Joshico]

Anvil felt small to me imo, i mean c'mon the whole city is just one street! Regardless oblivion cities felt unrealistic, chorrol felt like a town with a wall and paved streets, skyrim is waay better, though i do admit im disappointed with Dawnstar, in the phone game you feel like its a huge city, now in skyrim just some sucky fishing town.

Morrowind cities are better than oblivion (i dont get how you feel oblivion cities are "huge" there like the size of falkreath) look at Sadrith Mora, Balmora? maybe.

[Balakirev]

Anvil felt small to me imo, i mean c'mon the whole city is just one street!

 

You may be thinking of only one of Anvil's districts. It has five. It's a very large place. And as I pointed out, there's the Imperial City; I could have added Leyawin. The cities of Oblivion are in general much larger than the cities of Morrowind. They were planned to be very large, and were advertised as such at the time. They were also intended to provide a much greater experience for thieves, who had a lot more places to steal from.

 

Regardless oblivion cities felt unrealistic, chorrol felt like a town with a wall and paved streets, skyrim is waay better...

 

In what way? I'm not looking to argue with you, since we're discussing opinions in this particular case based on personal "feel," rather than anything else. Just curious about what you find that makes Skyrim cities "better." :)

[Joshico]

Leyawin yah it felt large, i got lost in it lol, and when i mean anvil i mean like the walled in city not counting the docks, lighthouse,etc you could see what i mean in the link (again imo) http://uesp.net/wiki/File:OB-Map-AnvilA.jpg

 

And of course the Imperial City is large is the capitol of the empire! Anyway, some oblivion cities just flunked in the whole "its very large" but some cities do like leyawin, skingrad (not counting the imperial city again its the capitol)

Skyrim cities in my opinion are better because i got the feeling it felt large and realistic, it also felt unique to me, but im not saying all the cities in skyrim are huge, Windhelm in particular felt small. Solitude especially felt like a real city, it was large and stuff. I know im not very detailed in this but im kinda feeling lazy so thts why lol

 

Could you also show me Anvil's five district? I only know that it felt like a town with paved streets and with a wall :\

Edited December 28, 2011 by Joshico

[a7x5631]

I got lost in Solitude and Windhelm at first. Windhelm is just a very weird design. It looks awesome, but hard to get used to.

 

I never had that problem in Oblivion, except for Skingrad, being pretty large and design was different (getting to the castle without FT was a pain). Overall I like both about equally. They just fit the game very well just like they did in Oblivion and Morrowind.

[GoodfellowGoodspring]

Im not sure about the size because its hard to compare without having them on the same map, the Skyrim cities seem more realistic and arnt just houses next to a path but has stairs and hills built into the city, the cities also seem more alive and have more content so i guess the size isnt the main thing anyway.

 

Plus a city like the IC would require a lot of loading screens to keep the FPS up but having more cities like Solitude would have been better.

[Balakirev]

>Leyawin yah it felt large, i got lost in it lol, and when i mean anvil i mean like the walled in city not counting the docks, lighthouse,etc you could see what i mean in the link (again imo).

 

And of course the Imperial City is large is the capitol of the empire! Anyway, some oblivion cities just flunked in the whole "its very large" but some cities do like leyawin, skingrad (not counting the imperial city again its the capitol). Skyrim cities in my opinion are better because i got the feeling it felt large and realistic, it also felt unique to me, but im not saying all the cities in skyrim are huge, Windhelm in particular felt small. Solitude especially felt like a real city, it was large and stuff. I know im not very detailed in this but im kinda feeling lazy so thts why lol.

 

Could you also show me Anvil's five district? I only know that it felt like a town with paved streets and with a wall :\

 

I haven't got any screens to put up, but you can check out screens in the UESP Wiki for Anvil. The few screens it lists unfortunately feel much smaller than the city looks when my characters walk through it, though I kind of like the one called Dawn at the Harbor. I always liked the wilderness in Morrowind best, but the cities in Oblivion more because of all the quests, the sewer activity (again taken from Morrowind mods), and the thiefly opportunities. ;)

 

I think what made Morrowind's Balmora feel large was a combination of a) clever use of geography (both water and height differential), b) narrow, tall buildings, and c) breaking the line of sight down a street. The Imperial City did all of this and more, but Balmora certainly feels immense in Morrowind terms. Skyrim: none of its cities feel even moderate-sized, to me. They feel...empty. That's just my perception, of course, but I keep expecting to see the traditional guilds, a wide range of stores, a good-sized population, etc.  I guess Bethsoft simply put the people who would have developed these aspects in previous ES games to other tasks--perhaps DLCs. Who knows?