You're talking as if people here are asking for them to be accurate by the centimeter. I honestly have to question how much time was saved by not checking where the door should be.
Also, I'd disagree and say that this is simply part of the job. Like furnishing the interiors in a way that makes sense (and for example not put silverware in a slum. You know, simply paying attention to what you're doing and maintaining a standard of quality).

You are both exactly right, Mitheledh and Doubler! It's (very) lazy design. But....I can ignore (explain away) it like this:

The exteriors of the buildings could be nothing more than 'representations' of the 'real' thing, just like the whole land of Skyrim is just a representation. You didn't think an entire country could fit into 16 square miles, did you? Think of the whole game as a crude approximation of the 'real' Skyrim.

This has been happening since Morrowind, and there is a very very obvious reason.

The interiors are bigger on the inside, so that the camera isnt constantly blocked by walls or the player, or NPCs in the way. If interiors were real size you would quite often have no choice but to use buildings in first person view, and NPCs would constantly block the hallways.


Basically, it would be much more immerision breaking if it wasn't bigger on the inside....cause the flaws of being in a gameworld would be more obvious.

Da mage, the complaint isn't the different size, we understand the need for that, but the completely different design of the interiors.

also every inn interior is pretty much the same for every inn, they don't match the building at all

I'm more annoyed with the interior "fireplaces" than anything else. I mean, approaching Breezehome, I can see smoke coming out of the roof (no chimney), but inside there's an open-hearth furnace with no place for the fumes to go! Why don't I, and certainly Lydia, who spends all her time upstairs, die of asphyxiation? Hopefully the CK (or whatever it's called) will let us bring some building codes to Skyrim.

Anyone noticed that lot of cave have some hole on the ceiling for the sunlight to go through, but if you go outside, there is no hole at all in the ground to go in the cave?

The ceiling joists in the Whiterun home are running sideways instead of up and down. They would sag and bow, if not collapse in no time like that. Bethesda should study some VERY BASIC real world construction before building things with zero integrity. I know its just a game, but I have to laugh at some of the things I see.

Not something I have noticed, or been bothered about in any game I have played tbh.

Now I look at it and my immersion is totally ruined, I can no longer bring myself to play such a flawed game world and will be trading my copy.

Just kidding, it bothers me not but are there any games of this type that accurately represent the exterior once you have entered?

yea, gothic 2 and 3 did, more than 5 years ago

That's typical of most games but you usually don't notice unless you look really hard.
Morrowind was one of the worst for this especially with the buildings in Ald-ruhn where the tiny crabshell buildings had massive interiors, and the interior of the giant crab completly overwhelmed what was on the outside.
Skyrim's aren't too mismatched.

The architect was actually that guy being beheaded on your first entrance to Solitude......apparently

Yeah, this really bothers me, I mean not so much the difference in scale (except occasionally like the fact that Dragonreach is about half a mile long on the inside) but the difference in the actual design and structure. It's okay in most cities (Riften doesn't even seem to be differently scaled on the inside) but in Solitude it's just awful and very distracting.

The real explanation behind this phenomenon is most likely that the development of the external skyrim world was done in parallel with the development of the interiors. I.e. both teams were provided with rough specifications (shape, dimensions etc.) of buildings required, without any prior knowledge of the exact outcome of the finished product produced by the other team.

Otherwise one team would have had to wait for the other team to be completely finished before they can start on their stuff, which would have added a massive and unnecessary delay to the whole project.

Basically the benefit of matching interior/exteriors was negligible compared to the delay it would introduce into the development process.

Here are some Solitude examples.

http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx316/randomguyface/2012-01-12_00001.jpg - Winking Skeever exterior
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx316/randomguyface/2012-01-12_00002.jpg - Winking Skeever interior; The door is to the left around that corner, I'm facing the same way I was when I came in
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx316/randomguyface/2012-01-12_00003.jpg - Fletcher exterior
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx316/randomguyface/2012-01-12_00004.jpg - Fletcher Interior; That doorway to the right should be where the arch in the wall is and look how long the building is
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx316/randomguyface/2012-01-12_00005.jpg - Walking through afformentioned doorway
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx316/randomguyface/2012-01-12_00006.jpg - Going further, we see a plaster wall with a window where we should have an empty break in a brick wall featuring no windows anywhere
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx316/randomguyface/2012-01-12_00007.jpg - Temple of the nine divines exterior wall
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx316/randomguyface/2012-01-12_00008.jpg - Looking back at that same wall from inside

Who would make a house without a toilet? And if i'm honest, I find that they have almost entirely ignored the trades (plumbing, electrics and building) throughout the ENITRE game. Frankly its ridiculous and im never going to buy another TES game or stop crying until its fixed

Seriously? With all there is to do in Skyrim, you're counting windows? I just love how people like this gripe about niggling things openly, thinking it is (they are) perfectly normal to do so. If you can't ignore it, move on, or play Home and Garden's Home Designer or something like that.

If this is supposed to be a parody of this thread it's terrible, as it's not at all comparable. You're trying to juxtapose the idea of not having modern conveniences of the buildings in a medieval style game to seeing a completely different place on the inside than on the outside of a building.

As far as I'm concerned, while Beth did an absolutely beautiful job on the natural environment, they dropped the ball when it comes to the built environment.

And I don't have to go play Home and Garden's Home Designer. I do it for a living. Or I would be if anyone in the area was building anything (stupid economy). Of course, as such, it's to be expected that I play close attention to the buildings and architecture in the game. These discrepancies are inconsistent and that is simply poor design. If you're fine with that, that's your business. I, however, expected more from Bethesda.

I was thinking about it last night and something occurred to me. If you go to Markarth, there are actually very few free standing buildings. The large majority of Marketh is little more than facades up against the cliff. Windhelm isn't much different. Many of it's buildings are facades pushed up against the wall or a large, indistinct mass in the center.

I agree completely! This has been bothering me for a while, ESPECIALLY the huge wall with the towers and stuff at the entrance to Solitude. It turns out they're just decoration - there's no door or anything...

If the exterior of the building has multiple floors, then I expect the interior to have multiple floors. If they exterior walls are wood, I want the interior walls to be wood, same with Stone.

Other than that, I am good to go, it is the NPCs and items in the cell that are more important to me than if some windows line up.

The buildings in IC in Oblivion were the same, windows outside, brick walls inside, windows inside, brick walls (or other peoples homes) outside. Noticed it one day in a shopping trip. Must admit, haven't noticed these faults (yet) in Skyrim. I think I pick up the faults as I get bored with the game

Even though MWs interiors were drastically different scale, at least virtually all the time the insides matched the outside layout.

It has more to do with kit pieces than anything else is my guess. If for example, kit piece “SolitudeRmCorOut01” is used for a corner, but doesn’t have a door in it, you’d have to put the door in the next block right beside it like “SolitudeRmExit1Way01” or whatever the naming convention they’re using is. It really boils down to how many varying assets (kit pieces) were created to use building interiors. The exterior buildings are usually NOT done in pieces, but all one piece. As someone mentioned, I guess it’s entirely possible the interior level designers don’t know exactly what the final exterior looks like when they do their levels.

One other thing, in Oblivion, many of the smaller interiors were done in one piece as opposed to snapping many kit pieces together. I believe there might be a few of these in Skyrim as well, but without the CK you’d have to go into a cell and start either disabling or markfordelete on the walls to see how they built it. I think maybe the inns are all one piece (but I easily could be wrong.)

On the bright side, Markarth has little to worry about due to it's location and Riften is almost exactly the same in most buildings inside and out. It still annoys me that the gray quarter seems to be filled mostly with stone and disguised as actual buildings.

Well, if that were the case, they should have designed their kits to work with the exteriors. But I don't think they are done this way at all (since Morrowind). My memory of Oblivion is that EVERY interior that I edited was one full model, not little kit pieces, and I checked a fair few, from Skingrad, Leyawiin and Chorrol mostly, including very large ones. They probably did design the exteriors and interiors concurrently, but it's still just sloppy. They should have 1) Checked on each others work as they went along to make sure they matched, or 2) Made a basic building shape design sketch for the other team person to copy as well as details on what parts would be made of what.