http://www.primagames.com/media/images/guides/hero/skyrim_maps_jpg_677x337_crop_upscale_q85.jpg It's from a preview of an online map you can purchase. I'm trying to withold judgement here, but I can't help but feel dissapointed. I know Riften is one of the smaller "big" cities, and there's probably more content in the sewers, and it is well designed, but this looks REALLY small. I count 15 buildings (Average OB city had about 24), which is nothing, also looking at it with the scale of the map in mind (based off that map from the behind-the-scenes vid in Feb that showed some of the city outlines) it doesn't bode well for the size of the province map either. I hope the other cities are just as dense as this one. I'll probably try and do some city expansions with mods. Thoughts?

Any news on Markarth? No? Disappointing.

But from the images we've seen, I quite like Riften. It's pretty and seems diverse. I've seen one picture that makes me think, oooh Riften looks quite wealthy and others that make me think otherwise. And we don't know the scale of the map, the houses might be mansions. Is the Thieve's Guild in Riften because if so aren't the Ratways under the city? That might be where Riften's getting extra room.

If I recall correctly Riften is the town that is sort of....stacked up on top of itself, so it actually has multiple levels

Riften isn't one of the major cities, is it? As long as it isn't, then I'm happy. This is much bigger than the little settlements in Oblivion, and much bigger than the smaller cities in Morrowind, as well.

It IS. I said so in my OP.

Yes, Riften has two layers. As you can see in that Canol-Under-The-Bridge Screenshot.

See? No need to worry. I'm sure there'll be tons of slummy housies for the poor folk and a few big ones for the rich toffs.

I read your OP, I wasn't sure how to interpret "smaller 'big' cities". That could just as easily mean a large, non-major city as it could a major city.

Any way, hopefully there will be a lot of interior content. If anyone's played Banasplit's Better Cities for Oblivion, there's a huge section added underground with shops and quests and everything. It would be awesome for it to be like that...

Of course it probably won't be.

I don't think each building will be one house/store/etc. Based on the quick clips seen of Riften in previews, it appears that each building houses many people, kind of like townhomes.

Thanks for all the input, guys/girls, Looking back at that footage we got not long ago, it seems those buildings around the edge of the moat (on the solid ground side) are pretty large, which is comforting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAgN0xRQrb0 I wonder why they have so many big buildings though (as in, almost no small ones)

Mabye its like a skingrad-like city. Anyway I don't really care about the size of a city I just care about how nice/wealthy it appears. I thought Whiterun would be packed but when I saw... It was spread out and had very few people in it... (Mabye people were in their houses? I don't know)

Did it (Whiterun) look bigger than an Oblivion city? (Please say yes) If so, how much?

Yes, it looked bigger (Or at least more spread out). I would say that not THAT big, but bigger.

So when you say spread out, do you mean the same amount of content, but less dense? I was kinda hoping for more content (I like to measure by building count, it's usually the best indicator of how big a city feels to me).

There are large corridors, but I would say that there are more Buildings as well. If the average City in Oblivion had 25 Buildings, Whiterun seems to have 35 Buildings or something like that.

Thankyou, that is pleasing news to me. Whiterun looks like a very beautiful city, btw, going by the most recent official footage of it.

I like how it looks.

Whiterun definitely has more content than an average Oblivion city. The official footage and screenshots really don't do it justice.

alot of the citys in skyrim are generaly bigger than oblivon in terms of Land covered, there are generaly more in them too, the citys are more Dynamic than in previous games and have waymore content, Obviously some of the Holds are larger than others, and the actualy province map while possibly slightly smaller than oblivion has way more in it, like in oblvion you could travel for quite some time without discovering anything, in Skyrim everything was placed properly and the wildlife work well too, i find it a much more enjoyable experience than oblivion but maybe thats just my opinion.

Just look at the width of the walkways on the map.
This will give you a sense of scale.
Riften is small.

True, but walkway widths can be deceiving. In terms of land area would you say it's smaller than Bruma?

Skyrim's towns are small generally. Sorry.

Riften is the city with the walkways at the bottom and the terrasse walkways and bridges on top? AWESOME

I'm glad Riften is Small, but dense, it preserves the natural beauty of it's hold.

"Oh look I found this exciting new information about Skyrim!"

TES fans (presumably, since they're on this forum): "Wow, it's so small/incomplete/lacking in manliness"


Wait, what?