Hello everyone.


I remember to have read after Skyrim was announced and Todd Howard got interviewed that although the number of cities would be fewer in skyrim, they would be significantly larger and a few of them would feel really huge.

After I installed the game and ran into Whiterun the first big city I saw, was not that large and apart from the very cool architecture of the dragon's reach and it's large balcony I was not impressed with it's size.

Are there any larger cities then Whiterun, Windhelm or Solitude?

Riften is pretty big. But yeah, the cities aren't that big, or well populated. And Solitude is definitely not the 'Imperial City of Skyrim'. It's pretty small.

Here's an interesting comparison, population wise:

http://images.uesp.net/b/b3/SR-City-Demographics.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/8/82/OB-City-Demographics.jpg (Imperial city has 119 people)
http://images.uesp.net/d/d5/MW-Demographics.png

Riften has the most people in Skyrim. Balmora in Morrowind has a larger population than any Skyrim city, and Vivec has more inhabitants than the 4 largest Skyrim cities combined.

Todd said that a few of the cities would be "massive". Ther not. A massive city would have more than 1 trader and 1 blacksmith. Also the cities are not that populated.

Most of the games have had cities with smaller populations than what is in the lore. This is more due to technology reasons. With the way Skyrim is made, it has trouble with areas that have larger populations. This is why you will get lowered performance in the Whiterun hold. That hold is pretty big, and even the wildlife you aren't seeing at that moment still hit the game's performance. With Morrowind, the game was made in such a way that it could handle multiple simple things going on in the cell at once. This isn't so as the games get more advanced. Daggerfall had the biggest population of all the games, but it was done with random generation.

Skyrim has a much more complicated way of doing things. Everything that goes on in an area will be intense on the system. Heck, the Whiterun hold was the place that I had the worst FPS drops at until I installed an ENB. Not even joking.

Much of the performance loss is from NPCs and the like. Buildings only get much of any FPS drop if they have certain lighting.

I agree with your sentiment, but yes, it's always scaled down for technological reasons. I understand this, of course, but at the same time I find it hard to imagine anyone can get away with anything in a Skyrim city or town, the population is too low.

Even Morrowind didn't properly represent how many hundreds of thousands of people were supposed to be on Vvardenfell, and Mournhold is one of the most deserted capital cities I've ever seen. MMOs take it one step further when their backstory books or RPG tie-ins claim there's 10,000 people living in a town with four buildings.

They also said that we would be able to mess with a town's economy, but that isn't really in the game either.

The thing is, Skyrim is using an outdated game engine. It's using a modified version of the same engine Morrowind used. MMOs don't use that engine in most cases. The engine Morrowind uses is Gamebryo, which is the engine that the Zoo Tycoon series uses. Older editions of that engine are able to handle larger amounts of things going on in the game, but it seems like messing with it makes it even more unstable. This might be why we can't have larger amounts of stuff on the screen. I am no expert, but Gamebryo is an engine that, while allowing tons of user made customization, is not a stable engine to use anymore for this series.

I hope they find another engine that allows for tons of user made customization while also allowing for tons of optimization that is more efficient.

I was floored the first time I walked up to Vivec from the Silt Strider many years ago. All the massive pyramid-type structures and people in each one. Why can't they recreate that feeling again? I know it's part of lore that some of these cities aren't supposed to be as big as Vivec, but hopefully in the future they will try to recreate that awe for me.

I believe that feature was scrapped before release.

But yes, Skyrim's cities are farely small. Solitude is about the size of Sadrith Mora, and larger than Leyawiin but smaller than the Imperial City. I do find it odd that Riften is Skyrim's biggest city ... Still, I don't mind. I personally love Skyrim's cities - with the exception of Morthal ...

I heard Vivec was meant to be an open city that didn't have those pyramid things. The problem was that it was too resource heavy, which might be why the city became that awful to navigate, but nice looking pyramid filled place.

Dont believe everything Todd says :3
Anyway,I Wonder and hope we get at least one big city in a DLC.

Dawnstar is one of my favourite "citys" Wish i could have a house there

I still remember my first trip to Vivec City. Between the fog limiting the draw distance and the way it's organized, that town really looked massive to me. Oblivion towns looked more like fortified hamlets, Skyrim "open" towns are even worse... They look like farmers' settlements!

Like the great city of Rorikstead.

Sweet sweet lies.

The cities are less, and are far, far smaller. Nothing has been improved upon when it comes to cites.

Oblivion set the bar high for cities. Skyrim's were a let down. Markarth isn't bad though.

Morrowind cities ftw.

I can hardly remember them. Been a while.

There were some really big cities in Morrowind. I forgot the name, but the city that had the Arena was massive.

It almost reminds me of an apartment complex.

Edit: Oh yeah. The city was Vivec.

Aye, markarth is probably my favourite city, riften a close second and dawnstar would be my favourite open settlement

Out of interest, with regards to the OP, how far along the development process were they when Todd said this?

Hehe yeah,But do you remember Mournhold? the city that we got by getting tribunal? Loved that city,Capital of morrowind

Zoo Tycon lmao! Played that game a lot in my childhood.

That game is part of my childhood and teenhood and advlthood.