I think the towns and settlements are within my own expectations of "viking towns and settlements" - not all that big. The only thing I liked about Morrowind towns was that they was open (no gates). But even that had Vivec City, which was a horrible design. Morrowind was great in what it did, for originality and being kinda first in many things it did. But I'll typically take more close to earth wrt design. Balmora and the north western towns were awesome, the rest just made me want the game less high fantasy. Guess I got that with Oblivion and Skyrim

There will never be a hometown like Balmora... there was just something about it.

This is why I laugh at everyone talking about "repeating dialogue". Every NPC in Morrowind said the same thing over and over, they were more encyclopedia then anything else.

On topic: does anyone else besides me feel that Vivec was a waste? For its size, and the fact that it was a central hub, it was empty. It felt empty, it really wasn't that impressive to me. They could have cut it in half and it would have felt alive, it just seemed that they copied a couple more of the islands just to make it look big.

I think Skyrims cities are visually more appealing, more impressive and more unique than anything in Morrowind. On top of that they feel much more alive.

I love vivec, but I felt the Imperial city was more impressive. I also love roaming the imperial city's sewers when I'm in the mood to sneak through the cellars of houses as a thief.

And I agree with Gaelsong's post; something about Balmora that made is great. It was pretty much my home for every Morrowind character. It's a big city that's not too big, it had a great scenery,and it has everything you need there.

Daggerfall. Now THAT had cities in it.

having recently played morrowind i would say that only vivec could compare to a skyrim city. maybe balmora but ive used the balmora expanded mod for so long i dont even remember what it looked like vanilla anymore. gnissis, gnarmok, seyda neen etc were all tiny little villages with only a few buildings.

I also don't agree that spreading things out over a lot of real estate makes them 'better'. Or, for that matter, effectively 'bigger' in anything but square footage. Vive is my least favorite city in any TES game. Huge on the outside, cramped on the inside.

Let's hope they add DLC and expansion packs that make up for this.

these cities no longer exist and skyrim clearly took from morrowinds desings (dwemer ruins)

Wut?

uhhh, what?

I think they fit the perception I have had of Skryim as being sparsely populated with a sense of independence running through the culture.

I always hated Vivec I got lost there a lot. But in general the towns of Morrowind did have a sense of size to them.

I do see your point when you compare it to say Daggerfall where the cities where very large with a lot of different shops and factions to visit.

The only city that felt big in Morrowind was Vivec.

To me it makes sense for cities in Skyrim to be smaller as well. Its a harsh land not suitable for many people, so naturally the cities will be smaller as well. They are still impressive and unique enough as they are.

Or maybe it's better because 75% of Vivec's inhabitants had auto-genned class-based dialog while almost every NPC in Skyrim is involved in a quest and a much higher % have unique dialog. Maybe it's because Skyrim NPCs actually can go around and do things like chop wood or run mills? Also, many of Vivec's NPC spend their entire lives standing in 1 position. Beth has to design entire living schedules for NPCs in Skyrim. Perhaps you're beginning to see why there's less NPCs in Skyrim?

"I'm a barbarian. That means I (insert huge boring [censored] paragraph that I've read 10 times already here)". How. . . riveting.

Don't get me wrong. Vivec was beautiful. The Cantons were beautiful; The wizard towers were beautiful; but a canton is just 1 beautiful building that the devs copy/pasted 9 times. Whiterun/Marcarth/etc actually have diverse and unique layouts. In Morrowind, I went from NPC to NPC checking them to see if there was an NPC who was interesting enough to merit further investigation.

90% of the time, they just had auto-genned dialog so I would pass them by. In Skyrim, I've stopped and listened to many more unique stories from unique NPCs.




I loved seeing the return of the Dwemer ruins in Skyrim, but they definitely weren't ripped from Morrowind.

The Dwemer ruins in Skyrim are vastly superior in diversity and design IMHO.

The towns in Skyrim are alot better than in Oblivion, but there's no Imperial city. I was somewhat disappointed by the size of Solitude, I thought "Oh neat Solitude is going to be huge!" But it looks about the size of Leyawiin. As far as Morrowind goes the cities were nice but I swear a lot of them looked similar to me.

They were very similar, copy-paste and only had a couple of NPC's worth talking to each.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think the Morrowind Defense Force is coming to get me...

The developers say that they had teams of designers working on each city in Skyrim for long periods of time, and I believe it. The cities are unique and impressive, and none of them are anywhere close to the size of Seyda Neen. Something many people also forget is that developers don't have unlimited amounts of time. They don't just build cities to the point that they start to tax the hardware too much, and then fart around for the next 6 months playing angry birds. I'm certain they had at least a few people working on the cities at any given point in development. Personally I'm quite happy with the cities in Skyrim.

I was disappointed in the size of Skyrim's cities... I was expecting something along the lines of the Imperial City but how the hell are some of these "cities" counsidered cities? Even Oblivion had bigger cities than Skyrim

Skyrim's towns/cities seem appropriate for the people of the land they are in. I don't think a huge city would feel right in Skyrim. These are people of the earth. They are not the industrial types of the empire. They got to where they are through sweat and hard work. Their cities reflect that life style.

i'll take the detail, graphics, diversity, weather, immersion, originality, interaction, appropriateness, etc. of skyrim over morrowind and oblivion anyday. the world they've created is the best i've ever seen on consoles.

Alright, I'll ask for forgiveness in advance since I'm no Elder Scrolls Scholar...

But it seems to me from reading the books & load screens, that Skyrim isn't the original homeland of the Nords, but rather was colonized sometime by explorers... Nords are, for all intents and purposes, TES Vikings.

So, looking at the history of "our" Vikings, I looked at a Colonized area like Iceland, whose oldest Viking city is Reykjavik. Iceland seems similar landscape-wise to Skyrim to me (though, in all fairness, I've never actually been to either), and the Nords seem on par technologically with the Vikings of the 9th - 13th century Earth.

According to the good ol' interweb (http://www.facts-about-iceland.com/2009/11/reykjavik-history.html), it took 1,000 years after the founding of Reykjavic for the population to reach 2,500... a small number even by 18th century standards. So I can see it being possible that, despite Skyrim's age, the population wouldn't have flourished the way that other areas of the empire have over the centuries... areas that tend to favor the New World or mainland Europe more closely.

Anyway, I know it's been more than 1,000 years since Skyrim was settled, but things also seem to progress more slowly in Tamriel than on Earth. Anyway... food for thought.

I hear that a lot from people who then go on to say a load of rubbish about the game. I didn't play Morrowind a lot, I played the [censored] out of it. And I still have that same feeling. It's not about the size of buildings, it's about the amount of buildings in what is supposed to be "a city". Morrowind at least tried to get this right, despite hardware and engine limitations, while Oblivion and Skyrim certainly did not.

3. morrowind towns totally lacked central buildings like skyrim castles
Who cares? Morrowind towns and cities were not built around fortresses. The natives of Morrowind are Dunmer, not Imperials. Why would they build giant castles all of a sudden?

or - in the case of telvani - only had that (a central tower and nothing else)
Can you name me a single Telvanni tower that does't have anything else around it? Only one I can think of is Tel Fyr, where good old Divaeth and his girls live. Vos, Sadrith Mora.. No, even without looking at my paper map, I can't think of a tower that was completely naked with nothing besides the central tower.

4. only balmora had a half decent amount of related quests.
most were dead husks out of nowhere, like gnaar mok or hlaa oad.
Both of those were small fishing villages that shouldn't have a lot of things going on. Even so, a fair few quests had you visiting those places and they were sail trip routes too, IIRC.


the average tiny settlement in skyrim is much larger than the average morrowind small town,
because the building are larger and have more peoples and quests in it
How many of those quests are radiant quests? And it's possible that Skyrim houses take up more space but there's hardly more of them. I think there was about a dozen buildings in Seyda Neen and it was considered a complete hole in the ground. I recall one of the Skyrim stronghold towns having less than that.


that s right, only guild buildings were two levels in morrowind
so the average poor guy house in skyrim is the size of a guild hq
That's complete rubbish. There were a number of two-level manors that weren't guild HQs. Heck, the first fighter's guild quest took you to a two level "poor guy house". Or poor lady, in this case. Houses were smaller in general, sure, but that makes a hell of a lot more sense than the size of Skyrim homes, which seem built with no regard to the cost of construction materials or the wages needed to pay the builders for a larger building than absolutely necessary.


mournhold had 2-floor building, vast sewers with dungeons
and was possibly the best morrowind city
Actually Mournhold was terrible, since it was supposedly a major city but only had two occupied areas and neither contained remotely enough houses. It looked real nice but it suffered from being so incredibly small.


with no voice acting, shedules or much merchant gold or quests ....
I m not even sure they all had beds to sleep in
Vivec had potential, but unfortunately it was not tapped. mostly long corridors.
You do realise that there are 9 years of hardware development between Morrowind and Skyrim, right? The original Xbox would've blown up if you had added more AI routines. And it's a good thing that there wasn't much voice acting in Morrowind, because it allowed the modders to fix the crappier dialogue without causing any problems. Good luck trying to do the same in Skyrim.

I didn't say Vivec was perfect at all, in fact I specifically said that I wasn't saying so, but I do think it feels more like a city than Whiterun or even Solitude. It's not "alive" but then few places in Morrowind are, at least not compared to games that actually incorporate schedules. It feels more like a city because cities are supposed to be big, have many people living in them, and have more than one smith or general merchant, not to mention guild representation. Vivec had all that. I've yet to see it in a Skyrim city.

Not at all. I'm simply saying that shallow putz types most certainly will not agree with what I said and will not care about whether or not a "city" actually feels like a "city", as long as there's voice art and shiny graphics. That doesn't imply in the least that all who disagree with me are shallow putzes.

As graphics improve, I doubt the cities will get much bigger unless Bethesda double their staff. That said, I would have really loved one big-ass city to accompany solitude, Riften and the others. It could have been Whiterun even, which would make sense due to its trade position, which would have made the Battle for Whiterun that much more epic and important.