Agreed, they are just too small and not epic enough.

Used to love Markarth

Oblivion hade better cities.

But something most people forget is that Oblivions cities were supposed to be "big and expensive" , while Skyrims are supposed to be "hard, tough and beautiful in a rough way"

Several of the cities look good (Markarth in particular), but they are all a bit too small in my taste and they could do with a lot more population. Especially the walled cities. Dawnstar, Falkreath and Morthal are decent enough as simple settlements.

Agree with this.

I still like the cities, but none of them really feel like cities. Even the largest of them seem more like towns/settlements.

I do miss a city à la the Imperial City. I thought Solitude would be a little larger, I think they could've added atleast one large city in Skyrim - considering the scale of the landscape most cities seem small to medium sized.

Balmora, Skingrad and Solitude; favorite cities for each game. Unfortunately, I have quite a bounty in Solitude. I've done a lot of bad things there...


I'll be frank though, not one of those felt like a city. They're really all towns. Even the Imperial City in OB wasn't a city.

So far, the only "city" beth has made were the Imperial City sewers and Mournhold sewers.

Markarth reminds me HEAVILY of Minas Tirith and mines of Moria in LOTR. Anyone else?

Riften I'm a little indifferent to. It's a cool town, but I don't like the multi-layering of it, it's a bit confusing.

I LOVE Solitude and Whiterun. I spend most of my time between those two places and the village of Riverwood.

I've only been to Dawnstar and Windhelm once, and I dont see too much other than the college at Winterhold. I haven't started messing around with magic yet, so I'm indifferent to it too.

Haven't been to Falkarth yet. I keep forgetting to go there... o_o

I thought Whiterun was almost an exact replica of Edoras. I was expecting to see King Theodan sitting on the throne.

I really am enjoying the cities, riften is awesome, Markarth I believe it's name is has this whole very dark secretive vibe about it, and Whiterun has a dope looking tree....

i get a little of a fallout vibe when i visit some towns

Even the biggest "cities" are more like villages in terms of scale. I admit they are mostly very pretty but their size is a complete joke. I remember City of Daggerfall(in Daggerfall) and how big it was - hundreads(!!!) of houses, huge population not this "3 houses, 1 tavern, 2 shops" crap... And it was over 15 years ago!

each new elders scroll is getting a lot smaller and focuses a lot more on graphics and unique characters and sights, oblivion to skyrim has been the less dramatic change in size. hopefully next elders scrolls is about the same graphics as skyrim and instead of focusing on graphic it improves the size to about 3x the eisze of skyrim

Winterhold has what, 2 houses? And I just hate Windhelm with a passion -- can't find anything in that labyrinth.

I do like Solitude, Whiterun and Markarth though.

Skyrim does NOT focus on graphical quality. At all.

This. The aesthetics of the cities are amazing but they lack atmosphere and people. Whiterun, a major trade hub has a market with less than half a dozen stalls in it. I suppose it's what you get when you develop primarily with Consoles in mind. The average PC could run cities ten times Skyrim's sizes. So no, I don't dislike them but I do think they could and should have been much better.

I think the term "city" is over the top for what we have in Skyrim , there are more like villages to be honest , beautiful villages except maybe Solitude and Windhelm which are more like small castle towns .

I expected large cities , larger than Vivec of Morrowind . Hopefully in the next Elder scrolls game we'll have real large cities where you can get lost in , in a few years hopefully .

Perhaps the obstacle was that on a console there is only 1 gig of ram , so Skyrim would have probably struggled on a ps3 or xbox with large cities hence the choice of making many "villages" instead of 3-4 very large cities , well just a supposition , maybe i'm wrong

No he's not the only one. They are small. I mean winterhold, albeit destroyed, looks like it was only ever a street with some houses on either side? What a joke! And no "city" in the game deserves that title... villages for some, hamlets for most of them.

Yeah that's exactly how I feel.
I spent most of my time, for example, in The Imperial City. Just roleplaying as a pirate, enjoying the docks and the massive districts and the countless number of quests that involve that city as a whole and it's residents.
Is Solitude supposed to be The Imperial City? O.o I could see Solitude being the smallest city that Oblivion had.



I don't know what you've been playing Skyrim on, but it so does.
One of the reasons I love the Elder Scrolls games so much is because graphical quality is a serious focus, as is everything else.

Where was this in Oblivion again? Loads of pirates and ships...ah...no, no that wasn't in Oblivion until you modded it.

Im ok with every city except maybe falkreath and winterhold, winterhold has like 3 buildings that arent burned down? Complete dissappointment, and Falkreath is just weird, seems more like a village if anything.

Though I wish there were more NPC's in em, they feel dead at times.. If we had more NPC's in the cities we could also have more than 3 people in the inn at a time in the evening

In games, cities are always going to be unrealistically small. Back in the 1400s, a huge city like London might've had 50,000 people. Do you really wanna sit around waiting for 30,000 npcs and and their dungy little hovels to load?

Of course not. It's a small sacrifice for playability.

No one is asking for 50k people in a city, don't be ignorant about the topic. As Whiterun being the "center of trade in Skyrim" as the tool-tip says, you'd think it'd have a population bigger than...what...say, 50, 75 people? And for Winterhold to be like, 5 buildings and the college, come on now, it's underwhelming to say the least. The cities in the game to me are the most disappointing part. Sure they look good, but they're soooo small. To respond to someone else's comment about all of them being voice acted and whatnot, sure, I wouldn't mind having maybe 5 or 6 models of houses that are repeated or rotated with some more generic yet randomized npc's to fill them and walk about the city and go about their lives. The AI's they have in now do that without true scripting, they just have certain tasks they do. Also, it could fit in quite well with the randomly generated quests the Skyrim has. I see no reason why maybe 100 or 200 extra randomized npc's couldn't be added to cities. and say around early afternoon a large part of them would be in the market place, chatting with each other and peddling goods. It would really make a city feel like a city.

You were expecting a bigger dock?
Oblivion's cities arent THAT big...unless you're comparing everything to the imperial city. Some references to cities in oblivion would be helpful.

How did every Oblivion town look the same? Each had unique style and layout, even before Better Cities

As for Skyrim's towns, they are towns. Serve their purpose but don't really evoke strong emotions. Solitude's palace from outside looks real fanatsy-like though. And i havent' been to Markarth yet.