Game Skyrim Forum

Okay so i've been seeing this alot on Youtube comments or forums post about how Valenwood is way to small and needs to be combined with Elsweyr to be a full game or to match the size and detail of Skyrim. So here is what i thought No!!! why?? because ingame scaleing is not that hard Valenwood can be made just as big as skyrim or bigger it's like comparing a state and how far it is to travel one place to another like for example i live in Oklahoma to get from where i live to let say Tulsa that takes 2 hours in cars and could take few days on foot so if you think about it there is no reason to combine the two provinces together. But i also wonder what if it did happen and beth decided they should combine the two well for i think this we get less of the content do to engine capability and lets say some of the places we wanted to see are now removed because it's just to much for systems to handle.

There has been no attempt to keep each game in scale with its predecessors.

Daggerfall, a fairly small province, ended up at "life size" (several hundred miles of mostly emptiness).

Morrowind, a sizable "U-shaped" province with a large island (Vvardenfell, where the game took place) in the middle of the bay, was heavily reduced, so the supposedly 100-200 mile island was more like 3 miles. The entire map was "playable" (in all 3 dimensions). We never visited the mainland, other than the quarantined center of one city in the Tribunal expansion.

Cyrodiil (in the game Oblivion), the largest province on the continent of Tamriel, was supposed to be substantially larger than the entire province of Morrowind, but ended up only marginally larger than the island of Vvardenfell. According to lore, the Imperial City Island alone should have been nearly half the size of Vvardenfell, which means that the game could (and perhaps should) have been restricted to that island, rather than cramming the entire huge province into a nutshell. Thanks to unclimbable mountains, border areas you couldn't access, and other restrictions due to the removal of Levitation, the actual "playable" area may only have been comparable to Morrowind's, and there was practically no "vertical" aspect to the game.

Skyrim is another sizable province, and despite being slightly smaller than Cyrodiil in lore, was supposedly a bit bigger in-game.

In essence, Valenwood, Elsweyr, or any other province, can be, and has always been, whatever size in-game the developers found "appropriate" for the game mechanics. That means there is no reason to combine two small provinces, when each of them has more than enough variety, content, and culture to require the full attention of the developers in order to pull it off well. I'd MUCh rather have two well-made provinces, each in their own game, than to have one game with two cultures each "half done".

Are we talking about True-scale IC compared to True-scale Vardenfel, or True-scale IC being compared to Morrowind-scale Vardenfell?

Either way, i agree with the sentiment. Because of the heavy scaling in the games, there's no reason that a province should be viewed as 'too small'. At their largest, the in-game worlds are about a thousandth of their 'real' size. At a more easily verified size, they're something like a 50,000th their real size. So there's more than enough room to work with.

The problem isn't how big the provinces are, but the size of area Bethesda is comfortable working with.

Vvardenfell was depicted as around 200 miles from top to bottom, where the IC island was described as "over 100 miles" in length, if I recall correctly. In Morrowind, the game, the island of Vvardenfell was somewhere in the 3 mile range. The entire province of Cyrodiil was under 4 miles in Oblivion, and the IC island was well under a mile. In other words, Bethesda scaled down the bigger province by almost 50% more, because it decided to only portray a piece of the entire Morrowind province. The game map sizes were fairly consistent, only marginally larger for each game, but the scaling depended heavily on how much area they could populate and detail. Skyrim was smaller than Cyrodiil in lore, so they didn't need to scale it down quite as hard. Bigger province =/= bigger game map.

For the smaller provinces (Valenwood, Elsweyr), that just means somewhat less downsizing. Besides, do you REALLY think they could do justice to all of the different jungle and desert settings in Elsweyr, as well as the different sub-types of Kahjiit, and still be able to pull off all of the assets to make a convincing forest for Valenwood in the same game?

That seems extreme, as the entire Lake Rumare region is less than half the length of Vardenfell. But let's face it, i don't think Bethesda has any clue what the size of their world is.

Absolutely not. Though, as i've said in the Location and Setting thread... I don't think they even have the concept for a convincing or interesting Valenwood anyway.

Todd mention in a interview about new technology so a setting in Valenwood probably won't be that bad it seems consoles are already coming out with new specs i don't keep up with it but i heard xbox scorpio is going to have a built in gtx 970 which is a good card and would very well handle new titles really well just idk what ps4 is doing so who knows. but to keep on topic i do agree with what Kovacius said it's what i've been wanting to say but never had a way of wording it.

I support this. I'm playing Oblivion with the Valenwood Improved and Elsweyr Anequina mods and having a blast. I'd love to see what Bethesda does with these provinces.

They can't even do justice to the diversity of cultures of one province, and you want them to do two? I'd rather not have multiple provinces be mushed together and their cultures homogenized to fit in one game, and would also prefer to have more space alloted to one province to better flesh it out, instead of leaving it the same size and merely tacking another one on.

Sure they can. Oblivion is the only recent game in which Bethesda did not do justice to the diversity of cultures. I thought they did it well, and in a manner that served the stories of both games, in both Morrowind and Skyrim.

How many decades do you want development of the game to take?

Skyrim was fairly homogenized (and Imperialized) as well. There were hints of differences, though it was never really fleshed out in favor of the Empire-versus-Stormcloak stuff. The Nordic religion barely had a presence, even among the anti-Imperial Stormcloaks. .. it was separated into "Imperial religion" for the Empire, and "Imperial religion + Talos" for the Stormcloaks. You can find someone in the wilderness complaining that the Nords don't follow the old ways anymore, which basically lamp-shaded the whole issue. Rather than actually have them follow the old ways (at least a good chunk of them), they just have an NPC say they don't, as if that fixes anything.

It doesn't help that they turned the Nords into yet another "dumb warriors that hate magic" race. That even gave them a perfect opportunity to really express cultural difference, with some Holds being more in with the ideas of martial/war magic, in remembrance of their culture having strong ties with it through Clever Men, Witches, and the like, and other Holds being more anti-magic because of the Oblivion Crisis and association with High Elves (which in turn could play into a new vs old struggle, including also the old pantheon vs the new/Imperial pantheon). Instead we get two warring factions that feel the rather similar and only differ over some relatively minor details.

I disagree. As far as I'm concerned anyone unable to perceive distinctions between Orc culture, Forsworn culture, Stormcloak culture and Imperial culture is tone-deaf to cultural nuance.

I'm not talking about each race's culture, but the province's cultures. Yes, each race displays a piece of its culture, but the game world is largely dominated by the culture of the province. There's more to Nord culture than "Stormcloak culture" with "nuance", there's strong variations on it, from the Breto-Nordic culture dominating the Reach that looks more like what you'd find in High Rock, to the more isolated and conservative culture on the Eastern areas that stick to the Old Ways, to areas that have adopted new cultural bits from an influx of refugees. Instead, we see Nords with varying living conditions and disagree if there's 8 or 9 Imperial gods, and the Dunmer-held Grey Quarter.

Part of the problem is the map size. When you have a entire region that's governed by 1 city and has 1 or 2 nondescript hamlets, you can't really flesh out the area to have a different feel of how things operate within the larger whole. It doesn't help either when cities follow a formulaic pattern (1 Inn, 1 Weapon/Armor shop, 1 Alchemist, 1 General Store, and the region's guild hall), making the differences feel more superficial.

This, neither looking at the map or playing ESO has any relevance because of scaling, ESO had to follow map scaling, the result is that Vallenwood takes around 3 of the 5 zones, this also let them having zones for all races, first is Altmer, the 3 next is Bosmer and the last is mostly Khajiit. Ebonheart does the same, two Dumer, one Argonian and two Nord.


They could easy put the entire TES 6 in one ESO zone if they wanted.

i gotta Agree with Huleed on this one.. they have such a hard time showing the cultural differences in a single province, two at the same time would likely be even worse..

They MIGHT be capable of doing two cultures at once, but I doubt that they could. I also agree that they should stick to one province. While I would argue that Skyrim gets a little bit more criticism in this regard than it should, there was still more they could have done in regards to Nordic culture. There was very little mention of the Totemic aspects of their religion, and it was mostly the Imperial Pantheon's Nordic counterparts plus Talos. There was a bit too much focus on the Imperial vs. Stormcloak dichotomy and not enough on nuance in religion and politics (which often go hand-in-hand in Tamriel). It's a shame, because it is an aspect that Skyrim had some wasted potential in. In any case, one culture done well is arguably enough for TESVI.

not even that sadly.. it was almost entirely the Imperial Pantheon, with the exception of a hermit in the wilderness

Huh. Guess you're right. You're talking about the guy that does Kyne's challenge, right? I was thinking there was more mention of Kyne and some other Nordic Divines than that, but I guess not (well, beyond Kynesgrove, I guess). And some mentions of Shor and Ysmir here and there, but the Nords apparently like to change between Ysmir and Talos whenever they felt like it. But yeah, I guess that's it.

But hey, there's Alduin though!

but at the same time, from what I have read Witcher 3's world is relatively empty even though its large

Ireallyhateitwhenpeopledontusepunctuationandjustletheirsentencesrunonlikestreamofconsciousness..................

But I do agree - combining valenwood and elsweyr would be a mistake.

Sorry my grammar is ass

LOL!

Don't worry. I'm chiding you, don't feel bad.

But like I said - I agree with you. One province at a time is best.