I have not seen another thread on this topic, but it is something that has really irked me for quite some time about Skyrim. First let me say I love the game, I have been playing it on the Xbox 360 and have yet to encounter a single bug on either of my two characters. What's bothering me is the lack of unique design elements in Falkreath, Morthal, Winterhold and Dawnstar. They look exactly like each other and all the various little towns scattered about Skyrim, architecturally speaking. The little towns like Dragon Bridge, Ivarstead, Karthwasten and Riverwood all looking alike is somewhat excusable, but the lack of unique architecture in four Hold capitals really does bother me for some reason. This might just be because my favorite cities are Morthal and Falkreath, I love thier gloomy undertones and the unique areas they both occupy in the game world. Being unable to acquire a home in either just adds insult to injury as far as I’m concerned considering in oblivion I could purchase houses in every city save Kvatch for obvious reasons. What do you guys think? Does it bother you? Am I just being anol retentive?

You're being anol retentive . Anyway, the "small villages" look the same because of the "tools" available to them for building. Some of the communities are mining towns. They aren't going to have much going for them -- structures for living, a tavern, and a jarl's home (someone placed in charge). You also find out through conversation that times are simply hard. So, you're expectations are a little high.

It bugs me too, and not just for the house reasons. I got spoiled by playing Daggerfall while waiting for Skyrim to be released and got used to having a large number of places to buy, more in any tiny hamlet than my char can buy in Skyrim as a whole!

Each place I visit now is ... more of the same. Without even looking I know there will be a few "carry this to someone" quests, many "clean out this area" quests, some meaningless problems with some race or faction that seem pretty important but don't matter in the long run. There's nothing functionally different between one place and another, they're all just sets for some sort of medieval / fantasy Deer Hunter type game.

Agree. Someone will be along shortly to post a picture of Markarth and claim the entire game is lovingly and individually hand crafted.

Guess they haven't visited many village inns...

That's because Skyrim is just a part of the continent of Tamriel. In small countries you tend to see the same architeture over and over again.

It's perfectly believable that all cities in the same province look the same.

What bothers me is how small they are...

The lack of variety bothers me as well, the amount of copy and paste on some prefabs is a bit annoying, Inns are the worst, since they even recur outside of the cities as the same fecking prefab =/. Oblivion's cities were more unique then Skyrim's cities are but to me the dwemer ruins are also similarly... well to similar, too much over use of the same things. Sure skyrim is a large game and has to fit on a DVD, but I'm suspecting they had enough space left on the disk as to not leave all these places feeling "generic". The cities are a bit lifeless as well, I mean oblivion was a bit lifeless too, but this has gone even further, less NPCs around in cities/etc. I'm guess because the X-Box and PS3 wouldn't be able to handle that much more but it still just feels... lifeless.

well notice they are all "unwalled"

This is more my complaint as well, but I'm over it.

Actually, the fact that the towns all look the same bugs me just as much as the four hold capitals looking the same. They're built in different environments and their architecture does not reflect that. As I recall, if you look at the areas around Rorikstead and Karthwasten, they're full of wooden buildings. Yet trees are not real plentiful in their areas. What? Did they import the lumber? Why weren't they built using the locally plentiful materals? Stone. And Rorikstead is built in a relatively flat area. In the winter, it's going to be a cold, wind swept place. The buildings don't reflect that, too. They have the same structures as Riverwood, a town up in the forested mountains. Or Dawnstar, a city on the northern coasts.

I find that to be very jarring, personally.

But also notice that the size of the download, steam for me, was VERY small compared to games like Witcher, Witcher 2 and etc etc.

So alot of copy and paste hehe

I suppose the only one that is really excusable is Winterhold, although, I think a lot more ruins would have gave the town a lot more character. Sort of a newer town being built into the ruins of the older one, due to the event wit the Sea of Ghosts.

i dont have a problem with them looking the same i have have a problem with Morthal and Dawnstar not having a general store or a stables and morthal doesnt have a blacksmith.

i know that winterhold doesnt have a blacksmith or a stables, but theyve got an excuse (the Great collapse).

falkreath at least has all of the normal stores. (maybe not the stables but i think they do).

Better Cities mod here we come looking forward to see the cities 'rebuilt' into what they're supposed to be, in my opinion. Even Winterhold, I understand the city disappeared but I could find only a few wrecks; i'd expect to see all the home wrecks in the icy water below for instance, roads suddenly ending, and so on. But nope.

Nonetheless the amount of content is still impressive for each of these towns given the circumstances. Here's to hoping we'll get the full sized cities soon by the great team that did Better Cities.

The sensible argument would be something like, "Homogenized cultures tend to produce architecture of the same style." In other words, the Nords have a particular architectural style, and thanks to the inclusion of ruins, we even get to see a glimpse into the evolution of this style over their history--the difference between Bleak Falls Barrow, Windhelm, and Whiterun. Because the people from one hold to the next share the same culture and values, their buildings tend to look the same. Remember that just because the holds differ in flavor, the substance is the same--they're counties, not countries. This is expected, especially because the lore leads us to believe that the Nords are a proud and resilient people with deep traditions. You should expect little variation from city to city and town to town.

What I will agree with is the size of these cities. Every single city, whether major or minor, is simply too small and too underpopulated. I don't understand how these communities support themselves.

You've clearly never been to France

I knew what were you going to come up with by just reading the title. Yes. Those 4 towns in particular, are rather small and do not hold one's interest for too long, especially Falkreath. If I say there were 10 quests in Falkreath, I'd be really generous (no, not the "Fetch me that, bring it to me, kill those bandits" quests). Unfortunately, the towns in Skyrim constitute a really small amount of value, both in quests and unique NPCs. Hell.. even Oblivion held better offerings than Skyrim in this department. I don't know what's the problem is or better worded, why Bethesda didn't bother that much with making towns more appealing and having a longer interest value. I can mention a few games from 12 years ago that had 10 times more quests (and interesting too) than Skyrim (Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 comes to mind).

I was playing Planescape : Torment last week and I was astonished by it's RPG elements. I said "Now this is an RPG". That game has become my favorite game of all time AND my favorite book of all time. You are supposed to become more involved in other NPCs lives, not just "Hello, you look like you could do the job, go , kill , and bring me back that ". It's just a no no.

Hopefully, modders will fix Bethesda's game, like they did in the past. With Bethesda's games, it's like this :

Bethesda creates the working base, land and tools.
Modders create the content, the substance, they build a wonderful mansion on the land that Bethesda has procured for them, with the tools Bethesda has provided them.

I haven't, but history tells me they aren't homogenized.

EDIT - To add, my education is in art history. I can tell something that is of a French style over a German or American; there are clear differences if you know your art history. That said, the point is the Nords are fairly tight-knit and traditional; they have deep roots--so the expectation should be to find structures that are more similar than they are different.

This is a very good point; towns, especially in primitive societies, are always built with what's locally available, designed for their unique environments.

For the hold capitals, however, one thing bugs me in particular; all these towns are very old, Skyrim being the first home of humanity in Tamriel and all that. However the small holds are just a bunch of wooden buildings which could have been built yesterday. Take Winterhold, for instance. It'd a very old settlement which was badly damaged and has seen a steady exodus of people. Why don't they have, instead of a wooden village, some crumbling old buildings, most of which abandoned with a great pile of ruins down by the sea?

Falkreath is supposed to be an area of great fame in ages past, yet again, it's a bunch of brand-new wooden houses. There's no sign of age, or even the bygone greatness the locals talk about in any of the smaller hold capitals.

Because Skyrim is a scaled world. You probably wouldn't be able to run from one side of a state to the other in a few minutes like you do in Skyrim. Even the time is scaled to reflect this.

It does make sense to me. After all, in real life there are a fixed number of architects and they're often building by virtue of a benefactor that will have specific tastes or following trends in the architect's schooling. I imagine much the same thing occurring in TES. So I would expect to see little diversity in architecture within each sub region of the continent. But if you look to ancient building in Tamriel you do see diversity spanning the eras. It's there, but not so much as to be little more than a patchwork quilt.

On the size of the cities and villages: that is just a game mechanic. You cannot have cities with thousands of dwellings and thousands of NPC with the same graphical fidelity and complexity that you see in Skyrim; our systems could not handle it. So the towns and villages act as suggestions of larger concepts

This become too painful to watch in Winterhold.

I do think that alot of people have overlooked the working farms, mines and sawmills which are a lovely addition, but easily missed when you see a city that has more guards then gen pop.

They aren't exactly alike, as you've pointed out the atmosphere and settings are different as are the layouts of the towns. It would be more fun if every small town was architecturally unique, but I'd rather the stories and worldspaces be unique if I had to choose one over the other (Ugh, imagine if everything was snowy, for instance). And I do agree with you about the houses. Falkreath is one of my favorites and I would have liked to have a house there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine

Check out that link, particularly the part about "Rebuilding the Shrine." It's not wholly out of the realm of possibility that the Nords rebuild their structures, or at the very least are able to keep them up. Then again, Skyrim is likely a very dry place (more like Colorado than Washington), so wood is more apt to keep than rot.

Actually, that argument is pretty nonsensical to anyone who's ever studied architecture. People in this type of time period should be building for their environment with locally available materials. Most of them, even in the cities, couldn't afford to import their building materials. The Reach, the Pale, the Whiterun Hold, etc all have different environments and available materials. That each region produced the exact same architecture is utter nonsense.