There's a library in the College of Winterhold.

Its that joke of a library in the CoW. daggerfall guy, it was a bookshop in the IC.

Joke is right. There's maybe ten books you can look at without being arrested...

They probably dosent even have a library. Thats why all shelves are closed, and not even the archmage is allowed to look Clever orc, that one!

yeah whats up with that? i tried killing the orc to get his key but he doesn't die either. =/ dumb

That's what I was thinking. I've got more books in a house then that "Library".

Skingrad is my favourite city (especially with the open cities mod) in any Elder Scrolls game. It gave the impression of being big by clever use of space. There were tight streets and tall buildings is some parts, parks, back gardens in others. And even the streets didn't feel too empty because of the guard patrols and NPC schedules.

Whiterun is just too open to pull off that trick. It feels like there are hardly any buildings, the people walk prescribed routes without any point. "I work for Belathor" guy at least has a reason to be walking past my house, he's delivering wood, but why do all the others walk past? It's not on the way home for most of them. Windhelm is the most Skingrad like in terms of design (not look), but it feels too linear. Solitude looks the most like Skingrad, but because of the wide streets, it just doesn't feel that big.

Maybe if they put in taller buildings to balance out the wider street, or had some back streets, It might have felt larger or more compact.


Edit: I was never a fan of the Imperial city. Overall it was large, but each district felt wrong somehow. Can't explain it.

The problem with Solitude is not just the wide streets. The only reason it feels as big as it does is because the castle occupies a big chunk of land and the rest of the city is basically a straight line. Personally I find Solitude really annoying, but that has more to do with the total disconnect between interior and exterior spaces. It's bad in other cities, but Solitude is the worst.

Imperial city was big yes. Only problem was that you only spent time in the marked district and the other districts was just filler content.

I wish they actually made them cities and not just small towns.

Skingrad had it's castle towering above the city (In a separate world space if you didn't use open cities), which to me, made if feel far more epic and gave it that deepest darkest Transylvania feeling to it. The Castle in Solitude isn't really that visible despite it's size. When you first walk in, the castle just blends into the mountain behind it. From the Blue Palace, it's too far away to be impressive. Perhaps if they had built the castle onto the mountain, what am I saying? Of course, if they had built the castle onto the mountain, they could have gained that same domineering feel.

I live in a castle, so perhaps I pay attention more than most about design of them in game. Castles were built to intimidate. That's it. Defence was always secondary, there is only so much you can do in a siege (most of it involved eating your horses), so their best form of defence was to intimidate the enemy into not attacking in the first place. Solitude just doesn't have that. Putting it where the Blue Palace is would have been better to achieve that affect, as would shoving it on top of the mountain. Right now, not only is it not intimidating, it's not even very noticeable.

And you are right, the rest of the city suffers because of it's poor location choice.


Edit: It has a very fitting name though.

If your complain is that it all seemed more small scale, than that IMO isn't a problem. I would have liked for Skyrim to feel small compared to the big might imperial province.

Problem is, Skyrim's cities (albeit brokendown) seems just as grand as those in Oblivion. Even worse, Morrowind seemed bigger than both of them. They don't match up well in terms of scale with Oblivion being the worst in relation to the other two. Cyrodiil just should have been so much more. More good roads, more trading activity, etc.

My problem with Skyrim is its towns. The 4 cities are just fine, but the 5 towns just appear like villages that all look similar. It wouldnt have hurt if Bethesda gave them a bit more character. Add a few stone buildings, a low wall, etc.

It's hard to achieve the same detail with the same size you would get by copy-pasting randomly generated content, ala Arena and Daggerfall.

And yes, it has been done before in other games, but in those most of the game plays in that one or more city.

whaaaaaaaatttt??

I'm just saying, no matter how good a sequel is, there will always be people complaining how there was 'more' in the first or second. Seriously, nostalgic moments should be over by now

I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would even build a city on a stone arch. It's only a matter of time before it collapses into the ocean. It might take awhile, but it is inevitable.

Anyways, I do agree with you about the castle. I might not live in one, but after spending several years of my early childhood living in Spain, I have visited a few and I've been studying them ever since. I'm actually rather surprised the defenses at the gate are as weak as they are, given that it's really the only way up to the city. The rest being rather inaccessible. Regarding the castle, no, it's not very imposing. At the very least it needs some large, imposing structural element like a powerful keep or strong gatehouse.

In maybe a few hundred thousand years due to erosion; salt-water and sea-air and all that. 'Cause compared to the stone arch, especially with how goddamned huge the anchors are, that rock weighs about 100,000 times as much as the city sitting on top of it. In other words, it'll fall down on itself before the rock falls

On the note of the cities being small in general, too, you have to remember if they made them bigger in scale as well then they're have to up the ENTIRE gameworld so that the city:world scaling didn't seem off (hell, it does right now if you ask me). A larger gameworld might be nice but it's hard to retain detail the bigger you get.

im not sure about the bigger part, but oblivion cities felt more lively to me.

Game cities are always a conundrum. Making them big is awe inspiring the first few times. But, since we go back and forth to the them quite often, really big cities become a slog to run through. Also, as someone pointed out, most of the large Imperial City was just filler. I went in most districts once, outside of the Market. So, game cities are usually smaller than any real city. However, Skyrim is a rural place, and towns and settlements can be quite small. I have been in a number of towns recently in Colorado that are smaller than Dawnstar or Morthal. A couple were smaller than Rorikstead. This is not uncommon in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and other states out here. So, I don't see anything odd with how a rural province is portrayed.

Could the cities and towns have more in the way of buildings and NPCs, sure. But I would want more content to go with the buildings, rather than just something else to run past on the way to a merchant. Another thing to remember, is if the cities got much bigger than they are now, they would have to be in multiple cells. There is a reason places like Freeside and the Strip got split up. Oblivion did not have as much going on with the NPCs, so those cities could be bigger.

Skyrim's main cities (not the towns like Dawnstar and Winterhold) are all bigger than Oblivion's cities were. Excluding the Imperial city, which was sort of a unique thing. It's the capitol of the empire, so of course it's going to be the biggest.

Except Morthal, Dawnstar, Winterhold and Falkreth. They are more like villages.
Go ahead and look at all major cities. They all have different walls and different style. The feel thing i wrote about is ofc my opinion.

I'd have to say that they are missing something, but not what you said. See 200 years ago in Cyrodell(bad spelling) was at peace, other then the gates, so people had more leisure time but in Skyrim with the war, and harsh climates and now DRAGONS it's harder... That and cyrodell was an imperial city, so they have imperial style of building city's compared to the nord way.

What i think it's missing is... more stuff happening, npc's doing more, they seem to do the same thing day in and day out, they need a random event that will alter their lives for a bit.

And that of course gives you the right to look down on anyone who isn't, and call them a casual as if "casual" were an insult. The cities in Skyrim aren't so populated because Skyrim is somewhat of a backwater. That being said the cities are way more unique, and special in their own way (just look at how different Markarth, Solitude and Whiterun are for example). Quality over quantity man.
Also, I think they used the space in Markarth and Windhelm to make the cities look bigger that they actually are. Markarth is built into the mountain and gives a feeling of towering over the Reach and Windhelm uses narrow streets and tall buildings to give it a big city feeling.

That is actually something that I would hate. Albeit most of the citizens in Skyrim already just spout a few words at you repeatedly, it still just feels better for everyone to have a name and house. I would hate not being able to enter some houses, it would ruin the feel of the game. One of the coolest things in the Elder Scrolls to me was the ability to go into every single building, its just one of those awesome things.