This topic has probably come up before and I understand the technical limitations but still, I think Bethesda has gone too small.

Let's take Whiterun for example: It's supposed to be the "Jewel of Skyrim" and a busy trade hub yet it has less people living in it than some bandit camps. It completely ruins the enjoyment and immersion of the game when you step into any of the cities or villages. What kind of a Jarl would send soldiers to protect 5, yes FIVE buildings of Riverwood? Dragonsreach keep is completely disproportionate to the actual city as well. The building is bigger than all the buildings in the city *combined*. Not only that but due to the scale of the cities, they are completely boring and lifeless. The same 10 or so npcs run the same script and say the same thing over and over. You can run through a city in 30 seconds and see it in it's entirety, that's just disappointing.

And let's look at the civil war. What *possible* strategic value would there be in conquering 10 shacks. Why would anyone attack Morthal? There is nothing and no one there of any value to anyone.

Falkreath is supposed to have great significance to Skyrim. Why? Again, nothing there but a handful of shacks.

The lack of life, space and NPCs also mean that there is nothing at all to do in the cities. The serve as places to unload loot and nothing else. Riften has a few things related to TG but that's it. 99% of the game is spent outside of the cities.

I still love the game immensely and will buy all the DLC's once they come out, but it's just so disappointing to see all the missed potential. I hope that in future TES games the cities are given the attention they deserve.

So true, we need bigger cities with more intrigue and quest-opportunity than dungeons. Cities and towns are supposed to be more alive than the dungeons. Dungeons should consist solely of puzzles and guardian monsters. Anything else is either a cave with beasties/bandits, or a settlement.

People have been saying this since Morrowind. It was a common complaint back in 2002, for instance, that Balmora was too small. The same complaint came up in 2006 when Oblivion was released. Some will say it has to do with the limited processing power of the XBox in the case of Morrowind and the XBox 360 in the case of Oblivion and Skyrim. I'm not so sure. I think it may well have been an administrative/workflow decision. As a modder, I know how much time it takes to make a few houses and populate them with NPCs. It is time-intensive. And I believe the front office made the decision to cut back on town size so that they could ship these games on schedule.

Games such as assassins creed have multitudes of citizens walking through each city

And those games have nothing at all to do with anything. They don't live anywhere, they don't have inventories or AI apart from 3 reactions and they vanish into walls or walk endlessly.

I don't think they cut down on the size. Look at the imperial city. It's certainly bigger than skyrim a towns but it doesn't live up to what it should have been. Most cities in oblivion were two street towns. I think you're right that its too labour intensive to make decent sized towns

Morrowind seemed to do a good job with the cities but Beth doesn't do metropolis very well

The larger the cities become the more generic the NPCs and dwellings in the city become. I think Skyrim's towns could be a tad bigger, but I don't want to have to deal with another Vivec.

I do like the fact that they thought to out farms and mills around the towns in this game. Aside from the smallness I thought they did the cities and towns well. It just bugs me when a town is two houses and a mill

I'm not saying they should be huge or that they should be like Assassins creed cities but something like 20-50 houses in the major cities. Every city should be the size of the IC in Oblivion with places like Whiterun and Solitude being bigger.

I mean, how do you Roleplay living in Riften for example? Let alone Falkreath. Also, I think people should go play Oblivion again. The towns there were twice the size of Skyrims.

It wouldn't make sense for the cities of Skyrim to be the same as the IC.