I have been harbouring a grudge against Skyrim since I first started playing which the game itself has resolved for me and I am thankful and wiser for it.

The grudge was this.

The towns are not big enough nor are they densely populated enough with people.

And every town I entered I thought the same... for months.

Then... last night... I read a journal and I saw the bigger picture and I had a light bulb moment.

The Journal was written by someone from Tamirel and it explained EVERYTHING to me.

Skyrim is the back of beyond. Meaning its the middle of nowhere and no-one really wants to live there. The journal explained that the east and west coasts of TES world were where people wanted to be, where all the money and prosperous cities were. The guy who wrote the journal was retireing to Skyrim as he liked the bleak landscape and rustic towns and villages. Sadly he came to a sticky end which is how I came by his journal.

Now I see where I am in the world when I play Skyrim and suddenly EVERYTHING I see makes sense. Beth have done EVERYTHING on purpose to fit in with their vision of the bigger picture.

So whereas you might like a huge city busting with people that actually would not fit in to the Skyrim portion of the Elder Scrolls world as a whole.

I just wish I picked up on this way back when I started playing.

I felt the same till i started looking at the bigger picture... it improves the world a whole lot more don't it

I always thought of it as.... I don't really know how to put it, going back in time culturally and technologically?

Like the Roman empire followed by the dark ages. After the Oblivion crisis, Red Mountain erupting, and the return of dragons, things have gone down hill.

More npc would not hurt thou. How bout filler people such as "solitude citizen", "noble" or "Riverwood settler", Just to make them seem at least a little bit more crowded?

Yeah, sure, let that be an excuse for having not enough NPCs. It's due to console limitations, don't let a book convince you otherwise.

Ah yes what is arguably one of the first lands to be settled by men many millenia ago, and two elven races is barren and empty and is the reason for the sparse designs of the city.

Oh wait look at solitude so far away yet so prosperous on and whiterun the "trade hub" of skyrim has all of 13 structures 5 actual homes .

Anyway I'm glad honestly you got a jarring from the books, that's how you learn more about TES and the world you play in, but let's not use it to make more excuses.

I have to agree with the OP, once I realized that Skyrim is a giant tundra forrest type area I liked it a lot more. Beth really does settings well, exploring Fallout 3 made me feel that the area was a giant post nuke wasteland.

I never did get why people expected big cities. The only ones I was bummed with were Morthal Dawnstar and Winterhold because they are so tiny they don't even need their own zone. Winterhold makes sense though. I still find Dawnstar to be too small its a port town basically and those are always larger

I'd take a few more travelers on the roads to interact with and a few less bears and wolves.... That would be keeping with the OP's ideas of Skyrim being between the "good" places to live and just be the place you need to get through to get to the "good" places.

I think a lot of it has to do with the Nordic attitude to life and time. The Mer are long lived anyway, permanence is just a part of their make up. The Cyrodiilic Empires and pantheon were always based partly on Elven ideas. Nords live more in the moment. They have their heroes and kings of the past, and their hopes for the future, but change doesn't bother them as much as the other races. Death is part of life. Jarls are hereditary, but the High King is subject to vote. Everything is less permanent to them than to the other races. "There's gold in the there hills." "Let's build a village." "The gold's run out." "Right, let's move."
Obviously they do build cities, and have an advanced civilisation, but those things are simply less important to them. These guys don't even have proper creation myths. The world starts with the oldest story you know. And look at marriage. It's not "let's start a tradition by having children", it's "we may be dead in a year, how's about it while we are still alive?"
Without this attitude, Skyrim might possibly have been the power in Tamriel, the centre or non-Mer civilisation and culture, rather than Cyrodiil.
The land is the way it is simply because the way it is happens to more important to it's inhabitants than the way it was, or the way it will be.

This thread is positive.

It aims to explain what many perceive to be a downside to Skyrim is actually a nice design making the whole Skyrim world work and fit into the Elder Scrolls world.

Read it and take it whichever way you want. I could not care less.

On another note. For all the people prattleing on about console limitations. The reality of the world we live in is that the developers have to work with whatever tools they are given. If they have to make Skyrim a certain way with explanations being the limitations of the consoles then so be it. Presumably when the XBox 720 comes out they will be able to show us some of the more densely populated costal regions?

There's no point complaining about console limitations. Its those same owners of the console with their limitations that fund the greater portion of the game. Just be grateful its not like GTA where you have to wait 12 months after the XBox verison to get the PC version.

closed for clean up.


I deleted more than half the thread. One person didn't actually read the opening post. That is your perogative, but if you are not actually going to read anything, then you should not bother to post. You missed the point to the OP by not reading further, and it derailed the thread.

There is a lot of negativity in this forum, and we got to see some additional fine examples of it by how other members then behaved in this thread. By being insulting and taking things to personal attacks. I will be reviewing the posts I deleted, as they were flames and some of you may be hearing from me.

Here's the deal - constructive criticism is always fine. If you don't like a topic, there are literally thousands of others to move on to - surely you can find something you like. If you see someone making a derailing post, report it and ignore it. Period.

It goes further. If The province is the tower, and the people the stone, their natures are linked in a way more profound than you would find in our world. Read http://www.imperial-library.info/content/nords-lack-creation-myth. Change is good, stability can be very bad : "(That's what happened to the Dwarves, by the way: their minds froze to death by thinking one thing over and over until poof, gone in a belch of a mountain.)"
It's a possibility that the violent and relatively backwards nature of the land and people are an essential part of Lorkhan's design, Mundus being a state of continued existence through change, and Skyrim being the prime example of this. They do have permanent cities and traditions, but if they fall, the people will adapt, those that were tough or lucky enough to survive.
You can't future proof a city, but a population with short, harsh lives, used to violence and upheaval, will survive it's loss, and build elsewhere. Why do all the smaller settlements look not just a bit rough and ready, but pretty much the same? Possibly because that's how you build a village quickly, when the last one has been destroyed.

No offense to the op, but it's not that hard to gauge that from foriegners atleast, that skyrim is a miserable place


For them

The OP raises a good point & it's a way of thinking that i have slowly come around to, However, it would be nice to see some of the towns made a bit bigger if only to justify a tavern & general store in a place that only has three or four homes.

If i want big bustling cities i get an Oblivion fix, Skyrim does not offer that & it's a decision that i've grown to respect albeit not love.