The ability to support more than a handful of Bethesda's painfully underdeveloped NP characters, in one game-world, not all at one time because most of which are in their own divided cells?

It is possible, my friend. But our mutual friend here, Bethesda... He just doesn't like to give it the time or effort.

I agree with all this, I didnt really take into consideration the 16 square miles thing. But still the towns and cities should be much bigger. For me not every part of the game has to be available to walk through. Why not make the map vastly bigger and take carriges and caravans and ships accross vast distances. You could maybe just watch out the window if you wanted to, move around on the ship etc. stuff like that. Just a few ideas. And you dont have too see every person and talk to them. You just have too know there out there somewhere, mending shields, cutting down trees, making arrows, building city walls.

I still maintain that 'ol gamesas would probably think we're asking for too much.

The PC players will say "Oh, don't worry. It'll be modded, because consoles can't support it!" Please, quit excusing Bethesda's laziness on the tying up of loose ends in their titles. Yeah, a beautiful looking mountain range and some dynamic lighting is really nice, it may even set you apart, but the inherent stupidity/lack of diversity in the AI tends to ruin all of the open-worldness. What good is a fantasy world if it isn't the least bit convincing? Both the PC and console communities shouldn't have to worry about modding in larger populations/cities, because it was something that Todd promised us.

I would like to know, then, how would you be able to play in a hypothetical future game where technology was developed enough to represent a virtual nation as big as a small country in real life. Something like, say, 8,000 sq miles. Since this seems to be what you're hoping for.

An area that vast would be completely impractical. And I guess the land of Skyrim is supposed to be even bigger than that. How many days would it take to travel from one place to another? How many hours to just visit one building? Asking for something that realistic is absurd.

Although maybe you just meant that it would be better to have a single large city, in which case, to make it large enough to be realistic, you would run into similar problems. Not to mention that we would be talking about a completely different game. Going into adventures to raid ancient caves and temples? Forget about it, we are in the city. Climb the Seven Thousand Steps to meet the Greybeards? Not a chance, the mountain alone would be as big as the city or bigger. Having the sense that you embark on a journey through the wilderness, unaware of the dangers that await behind a mountain range? That's out of the question as well. The whole narrative would have to be confined to the city, calling for a radically different take and experience. If that's the game you want, there's nothing wrong with it, but suggesting that Skyrim could've been that doesn't make any sense to me.

Anyway, I don't understand why some people have so much trouble believing that a map like Skyrim's, which is pretty damn big if you ask me, can be an acceptable fictional representation of a large province. I grew up playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time and thinking that the Hyrule field was as big as Yellowstone Park. It's what the game implied, and even though it wasn't literally right, it felt right. And that is all that matters.

And this! This is exactly what Bethesda DID with Skyrim, don't you get that?

You came wondering why the population was so small, but now you're condoning it?

Really? i think you mis understand. Where are they then, the bakers, masons, carpenters. Like I said all the people it takes to run a civillized city. There not represented at all. Which makes it feel unrealistic. The great king who rules over a handfull of people?

There are some mods planned that hope to add lots of civilians to the game. For instance, maybe 20 people in the taverns, some leaning against the wall, and stuff. That's the plan. They won't have much dialog, but that's better, as far as I'm concerned. They will have the common few lines of interaction speech.

There are lots of animation resources already in game, that can be used. Simple things like sweeping a broom. I think that will really add to it.

Bakers and fisherman would be really cool. I am disappointed in how there isn't fishing, even more so because you can grab a fish out of the water ... like that could happen.

I'm sure they planned for fishing, as well as may other things. The game just wasn't finished. It never will be on consoles. Now it's time for modders to finish the game for the PC. That's just how this company roles man they are pimp like that.

even there's no true "MMO" really exist, the "massive" is over-rated.

because due to the technical/hardward limitation.

unless you sacrifice the graphical quality for quantity.

the best tech approach to acheive a "believe-able" game world, is through MMO approach.

your "daggerfall" may appeal to you, but there will be another bunch of ppl like you then create similar threat, "discussing" about this "believe-able" stuff again.

a PC is stand for Personal Computer. If you really looking for "believe-able" game world, look and wish for the true MMO came out.

I hate MMOs. I only play single player games. I just can't get into playing online with people there is always more people than not that ruin the experience to me and break my immersion. Only card games and board games and trivia games and such are fun online to me. Just an opinion. Never understood why people like WOW and such. I tried it, and a few other MMOs and I just felt like I was online with a bunch of people not playing a part in a game world. Maybe someday I'll find the right people to play with, but there will always be greifers and noobs that will ruin my experience. If I want to be around other people I will turn off my gaming system, or play Second Life or something. Yeah, I said it.

A game's "population" has a lot to do with your own imagination I think. Like if you imagine it's bigger than it actually is than you can believe that if you want and it can make it more enjoyable. Because TES games give NPCs schedules and such, then they end up not doing as much when it comes to creating NPCs and houses because there's a schedule and resident that correlates with each. I wouldn't mind if they went more along the lines of other games though, where many homes are off to the side/behind other homes and you just can't walk back there because of an invisible barrier and you just pretend there's nothing important in that area, yet you know it's there so it seems more populated. In Grand Theft Auto you can only go into a few of the hundreds of buildings and yet you still feel like it's a huge city with many many people because the buildings are there (the traffic and NPCs help too lol). I guess it all goes back to what I first said about your imagination though. I just pretend the world is bigger than it is and it helps a little. But since every house has an assigned NPC(s) it's kind of hard to imagine that there are more people in each city/village in TES games. Just thinking out loud here... Don't know if all that made much sense.

Sounds like you tried the wrong MMOs. LoTRO was a great experience for me (before it went FTP). Rift was OK, until the WoW trash arrived on the scene. In general, I enjoyed my time online until I needed to unplug from them for a while... and I thank God for the ES series for providing me that outlet to do so.

The whole point in MMO's is to not get absorbed into the game, it's setting and any relevant lore that's associated with it. Its more about getting together with like-minded people who enjoys both the social aspect and the gameplay. MMOs are not for everyone, and definitely not for the faint of heart (nor thin skinned individuals).

I would of like that.

Yeah, that's true.
I follow you. I hadn't really considered that. That's actually one of the talking points of this game is that if you can see it, you can go there, at least until you hit the invisible wall -- the boundries of the game world.

I have tried imagining the world and the cities bigger than what they are I just cant get my head around it. Still love the game though. My question is would you sacrafice the whole 'if you can see it you can go there' thing for a bigger world, bigger citys, armys, war etc. Maybe not to the extent of dragon age 2 but some sort of middle ground. I think that would be heaps better.

The thing to remember is that Skyrim is a open world RPG, not a "medieval simulator" game, so fun and playability are more important/better than being completely realistic. Would huge city populated with several thousands of NPC be more immersive? yes. Would it be cool? yes, the first time you actually see it. Would it be fun? no. I don't know about you, but I have other thing to do than just play Skyrim, so I like the fact that a quest consisting of bringing a shipment of iron ore to a blacksmith on the other side of the city does not take three hours because Bethesda decided that realism>fun. It's not really hard to handwave things like the lack of baker and stuff by going, "oh, such and such npc is actually a carpenters, he's just never working when I'm around, the lazy bum" and other reasoning of the like.

I really don't want to sacrifice the ability to explore everything just to add the illusion that the world is bigger than what it is. It would actually completely break my immersion in the game and make it worse since once you realize that much of the depth is an illusion, it just make everything else seem smaller. It would also be against the genre of the series, since it would not be an open world anymore, just a series of pretty corridor.

Because consoles and most PCs don't have the ability to run that. For consoles to have the fault the run-of-the-mill PC would have to be head-and-shoulders above, which I doubt is the case.

People obviously don't remember Daggerfall. I'm sorry but that game world was way too big, most of the people were generic and had no use at all. I'm glad Beth decided to focus on quality over quantity unlike in previous games like Morrowind and Oblivion, because exploring places like Vivec and the Imperial City was a chore.

Also, it has nothing to do with the consoles, most PC's wouldn't be able to handle it either.

how much did you actually encounter when riding across daggerfall? I'm sure it wasn't the lush, living world of skyrim and was probably pretty bare. I'd rather have a more realistic landscape with smaller cities then big cities with a barren land.

As for console haters, wait til the next gen...i prefer consoles over pc because i don't have to update my machine every year or everytime a new game comes out. It's more affordable and better in many aspects then pc, plus many games are console only because pc games don't pay and are becoming an outdated platform with each new gen of consoles

How could I have possibly misunderstood when I read exactly what you wrote..?

You specifically said "And you dont have too see every person and talk to them. You just have to know their out there somewhere, mending shields, cutting down trees, making arrows, building city walls."

I specifically said "This is exactly what Bethesda DID with Skyrim, don't you get that?"

Where did I misunderstand, again..?

You two should agree to disagree. But Aureus I think you are misunderstanding him. He means not all towns are as functional or developed as they could have been. But I also see your point that it's still a pretty good job. You are just happy with the population and odin wishes there were even more people because it would be more realistic.

Sorry dude I obviously didnt read this properly the first time. Dude you rock, You have summed it up very well indeed. I have more to say on this topic but am busy at the moment .

you want a "believe-able" gaming world? until AI system can be feasibly implemented onto PC, there's no such true "believe-able" game world. All games come with scripted routines.
to have that kind of world with current pc tech, it will end up with buggy, hardware-overloaded experience.

there's where the MMO is the alternate way, instead of relying on script/programming, the other people are doing the AI (PC/NPC, depend on how you perceive them) for you.

Maybe so, but even with the technology available today, Skryim could have come a lot closer than it did.

Actually, number of the preferences matters, NPCs now have less things to load on themselves. Probably why they cut off so many clothing options after Morrowind in the 1st place, as well.