Well put. The only true criticism I have of the game, is that the towns and cities are much worse than Oblivion's. At least in Oblivion, each city had a unique feel. I find that all the cities and towns are very generic in Skyrim, bar Riften. Bear in mind that I haven't visited Solitude or Winterhold yet.

Mmph, Bethesda was too busy handcrafting dungeons to care about cities and guild questlines

I created a thread very similar to this not long ago and could not agree more about the lack of development in all four hold capitals you mentioned.

Winterhold needs an overhaul, definitely. Keep us up to date on what you're doing in the Mod section when you get started!

Looking forward to this; I hope to see some similar things done by the community with the other towns.

I have to say I agree with you on this, OP. Winterhold was my biggest disappointment. When I rode into town on my horse, I actually said out loud to myself, "This is it? What a dump!"

Winterhold is the worst! It only has 3 or 4 named NPCs that you can interact with. Karthwasten has more NPCs.

I tend to agree. Winterhold and Morthal, I can rationalize their appearance. One was literally devoured by a landslide and has the College to compensate, the other's lore does imply that it is little more than a damp hole in the ground already. Plus, Morthal's proximity to Solitude would have made it being a full fledged city redundant. But Dawnstar and Falkreath? Missed opportunities. Both could have been walled capitals, they had the personality and breathing space around them to back it up. Falkreath is right next to the Cyrodiil border, it should have been a pretty important trade center. And Dawnstar used to be the nation's old capital and most important port.

On the other hand, development time constraints exist. At some point decisions had to be made about what they had time and manpower to put in and what they didn't. Making two additional whole cities on par with the five originals was not just a question of slapping a wall around them and calling it a day. Would have needed several unique meshes and textures to give each a unique look. So I can cut Bethesda some slack, too.

I don't really have a problem with those towns or any of the towns, well except for Markarth being bugged but that's not a big deal.

Falkreath is definitely the worst.. Things around the city are cool.. Like the Dark Brotherhood and some Daedric quests..

I don't mean to be a Bethesda apologist here but, oh who am I kidding....

True, I see exactly where the op is coming from and agree there is so much more that can be done with the towns. But all that potential is based on some very creative groundwork (the towns as they are now)... groundwork mind you, that is hampered only by Bethesda's optimistic sense of ambition. I think what they already have in place is worth appreciating, and not nearly worth complaining about in comparison to some other aspects of the game.

However I also would have much preferred better designed cities (and more residents in general) than hand-designed dungeons.

Also, in case anyone's interested- even though I haven't even been to all the towns/cities yet, I think of those I've visited so far, Windhelm is the most fully-realized. It feels the most like an actual city to me and I guess that's why it's my favorite (not counting the npcs' attitudes).

I like how the "busiest port in Skyrim" has one ship docked at it

I agree with you there, I'm sure there was no way Bethesda could've fully fleshed out all the cities with the time constraints given. But it kind of disappoints me that they gave up allowing more time for the game in order to have the "epic" release date of 11.11.11. With all the bugs and broken questlines already plaguing players, this game would've benefited from many more months of development, which is why these towns were so underdeveloped in the first place.

Is this the part where someone comes in and tells us all that one house = five million houses?

I'm also looking forward to seeing what the modders do with these cities/towns.

Whiterun and Solitude will be the easiest to improve. All a modder needs to do is spawn more NPCs and buildings (and ships, for Solitude).

Winterhold, because there's virtually nothing there, will have to be built almost from scratch.

Windhelm was fairly decent. Again, it just needs more NPCs and buildings.

The rest of the holds I didn't really have a problem with. I can understand why they're so small. People in Skyrim have plenty else to deal with besides building towns.