I would like to add that it is not that hard to make a city either. I modded one in Oblivion in a gameworld I made up for myself called Taris. It had about 15 buildings with shops and people with daily routines and everything. It took me about three days. Imagine if you had a team of game designers getting paid money to to it. You'd really think their cities would be more impressive.

ETA: I understand that the programming part is the hardest, and I admire that, I admit I am not a computer programmer, and I appreiate having the TES Set. But you would think that the people not programming the game, but designing it would be able to use it just as well. But I don't know everything about all the ins and outs about it all.

lol, are you serious? Their team had to build the entire game. You had one city with every aspect pre-built for you.

Your edit still doesn't change anything.

Sure, you can easily build cities with the presets Bethesda took months to create.

Windhelm is the fifth, not Winterhold

am i the only one who considers the inside of the buildings as part of the city?

count those, and you have much more than before. add in the stables, nearby farms, etc and each city is as big as the imperials city(main part, not waterfront)

FTFY

Actually I made that edit before you made this comment. I wasn't talking about programming the game. I was talking about designing it. And if I could design a small city after learning the TES Set, I'm sure they could do a better job. And you are right, it doesn't change that fact. But thanks for pointing it out.

Idk, really how much more could have been fit in.

If you consider how buggy things are as is, imagine if they had mathematics cities bigger too

I do think this could be a area where consoles constrained the design.

(not a flame, I play on ps3)

Markarth has 80 npcs not including guards, I dont think that is small

Yes but in any other industry this would be a criminal offense called false advertising.

It's not a huge deal that they exaggerate, but they do create an awful lot of disappointment, they should avoid it for this reason alone.

Markarth is a medium sized town for my expectations of a TES game. I would love to see Bethesda try to create a seeingly big city. Even if that meant there were back drops in the city which were inaccessible but had people moving about. I think what bothers me the most is that they clearly defined these cities as being little fake towns. If Solitude had areas that could be seen but where inaccessible where there were simulated people walking about, and so on, it would at least make the city seem more real. When you stand in Solitude its like a a little fake city. I guess I am in favor of a litrle more artificial limitation on where I can go if it will bring the look and feel of a true city into the game. We get the same explorable area it just seems more legit.

Markarth has 80?

yeh check the wiki

Had they used proper occlusion technology and not such outdated rendering techniques or used the very, very simple solution of dividing the city into cells (like the gameworld's more seamless cells or, preferably, like the cities themselves and their own completely separate cells divided by a loading screen; the Imperial City in Oblivion is a prime example of this method), this can easily be bypassed. If push comes to shove and they can't use those very viable solutions (the latter being much easier), then tell them to stop pushing the damn hardware too much on graphical fidelity. Gameplay first, graphics second. Design the game with a goal in mind and if you can't figure out basic methods of putting together the technical aspect, then do the simple/sensible thing and don't squeeze the hardware until it crumbles and content/design cut simply for shiny graphics. Arena and Daggerfall were on far more limited hardware, yet had far larger cities. Why? They maintained their design vision instead of trading it in for graphical effects.

I forget about Markarth sometimes. Defiantly one of the best places in the game.

Ok, just what exactly were you expecting? A world twice as large as Daggerfall with 10 times more detail? Anyone with half a brain could have figured out that given the open world nature of the game and the size of the area in which the game is set to take place that many locations such as cities and towns within the game would have to be scaled down in order to fit, but if it is MASSIVE cities you want then have no fear there are solutions to the problem.

Solution 1: The game will no longer be called Skyrim but instead Solitude and the entire game is set within the walls of the city of Solitude, of course you will no longer explore the countryside of Skyrim but you will get 1 massive city.

Solution 2: You scrap the open world nature of the game and each location within Skyrim exists within seperate cells, you no longer get to explore every square inch of Skyrim but you can stretch out the size of the province since the areas parts of cities that you cant get to dont require as much detail, the cities will be massive but you wont be able to fully explore most of them.

Take your pick. Unfortunately we cant have it all and the folks at Bethesda only have a finite amount of resources, while one approach to handling the world and the areas within that world has its strengths it also has a number of weaknesses as well, you just have to choose which approach best suits the type of game you are trying to make.

But seriously wasnt there a thread on this http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1236490-skyrim-is-too-small/

They could probably easily create cities that surpass Asssassin's Creed's cities... but they need to keep a large number of factors involved as well. Bigger does not equal better - if it becomes a headache to navigate, then there are problems. They also have to fit it into the game world, and leave plenty of space for beautiful scenery and dungeons... or combinations of beautiful scenery and dungeons like Lost Valley Redoubt.

You have to leave helgen! Jk, have you done the main quest? Or civil war quest line?

Cheers

Its funny, I was watching a guy on youtube called "The Amazing Athiest" and he mentioned that every single piece of advertising that we see is all lies and that the only way companies can get us to buy thier products is to lie to us.

I bet its a laugh-a-minute at your house!!Get a grip.Bethesda create a masterpiece of a game and all you can do is complain about the size of the cities and make out as though we've all been duped into buying the game!
How many hours into the game are you?? one hundred and how many?sounds like the apparent 'tiny' cities must really have spoilt the game for you!!
I guess out of all the thousands of Skyrim players,theres bound to be haters like yourself and a couple of others in this thread.Grow up,appreciate that no game will ever be perfect,and appreciate that already the game has entertained you for over a hundred hours and its barely been out a month! People like you can never be satisfied unless their complaining.When you grow up,real life is going to be one hell of a disappointment for you if you feel 'lied to' about the size of the cities....

That's about as succinct as it gets.

+1 for truth

And to the guy that said big cities would be a "headache to navigate" - Yeah I guess . . . . . for ADD riddled morons, but for everyone else . . not so much.

Thanks. Go back to whatever pathetic RPG you were playing prior to this.

Ah. So now we're fisking the marketing materials. Good luck with that. I'm going to go play Skyrim.

I think they are massive regarding what you can do in them. I love the cities. Except Morthal; damn Ancient Dragon ALWAYS wrecks the place as soon as I arrive. I have to go through there and finish everything there before starting the MQ

Am I the only person that really enjoys this game?