Lol, most the data on discs are textures and sounds. The actual placing of objects is insignificantly small amounts of information.

I think the issue we are going to see with so many settlements is that the game world is too small. We will walk 5 minutes between towns and that isn't enough. With a team of 100 you would think enough of them would be mappers to make a somewhat larger world...

The Devs already confirmed that cites and villages would be "living, breathing". They have completely overhauled NPC's

Is Riverwood not classed as one of the 5 "massive" cities?

You have to consider that these are scaled down from reality. A lot. Even in Medieval terms, the Oblivion cities are small villages, but they are supposed to be considered cities so that is how we must approach the view. If the cities in Skyrim are dramatically bigger, we can consider those towns in Skyrim's scale.

Now, as for towns/villages, I expect, if the 10+ houses for minor settlements report is true, to be generally between the size of Suran and Caldera in Morrowind. In a 15 building town, I'd probably expect 10 houses, a chapel, an inn, a blacksmith, a mill, and an alchemical shop, as a random example.

Lol, no. It's a small town by the look of it.

Big cities are Whiterun, Markarth, Solitude, Riften and Windelm.

Riverwood hasnt been mentioned in much (any?) lore that I know of. The main cities in Skyrim are pretty much: Solitude, Winterhold, Dawnstar, Whiterun, Riften and like 2 others I forget.

I don't mind the size and amount of towns... aslong as the atmosphere is there.

I don't expect over 20 though, I like the thought process, keep it up. :goodjob:

They just better not be 2+ buildings with 5-10 people living there.

Need a bit more growth in NPCs and architecture please. Not asking for a hundred but about double or 3x as many NPCs we found in some of the little settlements we found in Oblivion.

Oblivion's towns were awful. Here are some statistics I gathered.

There are 10 towns in Oblivion.
The biggest one had 8 buildings (7 houses and an inn).
The smallest had 2 buildings.
The lowest number of residents in a town was 3.
Only one town had a service besides an inn.
Only one town had a chapel.
At least one town had no purpose whatsoever, having 3 buildings, 3 NPCs who say nothing but a rumour and no related quests.

Only one that was decently sized was the 2 group of Nords and Dark Elves living together. If most are around that size that would be nice.

I found Hackdirt a better town than that becase it had an inn, a chapel and a blacksmith, and the impression that it had been a fair bit larger before it was burnt. And nearly as many houses.

I was just going by size comparison but yeah I like seeing a town that has a believeable economy or source of trade and work. Which I think were good with the whole comments about destroying the villager's windmill and disrupting their economy.

Also hope their as interesting as Hackdirt.

its really weird some people just can't be satisfied

"we want more town and more people in them"

Bethesda ""ur wishes are our command."

"we want less towns and people in them because it might take away 5% of the wilderness area"

Bethesda" bit me."

I for one applaud Bethesda's effort to bring us more lively towns and cities that are worthy of being called cities and towns, in OB cities were smaller than villages and villages were..... 2 houses and a tavern.

I agree with you to a degree, don't want too many shops in each town. I think larger ones about 20 houses or so (it's plausible for things like Winterhold that were once considered cities in lore) 3 shops and an inn would be good (and possibly some other service/facilty). Oblivion underdid this but Morrowind overdid it. Just go on UESP and look at something like Suran where basically every building is a shop. In the Riverwood screen, I can see 3 signs, suggesting 3 services of some kind, one being a blacksmith. Probably also an inn and a general store. We can't see how many buildings there are but I would say probably around 10-12. You may feel this is a bit much, but also keep in mind that there are only 5 major cities in the game, so sometimes towns may need to be more self sustained, or going by it's location, we could excuse it as being frequented by travellers looking to climb the throat of the world.

In Oblivion you were less than 5 minutes away from a city at any point on the map.

Settlements are a good thing to have in the game. Not only do they make sense, but they just need to be there, and will hopefully encourage more aboveground quests.

Settlements in Oblivion weren't that great, but going as far as ten houses, and 2 shops? Nah..... I would be inclined to say, 3-7 houses and a tavern. Maybe even a few random house out on their own. Settlements need to be the right size, not too big but not too small. And for those who dislike the Idea of having 20+ settlements spread across the map....the fact is the land of Skyrim will be big enough to traverse for ages without hitting up a settlement of any kind.

So you want Oblivion sized towns pretty much exactly? I have to say 3-7 houses for towns is pathetic IMO. How can 3 houses be called a town or even a village? How big do you want the cities, BTW?


You sure about that? It's only about 16 miles squared.

You ppl talking about small or big settlements, and I agree that the size doesn't matter to much. I am thinking of a cool small settlement in Oblivion which name i don't even remember, but it had that cool quest: everyone in town was invisible, and i had to deal with a mage in a tower nearby to get the cure for them. That was simple, and fun. I think every settlement could have something like that, some mysterious thing going on that we have to solve. Thats what helps make fantasy worlds anyways.

More or less. Morrowind had 20+ settlements, was much smaller than Oblivion and it played perfectly.



What else could you do there? Sleep? Buy carrots? Settlements in Morrowind had more than one quests, they served as hubs to other locations too. Great Houses could ask you to do something at one place, there was still a little something to do there. In Oblivion, it's like there's this quest do it, and the settlement isn't even worth stealing from someone. Morrowind even had forts and ashlander camps. I feel like a lot of people here never played Morrowind to talk like they do. People all are concerned with settlements and such, while it's only a "return" to how Morrowind worked, and it was certainly better than in Oblivion.

Fancy fun quests don't make a fantasy world, it's the world itself.

Hence why I said that there were no cities in Oblivion, because the cities are really just towns and the towns are really just a small thorp or hearth.

I think you guys are talking about separate things. You're talking about towns, he's talking about 'settlements'. Either way, I agree with both of you.
I would like to see more towns and settlements.


- A proper town should have a few shops, a few taverns and some trades, preferably built around a resource or in economically viable location, not just in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully with over 15 homes. (remember we have to scale them down).

- A proper settlement shouldn't have shops imo, maybe the odd exception. Usually a small tavern and then maybe 3-7 houses as mentioned. Also built around a resource, for instance a mine. These can be more out of the way than towns, which is why they haven't grown as large.

A town is a settlement smaller than a city. A settlement is a place where people are settled. We're talking about the same things. I think about 5 or 6 houses is about the minimum for a believable settlement that is not just a farm or homestead. Anything sort of village or town should be at least that size or it feels very underwhelming and not believable IMO. I find it hard to imagine being self sustaining. They said the ones in Oblivion were not enough, but then suggests ones that are the same size, which I find odd.

I did like the smaller settlements in Morrowind, the person I was replying to had said you would be able to get lost for ages without coming across a settlement, but I'm saying that with the size, unless they happened to take a very odd and windy path, they'd run into a settlement pretty soon, or at least pass right by one. It was the same with Morrowind (once you were fast enough to not move in slow motion and assuming you're not just exploring the ashlands).

I was wondering when I posted, whether or not to specify what in this context I was refering to when I said 'settlement'. However I didn't think you would be facetious enough to bring it up so I didn't. I am well aware, thank you for the small lesson in semantics.



Fair enough. Then obviously his perception is flawed and he should be requesting a higher number of houses. I agree that 5-6 houses qualifies as a small settlement.

Something that size would be possible I guess, but to have a possible minimum of 3 for a town... that doesn't fit right. And I think to a degree they should make the sizes of towns dynamic and not set so like here's a town and here's a city, they are totally different, so much that you can have smaller towns with under 10 houses but also some larger ones (like Dawnstar) with 20-30 houses (assuming the cities have more than this, which I really really hope). Like how they had Caldera in Morrowind, which was the link between cities like Sadrith Mora and towns like Pelagiad.