Border Areas and Room for Improvement

Post » Sat Sep 28, 2013 9:12 am

Something occurred to me while reading posts in the "Location" speculation thread for ES6.

Our Bethesda friends are making some major mistakes with regards to immersiveness whenever they build cities in a province close to a border.

Some examples:

Oblivion: Bruma and Leyawiin. I don't recall there being any roads that lead to Skyrim or Black Marsh for those respective cities/towns. You'd think there would not only be roads, but occasional traders or travelers along those roads.

Furthermore, neither city seemed to 'look' like a border city. In other words, for Leyawiin, I would have expected to see a number of Argonians, along with a special trading area by the general market, and maybe a group of customs officers/inspectors or border patrol agents.

Skyrim: Markarth, Windhelm, Solitude, Riften, Falkreath. Here it was ESPECIALLY glaring. Markarth should have had a road leading to Dragonstar, and there should have been Ra Gada and High Rock traders EVERYWHERE. It's a 'silver city', which would attract tons of business.

South and Southeast of Falkreath are roads which appear to head towards Hammerfell and Cyrodiil, but stop. There's never ANYONE on those roads - not imperial troopers either patrolling or on their way to reinforce units in Skyrim, no traders, NOTHING.

Riften should have dunmer crawling out of the woodworks. I can't recall seeing a single one. The market should be really busy, too, especially with border traders.

Windhelm was perhaps the worst. There should have been tons of trading activity, along with boats coming into port from Morrowind and even as far as Akavir.

And, of course, Solitude should have seen TONS of naval traffic from HIgh Rock, Hammerfell and beyond.

I think it's time Bethesda hear from the fan base and start paying more attention to these sorts of details in order to make cities more interesting and immersive. It should get to the point that each city of any size should have chapters for several, if not all, of the major guilds - at the very minimum, you'd expect to see Skyrim with Thieves Guild chapters not just in Riften, but in Windhelm, Solitude, Whiterun and Markarth. Same for the DB.

N E 1 see this differently?

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