Obviously we don't know at this point in time as there has been no mention, but one of the least immersive aspects for me in oblivion was walking into a Tavern to rest, take in the booze and make recipes with my pestle, whilst looking at a lifeless window texture. I want to be able to look out at the quiet streets, the starry skies or appreciate that I'm indoors during Storms, but we were never able to appreciate this as all windows were just flat textures with a bit of light eminating from them. I've just reinstalled Oblivion and going to try out some of the amazing mods that never tried in the past, including Immersive Interiors, which adds transparent windows and give buildings in larger cities the ability to see outside.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34199

If Bethesda has already got this covered, the one thing I don't want to see is NPCs vanishing in front of doors. Perhaps have them go through the door and disappear once they are out of LOS.

Are there any other mods that you guys have seen and thought to yourself, "You know this feature would be great in Skyrim"?

The deadly reflexes mod is amazing I believe they already have that covered in Skyrim though

I agree with this. While the windows thing never really bothered me, having people disappear while standing in front of a door was a bit annoying. I don't know how easy it would be to make them go through the door and then dissappear (since it may stop players, other characters, etc from activating the door but there has to be another solution. I don't mind different cells, but a more pleasing transition is a must

no cells would solve this, i doubt that would happen on consoles but pc should have no problem with it.

Wow yeah, I really hope Skyrim has more of a single-cell for cities instead of like, 80..

It's not just looking at the view, but it would make other very cool things way easier to implement, for example;

• Standing outside and assassinating an indoors NPC while you're on the roof of another building.
  
• Whilst breaking in, guards might see you from the windows, gives the added stealth aspect of ducking under windows and perhaps timing guard patrols for high-end (castle) sneaking jobs.
  
• Breaking large windows and entering buildings from them
  
• etc.

Plus just the whole seeing a loading screen every (literally) 30 seconds while in cities is really, really annoying

To be more productive system-wise, I think they should make cities where the buildings are entirely open, so you can look outside from a window and so you can leave a building naturally. Reduce the loading screens between dungeons, cities, and the world (fast-travel).

Well I believe we might see open cities again because of dragon battles. If this is the case then we can hope that Beth. took one step further in making the world more unicellular.

I too want to be able to look out through windows. As you said, it'd be really immersive in the tavern scenario.

I think it would be great to be able to look outside and see people walking down the street or even look inside of houses.

Fully open cities and houses would be great, but not sure how feasible this will be.

If anything, I would be very happy already if they just created the illusion of seeing the outside world when looking through windows in cities. Especially combined with environmental effects like thunderstorms being heard indoors while it is raging on outside. That would give a really great atmosphere when you sit in the tavern with a mug of mead, hearing the storm outside whilst sitting close to the fire while listening to boisterous Nords with their tall tales

It'd be neat. In the past, the interiors were separate levels (presumably so that the engine need not track and account for the interior and all of the loose objects in each room; that the PC usually can't see anyway).

If they do it (even in the new engine ~or if someone did it for FO3/NV), I'd assume it would be using some sort of portal/viewport tech like you see in Fallout 3 that restrains what is visible to a small vantage and ignores the rest. Arcanum let you enter through windows (it wasn't so much of an issue for them though). Still it would improve the TES experience a lot I think.

Sitting on a balcony across the street and sniping something through a window with an arrow would be epic.

Regarding disappearing at doorways, something I saw in gameplay videos for the game The Saboteur (though I never actually played it):
Most interiors are not open to the player, but instead of having them be Western movie backlot cardboard buildings, they have working doors that NPCs can enter and exit. Just open the door part way, have a black void (or glowing yellow void if it's lighter inside than out), and then the NPC passes through it.
Use this to mask separate cells a bit... hey, you could even have the ability to knock on door and have someone come to the door, instead of just entering everyone's house like a weirdo.

If you can hop from a balcony to the roof, I expect guards to do the same (or it will not be epic IMO ).

**One time my PC was sniping passers by from the roof in the Temple quarter, and a guard leaped from the ground to the roof to give me the "Law Breaker" speech.

(A ridiculous surprise at the time; I hope that don't happen in Skyrim.)

Different engines have different restrictions.

If Fable can have open houses, why can't Skyrim?

This would be neat, but the machines they're designing the engine/game for simply do not have the power to handle it with out some sort of trickery.

It would be awesome indeed, and of course as a destruction wielding magician you should be able to just torch that house to pieces

Assuming that this engine handles landscape in the same way the old engine does, it would be impossible for caves not to be in separate cells. You can't walk below the land level in exterior cells. However, that assumption could be completely wrong.

I don't care if I see moving people outside windows; I realize it would be too taxing to create a completely seamless world with see through windows. However, one of my big hopes for their new engine is that they have developed some kind of automated method to generate interior cells that fake the scenery of the stuff outside the windows. At a bare minimum, I hope they created their engine such that the amount of light coming through windows reflects the weather and day/night cycle outside.

Yeah I've thought about this.
It all depends on the cells.
No seperation between exterior/interior cells.

The only reason of this is due to performance issues.

Oblivion's Gamebryo engine was HORRIBLE at handling many things at the same time. I mean it lagged completely after just 4-5 shadows... hehe.
I think Skyrim's engine will handle things like this a whole lot better.
Crysis had big enemy camps with lots of AI. No seperation of cells there.
Red Dead Redemption had towns too. No seperations of cells there.

However, these two games didn't have as big towns as I suspect Skyrim to have...
We will just have to wait and see.
My hope is that the technology has developed so much in the past 5 years that we can live without constant loading screens :pinch:

I really do hope that we can see out windows in Skyrim at the very LEAST. It was rubbish that we couldn't in Oblivion, we just had a lousy unrealistic blue light. Sometimes it was more natural white looking, and other times it was just unrealistic plain blue. They really should just open the windows so we can see out.

The simplest solution is to let NPCs open doors that appear to lead to a black expanse when outside. When inside, they would appear to walk into a walk into a bright hallway. Zelda did it that way.

That sounds good to me.

I'm hoping that all cities can be open but won't complain if they aren't. Shops and other interiors I don't care regardless if it has to be a separate cell or not. I almost prefer it like that in a weird way.

The Witcher did it that way too. (the entering from the outside part)