I think Fallout 3/New Vegas did town's well with the settlements you can run into etc, but bigger settlements being self contained (Megaton upwards). Coming across a little working village would be great, from the sounds of Game Informer's info they went to a small settlement where NPC's were chopping wood etc (I'm in the UK so this is all from memory of what I have read from the scans/updates) so it sounds like they will do something similar in Skyrim (if this was a description fo a city then I apologise). After all Fallout 3 was after Oblivion and so we don't know that they themselves didn't grow to dislike the execution of towns in Oblivion.

Im confused. Every where one the net that mentions the 5 cities and 130 dungeons, they say '130 dungeons' not 130 places of interest and dungeons?

I'm all for less cities. As long as these cities are unique and interesting. I still consider Balmora to be one of the best cities in ANY game period. Let's hope a city in Skyrim steals the title.

And the number of dungeons does not concern me. What DOES concern me...

* How big are they?
* Do they feel unique?
* Do they standout from each other? In Oblivion, most dungeons looked relatively the same.
* Are they exciting enough to want to make me actually dungeon crawl? (In OB, I kind of lost that sense of wonder after around level 15 or so, they were too bland)
* Do they tie in well with quests?

Daggerfall cities were really only the town square, which is where everyone ran to the second they arrived in town, and usually fought a pile of guards from the mound in the center at some point.

Small, detailed cities/towns, and plenty of locations would be my choice.

Skingrad always felt like the biggest city besides IC to me, and even though it's only 2 streets, I think it seemed that way because all it's buildings were quite big. All were at least 2 stories and some were 3.

So if everything is included into those 130 places then exploring will be over quickly. Because there is not much.

Only 130 places... :sadvaultboy:

Well I hope those dungeons and stuff are big then.

I think I'm really starting to like the Nordish flavor of the game. At the very least, it seems names will be easier to pronounce this time around. Remember Morrowind? I didn't even attempt to pronounce some of those names....lol...

Everyone keeps sticking "Winter Hold" with the smaller towns and I have no idea why considering it's the capital of its county and a rival to Solitude.

Didn't it say that the 130 was down from 180 or so? If so wouldn't that mean 130 was regarding dungeons as opposed to places of interest?

There was a map in the art video with 5 city names in big writing (the ones listed by the guy you quoted). Winterhold was not one of them.

Do you have a link?

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/2858/skyrimmap.png

Yes, but, I'm only seeing "Windhelm", "Whiterun", and "Riften" in big letters. Okay, I can also make out Solitude. And also, wasn't Markarth Side that destroyed town in the screenshot? That can't be a major city if it's destroyed, that would be so lame.

Well, Markarth is in huge letters to the left of the canyon. There are only five places listed in that size font, it goes quite well with the quoted "five massive cities".

1. Solitude is in big letters.

2. Markarth Side is now called Markarth, and is also visible in big letters in the canyon, though it's slightly obscured because of, well, the canyon.

3. The city in the screenshot was not destroyed. The image we got does not show any people, but that doesn't mean it isn't or won't be inhabited. We thought it may be a well preserved ruin because of the lack of people, but we've been told that is a city by Pete Hines and also here.

Pete has also called it a Dwemer ruin and I'm almost sure he even called it something else, too. But, I called it destroyed since, you know, buildings were leaning/knocked over and moss covered everything and it just looked all around structurally questionable. But, please, could you circle it for me, because I am totally not seeing anything.

He said it is a Dwemer ruin and a city, but nothing more. The calling it a city was in response to someone asking about Todd's statement in the interview that there were Dwemer ruins built into mountainsides that people had moved into (like a city). There are no buildings leaning/knocked in that image at all (have you actually looked at it lately?). Apart from a few cracks in the tower (like I said, it's also a Dwemer ruin) it has no obvious structural issues. ICBF editing that image and circling it for you though. The name is obvious. In the canyon, lower left.

How many locations did Morrowind have?

I like that massive adjective they've been using. I really like the large capital cities. They are always the most fun for me.

No, that tower is definitely leaning to the right. And as for the "knocked over" part, that was poor wording on my end. I meant the leaning over buildings and the fallen over pillars. But, big cracks in a noticeably leaning tower perched on the edge of a cliff is a little more than a small problem. http://oi52.tinypic.com/2w3rmyp.jpg Just some other stuff I noticed, and there, I even edited the picture for you because it's not a hard thing to do at all.

Yeah, because they're Dwemer ruins. What's your point? It's confirmed as a city.

Well, the problem here is I never said it wasn't, I was asking you how we know it's a city, and I wasn't satisfied with the evidence you gave me so I explained why I had doubts. The whole time, however, you are being sort of a jerk, insulting my perception by claiming you shouldn't have to circle it because it should be obvious to find a blurry word written on a map photoshopped off a wall overlayed onto another map accompanied with the vaguest directions ever: "In the canyon, lower left".
Plus, everything you said had such a condescending arrogance to it: "Have you even looked at the picture lately?" "It should be obvious".

So, I guess my points were the following:
Circling something in mspaint is probably one of the easiest things in the world to do and it takes like 2 minutes to do, 2 minutes that would have probably just been spent on these forms anyways.
You said I was wrong about several things that I was right about and I showed you why I was right.

130 places of interest!

OK if they have better quality then I'm all for it, oblivion had 300+ locations but they felt like 10 because the cities were villages the villages were 2 houses and a tree, and the dungeons had nothing in them.

Kinda off topic, but I really loved how you, in Morrowind, could see dungeons on the map. You could bring out your map that came with the game... and look at some strange bay or island and point out that there was a dungeon. I loved that.

Even if it is 130 points of interest (which I doubt it will be) will it be a huge issue? In comparison to Oblivion the cities look bigger, the world looks more interesting from simply a landscape point, we will have mines (a mission to find out what is killing those NPC miners leading to uncovering a hidden mine filled with beasties? Yes please) that may lead to dungeons and other mines in a network, dragon's to seek/hunt. I got awful bored of finding fort after fort in Cyrodill and if I get more detailed unique POI's I will be happy with 130 (though I'm pretty sure it will be more than that).

I don't know about everyone else but I am very much feeling that Bethesda are making all the right choices with this, they appreciate their community and listen to them, and the one official screenshot we have of a city online already shows a settlement that is leaps and bounds ahead of Oblivion in terms of creativity and detail. Bethesda have had 5 years to get this right since Oblivion, so wat if Creation is an evolution of Gamebryo, I loved the world's created in Gamebryo, and something that takes the good of that engine and improves the bad sounds mighty fine to me. I cannot wait to dive into Skyrim and if Oblivion is the relative 'worst' in the series then I feel we are in safe hands.