I suppose the way i would define it is like this - We don't know yet

From what we can see, the cities are quite massive.

However, what I enjoy more is the relative scale is far more appropriate. If you look at an Imperial Guard in Oblivion and compare his scale to things within the city, the city feels small and cramped.

If you look at anyone in the trailer for Skyrim, the buildings/landscapes feel far more appropriate in scale.

The Cities will probably be larger then what Oblivion had but they'll probably contain the same amount of people. I can't wait to hear more about cities.

it doesn't have to be physically bigger. Just need few hundreds of filler NPCs swarming the street, and it'll feel much more massive.
Maybe get bigger and taller buildings packed close together and make the city structure much more dense and complicated.
Buildings would literally be stuck to city walls with more buildings on top of each other with narrow catwalk and stairways.

Bigger cities with the same people would svck big time, I already thought the cities in Oblivion were too deserted.

Havent they said that there are going to be a lot more unnamed npcs? And isnt that kinda short for "we're gonna have more npcs"? :biggrin:

Morrowind's cities were just as "deserted" as Oblivion's cities. Can't oversight Morrowind's similar shortcomings. However, Morrowind didn't have an excuse because they didn't have an experimental schedule system. I'm sure Skyrim will have many unique NPCs with all their own schedules, I mean they have double the devs they had before and are far more comfortable with their AI system since now it has been in existence for over 6 years, so they can do it much more quickly.

Yes, ilike everyone had gone to the movies or somethin'.

I'd say 10 000 NPC (as opposed to 1 000) in the largest city seemsaedquate. But i'm disregarding technical limitations. Also, visible population desnisty should vary, decreasing from center to outskirts.

*EDIT*
One zero too much.

No we're not. You must've not read it properly. There's 5 massive cities, that doesn't mean there aren't 3 slightly smaller cities, does it? And it's been 200 years, has it occured to you that cities could've been destroyed?


Where did you get that info? I sure hope not, I hate un-named NPCs.

The best thing to do is just wait and see. There's no way we can tell what they mean until we play the game/see more footage. You shouldn't put down the game before you see it. I see this far too often on these forums, give Bethesda a chance. Skyrim will be great.

I think it was said in the Todd Howard podcast that came out not to long ago, I might be wrong though... Unnamed NPCs like the travelling merchants in Fallout I think would be great. As well as crowd fillers, beggars and refugees. Im not saying all of these should be unnamed npcs etc etc, but I think its a worthwhile trade-off to get more ppl on the streets.

And Bethesda haven't made me disappointed for ish 10 years, Im pretty sure the end result will be spectacular.

Because everything has to be taken iN CONTEXT, massive probably just means massive compared to what we have done before. So, bigger than Oblivion cities, probably twice or thrice as big.

Yeah, I tend to think Assassin's creed or Kirkwall, but the thing is Kirkwall you could only go to certain parts 9and was the only city in the game), while in AC the core gameplay function revolved around having those urban environments.

I expect them to be bigger than Morrowind and Oblivion cities, but I don't know or have any real speculation on the actual scale.

The thing I disliked most in Oblivion was the complete lack of smaller and medium sized towns. There were itty bitty villages, but they weren't very cool. In Morrowind there were lots of towns and cites. There weren't many as big as Balmora and Vevic, but at least they were everywhere. Something you would expect to see in a place where people actually live.

No I didn't Misread anything, Im not talking about Skyrim, on all the maps each Province have atleast 8 cities, going by your logic Oblivion should also have just 5 cities no? they stated 5 massive cities because those are the main points, they could have said 5 large cities and 3 smaller ones, they didnt. on the maps(not the one Skyrim pweped out) each city major city is detailed for each province.

and those cities -weren't- destroyed because they still show up on Skyrims map though all of a sudden they are less major and High Hrothgar the city seems to appear out of nowhere(gonna look again ), namely an obscure one in the earlier podcasts dealing with Bethesda studios game dev office (showing the rebels main city windhelm?), they've been brushed to the side potentially omitted and thats not like it didnt happen in Oblivion either, namely the city of Sutch.


yeah 8 cities for Skyrim

What do you mean by Sutch? Sutch was never a city to my knowledge. It wasn't on the original map in Arena. It was a fort in Oblivion and that's all I remember it as being. As for the cities that aren't the massive ones but are on the map, they are most likely the smaller towns. Morrowind only had two cities and the rest were just towns. Oblivion had one massive city with smaller cities. Now Skyrim has 5 massive cities, many towns and even more villages. I'm sure Dawnstar will be in the game and we already know Falkreath will be in it too.

Edit: I looked up info about Sutch and it seems it used to be in an Oblivion demo. Not really much of a loss because Sutch had never been on any maps before. At least they made Fort Sutch in it's place hehe.

With regards to morrowind I speak of the entire province which numbers in 8 major cities.



Sutch was northeast of Kvatch and east of chorrol.


updating.


Don't get me wrong if their going to put emphasis on massive then the number of "massive" cities isn't something to hang on you know?

anyway I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME fine pre-Oblivion maps or pocket guide maps, but from what I found Skyrim has all her cities :tes:

I hate un-named npc's. If you are going to throw a bunch of npc's in the streets, the least can do is NAME them.

Massive from TES perspective is around 15-20+ houses IMO. Don't expect a 1:1 scale of New York or something crazy

"Massive cities" in Skyrim = Vivec + Balmora + Sadrith Mora (in MW) or Imperial City (in OB)

Well that is completely unrealistic for a city in any game frankly unless the game is based only in that one city. Plus, TES is akin to a medieval setting, which no city was the size of New York since it wasn't until the last century that cities were the main living setting for people. However, I expect many more than just 20 houses.

I'd like to point out that Oblivion's cities weren't that small in area, they were just poorly laid out and lightly inhabited. Built more vertically, given appropriately-sized housing and families (smaller houses, larger families), and any of Oblivion's cities could reasonably be called a city in the medieval sense. If a typical Oblivion city had say 50 inhabits, denser housing and appropriate occupation (i.e. families rather than 1 or 2) could see the population blow out to 1000.

It's already been confirmed that Minor cities will have 10+ buildings. (That's like 2-3 times more than in Oblivion^^)
Then massive cities will have to have at least more than 30 buildings, if massive is really massive...

And, currently confirmed numbers of cities:
Major Cities: 5
Minor Cities: 20

Also, every city is said to be truly unique this time, so it will feel more alive than it did in Oblivion nonetheless. (Every big settlement is unique. The city of Markarth Side, for example, is set into dramatic stone cliffs, with buildings teetering on the end of sheer drops.)

Vivec in all the games "limitations" rofl stomped on every City in Oblivion with little trouble when you really look at it, I hope they do not consider Imperial city in Oblivion a template for anything near massive for Skyrim

And what are you referring to a minor city? I wouldn't consider a tiny hamlet with 5 buildings a minor city. The only cities in the game were the main ones. Everything else was just a couple of random buildings. Nothing wrong with that, but calling them cities is a little absurd.

Yes, it IS absurd, but what I mean is that these cities (or rather towns or villages) seems to be the equivalent to the hamlets.
And since they call them minor cities, we'll probably also see some hamlets in Skyrim as well, so it seems Skyrim will be quite a lot more crowded than Cyrodiil was.