Dragons can attack cities and I suppose this also include the major cities as well as described here:
"Five large cities, comparatively larger than those in Oblivion, are available to explore (and to be attacked from above by dragons)..." http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skyrim

Yet I have read through several topics claiming that the cities are in cells once again (and yes I am lazy to research this myself). The devs have stated that these dragon attacks are not scripted, but if cities are in cells how can this work? Do dragons have the ability to enter cells? And if that is the case what will happen if we leave the city/cell with a dragon inside - will it come out for us or will it be an easy way to escape?
Could it be that there is a certain probability that a dragon will spawn in the city cell and attack? I hope not!

I can't remember exactly where, but I had heard skyrim cities wouldn't be separate cells. Although, don't know how that'd work either, they're so massive, could you immagine the lag?

Based on the locations of the cities, I'd say they are probably not in cells. Good luck building a wall tall enough to stop people from falling or climbing down into Markarth, and at least a large portion of Riften is right up against the water or on it, which would be kind of hard to put in personal cells.

I also have read somewhere that the cities are not in a separate cell.

Well that is indeed good news if they are not in cells. Does anybody have a link to something that confirm this?
If that is the case a moderator should delete/lock my then worthless topic. Sorry guys.

I don't think all five cities will be open. Some will and some won't. Even if all of them were closed it wouldn't matter because Dragons wouldn't come from the sides they come from above and a closed city doesn't have a ceiling or roof.

They're talking about how they would still be in the cell when you come out so there would suddenly be no dragon above the city when you exit through the gate.

I reckon they'll all be open. If they are perfectly capable of keeping some "massive" cities open, why not the rest? Remember the engine will be much better than in Oblivion.

Well maybe it's not so much a technical drawback. Maybe they want to have a closed city with a drawbridge or something to add to the variety of the environments?

Oh, that;s what you meant. I don't think that would be a problem at all. When people say closed cities in the sense of TES games, I think they generally mean being closed in so that you have to load them up seperately in a seperate cell.

Yea not so much the loading as opposed to just having some variety. That way all fice cities aren't just wide open. Markarth looks like it's secluded and closed off and it looks great.

Yeah, we're not talking about the design choice, more referring to the technological limitations that the Gamebryo engine imposed on Oblivion. In oblivion there's the "Wilderness" worldspace where you have all the trees, moutains, roads, etc, then each city has it's own World space, so you'd have the "Cheydinhal Worldspace" and "Bruma Worldspace" and so on, and when you enter the door, it transports you into an entirely seperate world space. You could hop the wall from the inside and be greeted only by the terrain LOD, likewise you can hop the wall from outside to be greeted by a bunch of muddy textured low poly buildings. This is part of the reason why Oblivion didn't have levitation or jump spells.


Just to clarify, "cell" and "world space" are not the same thing, so thats not the word to use.. cities in skyrim will be in the same "cells" as everything else, but the cities in Oblivion were in different "worldspaces"

If they are cells / worldspaces, they could just spawn a dragon far away from the city (in that cell or worldspace) and have it fly overhead. :shrug:

Yeah in oblivion if you scaled a city wall from inside and looked or weren't outside there was endless clear land and sky spawn the dragon in the worldspace but far away if the cities are closed. If open theres no problem

Forgive me if I'm wrong but don't we get a decent look at cities in the trailer, I don't recall any of them having big walls around them.

EDIT: Just watched it again and its hard to tell, only obviously un-walled on is the one that is on that huge arch.

Markarth looks like it's walled in/closed off.

It's in a canyon. There's at most one edge where a wall could be.

None of morrowinds cities and towns except for mournhold were in a cell.

None of Morrowind's NPCs did anything besides standing around either.

And thus is the wonder of almost 10 years of progress.

I think that most cities will be open.

The biggest issue is that in order for it to seem special you cannot just have dragons flying around and landing in cities like giant pigeons. They will stop feeling epic if you run into a dragon five dozen times throughout the game. The same ting happened with Oblivion gates. The first on was interesting the next two were increasingly dull, and the rest were just a drudgery. Monsters stop being monsters why they are a dime a dozen.

In fact that is the biggest issue with most games they toss so much at you that they have to increase the stakes so much that eventually you’re fighting the gods themselves over a tiny loot drop. The only thing worse than no dragons is too many dragons.

Indeed. It has to be an "OMG WTF THIS HUGE DRAGON IS TOASTING EVERYTHING! RUN! TAKE COVER! GAAAAHHHH!!!!" experience for it to be meaningfull at all. It should come perhaps 2-4 times average before you get to slay a dragon so it feels that much more epic when you do kill one.

I don't see what the big deal is about open cities, Morrowind had nothing BUT open cities except say Mournhold, so to those who played way back then, this is just Bethesda bringing back some of the nice things Morrowind did but Oblivion didn't. If the engine is optimized appropriately after their test runs with FO games then it should be easily doable, hell Oblivion had mods that made open cities.

They dont need to make new cells anymore, thats all old school stuff. I think technology has progressed past that.

well if there are cells its simple the dragon spawns inside the cell and commences its attack