» Fri May 27, 2011 6:58 am
Vivec takes the cake for me.
(You know... Because it actually looks sort of like a ton of wedding cakes embedded into the sea, with like 4 layers and stuff, and there's totally bridges and stuff between the cakes and it's totally weird and... Um... Yeah.)
But in seriousness, Vivec does well because the continuous nature of the maps in Morrowind just lent itself to the sheer size of Vivec; from the air or swimming between the cantons, you could just admire the whole grandiosity of the city. It was absolutely nothing like The Imperial City, which you could never really get a good feel of how large and splendid it was because you were most likely fast-travelling all over it. And because of that fast-travelling, you never really felt that it was big... And it really wasn't, I think. It takes about a minute to get from the jails to the stables through the main city by foot, and that's saying something; it'd take a LOT longer to get from the silt strider station of Vivec to Vivec's palace, partially because there were lots of specific bridges you had to take, but regardless, it actually is a lot further of a distance, methinks.
I think the only part of the Imperial city that really had anything going for it was the Waterfronts district; it's openness really made it the most beautiful part of the city... And it's considered the freaking slums of the Imperial City, darnit!
I will give credit to Skingrad, though. It's easily the most interesting of the Oblivion Cities, since it's so layered and crowded; it really lends itself to feeling like a big, hefty city.