To put it simply, the less interior cells you have, the more connected and open everything is. However, the more interior cells you have, generally improves performance.

We have to see what this "new engine" is capable of.

Well.. I don't want to go through doors to get into caves, but if it could just automatically act as an interior cell once your inside I'd like that.

I'd like everything to be open and connected without seperate cells but I'm sure its just wishful thinking.

It seems the more advanced technology gets, the harder this becomes to achieve.

I would like it to have none, but that is just not possible peoples systems wouldn't handle it, I would play the game with interiors over not playing the game at all any day

As much as we want thdere to be no interior cells for smooth sailing all along the way, that would be overlag, dont you think?
I mean, I would absolutely love if caves and buldings were all part of one world space. (I of course assume cities to be an exterior cell, because that was a better choice all around)
But the toll that will take on some computers would be harsh.

Considerin' that the Elder Scrolls is set in a universe where you have various critters like ogres and trolls and various beings of other planes who's slipped through cracks in the fabric of space-time wandering around the wilderness, not to mention those bastards across the province border that you've had a running war with for the last five years, it actually makes tons of sense that major cities and towns would be walled off from the outside world. The performance boost is just a bonus.

making the game entirely exterior is sort of a touchy subject
you may not notice, but for building interiors to logically fit into their corresponding buildings (in mw and ob), the buildings would have to be much larger
plus, that would mean rendering all the interior cells and npcs
I just foresee unneeded complications

Yes but they do not wall themselves off with loading screens, they wall themselves off with walls.

In fact, this could be applied to walled cities so that they could remain seamless but still be interior cells.


Levitating over city walls anyone?

It should be no harder technically to have exteriors and interiors form continuous worldspaces than it is to have exterior cells loaded on demand. Instead of calculating which cells to load based on distance alone, start with distance as your measure but penalize it for each portal zone or occlusion plane you have to pass through to reach an area.

It's not so much about what I want as it is about what is realistically achievable. Dungeons in exteriors aren't. Or full cities completely in exteriors, everything in exteriors. Unless you completely change the way things load but even then...

Cities in exteriors with interior buildings may work, if the cities aren't too big and NPCs aren't so heavy on performance on this new engine. It would be nice if that could work, especially if it's enough reason for Bethesda to bring levitation back.

I think constant loading screens like in Oblivion really killed immersion for me. If anything lessen them substantialy so that if your in a building theres no loading inbetween rooms and only have a load for BIG buildings as well as doungions etc.

I would hope for it all being one open world where i can go anywhere without a loading screen though...but thats being very optamistic

Not if they were zoned. As in, the first room of the cave or whatever is always loaded, but then the rest loads as you get into the cave. Games as old as Unreal Tournament 2004 used techniques like this to reduce lag. Very different world types, I know, but still, it's something to consider.

As much as I enjoy the notion of everything being open to the exterior cell, the idea of what that'd do to my performance - even with a high quality computer like mine - scares me. I remember quite well how unstable Bethesda games can be, and I feel as if having separate interior cells at least helped to prevent losing too much information to drop outs through auto-saves.

I do miss the cities being in exterior cells quite a bit, and I feel that the notion of having cities inside of walls in the land of Skyrim is doubtful. But the idea of having caverns as a part of the exterior cell, as well as major buildings? The amount of lag I'd have to put up with loading up all of those objects alongside distant backgrounds that I don't even see...

Point is, I'd prefer something similar to Morrowind. But interior cells as an essential part of the game, and they never really bothered me immersion-wise.

Depending on the new engine, which ever options can give us a stable frame rate.

It's 2010. I don't want to see loading screens at all.

Speaking of, does anyone actually know what they meant by "new engine"? Gamebryo was just a rendering engine...

If they could pull of a Zoning style system we may be able to get the seamless world we all have been wanting...If it were true I would jump for joy.

cities exist in exterior. buildings off that exist in their own cells.... if cells even exist in this new engine.

but im expecting a lot more this new engine.

and as for what they mean by new engine. they are referring to the graphics engine... gstaff said it was developed in house and is brand new.

It really just depends on this new engine.

I'm almost positive cells will exist, if this game will be anything like past games... I don't think many people's computers could handle loading an entire world all at once.

Im hoping the new engine is all they seam to say it is so far. If so then zoning could be a good possibility and you wouldent have to worry about your computer not being able to run it since its not loading the whole world at once, it seamlessly loads zones in the background so you dont notice.

all "they" say is that it's a new engine.

So I'm gonna go with yes it will.

It sounds like you are describing exterior cells, because really, that's what they did for Morrowind and Oblivion, pretty much. They just called it a "cell" instead of "zone".