Fair enough. Was sure that by now Bethesda could create cities as deep and lifelike as Novigrad in Witcher 3 though. It's probably an overused comparison, and it certainly wasn't perfect, but it was miles ahead of what they achieved in Rivet City or Megaton.

Novigrad was only able to achieve what it did because 99% of it was static objects, the NPCs didn't have actual schedules to keep track of, and half the building's couldn't be entered, just like GTA.

In Bethesda games, you can pick up every cabbage, and basically anything that isn't furniture really, NPCs actually have complex schedules that are followed, and every building can be entered, which takes up far more CPU and GPU power then anything in Novigrad does. You couldn't make Novigrad in a Bethesda game, unless you put up like 50 walls, and divide the place up into load screens, because the sheer number of moveable, physics enabled, objects would be a strain on even good PC.

What you find deep and lifelike is personal opinion OFC, but I, and many people I know as well, dont find the GTA/Novigrad style cities to be "deep" or "lifelike" because of how obviously cardboard the entire city is.

This mostly had to do with memory limits on previous generation consoles. This is also why the NV strip is divided into 3, 5 if you count freetown.

Still NV get Skyrim on PS3 problems with all DLC loaded.

Oblivion had more and larger houses but far to few people for the houses and they was mostly indoor.

With current generation this is not an issue, main issue now is the work to make large cities.

You make some great points. That being said, I would rather have the pantomime of a fully realized city like Novigrad than compromise on smaller settlements for the sake of our cabbage handling.

Novigrad is essentially artifice but it's constructed in such a way that it feels genuine, as though it has grown and developed over centuries. it's a joy to explore, for me anyway. This is all opinion though and I can certainly appreciate where you're coming from.

Perhaps. But "cabbage handling" is part of what makes Beth games different from other ones. I could see a bit of middle ground like they did in the City Ruins in FO3 (a mix of enterable & non-enterable buildings to bulk things out), but then we'd have threads complaining that every building wasn't enterable/detailed/etc. (oh, wait, we already http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1528514-inaccessible-buildings/ )

Ha ha! Well, you're right. The cabbage handling is definitely part of Bethesda's identity. There's an authenticity there that I've never really considered. Every building is enter-able and has a designated occupant. They sleep at night and you can pinch their silverware if you feel like it. That's pretty special when you actually think about it and I can certainly see why it's important to so many people.

Still, exploring Novigrad has been some of the most fun I've had in any video game in recent memory. It's positively smashing.

So we have seen about 1% of the map and probably 1% of the game yet you so certain as to criticism Bethesda and come to a conclusion that there's hardly any settlements and where there are good settlements, they're destroyed or inhabited by monsters?

Why do people come on these forums just to be cynical? Especially when it's based on narrow assumptions?

I for one believe that there are many, MANY settlements in the wastes to explore. I also think Diamond City is SUPPOSED to be slightly small, considering it was built inside a BASEBALL park. It's not exactly going to be a sprawling metropolis. What are you expecting? A fully re-built downtown Boston with 20,000 office buildings, 200 skyscraqers and a mass array of restaurants and diners?

Sometimes I think people forget the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is struggling and often failing to survive, never mind band and form huge settlements.

Yes, I think most people have made it clear what they think of my opinion.

It's not based on narrow assumptions. Maybe I didn't communicate it well, but it's about my longstanding belief that Bethesda's built environments have almost always been lacking and the evidence that suggests they haven't done much to address it.

And I already mentioned that I KNOW it's a post-apocalyptic world. But then why should I have to face hundreds upon hundreds of raiders, only to find there's about 20-30 people living in each of the world's major settelements? FO3 and Skyrim's towns felt particularly underpopulated.

Those that actually bothered to discuss it with me, like AwesomePossum and Tel Aviv, made me realise that perhaps I was wrong to suggest that huge, detailed towns/cities is realistic in a game built in this engine, and so I'm willing to let this thread die. I for one loved Novigrad. I understand the "cardboard" argument but I think there are times when size really does matter. And there was a hugely impressive amount of citizens and interiors (albeit small) in that city.

I didn't bother to discuss but my views were already put across! I just don't want people to be so negative. I think, like others, the lacks of towns and big cities and population (The population of the Elder Scrolls really tickles my pickle, in a bad way, but that's for another time) was a side effect of a crappy xbox360 engine Bethesda obviously built the games from.

So I am hoping that this next game, on the next-gen, will improve on these issues. If it doesn't and the game is a barren wasteland (and not the type it's SUPPOSED to be) I will return to this thread and make a grovelling apology

But sorry if i came across as aggro or cynical. Not my intention

Two changes, first is that NPC outside of guards and bandits are named, even the guards and bandits has schedules and they have that you see is that you get looting.

The engine is probably not very efficient to show many characters on screen at once.

Issue her was memory on previous gen consoles, this is why Vegas was divides.

If the issue only is rendering it can be solved by blocking line of sight this don't help with memory.

Decedent chance they can use city cells in Fallout 4. Main constraint will be the time to build an large town.

I'm thinking we'll see a lot more little settlements and towns. . Obviously more than what they've shown so far. I guess it depends on what you think of as a settlement.. Fallout 3 settlements might have felt more compressed and the layouts might have made it feel less like a settlement than when playing a game like oblivion which has a more familiar layout. They are also obviously going for a different feeling than in games like skyrim and oblivion. In those games they want you to feel like the world is really big and heavily populated. In fallout they want you to feel like it's really big, sparsely populated world.

I am not sure why people claim that BGS has small cities/settlements. Name another game (not an MMO, of course) with larger cities/settlements, especially one set in an post-nuclear war apocalypse or medieval setting where cities/settlements are obviously going to only be a handful of people.

BGS has around 1,000 NPCs populating their worlds, not counting spawns, of course. I have never seen another game even attempt such a population. Even high-profile titles like Bioware's are tiny compared to what BGS does, and such titles are very linear as far as their locations are concerned.

Example of settlements/cities in a medieval world:

If you want to see a good presentation of what a medieval setting would be, including "major" cities, watch the "Robin Hood" mini-series directed by Richard Carpenter. It was made in the 1980s and is now on DVD as "Robin of Sherwood". It is by far the most accurate presentation of the Robin Hood legend, partly because it was filmed on location at various castles and other locations. Even Nottingham is an extremely small settlement/city and the local villages are even smaller. This is how things were in that time period. A post-nuclear apocalypse would be very similar as far as size or population is concerned. It would be extremely unrealistic and immersion-breaking if there were large population cities. That's aside from the fact that having large populations would mean that other parts of the game would have to be cut back a lot due to technical limitations as well as limits such as development budget. It's not surprising that no developer offers such a setting.

sorry old joke with me back when I was modding another forum years ago

I found Novigrad a bit too static and boring. Much like the witcher and other lesser games of the kind that follow that path due to tech limitations and development cost. The points you make above are the reason why I feel Bethesda sits on a much higher pedestal despite their very minor shortcomings.

I thought it was probably me, but I wasn't positive.

I must say, though, the fact that you couldn't tell if I'm serious or not is a sad commentary about people on the internet. That there are people that would say that and be serious is frightening.

Novigrad is a good example that has been brought up several times in this thread already. Aside from that Witcher 3 also had Oxenfurt, which was decent in scale too.

Alas, I can't really picture it. Haven't played (or watched someone play) Witcher 3. (very little desire to play the game, as it still involves that uninteresting character named Geralt. )

There may be a few remote Enclave posts or bases as well. This is the east coast in the same time frame as FO3. And not that far from DC tbh.

It's after FO3.