And real wolves and lions know this.

I would still play Oblivion if it was only the imperial City at full scale, but it better have a gargantuan sewer system! It seems more realistic if the dark brotherhood is in the sewers, and citizens hardely knew the name. That way they only freak out when someone dies and the blame is perhaps put on some politician.

Again, a lore-accurate IC should still be very beautiful. Again, read the PGE and look at that map. That would be extremely beautiful, and could be incredibly detailed.

So. There were miles of landscape around Cyrodiil that you can't get to. And you wouldn't have to use a invisiable wall, so you might be able to use levitation.

So. I'm fine with this. It could be beautiful.

I think it would work better than Cyrodiil would. They scale destroyed Oblivion. Everything was so small, and the cities barely villages. Jus the IC could be a near 1 to 1 scale, making everything much more realistic.


Cities are insanely diverse. Walk through New York City and say it's not. In fact, due to the fact that tons of people are confined into a small area you get more diverse than open landscape. How different accents can you here in London, for example. And if The IC was lore accurate, it would be like this, to.

Also cities are generally more dangerous than the wilderness. There would be plenty of fights with thugs (like in PS:T) and the like.

As is, the sewers are gargantuan. They're the biggest dungeon in the game and cover the same area as the city.

I think you guys are focusing too much on the "Daggerfall scale" thing. You can still have a lore-accurate Imperial City the size of the IC in-game...or, if any bigger, say, a Vivec and a half, just with the features DESCRIBED in lore. After all, Daggerfall proved that a lot of the "big scale" was fluff, and Morrowind proved that you can still make a massive-FEELING world without miles of useless, randomly generated land.

Do they? Any evidence that wolves and lions are cognizant of the effects of gravity on their dynamics? Or just a instinctual avoidance of heights? (and, falling off)




I agree with you fully. But I don't think I could stand an entire game in one city.



Conversely, there will many, many, many more miles in TES ? The Imperial City that you wouldn't be able to get to either. It's there, but not there. The city the better. Stay in the City. It's good here. I think the Imperial City could have been amazing, but I still wouldn't have spent my entire gaming time in it.



I'm not. It could be beautiful, of course it could, but perhaps too much of a good thing is bad. And, if they really did make an entire game purely in the City, 100% lore accurate, then we here in the lore forum would be rather bored for a while, having no chance at all to feel smug and criticise to our heat's content at the woeful lore innacuracies.



Realism pertains to generics. Unless they planned to paint every single building a different colour, and used a different style of architecture for every street, then alot of what you would experience would be generic.




Humans, humans, humans, nord, humans, humans, nord, human, dunmer, human, altmer. No monsters? No Necromancers? Rogue wizards? No banol and inane typical fantasy monsters?

I think you're evicting some of the staple TES villains from their dearly beloved homestays for the sake of your metropolitanism.



In ancient cities like Rome, Babylon, Peking, Byzantium... Perhaps it would be dangerous, but how anywhere can be dangerous in Cyrodiill itself it beyond me. Especially it's capital, where the Legions, recalled, are at thier strength. The Septim Empire, known for it's pedantic fuss over everything, prosecutes man and mer for any breech of the law whatsoever. You picked up a spoon? Either go to jail or serve you time hard labour!

Cities, as a fact are not more dangerous than wilderness. I don't know what you are getting at there. Is London more dangerous than the middle of the Gobi Desert? In the Gobi Desert, you're gonna die, in London, nothing will happen unless you make it happen. (I know. On my 18th I got little tipsy, missed my train home, got locked out and had to tramp it out in some police station I barely found at like 3AM.)

For the first part--- Yeah, I have seen animals react adversely to being pushed toward a precipice, suggesting that they not only understand the concept of falling, they also understand that falling from a precipice would be 'very unpleasant', and actively resist such pushing.


The animals in Oblivion all act like they have rabies or something. Real wolves and real lions dont go "Oh human! ATTACK!" like that, without provocation.

They act more like somebody shoved a live hornet's nest up their bums, and now they are looking for who did it.

At the same time slaughterfish are a lot less aggressive now.

I noticed that in Bloodmoon, animals don't attack you as soon as they see you. They only attack if you get too close. Unfortunately, they were EVERYWHERE on Solstheim.

I'd be totally for that if the end result is something like Planescape Torment in TES, which really didn't need combat to be good. But then, I have funny ideas about what an RPG should be. I think a really good RPG should be indistinguishable from an adventure game. As it stands, though, most role playing games let you play any role, so long as that role is tangentally related to plundering dungeons. (A legacy of the wargaming past of role playing games.)

You're looking at the difference between "I know I should avoid falling from a cliff because I've graduated at Falls-Are-Bad-For-Your-Health-Uni" and "I know I should avoid falling from a cliff because my instinct says so"; I'm looking at the common point, which is: "I know I should avoid falling from a cliff."


It's not the only difference. How often has this scenario happened to you in Oblivion?
You're riding your horse, a fast one. A wolf starts to chase you. You ride past a flock of sheep. The sheep do not scatter and just stay around. The wolf runs past the flock of sheep to continue to chase you.

If you're fast enough to stay out of reach but slow enough to not lose them, you can get a mob of various monsters and bandits following you, like if you were aggroing in a MMMMOOMMMMOORRPGG. Wolves, minotaurs, land dreughs, marauders, bandits, skeletons, all running together chasing you... (Then you quaff an invisibility potion and they all start fighting each others. Fun, but utterly stupid.)

There are lots of good reasons why the Imperial City in the game shouldn't be in full scale. It's the computer game version of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail. Even if our computers were capable of handling the load, and even if game designers had unlimited resources, we wouldn't want to have to deal with that much detail in our games. How many apprentice bakers would there be in a city of a hundred thousand people?

I was disappointed in the Imperial City, for a few reasons. This is supposed to be the greatest city in the world, the central hub of the world, and has been the greatest center of power, wealth, and culture for millenia. Yet, aside from White-Gold Tower and a few other bright spots, most of the builds are crude, drab, and monotonous. The houses of the rich look like the barracks of frontier garrisons. I'd have hoped that the Imperial City was at least as majestic as Mournhold was in TES III: Tribunal.

There are lots of tricks for giving the impression that a city is larger than it appears. Movie set design has a lot to teach. Skingrad is very good in that regard, with curving streets that make it seem like the streets are longer than they really are, and the tall, narrow buildings suggest a densely built-up city. It's much like how the deep canyons and winding trails in TES III: Morrowind made it seem like it was a much larger area than it actually was.

One problem for the visual design of the Imperial City was that they seem to have really wanted to emphasize the point that it was laid out like a wheel, in a conscious echoing of the Wheel. This meant that we had to see the curving city walls and the towers. So, there were a lot of clear lines of sight, making it clear how small an area the city was.

The other disappointment in the city was that, even given the limitations of detail, and the need to emphasize the shape of the city, the city was still underutilized. There's been lots of commenting upon the pathetic Imperial Legions, for instance. But where's the Imperial Navy? The Empire is supposed to be a great naval power; why not a single Imperial warship at the docks? We've read two novellas about Decumus Scotti and the Imperial Building Commission -- why not have it appear in the game? Why isn't the Fighters Guild represented in the Imperial City? Why aren't the shops in the Imperial City any better stocked than the shops in the other cities? Why do you have to go to another city to even find a working temple? If Baurus wasn't staying at Luther Broad's Boarding House, would I have ever had any reason to visit the Elven Gardens District? That, and a couple of other districts, are almost completely unused.

They really could have fit a LOT more into the Imperial City, even given the scale they had.