Some of the talk about the size of Skyrim and it's borders got me thinking a bit. The previous invisible wall method of dealing with the edge of the map always has always left much to desire in my opinion, so I thought of some various alternative approaches, and was hoping the rest of you could fill in with your ideas on how to deal with this issue? The 3 main "natural" border obstacles I could think of was steep cliffs, fast-moving rapids and the endless ocean, and as you can see in the poll there are a few different ways these could be approached that would in my opinion make them far more fun/interesting. For example, one would have to think twice about scaling a steep cliff if you knew there was a risk you could loose your grip and fall all the way down, possibly with injury or death as a result. And who wouldn't want to be eaten by a giant sea monster? So, what's your ideal way of handling the everlasting border issue? ^^

This may not be popular sentiment, but I don't mind the invisible walls. Sure it's jarring, but you accept that the story takes place within a set boundary. I found that most of the time when I hit one, I already knew I was close to it and/or I was being silly and trying to trip it. It's a necessary evil that you learn to ignore.

I mean, what else are they going to do? What I don't want to see are unclimbable mountain ridges used as an all-encompassing barrier. In certain places where it makes sense, fine, but not defining the entire Skyrim border. That to me seems more unrealistic than invisible walls.

Yeah, I'm not that overly against just having invisible walls either, it's just that when they use the approach of putting say a fastmoving rapid to block the way, and assuming we realize it's supposed to be taken as that the rapid is just too dangerous to traverse, I'd far rather like to actually experience it by trying and getting dragged along rather than just having a message pop up. I also hope they won't just put mountains all around it, there should logically be roads leading out of the province to the neighboring provinces, which as far as I can remember wasn't present in OB (?), having something simple as a locked gate along with some guards would serve well to not break immersion in those cases for me at least. (should've added that to the poll as well I guess ^^)

I doubt they're going make all those things just to have something else than invisible walls walls. Anyway, invisible walls are fine with me since I'd never go to the border anyway (seriously, why would I?).

Because a quest sends you on a walk from Skingrad to Leyawiin?

I voted on the stuff with most votes on the two upper questions, but on the last one other.

I think there should be a message stating that we are really far out on the sea where it's not safe to be and going further would lead to our death by a ridiculously huge monster, it is really a part of essage pop up without invisible walol and the monster thing, but we should be warned much before it.

NO BORDERS. For the love of of god. Nothing ruins a game like this more than an invisible border. Best example I can think of is in Shivering Isles. The rocks near the gatekeeper. Barriers. Enough with them. They ruin exploration.

No monsters out to sea, please - make the Sea infinite, like in Morrowind, and (iirc) Shivering Isles.

text message-"LOL U HAV REACHD DE BORDER TURN BCK"

tbh, im fine as long as it is not as bad as the invisible borders in new vegas

As long as they aren't intrusive, I generally didn't have a problem with the borders in Oblivion. My only gripe is the steep hills you have to zig zag to get up.

although these things seem nicer than an invisible wall, but that alot of border area to make sure they have rivers steep mountains or ocean...

I nearly always travel on the road, since if I make a shortcut (through the forest) I get lost if I don't open my map every half minute lol. Like today, I was traveling to a inn north of the imperial city (forgot it's name), and ended up in Vaermina's Shrine So yeah I never get to the borders unless I try to reach my destination without the map hehe

The borders are necessary. They can be done with rapids like you said, but there should still be an invisible barrier on the other side because someone will figure out how to get past it. I know it kind of kills the sense of exploration but after you go past the border and go to where you can't see there is nothing left. Therefore no reason to go out there, at least not an in-game reason. I think they should focus more on making it look more realistic in the sense that other NPCs should go to other provinces. In Oblivion no roads even went to the borders. If they add roads going to other places in Skyrim and then put generic NPCs that could pass the barrier, but then just walk out of sight and are moved to a different road to walk in again it would make it seem much more realistic.

Also, changing the message to "My business is here in Skyrim" might make it more realistic.

I want Morrowind Style for the first and third question.
As for the rivers, our character can swim, so I shouldn't drown.
This isn't Red Dead Redemption where the only water I interact with is rain.
I think there should be a little resistance with water,
not pull me under in a swirling fury, and surprisingly end up a few hundred yards down river.
That would be dumb. And wed have to search for a bridge, or just spam jump across.

But good topic though.

Um, because one can swim doesn't garauntee swift or cold water survivability.

Erm, I'm also confused why you wouldneed to search for a bridge to cross when your at a border :shrug:

ON topic: I'm fine with most implimentations. I DON'T WANT borderless with just open land beyond. I'm one of those idiots who will keep walking...and walking...swimming and swimming...because I know some damn developer put a cave somewhere out there just to mess with us! :rofl:

perhaps put a nice easter egg when you get so far out... see how long until someone discovers it

No, only to slip in place and not getting any further.


No, I don't want rivers to block me in any way.


I want to keep swimming forever, swimming speed slowing as I get further from land until I barely move. Then ridiculously far away invisible wall.

So you could visit MORROWIND!!11!!!!1ONE

Honestly, I think I prefer "invisible walls" since other types of barriers would be no less "arbitrary" but attempt to "fool" you in to accepting them, which for me would be more jarring to my role-playing.

The ideas mentioned in the OP remind me of the King's Quest games where if you went one screen outside of the play area a scorpion would automatically kill you, a sea serpent would eat you (Graham! Look out!), etc. :wink_smile:

I'm fine with walls. I don't care about "immersion." I always realize I'm playing a game, and invisible walls are practical.

i never realised they were games where there may be unreal things, i mean magic is alot more real than border control afterall :spotted owl:

A few thoughts off the top of my head:

A simple journal entry saying something like, your destiny does not lie on this path. (coupled with the invisible wall)

A strong wind making headway impossible.

A huge snow storm that makes it impossible to see ahead and the game just secretly turns you around and faces you back into the game world.

Ah [censored] it. just do what Halo did. GIANT LASER CANNONS!

I thought I'd bump this up as other similar topics are coming out and this one was here first and has a poll too!

The only idea I don't like is after swimming out to sea you radomly get eaten by this sea monster. Did you get this from the old Jak and Daxter games? :tongue: If they add the rest, it should definitely take a while to lose stamina and drown, as it would in reality. The rest of those ideas are downright awesome.

I don't want invisible walls within the interior of the map - although I'm not sure how it's going to work in Skyrim with the changes to skills and attributes, in previous TES games a high acrobatics skill was rewarded with being able to climb steep slopes and jump over things, even without levitation in Oblivion. I also want to see open cities, so I could potentially sneak into a city for a series of burglaries and then out again without any immersion-breaking walk past the gate guards. :whistling:

The outside borders of the game area are a different matter however. I play on PC and you could remove the borders very easily with a small edit to the .ini file, and MANY modders placed new locations outside of that border, requiring that you turn off borders in order to reach said location. In Oblivion if you turned off borders you could actually move for quite a far distance beyond them without falling off the edge of the world.

To have the external borders of the game world blocked by cliffs and mountains limits the ability of the modding community to place locations outside of those borders - not only would they need to (for example) create a player house, they would also need to make substantial changes to the landscape so that it was accessible, resulting in a greater likelihood of conflict with other mods as well as being more difficult to plan and create. Or they would have to place it inside of those borders, and with a limited amount of space again that increases the likelihood of conflict with other mods.

So a definite no to invisible walls within the map area, but the edge of the map needs to be easy for modders to utilise in terms of terrain.