Let's get few fact straight, open seamless world in Skyrim is not possible:
Due to low memory on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 compare to standards of today on even the low to medium budget PC's.

With a PC you can adjust all graphic settings to suit you best.

So even the low to medium buget PC's could handle a seamless world in Skyrim.

I did a poll about loading screens in Skyrim where majority wanted no loading screen at all when entering a city or house, dungeon.
So it's not strange if most people would want that? It's possible - why is it denied?
Maybe because they are making the game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and for PC after, that's it. No extra work put into much more then that.

* Would you not all like to know if it was possible and how easy it would be to make it possible to have a open seamless world in Skyrim where you did not get any loading screen to enter a small town or a small building inside that town again?

I would like that, it would be a next step as The Elder Scrolls have always been famous for - doing the next step within the genre.
This is all my opinion and you are free to not agree with my opinion but you are not free to disrespect others opinion with untasteful comments or threats that the thread should be closed, have some respect and act in civil manner. If you have a problem and think a thread should be closed, you report and don't post in that thread.

Thank you!

yeah this would be much better, but im a console player so i doubt it will happen, load screens arn't that bad though.

I dont mind, as long as they used the time they wouldve used ( to put that in the game ) wisely...

They could have probably got open cities on consoles if they used some form of occlusion culling.

Open cities?
Maybe.

Open houses. With exact same detail as before and without lag? No.

Or used a single thread for streaming background resources. Not sure if this works as well for consoles though. Still, this should take care of the problem.

If not, having seperate view distances for different kinds of objects, and have really low-res and low-poly distant land objects, which then render in full detail (seamlessly) as you get closer works partly as well.

Still, I think it's wayyyyyyy too late for that now.

A fully seamless world is not an impossibility with modern technology, not even on consoles, I'd say, seeing as I've seen games on this on consoles, Red Dead Redemption, for example. The problem is that with that game, not all buildings can be entered, and when you can enter interior areas, they tend not to be as large or as complex as the ones we've seen in Elder Scrolls games, so while consoles CAN handle seamless worlds, I suspect that ensuring it would work on them would require limiting the game, and while I'd like to see seamless loading for interior cells, if it would require a less interesting world, I'd rather wait until the next generation of consoles. In any case, this isn't going to happen in Skyrim, even if it were feasible to do it on consoles while maintaining the same level of quality we expect from the game, adding it would still require a lot of work, even if we assume that the game's programming would allow for this without any changes, it still would require recreating all interiors in the main world space, which may not be easy especially when you take into account that Bethesda might have designed the interiors in a way that would be impossible to fully replicate if they weren't in seperate world spaces, such as having buildings larger on the inside then outside, simply put, I'd say this task would be too much work to be feasible at this point in development.

Maybe it will happen in the Elder Scrolls VI, but at least for Skyrim, it won't be happening.

There really should be a "don't care" option. Because, yeah, it sounds nice, but it's already been confirmed that it won't happen, and yet I'm not really disappointed about that. I personally think depth and detail are worth a loading screen here and there. The fewer loading screens they have means less detail they can have.

I sure would like a seamless world, but i don't think it is possible to make that happen for PC before the release date, probably as the game stands now each city is surrounded by a wall like in Oblivion to have some sort of excuse for the loading screen, and i don't really see how those walls could be removed considering dragons have to attack cities etc, what i really would like is the ability to see out of windows from houses, the closed off cities aren't ideal but can be passable, but the houses feel very claustrophobic without real windows, i guess its all down to consoles having very little RAM.

I honestly didn't have that much of an issue with the loading screens in Oblivion.

Yes, it would be nice if everything was completely open, but it still beats other games where you have to sit through a loading screen just to travel to a different region of the map.

One thing I don't understand is when people don't want cities to have walls. It makes perfect sense in my opinion for cities with such fantastic monsters roaming about to have walls to keep the people safe.

I'm indifferent when it comes to the loading. I wouldn't want them to have to hold back on houses and cities to keep the system requirements down. Some kind of option to passively load nearby cell assets would be better than a totally open world in my opinion.

Seamless loads are definitely possible for Skyrim, but I don't think they are going to happen (mods ftw). Even with the loading screens that will be in game, if you have a decent PC, they won't be there anywhere as long as they will be on console. Plus, loading screens can offer some useful tips every now and then.

I loved how I would just walk into any city or town in Morrowind, but didn't Todd already say that the cities in Skyrim will be walled and in a separate cell? I don't think he is going to change his mind now.

I didn't really like it in OB, but it was easy enough to live with. About the only thing it realy ruined was levitation and jumping over the walls.

I took "maybe" to mean "I don't care."

Whats with your console flamebait topics?

On topic though I'd love to have a seamless world but if they did that I would worry that some of the insane detail Bethesda place in locations would have to be sacrificed. Short loading doesn't bother me so much, it would be nice to see open cities in the future.

as a console player, I really dont want them to try and make the game with no loading screens for important places. I would rather have them keep game performance at the highest possible level than overwhelm my console with data for the sake of adding more realism

Well I would want walled cities even if Bethesda was making Skyrim an open seamless world, its just more realistic. However, I'd want something along the lines of how the Open Cities mod in Oblivion does it, keep the walls but allow the gates to actually swing open and closed when entering. Then we could have archers on the battlements to snipe creatures or bandits wandering too close to town. Maybe even some ballista for giant and dragon attacks :woot:

I think it would be possible for Bethesda to make the cities open if they wanted, the ability to do so is in Oblivion as well. However, they aren't going to make the PC version open and the consoles have loading screens, especially when they're optimizing the game for Xbox 360. For now, I'll cling to the interpretation that when Todd said "loading screens" and after made the comment about how you won't be "clicking the door, waiting for the load, and then going in" that he meant the far shorter *Loading...* that you saw in Oblivion every once and a while when wandering in the exterior.

1) I don't care, loading screens have never bothered me.... especially since, on the PC, they're shorter and less intrusive. They really mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.


2) They won't do this. Yes, there's a few minor differences between console & PC (like, you need to have "options" menus on the PC to take into account different hardware), but they are not going to build different versions of the worldspace (i.e, make open cities/etc) for the different versions of their game. Period.

Loading does not bother me much. So open I guess is better, but it isn't a big deal. Now no levitate again, that does bother me.

Indeed, there's no way that gonna happen.

Of course not. They know everyone will buy it no matter what. They are a business, and in the end, money is all that matters.

Hi, my name's Jacob

Most people do not have computers that could run an "open seamless world."

yes i would like it and yes they could do it but they wont.

Ugh. Sad, but true. Money, money, money.

Yes, I would and they could, but won't.

I'm not sure how thing's work and what not. But why couldn't they just do what MMO's do? Run huge seem-less worlds server side or w/e they do...ugh I feel so ignorant right now. Hehe.

I would think if done this type of way every platform would get the same great game and only one version would have to be made.

just to tell you, that would be a freakin gigantic game world. probably the biggest ever in a game and would probably take up three discs