So while playing Assassins Creed 2, I was wandering through Venice and I thought to myself, this city is amazing for being in a Video Game. Now sure it wasn't really a city (there was no interior, there were almost no businesses tin interact with, etc,) but it had its charms. I loved the architectural style, and how big it was. It was the first city run on a computer system, or rather XBox if you will, that seemed life size. Now with that in mind, I was wondering why Oblivion couldn't be like that, minus that fact that its emulating an entire world not just one, or rather 5 cities, and the work that would go into it would be massive. I realize that populating a city of that immensity is insane, but I still find it interesting that that it was so small, compared to how it should have been. In Oblivion, the Imperial City had 192 residents, but shouldn't the population of the capitol city of the empire been maybe 50,000+ people? The Island the the imperial city is built on (It's name escapes me right now.) is according to the official map here: "http://images.uesp.net//c/c3/TamrielMap.jpg" roughly the same size as Solstheim in the north-south direction. However in Morrowind, if memory serves, Solstheim is a lot bigger north-south than the Island the Imperial City is built on. So, in my research I have found no census records of the Imperial City, but I would like to know how big population wise it is. If I was able to know this, I'm sure I could come up with a number equivalently correct for Morrowind and Skyrim. Any help would be much appreciated.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Demographics

The Imperial City is huge, and has a population of several thousand. You just have to suspend belief because Gambryo would crash with that many people. :facepalm:

Thanks Zark for the demographics, that cleared up a bit. Also, I'm officially declaring several thousand to be a massive understatement. The population of London, England during the 1600, which I believe to be about as accurate technologically as the TES IV time period if you include the magical aspect of the history, was about 200,000 people. I firmly believe that the Imperial City at least matches that. Time to start making the Imperial City according to me...

The actual population and scale of Cyrodiil is much larger than the game depicts. (I know that sounds strange as there's no actual Cyrodiil.) But the thing is, most NPCs are scripted to talk and have their own schedules; etc.

In AC2; they're all mindless drones, in essence. If you follow someone, after a while you'll notice that they aren't even going anywhere. No one eats, no one speaks to you in actual dialogue, nothing.

Im sure when technology can handle it, TES would look more like AC though.. Someday... *fingers crossed*