Doubt it. That's an awful lot of content. Each city had about 1/5th the buildings and people of the Imperial City, the whole game had about 3 ICs worth of city content.

Was Oblivion that different? A lot of them just had randomly generated dialogue and if you actually stopped to speak to them they just spouted off some generic line which was taken from a pool of responses - not to mention the fact that they sometimes changed voice too! I don't disagree with you particularly, I'd just rather have it be abit more..... bustling with activity?!

I agree they should all have something more to say and there should be more people there, but an Assassins creed level is impossible wiht the technology and totally implausible for working with the style of the game. Have you read the interview with Todd that talks about a merchant returning your sword to you and then later offering you a role helping with the caravan, and you can kill him but then his relative will have something to do with you? That's the sort of complexity we're expecting. Even for the Oblivion AI, even if it was basic, it was far more advanced and fit into the working system of TES whereas Assassins creed ones never could. There's much more to take into account then the dialogue alone. All they did in Assassins creed was walk around outside and never do anything or go inside and then dissapear forever to be replaced by more randoms who did the same thing.

Nut yes, as I have said, more effort into NPCs would be much appreciated.

I documented the amount of npcs in major cites across Cyrodiil and Morrowind
Vivec-Over 200
Ald'ruhn- Around 90
Sadrith Mora- Around 70
Balmora-Around 80

Imperial City-Somewhere Around 150
Anvil-Around 40
Kvatch-Around 15
Skingrad-Around 35
Chorrol-Around 35
Bruma-Around 35
Cheydinhal-Around 35
Bravil-Around 30
Leyawiin-Around 40

I have the exact numbers somewhere but im just doing this by memory

Honestly I felt a good example of a populated game in this style was Fallout NV. They had areas that were crawling with, what felt like, an extraordinarily large number of people. The example that comes to mind first is Camp McCarran. I don't know if there were really that many NPCs here (certainly not many named ones) but the scale of the place dwarfed the towns in Oblivion. Even if Bethesda doesn't put more NPCs in the game, they should at least make it feel like they did.

Bigger isn't always better. Better however is better. No need to make them bigger, just make the towns a little more alive and such and you're golden.

True, but I was always a little off put when I found a 'town' in either Oblivion or FO3 that was simply 3 people and two houses. Even the cities and roads could use a few hapless travelers for me to pick off with my long bow

dont know enough about lore, but I'm hoping they don't have as many cities to do. It looks like to me Cyrodiil had too many cities for them to do them all justice.

Just some quotes from me on my own thread I thought would be relevant here. :happy:

I think this idea would be fabulous :happy: I like the idea of having some Nordic tent settlements--it would add greatly to the game's experience! And I also agree that it would be very boring if all the cities were too much alike, but i doubt that we'll have to worry about that.




That would be awesome! i understand why it was done the way it was in Oblivion, but the cities were just too small and it was unrealistic with so few buildings and so few people.




Agreed! :biggrin:

Yes, they also said that every one of these five massive cities will be bigger than the Imperial City and have no gates or doors.

I read somewhere that skyrim is going to have a lot of single line filler NPC's like Fallout3.

The problem I see with city's in Oblivion was that they had individual houses for every person, and only a few people. It probably would have been better with apartment like buildings that had more npc's living in them. (becasue the empire was supposed to be tropical roman, right?)

In Morrowind the only problem I saw was the lack of schedule's. Vivic looked like a ghost town. (I mean who really stands in one spot for 72 hours straight?)

Honestly, id like to see Nomads that moved around, like in two-four days they would back up, and move on to a new area of the map. All that they are leaving is animal bones, food, etc.

Another excellent idea! :teehee:

In a way i am glad about non essintial NPC

that way the citys will feel more alive, if the largest city isnt heavily inhabited i am downloading a mod

Source please? I don't doubt a couple will be gateless but I don't think all five will be. Open cities was a misquote on Pete's twitter feed. He said cities were open but later backtracked and said he had to double check.

And yes, I know dragons can attack cities but I'd like a source from a dev stating that all five cities are completely open.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to have a certain portion of the population be "filler" NPCs. Although many aspects of the game were complete garbage, Two Worlds had quite a few characters roaming around doing who-knows-what without interacting with you, but also without just standing still. In the Gothic series (incl. Risen) many of the NPCs had separate day/night routines, and most had some job or role, whether or not it had any bearing on quests. Now, there were still problems with the aforementioned games of course, but they proved that not every NPC needed a particular purpose beyond adding to the "life" of the town.

All the talk about certain mundane NPCs having only one lines to greet you as oposed to important ones giving you quests seems to be a distinction established for the purpose of populating cities and towns with much more passers by than in Oblivion.

Also Skyrim has eight cities it would make since if they had all eight not just 5 major ones and from what i understand its Solitude, Whiterun, Markarth, Windhelm, and Riften
didn't see Dawnstar, Winterhold, or Falkreath im a little worried about the lore at this point

5 major cities, and then other towns/settlements. They'll probably be there, just not as big as those 5.

Hope so Winterhold and Falkreath are among my top 3 cities in Skyrim. Markarth Side is the other

yes young apprentice, the win is strong in you

I think if they follow through their own logic things will just naturally fall into place. For example,apparently, children will populate the world. Well, then, children go to school. Schools should be part of towns, certainly part of major cities.What about the closest thing to hospitals? Is Skyrim's health care systen entirely based upon magic? There should also be a quota of vagabounds, beggars and streethokers, as surely the capitalof the province would atract such kind of fringe occupations.