I usually HATE invisible walls, but I would be willing to have them if we could have some kind of view into other Provinces.

I would love to be able to see Blacklight, The Imperial City and Orsinium from the mountains.

I doubt we'll be able to, but damn I'd love it.

Something akin to skyboxes could make this work without too much effort.

Maybe you could, but I doubt you'd see much, you could see into parts of other provinces in Oblivion too, but it would just be trees, rocks and other generic terrain features, I wouldn't be surprised if Skyrim is about the same in this regard.



So you'd rather explore said place populated by only land and trees and find what's supposed to be a densly populated province is actually an empty wilderness without a single interesting thing to see and eventually just drops into an endless void or whatever it is that happens once you reach the end of the terrain Bethesda modeled? I for one would find that MUCH more "immersion" breaking than invisible barriers I'll only notice 0.000000001% of the time I spend playing the game (Seeing as I'm not usually in the habit of trying to leave the province when I know the game doesn't allow it. Why would I want to anyway if there isn't a single interesting thinmg to see or do there?) not to mention it might lead to me wasting my time as without checking the map, I might not realize I'm leaving the province and could wander for an extended period of time even though doing so is entirely pointless. Now, usually wandering is fine in an open world game, but only when there's actually a chance that something worthwhile can come of it, wandering outside the game's borders, if it were possible, would be utterly pointless as there would be nothing to see or do out there.

I'm perfectly, 100% fine with invisible barriers as long as they're kept only on the borders of the map (Now using invisible barriers to keep me from using any paths to get to a place other than the one intended as in New Vegas, on the other hand, is a big no, if you want to force me down a linear path in your open world game, then at least do it with barriers I could actually believe would prevent me from going off the intended path.). Of course, if Bethesda can come up with a better way, that's fine with me too, but there's not exactly that much they can do, they can't do an endless ocean like Morrowind as it's not an island, and surrounding the entire province with impassable mountains tends to look artificial, like some god put those mountains there merely to keep people from leaving and entering the province, and makes one wonder how it was ever possible for anyone to enter or leave in the first place.

Better yet, make the mountains scalable from the Skyrim side but have a sheer drop to certain death on the side where you don't want players going. Voila! a stunning view that still keeps you in the province.

As for crossing the boarders, I think there should be armed guard towers that shoot anything coming or going between provinces, Skyrim is in the middle of a civil war over sovreignty, they probly don't want the Imperialists going to try and get help and then people can stop crying about invisible walls

How else would they do it besides an invisible wall?

A wooden rickety fence around the whole border? hehe

NO to impassable mountains or natural barriers. I can understand why some people don't like the invisible wall, however the great thing about this is it's easy to turn off and modders can then expand the gameworld outward. If, for instance, someone mods the whole of Cyrodiil or Morrowind into the game, it's simply a case of turning off the invisible wall and walking across the border. Impassable mountains would just make life so much harder for modders.

Oh they'd find a way, why make it easy? Too easy to mod and we're inundated with crap. Better to weed out the slackers early and get better quality mods in the long run.

It's really not that straightforward. Suppose there were impassible mountains, and a modder went to the trouble of modding them out, that could potentially cause conflicts with other mods. Then there's the whole issue of the 3D map and removing entire mountain ranges.

It's just so much easier for everyone to go with the invisible wall.

And likewise, with all the other bordering provinces?

I'd imagine that there isn't much to look at... unless you like steaming craters

How else would they do it besides an invisible wall?

A wooden rickety fence around the whole border? hehe

Well, in Morrowind the way they did it worked great, and they could do the same for Skyrim. In Morrowind when you approach the border, you could continue moving forwards, but you wouldn't actually move anywhere on the map, it was just an endless loop. They could do the same with Skyrim.

NO to impassable mountains or natural barriers...