I would just like to weigh on here with a bit of information that I know fromvarious interviews and the raw data from the Construction Set - which allows you to see what developers saw and to see how they made this world.

The terrain - ie, the slope of the Earth - was randomly generated, then handcrafted frok there for certain regions. Trees are generated on load - explaining why you can remove them via console - although many are static. All other things that are neither land or random tree were hand made.

The reason the dungeons look similar is because all dungeons were hand made by one single person. Oblivion had a tight budget and small crew, and only one man designed the dungeons. Therefore, with the limited pieces of dungeon available to him, the designer inevitably had to repeat certain styles of dungeon.

If you ever use the Construction Kit, you will see that there a few hundred dungeon, cave and ruin pieces -- but many pieces only fit one way. This is usually done for the purpose of reusability - if the designer had to make the dungeon pieces uniquely every time, we would still be waiting for Oblivion.

This issue was fixed with Skyrim as an entire team of dungeon builders were hired.

I agree that sometimes, especially after a couple hundred hours playing Oblivion, some things can be repetitive, but I never noticed it overtly.

TL:DR - Terrain was done randomly but hand-edited later, everything else in the world that you see is an object placed by hand. Dungeons were made by a single man and so yes they might repeat a bit.

One thing you can do is disable the borders and add some mods that extend outside the borders.

Exactly. Nor were they "randomly generated" when the game was being developed. I think that people are confused by the dynamic process that "paints" the grass and erosion effects onto the near landscape as you approach. That's obviously software-generated, but the dungeons and interior cells are obviously all hand-placed. We have the same tool that the developers used for this process (the CS.)

The caves and some of the tower interiors in the Oblivion Deadlands are randomly set when you go through an Oblivion Gate. There are only a limited number of "Oblivion Worlds," and they are given a bit more variety by jumbling up some of the cave sequences, etc.


Your fatigue level drops when you jump around or fight. It regenerates when you rest. If you are running, it regenerates more slowly, until your Athletics skill gets maxed.

Very good King. You've made your point, now will you like...ya know...go away?

I apologize that my factual evidence has somehow managed to offend you.

and my point still holds: 99% of the landscape in Oblivion (including the dungeons) is generic, cookie-cutter material. you literally have to go out of your way to find any interest in the architecture in Oblivion since it's just about non-existent.

There appears to be a confusion of "fact" and "opinion" here.

I know how you feel Niza. You can get across the entire province pretty quickly, so long as you do not let yourself get distracted. Granted, I do get distracted a lot though... What I do is try to imagine it as being much larger. The fact that the timescale is 30 seconds passing in the game for every 1 second real time tells me that the devs meant for the setting to also be at least 30 times larger than what we have. That would still be pretty small though, compared to real worldplaces. So I tend to imagine Cyrodiil as being at least 300 times larger than what it is in the game. I portray it that way in my writing, where it takes about a week to travel from Cheydinhal to the shores of Lake Rumare.

OTOH, I do appreciate the good things about the smaller scale we do have. It means we do not spend forever walking in real time without ever seeing anything notable. That is one of the complaints that people seem to have about Fallout New Vegas. It is a big world, but nothing is in it. In Cyrodiil, you do not have to go far at all to stumble into something new and different. You do not even have to specifically go looking for things. No matter what direction you go in, you will find something.

nope, it's fact.

*snickers* okay King. Cyrodiil is all "generic", if you say so.

Now, excuse me while I'm off to enjoy yet another generic, streamlined, dumbed-down gameplay session

Well, for one, your "factual evidence" was wrong.

For two, your second sentence is a fantastic example of goalpost moving and intentional missing of the point.

Yes, and the fact is that there's confusion. Your statement was about the difficulty "to find any interest"; that places it firmly in the Subjective Realm, with all the other Grand Opinions.

i find cyrodill to be immense, without fast travel i'd probably have spent double the time in my playthroughs just walking from point a to b. I had a mod that removed the cities from known fast travel spots when you start off, really changed my scope of things when i have to "discover" a town. That said i've probably spent a couple of real time weeks wandering the landscape.

Edit: the world seems even bigger when you start off as a heavy armored nord with no horse

yeah...

Oblivion as a whole is pretty generic and flawed, this isn't debatable.

Yeah, and if that was what you had initially said you wouldn't have gotten the pushback you did. No one here has claimed that Vanilla Oblivion is perfect.

You made a 100% incorrect claim that Oblivion's landscapes were generic because they were randomly generated. THAT is what people objected to.

yeah...

you're arguing semantics. Oblivion's landscape, whether randomly generated or not, is completely uninteresting and devoid of the artistic potency that Bethesda usually displays with their titles.

this, of course, once again: isn't up for debate.

lols, stop fighting each other, it doesn't matter it is randomly generated or not, it is still good and beautiful.

And it doesn't matter Cyrodill is small or big, it is totally depends on the player perspective.

I just like to be fast, and i don't get easily distracted, unless there are bandits, wolves or any monsters. I only distracted by deers, because i love hunting them with bow, and they are extremely fast. I just cannot resist the temptation to shot them whenever and where ever i see them.

This figure comes from Bethesda's PR department.

The Oblivion Construction Set tells us that each exterior cell is 4096 units by 4096 units or 192 feet by 192 feet or 58.5 meters by 58.5 meters. I count approximately 86 cells from Topal Bay south of Leyawiin up to the invisible border north of Cloud Ruler Temple. 192 x 86 = 16,512 feet. 5,280 feet = 1 mile and 3 miles = 15,840. So, north to south, Cyrodiil is approximately three miles long.

I count 104 cells west to east, from Anvil to the invisible border east of Sundercliff Watch. 192 x 104 = 19, 968, or less than 4 miles.

Because Cyrodiil is eccentrically shaped (i.e. it narrows considerably) over on its western end there's some guesswork involved when estimating total square milage. I put the total at 9 square miles and I think that's being pretty generous.

For comparison's sake, Vvardenfell is approximately 6 square miles. I've not yet counted cells in Skyrim but I plan to very soon. I suspect that Skyrim is between Cyrodiil and Vvardenfell in size.

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I'm not fond of using speed as a measurement of game world size because speed is relative. And, as Acadian points out, so is timescale. But since the title of the thread is how big is Cyrodiil for us I think, in this particular thread, player speed and timescale are both perfectly valid considerations.




I felt the same at first. After I got rid of my compass and had to start using landmarks I have to say the game world began to feel larger to me. In addition, I've recently begun phasing out my map as well. Now that has had a really significant effect on how large I percieve the game world. Skyrim has seemed to almost double in size. I get lost a lot, now, and boy, there's nothing like getting lost to make an area (real or virtual) feel enormous.

::EDIT:: A friend directed me to a mod tonight that removes all of the markers from the map. So I'll probably go back to using the map for awhile (without markers) and see how I feel about that. I just took a look at it and I have to say, the 3D map is actually very pretty when it's not covered up with markers.



First, it cannot be said that Cyrodiil's generation is "random." Bethesda had specific topography in mind that they wanted their software to reproduce (i.e. Cyrodiil as shown in maps). They also used selective geological data. They were very speicific about what they wanted to achieve with their software. The result is anything but random. And, as BAugustus points out, once that process was finished Bethesda's world builders proceeded to alter the generated landscape by hand. We do not know to what extent they altered it but I suspect some areas were handcrafted more than people realize.

Second, as glargg mentions, dungeons are a separate issue. Anybody who thinks Oblivion's dungeons are 'cookie cutter' or 'clones' of each other needs to take a trip to UESP and look at dungeon floor plans. Not one is the same. I am actually very, very impressed with the ingenuity of Bethesda's dungeon builders. They have done a marvelous job with limited resources.

Now it's true that in Oblivion dungeon tilesets are limited. But that limitation applies to every 3D game I have ever played. Time and money constraints mean that a limited number of meshes can be created for each dungeon type. If you want a game in which each and every dungeon looks unique you will have to play an isometric game with dungeons that are 2D paintings.

My brain! D:

It still feels pretty big for me, well bigger than it did when I first started playing, then again I pretty much walk/jog everywhere I go, so I taken more time to take in the beauty of the world

On-Topic: I think Pseron is the person to talk to for exact figures. Looking at Eleanor's map, the area around the Gold road is COVERED in locations. I think there's no shortage of places to explore in Oblivion - how big it is depends on how much time you take to explore!

Off-Topic: I find nothing 'generic' or 'cookie-cutter' about Cyrodiil. I find it beautiful, awe-inspiring and just plain amazing to adventure across. I love seeing the transition from Evergreen forest to Autum forest to Winter forest as I ride across Cyrodiil, not to mention the swamps in Blackwood and the like.

In terms of dungeons, I do notice a number of repeats. But each dungeon is unique - as Pseron says, they may be superficially the same, but in terms of their sizes, shapes and content they're completely different.

Really small. And something that really brings it down smaller is how the landscape looks. Most of it is empty not to much to explore. It's not like Skyrim where you have hills and curvy roads and spiked mountatins. It's all really boring also.

^this is my main issue.

it's all repetitive, recycled content. lacks the feel of both Morrowind and Skyrim, which both felt like they were meticulously crafted.

Then how about this advice: don't play it. Don't play it, go away, and leave us alone. We enjoy the game, you do not. We get it what you're trying to say, but we will never agree with you.

Now scoot! Scoot on back to wherever you came from, please.


I don't use the compass in Skyrim either, and I don't have to put tape on my TV anymore. The HUD is on its very lightest setting, this way I can just barely see health, magic, and stamina, but the compass itself cannot be seen the way I've got it.

Some of my future characters are going to not use the 3D world map either; instead, I'm actually gonna use a copy of the paper map (the one that comes with the game), this way I can make my own notations on it.

Right now i am drinking, and so is my character