Inside the walls is an amazing experiance. I dont mind the over population. Its all opportunity.

There is tons of diversity and culture. Local shops, street merchants, local and out of province cart merchants. Aromas of cooked meats and baked goods. Huge crowds and cheering from the Arenas. Friends, family, lovers, and strangers. Parades and celebrations. Inspiring art culture. Diverse architectures of homes and shacks. People everywhere. Theres debauchery, day and night. Drunks, [censored]s, and skooma addicts. Thieves, strangers, creeps, and weirdos. Night life hole in the walls. Alleys and streets you dont go down. Neighborhood skooma wars and kingpins fighting for city dominance. Political figures. Corruption. Wealthy elite and Guilds playing the background. Intellectuals and philosophers debating and scheming. Spiritual energy every where...

Beth, can we please at least have an ES that focuses on actual city life? Can we tone down on trying to build a whole province and focus on sections of provinces to allow a proper city setting? I would rather have one huge city then five that doesn't even represent lore or actual city culture.

As an example, the Imperial City. It would have been better if you expanded the landmass of the island it sits on, and just focused on that area. That would have allowed a bigger, heavily populated, and a more detailed city. Also, you would have had more landmass for forts, caves, ruins, and small towns/villages as well. Instead of trying to cram every thing into a whole province. The focus could have been on a smaller section of the province, like Morrowind/Vvardenfell. On top of letting our imagination go wild on how the rest of the province might be like.

Tribunal was a step in the right direction and would even be happy with an expansion. I love the series but Iam tired of the Immersion breaking cities on top of the amazing world designs.

Does anybody else agree with this?

I've said in numerous previous posts that Oblivion should have had the Imperial City island (Rumare?) cut off from the rest of the province by the crisis, and limited the game to the 100 mile or so long island (which could have been properly represented by the 8-15 sq. mile map, depending on how you measure), just as Morrowind restricted you to the 200 mile long island of Vvardenfell (represented by around 7-12 sq. miles). The city could have covered half the game map, and STILL be considerably smaller than it's described in lore. The Citadel, which is all we saw in the game, should have been surrounded by a belt of better housing, and that in turn surrounded by a commercial district and then the vast slums. That would leave just enough room for some surrounding wilderness to give a bit of diversity.

The pitifully small dockside Waterfront District with a dozen shacks was all that we got to represent the vast majority of the thousand square miles of housing and businesses making up the massive urban center of a continent-spanning Empire. At absolute minimum, the city should have been the size of the entire island in the game. If that's not possible, the game should have taken place in a smaller city in Cyrodiil, rather than diminish the impact of the Imperial City. According to in-game literature, you could see White Gold Tower even from the far ends of the city. In the game, you could clearly see White Gold Tower from the far ends of the thousand-mile-wide province. Slight difference, I would think.

Kovacius, awesome post. I like how you brought up some lore facts about the size of the Imperial City. You detailed exactly how I feel about the size and area. I also like how you said they should have left IC out and focused on the main land/different city. I would have liked that as well and had IC as an expansion or spin off.

It just kind of svcks when thinking about how lore heavy and detailed Beth can be, that they leave out the main hubs/cities. Iam hoping that with the next game that they put more size and detail into the next major city.

Also, what do you or others thing about Skyrims cities?

The problem with that is that it would completely remove any questlines beyond the main quest. If the City Isle is blocked off then everything leads solely to the main quest, as the entire city panics about the fact they're trapped. Morrowind could get away with being set in Vvardenfell because there was no sudden circumstance that cut it off. What you're suggesting would serve no purpose other than to railroad the player into the main quest, and make the game almost entirely linear. Then you're stuck with the problem of inevitably crap storytelling, since the crisis has to be solveable from City Isle, since you can't leave it. Then there's the issue of exploration, if the Isle is that heavily populated how is there anything left to explore? And what is there would likely feel more cramped because of it being packed onto an island with one massive city.

I do agree that the Imperial City, all of the cities really should have been much bigger, but limiting the game to the City Isle would've created far more problems than it would have solved.