With the Art Video today you get to see a close up of the map of Skyrim and it confirms there are only 5 major cities and they are Windhelm, Solitude, Markarth, Whiterun and Riften. You can see the map http://i764.photobucket.com/albums/xx281/Soulece/Skyrim.png?t=1296066249.

A screenshot of the first city, Markarth, is http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/screenshots/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim/TheElderScrollsVSkyrimMedia/Markarth01.jpg. Many of us have had hunches of what the 5 cities were with the map shown in the Todd Howard video but we couldn't see if there were any other cities. Now with this map, we no know that there are just the 5 massive cities with villages strewn around Skyrim.

As for Markarth, we don't know if there were just no NPCs around that part of the city at the time or they hadn't populated the city with NPCs yet (Not populated with NPCs for the screenshot seems more likely.)

Also it has come to my attention that Solitude is for the Empire and Windhelm is for the Rebels. These are the red words under the two cities names.

Yes, but it could be some large villages, they said 5 massive cities, i think there are still towns and junk. and i bet a town is as large as an oblivion city.

Was anybody saying anything to the contrary?

Thank you for this information!

What are those red words below Solitude and Windhelm?

Looks like empire and rebels?

What about minor cities?

I did a blow-up in photoshop. that's what it looks like to me as well.

"5 massive cities" is honestly promising. 5 massive cities. No cities in Oblivion were massive besides IC. I think there will be more places to go in Skyrim. You have to take into account villages, random homesteads, smaller cities, etc. There will be a lot of places to go.

I thought they were words at first too but when I looked at them closer, that's how big the cities are compared to the landscape I believe. Edit: Yeah, now that you say it, I see it too.



The minor cities are the villages. It has been said there are some villages that are pretty good size. If you look at past games, Morrowind only have 4 major cities, Oblivion had 9 major cities, one of which was the massive Imperial City. So basically, the mass of the cities have increased with each of the newer generation games. Oblivion was a big step up from Morrowind's cities and it looks like Skyrim will be a big step up from Oblivion in city sizes. In Skyrim, there are only 5 major cities but they are massive, so I'm guessing they will be more akin to the IC than the normal city size in Oblivion. Not to mention the many villages scattered around Skyrim that will be of pretty decent size.

There will definitely be smaller cities, such as Falkreath, Dawnstar, and Winterhold.

I am glad we will have citys that REALY FEAL LIKE citys. I hope they are open citys too. I do not like the closed citys of oblivion. That was anoying Open houses could be very cool too.!

Open cities are doable easily but for the majority of computers, open houses won't work will with the number of objects in the TES game world. It would just be too much loading at once. Also, if you do it within a range of the character, you will have large amounts of lag spikes when you come into the city and start walking around because you have hundreds of objects to load at once. As of now, only the high-end computers can load that many objects simultaneously. When it comes to the point where the amount of ram and SSD are common place, then such a thing won't be a problem at all for any computer.

Where do you think we start the game?

My guess is in or around the Riften.

Hmm good question. I don't think it will be Windhelm or Solitude because I'm sure you have to pick a side and that would ruin it. I actually think we may not start in a city, maybe we will start in a village and they will try to execute you there. I'm not sure.

Cant wait to visit Solitude. Wonder if the grave of the Wolf Queen Potema is there to see?

I'm sure you can, BGS always does a great job with details, even the fine ones like that.

Awesome! Maybe we can hope for more factions like in Morrowind!

I'm not sure what you mean by that. There were quite a few factions in Oblivion as well.

No, I mean about the Empire and Rebel influences, more like "houses".

One can hope. Wonder if it′s lootable? :hubbahubba:

I also hope that you get a reason to visit the villages. In Oblivion, the major cities had all the action (logical), but I hope there are quests connected to villages, or faction/guildhouses there.

I think it's best to be cautious before getting too optimistic about the size of the cities. All we have to go on is one word "massive" which could mean anything. What's more hopeful is that all the NPCs will actually be doing jobs in the city, and the cities seem to be focused around some industry, which will probably go a lot further toward making them feel "real" than the size.