When I first played OB, I saw the whole map when I opened the box, and the way the land was shaped with the river running through the heart and leaving the Imperial City as a lone island. The strong curves of the maps edges, everything about the geography and shape was just beautiful. Now that I've seen the land of Skyrim about 3-4 months ago and studying the geography, it just seems as Skyrim is, well very boring, it's just a block.

There is no real unique shape to Skyrim, it has a very boring shape, the only province with a larger lack of geographic uniqueness is Elsweyr. It's the shape of a brick. All the other provinces of Tamriel have gorgeous geography, High Rock, Morrowind, Summerset, Hammerfell. What I'm trying to get across is, is Skyrim's geography going to be fun, like with Cyrodil it was very unique and the river that ran straight through was a nice sense of location, will Skyrim have that? I would've loved Bethesda to visit say Summerset, or High rock, something with a real bam factor.

EDIT: since my choice of words are causing such a startle, I would like to propose this, if the Bethesda team put the same amount of effort as they did in Skyrim to Cyrodiil, Cyrodiil would surely kick the ass out of Skyrim, but thats not the point I'm talking shape of land and how the Bethesda team could manipulate it.

What does the shape of the borders have to do with the uniqueness of the terrain? You're mixing up two totally different aspects here.
Skyrim will have distinctive mountains, not fully shown on any map.

I voted summerset for obvious reasons

My apologies, mix up of words there.

The shape has absolutely nothing to do with the terrain. And if we were comparing terrain Skyrim would win, as Cyrodiil was awhole lot of 'copy paste forest & wolves'. The only real unique aspect of Cyrodiil was the imperial city. Skyrim on the other hand has lots of varied terrain, such as pine forests, tundra's, snowy mountains, plains. Alot more than just forest.

One of my favorite things to do in Oblivion was climb mountains. Seeing as how Skyrim is a mountainous area, I don't think I'll be bored. The center of the map may bore some people, as it seems to be comprised of mostly Tundra, which can be a visually boring terrain to walk through, but I think they'll more than make up for it with the borders. Mountains to the east, a large forested area to the south, coastal northern area, (hopefully with some frozen coast and ice/glacier type terrain) and the massive canyon in the west where Markarth Side is located, it seems as though there will be some serious variation in the terrain and I am looking forward to exploring it all.

You need to remember that Skyrim isn't just a flat plain like Cyrodiil, a lot of it has varying elevation.

The shape of the province (and btw, Black Marsh is easily the most blockish province) does not determine how interesting the terrain is. Morrowind was basically a Skyrim stretched vertically, but it was far more interesting in it's environment and landscape than Cyrodiil. Skyrim has marsh, tundra, mountains, canyons, forests, etc., that's what matters.

:gun: Shape is uniqueness?

Christ, that's like saying oranges aren't as unique as apples because of the sphere:curvature.

Unique shape isn't nearly the same as unique geography. But if we're talking shape - my vote is definitely to cyrodiil. With the river running straight into the center, it's definitely the oddest.

Have we seen the same screenshots? Even more importantly, you find Oblivion unique?

Oblivion was just a shiny, green mass of tree's and repeated terrain. The shape of the land may have been interesting to you, but I found it to be dull and unimaginative. Skyrim seems to have a great variation compared to Oblivion's interpretation of Cyrodill.

Not saying the terrain was unique, the terrain was just the same 10 square yards copied and pasted a couple thousand times and then some wolves added. I'm saying the actual shape, if bethesda had put the effort into cyrodiil as they have in Skyrim, I'm sure Cyrodiil would kick ass.

Not sure about the geography of some the other provinces but I think Skyrim is pretty unique. Compared to Cyrodiil that is.