Before amazing quests, astoning graphics, incredible monsters, immersive quests, evocative music and so on, the most important thing for me would be: have (being in Skyrim is even more important) mountains like in real life, where there are nice little roads that across the lands and bring people from a town to another. I'd like to feel the huge and overwhelming size of a great mountain, meanwhile I walk for my quests, and not like in Oblivion where a mountain have no roads and it's high as a little hill.

I understand this would be a real challenge, to avoid issues with graphics, objects, polygons etc., this is of course nothing easy. But if implemented well could be really a great aspect of the game immersion.

The problem with mountains is that they're really, really big. If you want something both tall and climbable, you need a lot of ground area, and that means either an incredibly large map (Which, given that Bethesda are not cyborgs from the future, means sparser content) or the entire map being taken up by a single mountain.

It svcks, yes, but there's really no two ways around it.

OB mountains were pretty complicated to climb. the hardest being dive rock, or what ever it was called. I would actually like more mountain trails (in good or bad condition) The mountains are a good terrain type to exploit given the geography of the map.

From what I've seen so far on screenshots, mountains look much better graphically..

Unfortunately I don't think they'll ever be "real mountains". Graphics, objects, polygons shouldn't be the real problem. Maybe 7 years ago but not now.

I see the real problem lie in the size of the world. With Oblivion's size of 41 square kilometers, which Skyrim seems to be too, you'll never ever be able to have "real mountains", or anything close to it :confused:
I'll just quote myself of this:


This is one of the reasons I'd like Skyrim to be bigger. Approximately 41 square kilometers just isn't enough if you want the world to feel "not cramped up" and "epic" in terms of landscapes.
My ideal would be 70-100 square kilometers.

Yeah. Oblivions mountains was way hard to climb. I therefore think that Skyrim should have a hillside to climb on or simply just some roads. And maybe some villages would be cool planted on the mountain side.

I agree, but I also see the problem with being able to create mountain high enough to satisfy this. I do however agree completely with the roads - perhaps if there were roads or paths along mountains, you would feel more amazed despite the smaller size of them. What I think might also help that would be various settlements or towns nestled in a valley between two mountains.

Well, if we have to clime 7000 steps to get to the GrayBeards, then I'm guessing they'll be on a pretty big and well placed mountain.

Better mountains? Sure. Realistic mountains? Not gonna happen, not anytime soon unless we go for tiny content and sparse details like Just Cause 2. Then again the OP seems to have no problem with all the content gone for a really big mountain lol.

They're actually really, really small steps

Uhhh... thats completely false. I (just one person) can expand the total size of the OB map by 25% in one days work with the CS (i know because I have). and a team of devs can do the same, fill it with content, in that same amount of time. (what will take a little more time later is the time it takes for testers to test the content. even so, there is nothing true above the statement above. they aren't increasing the map size because its considered "extra credit" since alot of the people who will purchase the game are streamline gamers and won't care if the map is small (they just want the achievments and one play through before they trade it for the next big game) beth won't spend extra time/money to improve on something that is "good enough".

I think it would be doable if you were willing to have large swathes without content, which is fine for a mountain area. It's just a amtter of putting in mountain ranges, maybe a few caves here and there, some camps, and some random mountain creature spawns along the open routes. Shouldn't be too much effort involved even though it would increase the square footage by a large amount.

Yes, I see we all are aware about how this issue is great. But I don't know... maybe Bethesda should think about a way to "cheat" the square spacing problem... I really don't have a clue about how this should and would be, but I'm sure that if they find the solution for it, that would be a real mile stone (lol) in exploring virtual worlds.

Maybe something like was in Arena, autogenerating, but with instruction to make it less random? And maybe a smart way to travel, like I don't know, I hate fast travel and almost never used it, lol, but a cliff racer thing, like... carovans maybe? So would be in an interior cell, would be nice something like to actually live the travel in playing time, to avoid some issues about distance.

Another solution would be creating separate exterior maps, like every town etc, and have mandatory to use some travel tool at some points. Done bad this could be really an epic fail, but done well, that would really increase immersion, realism about space and storyline. In real life of course one can travel feet from a town to another, but that require so much we prefer to use.. well cars, lol, but in other times carovans, boats and things like that. Making walk our PG would require really too much time that other ways would be almost mandatory, and running feet could start this autogenerating map thing or something. I'm so confused and not familiar with these problems actually, but all that would make really a difference.

Watching at those pics is a great way to get depressed, because you know it'll never be for this one. If Beth'll ever decide to pay attention to what the real open world fanatics like us want.
What mirglof says is just all too true.

I love mountains. But this will not happen in this game. They would need a massive area. I hope the mountains are improved upon but I know they will be by no means realistic.
Skyrim does have a lot of mountains tho so hopefully the ones they put ingame will be reasonably good.

I want to see one person suggest to me that Oblivion wasn't cramped. It took ten minutes to cross the entire map on a horse and you passed by hundreds of dungeons and bandits on the way. Spread things out and we can have good open mountains and fields and not feel suffocated by bandits on our left, vampires on our right, minotaur lords behind us, and a portal to oblivion in front of us.

It makes sense for realism and it makes the game more enjoyable. Considering much of Skyrim is mountainous, much of that couple be mountains with trails. Add in content every now and then (little stuff) to make it interesting and they've got us hooked.

Have you seen the mountains in that GI shot? Look fairly real to me. They certainly don't look like giant mounds anymore.

With Skyrim's map size being the same as Oblivion's, there will not be any real mountains, or realistic environment, to bad <_<

They should have used something similar to the Fuel engine map algorithms, for the Creation Engine. Check out this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhyyUiYQolA for an in-depth look at the huge world of Fuel.

As much as I want to see something equivilant to the http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Aerial_photo_of_the_Andes.jpg I know it won't happen. However as far as mountains go I am more expecting something like the http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Pilgrimsleden_Dovrefjell.jpg mountain range in Norway, which is a tad easier to pull off. It may not look as majestic or awesome.. but it's the most realistic in terms of engine capabilities.

I don't think you realize that they have limitations on size. They can't just make the game world as big as you want it.

In case you'd like to know: I've made an estimate of the Throat by measuring steps in the house. :tongue: It seems one step is about 20 cm or 0.2 m. Multiply this by 7000 and the result you get is 1400 m. Now I hope it'll feel that high. How high do you think it'll be? Could that be much off?

It's only a model. Your imagination is supposed to improvise.

All these are interesting ideas. Yes, I think that it's really a difficult matter to create something like in reality, but... if we are talking about compromises well, please Bethesda, at least don't make something I can jump in top with 30 acrobatics and I can reach the top in 15 secs with 65 speed.

@Tamira: great signature, <3 Epicurus.

Ok now fit that extra 25% of landmass, additional height mapping, extra objects, new objects, and all the quests/NPCs/voicefiles that the devs would have to add to make it not one big flat stretch of land onto a DVD. Won't happen, as Oblivion used most of a DL DVD. This statement is way farther off base than anything PhYoshi said, mainly because there is no logic applied here at all, especially in the part I bolded.

With a proper engine, a huge AND detailed map size is achievable without increasing filesize.

No, he was correct.

Just because modders can expand the size doesn't mean a thing. Modders expand something that is SAVED ON A COMPUTER. It would never fit on a disc with all the other content TES has.

There are people that have 10 GBs of mods. Are you saying that all of that content could be added to the game, just because modders can do it? No, because a game disc isn't even 10 GBs.. Until the memory on DVDs is increased substantially, or Microsoft buys the rights to use Blu-ray, games with TES-level content will never be Just Cause 2 sized.