Well, as I said :
"a linear tunnel gets old much faster than a tileset"
Most people seem to agree that the dungeons are superior, which is making me feel rather optimistic, but I have to say that messages like the one from Imp of the Perverse tend to make me worry that this agreement might be for reasons that are the polar opposite of what I like - the "single corridor effect" is really the one that bore me to death, and combined with the "coincidentally convenient exit door that really doesn't make any sense in a realistic light" tends to combine together to bash me out of the immersion and right into the "oh, well, it's REALLY a game", if you get my meaning.

Random is good, linear is crap, handcrafted leads to low replay value. Why should I do a dungeon again if I know I'm always going to get the same item every time. That's not the case with Skyrim at least for the majority of it's dungeons and I would add that the Dwemer Ruins were well done in design.

"I've never seen anything quite like that..."

Me neither Lydia, me neither.

I see well some dungeons are linear. That goes without saying. They are understandably linear I would say. Others are not. Some others are very large with a caveat of rooms, tunnels, alternate entrances/exits. You're certainly not going to find any endless dungeons ala Daggerfall but you will find large dungeons filled with lots of traps, scenery, monsters, loot and bosses.

Some dungeons have large caverns of life attached to them or are buried castles, things like that.

If you're look for an immense dungeon. the kind of place you get lost in for hours then of course there aren't hundreds of those. Usually I look forward to simply modding those in. Or rather, adding more.

I spent hours, for example, in Blackreach and all its attached Dwemer ruins/dungeons. Some pretty cool battles in there too like Giants and Dragons underground. I dont want to spoil it all. Just take me advice: Watch where you step.

I prefere the linarish dungeons you can find to the dungeons in oblivion where your friend could travel there for you and there would be no chance of you being able to determine where you are without opening up the map.

My quarall is that they are all filled of the same things though. necromancers, bandits and undead dudes. Would be nice to see more dwenmer, hostile orcs and elves, wild animal caves e.c.t.

It pained me to read this, but there are tons of wild animal caves and Dwemer ruins. There are also hostile orcs in bandit groups. Of course if you go into a Draugr ruin there will be Draugr.

i think they are vastly improved.

I think people are just annoying that they're mostly linear.

I personally prefer linear. I always miss stuff in non linear dungeons and I hate that.

But... to each his own.

Just need a mod that gets rid of all these candles and lanterns illuminating caves. Why have torches when they're not required in such deep and undark places?

You can clearly see a person was thinking about the dungeons in this game. In Oblivion they seemed like mass generated grids, while the new dungeons all still share assets, you find little quirky stories in almost every single dungeon with a skeleton hand collapsed in rubble reaching out for a sword, or something similar like this. You also find areas that are set up to be visually cool, like a sun beam falling down over a pool of water, and these are all created "by hand".

The issue is that there should be some similarity in similar types dungeons. All real life caves have rocks and similar rock formations. All real life ancient Roman ruins have similar arches pillars and architecture. Same with Gothic Cathedrals.

That's why I never agreed with the "all Oblivion dungeons are cookie cutter" view. They all used similar elements like Skyrim does, but still allowed for unique designs (Oblivion had a wide variety. For example tight narrow corridors, big cavernous rooms, forts in caves, caves in forts, waterfalls in ruins, trees or ships in ruins etc) and discoveries, like Skyrim does.

I haven't been in a huge number of Skyrim dungeons yet, but I like what I've seen so far.

I can definitely understand what you're saying, but I think in a game like Skyrim, offering you multiple paths through a dungeon wouldn't amount to a much more non-linear experience. You're still most likely going to scour every inch of it, killing everything in your path; having control over the order in which you do so wouldn't add much to replayability. The variety comes more from which weapons/spells you use to do the killing. One game that I think really nailed the multiple paths approach was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. There the paths really meant something - there were stealth paths, guns blazing paths, ducts, walls you might be able to punch through, ledges you might be able to jump up to. Your available paths really depended on how you'd developed your character. Skyrim doesn't offer enough character variety to achieve that. It also takes a lot more time to develop levels like that - look at the length of Human Revolution compared to Skyrim. I beat that game in about a weekend, while I still haven't come close to seeing everything in Skyrim. For the kind of game that Skyrim is, the sort people end up losing themselves in for years, I'd much prefer having 150 or so dungeons, to having a dozen or so non-linear ones.

I think you have a valid argument, because alot (but not all) of dungeons seem to have all alternate paths completely blocked off by rockfalls and clutter. It felt way too easy, with so few dilemmas appearing in the hallway. But then I have only been to maybe 10% of all the dungeons at best, so perhaps my experience isn't conclusive just yet.

I have yet to see a single dungeon that is the same as one I've already been in. That's the handcraft part.

They're still better than the ones in Oblivion. :rolleyes:

I actually love the Skyrim dungeons, in fact my only complaint about them (which I think is a problem with the loot system in general) is that there just isn't any interesting random loot lying around. I remember in Morrowind finding some awesome items cleverly placed in dungeons, and while Skyrim has some nice scenes with odd skeletons run through with Iron Swords or whatever, there's nothing to match the sense of finding Awesome Artefact of Wonder on a shrine deep inside some dank cave. I'm actually tired of finding little offering tables covered with (let's be honest) crap. The Iron Helmet looks nice enough, but since it's one of the three or four items that appear AGAIN and AGAIN as random placed loot in every dungeon, even at level 55 (so it's not levelled, someone actually hand placed it there) there isn't that same excitement as there used to be when discovering a little offering table.

Hell, even the skillbooks are all neatly placed all alone separate from the other books. No more checking everything in a bookshelf for something interesting (unless you actually want to) - anything important will be right there.

Don't misunderstand me, I really do like the game, but it's perfectly natural to find things you'd rather had been done differently.

My experiences are matching the OP - the dungeons are for the most part linear and the components are reused a lot (with minor cosmetic dress changes). There are some exceptions, and there are sometimes little tunnels or chambers that you can sail past because their entrances are easy to miss. Early on I snatched up some torches because they used to be essential for most of the underground locations, but so far I've not found a single location where I've struggled to see where I'm going or what's around me.

Bethesda has never been one to make Mazes. I actually hate mazes in games, but I can see where the fun is.

Well, you're destined to be disappointed then - the vast majority of dungeons are "lovingly handcrafted" and essentially linear. The handcrafted part and the linear part don't really relate - the dungeons are beautiful, have great art design & architecture, etc. In this, they are "handcrafted". The linear thing is a separate issue - it's clearly a design decision that the developers made early on, to make all the longer dungeons loop back around to the beginning (secret exit paths, etc), and to make them non-mazelike. But that doesn't make them any less handcrafted - they're just handcrafted in a way that you're not fond of. :shrug:

(Now, there are many variations of the "linear" thing - like huge rooms with various paths through them, so you keep coming back from another angle.. but you're still progressing through it from beginning to end. Not all the "linear" is a straight hallway.)

Well, they did Daggerfall, which was the other extreme and actually really nightmarishly maze-like.
Though I'm pretty sure there can be some middle-ground between "a tunnel" and "a horribly complex maze"


Yeah, well, I noticed it's not strictly speaking a straight hallway, but it works just like one : you just follow the rails without having to think about the path for one second, never to wonder where you are, and never looking for shortcuts, hidden passages or treasures and the like.
I find this kind of design reeking of lazyness and deeply boring, and frankly it's rather jarring in a game that is supposed to be all about "non-linearity".

Fixed it to suit my opinion

i just really low the dwarven architecture, cogs, wheels steam, and yeah ... that centurion guard -_-

Try playing without fast travel. The entire worldspace anything but a set of rails. I end up having to bushwhack a new path every time I try to get from Solitude to Winterhold.