I wasn't super bothered by the city wall style of OB but I did think it was an obvious short cut to over come a bunch of potential bugs and frame rate drops.
so I would be happy that not every city will be closed by a wall, but it would be okay with me if the capitol had a wall, and maybe a few of the smaller settlements having a palsade (since ones near wilderness realisticly would need a barrier between them and bandits and beasts.

I haven't heard anything one way or another but there are a number of people who say that there won't be walled cities like in OB?

The only cities I wouldn't accept as not being open are subterranean ones. Unless there's no division between dungeons and the overworld.

I'd also like to know about if interiors will reflect this. I was tired of entering such a small room in a house just to get a load screen. Mostly I would think this was bothersome for actual houses. Not like massive dungeons and such.

I liked Oblivion with having the walled off cities, and having them be their own little worlds rather than rendered into the world like in Morrowind...

That said, I do like the seemless wandering into a town and the lack of a loading screen to go into a town in Morrowind...


I guess I like both equally. Can we have the best of both worlds? lol That would be a dumb question.

I think open cities would work better in Skyrim. There, I made my choice... lmao

bliviongate:

I hope they are all open. I'm gonna lure so many beasts in towns, that no one will notice me breaking into difficult places
(of course, provided the stealth and radiant-ai are as good as they should)

If anyone played Nehrim, the main city of Erothin was seemlessly added into the world and you could wander from wilderness into it fine.

And it was a giant city on an island with a huge bridge you had to cross to get there. It was absolutely magnificent.

I didn't like Oblivion's system at all, really. It could work sometimes, but it was such a cop out of finding a better system. I really hope Skyrim's is better. It would be cooler if the gates opened as we approached and we seemlessly walked into the city.

As no one has yet procured any evidence for or against, those who are saying cities are closed off again are merely making the assumption that the new engine's capabilities haven't been modified or sidestepped from Gamebryo's original limitations.

If the Creation Engine incorporates Umbra's occlusion-culling middleware, or if they created their own occlusion-culling system just as they apparently did with their trees, then open cities could very easily be a reality.

I don't think the walled cities in OB were a result of the engine not being able to handle them. I think the biggest reasons was that they had trouble with npc's (probably the guards more than any else) constantly running into the wild to chase or get away from beasts and monsters. as well as keeping things like Ogres and minotars from killing all the non essential characters. then after all that there was the problem with to many static objects that would have severely affected the speed of the game. Not in every city, but Skingrad was the worst and even with the cities being in a excluded cell my frame rate dropped now and again.

Vivec did not have any walls and it was super massive. not on gamebryo I know but its still worth pointing out.

I agree.

Best of both worlds? Walled cities with no loading screen on gate

Edit: Oh and on topic. I'd imagine quite a few cities are in fact walled? It's a dangerous world after all and having some sort of protection against its wildlife and daedra is not the silliest of things.

Surely they could have a wall still, just have a gatehouse with the gate open so people can just walk through. Unless the city is under attack, in which case the gate can be closed.

Not that that would stop a dragon.

While RAI probably did have an affect on the control of things, the NPCs themselves played a more prominent role in closed cities as the time it took to render them. Any decent amount of actors on screen (or in the player's rendering line of sight, which doesn't ignore npcs behind walls, etc) could cripple Oblivion. And the same goes true for the architecture.
RAI has hopefully gone through at least some basic refinement, so I'm hoping it won't be an obstacle to open cities in Skyrim.

Vivec was super massive, but only in the size of the cantons, which were themselves pretty simplistic. All the real render-intensive objects and actors were in interior cells, for the most part. And of course, Morrowind's render distance was quite a bit smaller than Oblivion's. Less data to load for the immediacy, and it didn't have to worry about LOD issues.

Given that cities now have mills, mines, etc. I'm inclined to think that the cities will be open, having an NPC go through 3 transitions just to get to their workplace sounds a bit much... ( out of house, out of city, into the mine/mill ). If the city isn't a separate cell then it would be better implementation imo.

Niker

I have to disagree with the rendering part (npcs) MW had in many cases the same number at least and most often more npc's in a given cell. Yeah, the model textures were not as up to date, but even with the more updated model texture that would not account for problems with render speed, etc. I think the reason there was less npc's was it took more time to place them into the world and even more time to make sure they stayed with in where they were supposed to go. MW did not have that problem, npc's pretty much stayed put unless specificly altered to behave differently.

I think the Oblivion system would have to go as it wouldn't work properly in Skyrim (even if it was easy to program/implement). If dragons are going to attack cities and towns the inside of them can't be 'separate' from the outside world.

We don't know anything that you don't know. We don't have secret info that's not available to everyone. If you don't know, there's a chance we don't either.

I think the answer is we really don't know. With Skyrim having a new engine, I could certainly see Bethesda doing away with the seperate world spaces for cities, as the new engine could well handle this better, of course, it also might not, I simply don't know.

Whether it's in or not, we can still have walled cities, because that just makes sense, only instead of city gates being loading doors, you'd just walk through them directly into the city, that could also mean that guard towers could allow the player to access the top of the walls, and there could be guards patrolling them, something that would have been logical to see in Oblivion.

Did you just tell 90% of the thread starters to [censored] off ?

with or without great walls, i want skyrims citys to be open, and if you run to the gates with bandits or beasts after you the guard would act by either not opening the gates or to run to your aid. closed citys are stupid, but i think that closed houses has been confirmed...

Well, all I know is that I can realistically put 20 or so creatures or actors on the screen at once in Morrowind without too many issues, whereas if I were to try that in Oblivion, things get very messy in terms of framerate. :shrug:

:hubbahubba:

Obviously no one knows, and at this point, the decision either way is set in stone, but I really hope that cities aren't walled off. It was annoying in Tribunal, but at least they had decent enough cover for it.

I always enjoyed the fact that you could enter a town in Morrowind from any direction save under it. (and in some cases, even then).

This! also, by that we must assume that dragons can attack ALL citys.

Thats worth speculating about. if dragons appear in every city thats a good reason to believe that they will all be open.

I'm pretty sure that most cities are open.

A lot of the settlements were in Fallout 3, and Skyrim has a better engine. We don't have any official information on it, but I still feel like logic pretty much confirms this.

Exactly. Cities need walls, but if the transitions can be seamless, that would be ideal.