Do cities feel small in Skyrim for you too?

[Dark Spark]

Blackreach. Imagine a city the size of the Blackreach playfield.

Bethesda has gotten it right, once. Problem is the only place they could fit this city was under a mountain range.

[ZeRoc]

I get bothered by this quite frequently. My first Elder Scrolls game was Morrowind, lots of inconsequential npcs, plenty of small towns that still managed to have a general goods store (unlike Morthal), plus the cities do feel much smaller. It's for that reason I downloaded Expanded Towns and Cities. Etac expands each town, making them much better. There's now a market outside of Whiterun, some men working on repairing houses in the back of Winterhold, general stores in Morthal and Ivarsted, as well as a smith in Karthwasten, Shor's Stone, and the other mining communities. It adds a nice dose of realism. Sure the characters added aren't fleshed out, but they certainly don't need to be. Not everyone has to play a role in your quest, and it seems silly to have a scarcer population in Skyrim than there was on the inhospitable island of Vvardenfell.

[GamerAim]

I get bothered by this quite frequently. My first Elder Scrolls game was Morrowind, lots of inconsequential npcs, plenty of small towns that still managed to have a general goods store (unlike Morthal), plus the cities do feel much smaller. It's for that reason I downloaded Expanded Towns and Cities. Etac expands each town, making them much better. There's now a market outside of Whiterun, some men working on repairing houses in the back of Winterhold, general stores in Morthal and Ivarsted, as well as a smith in Karthwasten, Shor's Stone, and the other mining communities. It adds a nice dose of realism. Sure the characters added aren't fleshed out, but they certainly don't need to be. Not everyone has to play a role in your quest, and it seems silly to have a scarcer population in Skyrim than there was on the inhospitable island of Vvardenfell.

While the Dunmer may disagree, Morrowind was doing pretty well off in Morrowind. Yes, Vvardenfell was largely ash, but it was also newly opened up and home to the holy city of Vivec. This brought in outlanders for the resources and Dunmer to Vivec and the other holy sites. Everyone wanted a piece of that island (even the Telvanni). Now, while Skyrim is pretty pathetic and none of what I am about to say entirely justifies it, it did have a few reasons for its lower population.

One: Whereas Vvardenfell benefited from the influx of people from the Empire and the long-lived and well-off Morrowind, Skyrim does not. It's always been a harsh land and is much younger than Morrowind. Nords probably breed faster than Dunmer, but they probably died a lot quicker as well because they're men, they're Nords and they live in Skyrim, which is probably more inhospitable than Morrowind.

Two: Skyrim is set 200 years after the Oblivion Crisis, after the near-total collapse of the Empire, after the Great War. Skyrim will have suffered from this. And who knows how many people died in the Great War? And the civil war? The point being, Vvardenfell was way better off than Skyrim was in the games, IMO so it makes some sense that the population would be lower in Skyrim. I don't think it should have been as pathetic as it was, but it did have a few reasons why it might be more pathetic than Morrowind.

[ParanoidAndroid]

It's mostly related to the engine though, it can't handle over a dozen NPCs and objects on the screen at once. Because it's basically the same engine in Oblivion, Fallout (3/NV/4) as in Skyrim we got the same problems and thus small and walled of cities.

The only city that actually feels alive and large is Novigrad in TW3. Let's hope Bethesda kicks in a higher gear and creates a decent engine. Although I don't think this will happen.

[Leckan]

Due to game restrictions. In-universe, they would be vastly larger and more populated.

[dremorababe]

They're scaled down versions, yes. Unpopular opinion but I don't really like the idea of cities like Novigrad in TES. Novigrad fit that setting wonderfully but TES cities have this homely, comfortable feel that I wouldn't get without the ability to interact with NPC's. They just feel like home to me but maybe that's because I'm not one for big crowds. I'm certainly not a people person.

[legoless]

Novigrad fit that setting wonderfully but TES cities have this homely, comfortable feel that I wouldn't get without the ability to interact with NPC's.

Why not both.

[Unionhack]

I'm certainly a fan of massive cities divided into distinct sections that I could get acquainted with, and while it would do wonders for immersion, I think I favor the smaller-but-different cities approach. They feel special.

I prefer a large explorable wilderness than large cities in a game like this, despite how much I love urban settings. It just seems to fit the gameplay better. Maybe one day when we break free from engine limitations though!

[dremorababe]

Am i the only one that likes Vivec City? It was far too complicated but I think that fits the person it was named after

[noobishlord]

Am i the only one that likes Vivec City?

Yup, only you. Not a single other soul liked it.

...That may come off as quite nasty, but that phrase annoys me so much.

It was far too complicated but I think that fits the person it was named after

I'll definitely agree it was complicated. I think I'm pretty good at finding things in the Foreign Quarter, but forget about the rest of the Cantons. I most certainly didn't spend any real length of time in them. It's kinda like the Imperial City. I can go around the Market Section and the Arena Sections practically blindfolded, but forget about any of the others, I just walked down the center path to the doors I need to go.

[Imbalance]

I'll definitely agree it was complicated. I think I'm pretty good at finding things in the Foreign Quarter, but forget about the rest of the Cantons. I most certainly didn't spend any real length of time in them. It's kinda like the Imperial City. I can go around the Market Section and the Arena Sections practically blindfolded, but forget about any of the others, I just walked down the center path to the doors I need to go.

This nails a good point: if the majority of a place turns out to be unnecessary fluff to fill the gap between you and your objective, that's probably overkill. Granted, maybe a majority of the worldspace can be described as such, or maybe a place only feels unnecessary because no meaningful quests utilize enough of the created environment, depending on your point of view. I agree that both Vivec and Imperial City feel needlessly complex, while adding that no city in Skyrim gives this impression.

On the other hand, Daggerfall's immense scope is part of the draw, though the redundancy of how cities are appointed seems to shrink it to a more manageable ordeal by making it blatantly obvious just how much of that world is filler. There is little compunction for ignoring most of what you see when you accept that a) you'll likely never see all of it and b) if you've seen one town, you've pretty much seen them all. I can't say I dislike it when it's done that way, but I definitely prefer the last three entries in this regard.

[BiggJobag]

Now, before I say anything, let me say: I know nothing about meta-game lore, but I do know a little bit about history aka. real-life lore.

The cities in Skyrim did not feel too small to me. To me, they felt much too big.

Skyrim is a country with a harsh, cold climate. It's also barren of any worthwhile natural resources, but the climate is the most important thing. Because of the poor climate, producing a surplus of food is very difficult. Because producing a surplus of food is so difficult, very few people can afford to not work in the business of producing food. This means an almost entirely agri/aquacultural society, probably with a small noble class maintaining the power, and their courts, as well as an ecclesiastical class. And it also means urban areas, if they exist at all, are simply minor royal centres with one-hundred or less inhabitants. There just isn't enough food to go around for more.

This is the pattern replicated across history in any area of the world poorly suited to agriculture. My own Scotland didn't start to get anything resembling a town until the 14th Century or so. Scandinavia in the 15th Century. Iceland's capital and only city, Rejkjavik, only became urban in the 20th Century. Conversely in desert places like Australia, or rainforests like the Amazon.

In keeping with the environment Skyrim finds itself in, I (possibly in a minority of one) was a bit dissappointed that the country was so urban. I felt the cities were bewilderingly populous, and was astonished at the idea that jarls were funding and feeding professional standing armies. The countryside seemed disturbingly empty of all the farmers, herders, fishermen and hunters doing their best to eke out enough to survive from Skyrim's unforgiving environment, while having enough spare to pay their jarl's taxes.

[Will Zurmacht]

Food production was believably represented I thought by the farms and fisheries that surround most settlements. Most outlying areas have camps with NPCs who remind the player that they've "been hunting and fishing in these parts for years." The province enjoys strong imperial trade links that allow the export of mineral, timber etc. wealth in exchange for the import of food and other goods, boosting urbanization.

Standing imperial legions make sense given the Empire's logistical capacity, but most forces fielded by jarls would probably be feudal style hosts called up for service during campaign season and then dismissed to work the land during spring and fall. Full time "police officer" style hold guards as seen in Skyrim are an absurd but necessary evil designed to help keep crime-happy video game playing tweens in check. I would generously interpret them more as each jarl's household retainers who keep the peace on a part time basis while tending to their small fiefs and so on most of the year, in typical medieval fashion.

[ArthurLev]

I think it's the number of houses. Solitude feels pretty big, but everywhere else does seem small for whatever reason.

I feel the same. In the next game i hope they make bigger cities.