The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is perhaps best known for featuring a game world unlike any other, with a excellent, varied and expansive map that provides the joys and wonders of exploration and discovery like almost no other game map in the entire industry. However, the one area where the map falters a bit is the cities and areas of civilization themselves. As opposed to something like, say, Novigrad in The Witcher 3 or even the Imperial City in Skyrim’s own predecessor, Oblivion, cities in Skyrim often feel very small scale, and a lot of them do not have the same living and breathing atmosphere that the rest of the game world does.
A lot of that, of course, is due to the nature of the setting itself. Skyrim is much less urbanized than Cyrodiil in the Elder Scrolls mythos, so it makes sense that it doesn’t have any large cities on the same scale as the Imperial City, but that doesn’t mean that the cities shouldn’t feel like living environments in their own right. Other than a few exceptions, such as Whiterun and maybe Markath, the game doesn’t really have any cities that stand out in your memory.
Can Bethesda work on improving this in the inevitable Elder Scrolls 6? There’s no reason why not, really. There’s nothing to suggest that a game world as well developed as something like that of Skyrim’s can’t feature memorable cities in the vein of what we saw in The Witcher 3. Maybe that is a game that Bethesda need to look at for inspiration.
What are your thoughts on this? Tell us in the comments section below.
This article is part of our series on Bethesda’s next big entry into the world of The Elder Scrolls. Through this series we take a look at the possible new features that Bethesda can add into the next The Elder Scrolls game, based on what they implemented in the previous entries and player feedback.