Riften was definitely my favourite city in the original game, and this adaptation might be my favourite one that I’ve made so far too… ArtStation: www.artstation.com/artwork/QKKErZ Soundtrack: ‘A Long Awaited Journey’ & ‘Lights of Destination’ - Helmut Schenker.
One very minor criticism I have, in the game outside most of these cities are a few farms, and if you're upscaling the cities into actual cities, it would make sense to upscale the farmland to provide enough food to support such a population. Fantastic work though, especially the street view
Yes! Medieval fantasy cities need sprawl, and enough farmland to look like it would realistically support them. Having the outside of the walls just be trees makes it feel unrealistic. Any wood within a days walking distance would have be cut down for building materials or firewood or to make pastures or farmlands, only leaving some well maintained copses.
Isn’t Riften a fishing city so wouldn’t they get most of their food from the sea by ship? I’m not saying their shouldn’t be farms but if your a massive port couldn’t you supply enough fish to support the population of a city very easily?
Witcher 3 is more closer to realism. Noivgrad is really large and thats what a medieval city should be like. When you later go to oxenfurt. It looks really small.
@@austinbailey312 It's next to a large lake, not sea, which would limit the catch in quantity and quality, even if the lake as well was scaled up realistically. I doubt the people would only be eating fish and crabs. There should be farms and orchards. Before trains and trucks, importing all grain, oil, fruit, and vegetables from wherever else would be expensive. The rivers in the mountainous Skyrim are mostly poor for transportation as well.
There are only Eight of the weak Aedra, Talos is a false god, a human that abused their dragonborn abilities to make themselves a god, but they were no true God, just a pathetic power hungry man
@@samuelhaverghast2442 Ysmir is the god of men, the true ascension of the mortals amongst the divine. His mere name is a threat to the pride of the Mer, and so they must shun his glory. No matter how they, and you, may disparage his name, his place amongst the pantheon is as undeniable as Masser's place amongst the sky.
@@SonnyFRST Skyrim is a decade old. Graphics cards or consoles did NOT support 4k until 2013 or 2014. So how were they going to implement this amount of work and quality when the tech back then was not ready? Bethesda today does not need to go back to a 10-year ol game to implement these graphics. Please stop with these brain-dead comments.
@@LudwigVanSkorm I wasn't talking about the graphics. Also not saying they need to go back to Skyrim, quite the opposite, my complaint is that in all this time the only things they done in TES was shitty mobile games and fucking ESO.
I can't help but imagine a previous scene in a Elder Scrolls movie, with characters discussing a heist on the Thalmor Embassy, and one of them says something like: "By Ysmir, for this to succeed, we'll need a blasting good thief!" _"I think I know the perfect lad."_ "Well, Gumnar, were is he?" Then, this establishing shot of Riften, bold letters and all.
Now THAT is a hold capital! And city vibe is preserved so well; shop stands in the canal look exactly like a place criminal underworld would thrive in, and is this entrance to the ratway snuck in at 3:34 on the left I see? 😄
"I found it!! I finally found it!!" "By the gods! The quill of Gemination!" "Well, what took you so long??" (Points to the new size of the gawt damn harbor)
I think we could get a game like this but we probably never will because Bethesda refuses to ditch their stupid creation engine which sucks, and is incredibly outdated. I really wish that they would use something with modern features like unreal engine.
@@TheLoneWolf449there is a reason why Bethesda can’t use Unreal Engine. They released a UA-cam video about it. Using Unreal Engine would mean giving up the potential for mods and since everyone loves using mods, well, you see where I’m going here
We never will Because the new generation of consooomers are clueless, and "herp derp" throw money at anything shiny.. Skyrim wasn't that good guys, you all three money at it endlessly.. now the bar is so low @@TheLoneWolf449
Yeah! A game set entirely on Riften where you are a member of Riften's underworld (maybe something in the style of the Thief series of games?) navigating its dangers and trying to survive for another day.
Sometimes I forget that the game is...that. A game. And cities are scaled down for gameplay. Lorewise, however, they surely look more like this. Incredible work mate.
Honestly, man, this is wild! Ingame, Riften is just a bit more than a dozen houses and a painfully obvious "hidden" Ratway... It definitely feels like a city for thieves, but still. I get that it's not possible to make cities that big (from technological perspective) and still fill it with enough content, but when I look at The Witcher games, especially Novigrad, Oxenfurt, and the often overlooked Wyzima, I feel like it's doable in a balanced way. Those cities are large without feeling empty, so it seems possible to pull it off in Elder Scrolls 6 too. Hopefully.
It’s also that the devs wanted to scale it down for player convenience because if the cities were this big it would be really annoying to constantly traverse. it is possible to make it fun, it’s just also harder and riskier
It is possible to make it this big and also fun. The A.I. have their own scripts. The vendors go to their shops, workere to their workplace, and guards to their posts from X hour to Y hour and then, on their free time, to either a hub, or to a meeting place woth other NPCs, and then back to their homes to sleep. Throw some travelers as visitors that can have random scripts like shopping, drinking at taverns, sightsreing, trouble making, etc. And you already havr a living vibrant city. Add a few random events that require your involvement, and some that dont, and you are immersed. Traversing from point A to point B can be a bit annoying, but with the randomness of whst could happen in the cities, players would def not get bored. And ofc, add fast travel points in the city, like a tavern, the palace, the jailhouse, etc. That way, if you arent interested in running for 3 to 5 minutes from point A to point B, you juet fast travel. Now, in tearms of how hard it will be on the consoles and PC, that is the challenge. But as you said, The Witcher 3 did it phenomenally, and with far better graphics than Skyrim. So it would have been possible. But Bethesda arent as passionate of their things as CDPR is with theirs.
@@KolonelCeanders Nah, there's really no excuse for Bethesda. Gamers can handle walking through a city that takes longer than 20 seconds to traverse the entirety of.
It also technically doable to mod the everr-living paste out of Skyrim to be more on par with games like the Witcher. However, at that point, why not pull a SkyBlivion level overhaul and expand the whole game? I feel like a safe size for videogame Cities is to more a realistic Hamlet not full scale city IMO. TES games set an expectation that the world is teeming with lore and secrets. So for the secret hunter you want to peel back all the curtains. But for the RolePlayer you want an immersively immense world with diverse options to travers that world for large journeys. Mages being able to teleport. Rouges and warriors and their favourite steed. But you also don't want to overwhelm the player with so much that exploration seems unachievable, but the world not be so small that you lose out due to the other end of the spectrum (IMO). And with the subjectivity of taste, there's a different "perfect world scale" for everyone. Personally, I feel Skyrim could stand to be 3x its current size, be made to be equivalently just as rich with content for updates sake. What do you think?
This is GOREGOUS! Brings me right back to when I first arrived at Riften. Can’t wait to see what the rest of Tamriel looks like. I would love to see Daggerfall get similar treatment.
My brain can't even wrap iteself around all those individual objects in the canal walkways to render!!! This is both technically and aesthetically a giant leap forward.
The walk through the stalls is crazy good. The rain splashing on the ground is a nice touch. Now I want to walk through it in VR and talk to NPCs that look equally good who can chat in real time using AI
I was hoping for riften for so long - and this is just magnificient. You managed to capture the lush athmosphere so well. Your shots, compositions, editing and sounddesign are also cinematic af. I wanna see this on a big screen - outstanding work!!
Man your stuff is so good I rewatch it every now and then. Really makes my mind wander into a world where this is what Skyrim and similar games looked like
You need about 2 acres of farmland to support a family of 4. That's with modern farming techniques (primarily fertilizer and pesticides) and modern calorie consumption. Double that for older techniques, and double the calorie intake back in the days before we got most of our work done manually (instead of burning wood, coal, etc). So realistically, you'd need about 2 acres of farmland for every medieval person. If you figure Riften's population is 250, that's 500 acres (about 200 hectares, 0.78 sq miles, 2 sq km) of farmland needed to support it. That's small enough that a surrounding community of farms could support it. But you can see how just the logistics of growing and transporting food placed a cap on the size of a city. At some point, it because easier just to set up a new town, rather than collect a bunch of food from far away and transport it to the old town. People vastly underestimate how much land is needed to grow food. If you've been thinking you could grow a backyard garden and never have to visit the grocery store again, you're sadly mistaken. Just the labor involved in maintaining enough land to feed yourself is nearly a full-time job. It's why we've consolidated and mechanized it.
The thing that these true scale videos do better than Skyrim is showing why the Dragonborn is truly a legend even during the events of the game. The fact that a guard in a city of 15 people cannot fathom who the Dragonborn is despite said Dragonborn being the most obvious person imaginable makes your character feel completely unrealistic as a legendary figure. Instead imagining cities this large, news traveling slowly and not through a teleporting courier, and debates about ideologies and the Thalmor Elves undermining of such debates, shows how one person traveling on secret and lonesome roads would be talked about and revered or despised as said Dragonborn.
Astounding. A true work of art, and I can't imagine the amount of work that goes into it. I'm amazed that I can tell where in the city you are when you show the street-level views, even the non-walking stills near the beginning.
Love it! The market was super cool to see. The walkways with no fencing or rails made me anxious because I could totally see a random thief running out of a house or away from a stall in such a hurry that you get knocked off the path and unalived. Well done, sir. These are a delight to behold!
Your videos are some of my most favorite on the internet. Playing Skyrim, I always put immersion first and imagined just how would those cities look on a realistic scale. You made all my fantasies about that come real, thank you for that. The music you use in those videos is also so fitting and nice, adds a lot to the atmosphere!
this reminds me that I'm convinced bethesda should make one of their games set entirely within a city, just to bring the real scale of the world to life
i have just downloaded unreal engine because i want to develop landscapes i can take "walks" in. I love nature, and have been inspired by modding skyrim heavily for the same purpose. These videos are really inspirational, your work is incredible. I can't wait to get started.
The biggest problem of Skyrim IMO is all the towns/cities have like 10-15 buildings. One blacksmith, one mage, one general store, one apothecary, one inn. I understand they had limitations for how large the game could be then, but the cities should've all been 3x as large to give the impression of the scale.
Utterly fantastic, not only expanding it to the size of a believable city, but also keeping the vibe and feeling of the city. I also like that you took inspiration from ESO. Truly a city worth the title of Hold capital. A shame Bethesda stopped doing large Cities with Daggerfall.
Another great video. Love this series. I know it would be extremely time consuming to navigate a game in a world so large, but it would be quite nice to have something in between this and what we actually got in both Skyrim and ESO. I'd love to see you tackle some of the cities from the other games. Vivec, Mournhold, Anvil, Bravil, Leyawiin, Wayrest, Sentinel...there are so many!
I can see the Townsend's Skylines bit now. To travelers who may be taken aback by the brisk weather, you may prefer a forest region closer to home. On the east banks of Lake Honrich we find one of the oldest settlements of the Nordic inhabitants, Riften. Set into the iconic red birch forest coating the region referred to as The Rift, the local ecosystem enjoys a far longer autumnal season owing to its unique placement between the mountain ranges to the north and south. While the Ysgramor's Teeth range blocks much of the cold wind from the Sea of Ghosts, The Rift itself is far lower than the Jerall range to the south like Bruma is situated on. This temperate balance supports a vibrant forest where travel, trade, fishing, and agriculture are far more abundant. In spite of its historical age, many of the buildings in Riften are relatively recent. In the aftermath of Hosgunn Crossed-Daggers' 30 year rule over Riften the once proud center of trade in Skyrim fell from grace in the wake of crippling tariffs and curfews. Poverty, famine, and plague ravaged the city when the townsfolk rebelled en masse, setting fire to the jarl's hold and devastating much of the city in the process. Over the next five years, Riften's people worked to remake their once beloved city into the much smaller settlement we see today. As bleak as it seems now, it serves as a monument to population's willingness to stand against tyranny and build back from adversity. Many citizens now live in the walls of the canals running through Riften proper, and many merchants are out peddling their wares in stands on the docks and across the bridges. This can range from locally sourced crops and forged equipment, or exotic goods from the neighboring provinces. The biggest market today is the mead business, funding various estates to raise bee farms for honey so that the Black-Briar Meadery can mix it into one of the best quality beverages in all of Skyrim. The texture of this beverage is said to- Yngvar where is my mead? Yngvar the mead was in my pocket the moment we started recording, who took my goddamn mead?
You just hear for the shadows: "Haven't worked a day in your life for all that gold you're carrying, eh lad/lass?" Anyways, incredible and mind-blowing as always! I love the design, the port section reminds me of Nuln from Warhammer Fantasy for some reason.
If I was Todd I would focus on a remake new game release pattern. So after fo4 I would have worked on a dagger fall remake (so we can use a lot of the stuff from the hammerfell to use in es6) that would have released in place of Starfield and we now still be waiting on es6 but the itch would at least be partially satisfied.
@@PlayerJay425 That would suggest that management could make a consumer focused decision rather than a "lets just re-release what we've got now and sucker them in" decision. I might not like Todd very much, but even I won't blame him for that one.
For the people saying "I wish we had a game like this, with these big cities instead of the small ones we got", I just have one thing to say to you, no. As much as big cities like this are beautiful and the creator of this video did an amazing job, we can't have big cities like this. I mean.. we can.. but the problem comes with quests. I'd LOVE to spend my days exploring a Riften like this, but I wouldn't love to spend days just walking to a singular quest.
This exactly. There are whole teams of game developers and level designers whose sole existence is to ensure games aren't too big, cumbersome, or difficult to navigate. The idea seems fun until it takes you two hours to cross a city only to realize you didn't put down a new marker and are just wandering towards the town gate.
@curlzncrush - Definitely gorgeous and it would be fun to get lost in for a short time, but you could never make a game this big and fill it with enough content to prevent it feeling empty and dead.
I thought the size of the downtown areas are good but the city should extend further away with more suburbs and smaller buildings It's only a medium sized city, and everyone is packed in
@@christopherpekel6096 Nah, the entire City Center and Heywood area combined is only about the size of the suburban housing neighborhood where I live, obviously scaled down for gameplay purposes and limitations.
@@indiexanna there's supposed to be 6 million in night city. If you're in the USA your suburban area is likely the same as a district of somewhere like Tokyo that might have half a million people Overlay American or Australian cities over Asian or European cities and you'll see what I mean It's scaled down but not as much as some think Hard for many Americans to comprehend how many people you can fit in a city if they have never left the country Saigon has 8 million people and I was able to ride a scooter from almost one side to the other in 20 minutes at night Double night city's in game size and I reckon it would be realistic, those mega buildings would hold a hell of a lot of people assuming apartments are small and most don't have windows We also have to assume that V has a large apartment and most people have rooms a third of the size, which is more lore-realistic
@@indiexanna you know what, you're right. Looking at the map superimposed over other cities it would need to be several times the size to fit that 6 million, even with insane high density and all the mega buildings. It's smaller than I remember it being when seeing it placed over world cities
@@christopherpekel6096 I live in Jakarta Indonesia, 11 million+ people lives and works here. Thousands of people lives in the suburban neighborhood I live in, it's like a housing complex consists of many roofed houses, some SOHOs, traditional market, several schools, and one apartment complex, kinda like the Rancho Coronado area but obviously larger in scale. Scaled properly, the Night City district itself, Watson + Westbrook + City Center + Heywood + Santo Domingo, should be at least 3 times the size of the entire Cyberpunk's map. Pacifica on its own should at least be the size of Pacifica + Night City district minus Santo Domingo, Charter Hill, and North Oak. Aldecaldos Camp on its own should be the size of the entire Santo Domingo. CDPR did a great job delivering the illusion of a massive city, they condensed everything and yet it's still believable in size when you play it just like GTA Vice City map from back then which is not even the size of Santo Domingo I believe but boy did it feel real that time.
Imagine your life there. Friends with the kids on your street. Dad takes you down to the docks sometimes. The harvest festival in fall. Swimming in Lake Honrich all summer. Sneaking some Black-Briar mead with your buddies on a camp-out out past Merryfair Farm.
I really hope that elder scrolls 6 makes everything on a larger scale than they have been in the previous games, I don't expect them to make anything like what you've made, but something at least a little bit more believable would be nice.
@@TheLoneWolf449 at this point they should give up the TES ip to someone else who knows how to make huge games with detailed worldbuilding and good stories
@@shahriar4706_ I'm not ready to make that call yet. They've got new leadership with Xbox. Elder Scrolls 6, Will be the first game fully developed under Xbox, out of their three big RPG series. Xbox was only with Bethesda for the tail end of Starfield.
If I may make a small suggestion, I think the foot of the mountains should not be covered in snow, when Riften, at a similar altitude, is seemingly still in autumn. Great video as always!
I am BEGGING you! Do a lore accurate Alinor, glistening insect like skyscrapers showing every color of the rainbow against the emerald sea. It would be nothing short of glorious.
This. Is. Phenomenal. Absolutely my favorite place that you guys have done! You've brought Riften to life like I've never seen before. Truly stunning. I'd give anything to play a to scale Skyrim. Just. Wow. Also puts into perspective why Inigo loves it so much 😂 fish, money, Mead? I mean why not?😅
If Skyrim was to that kind of scale, it'd take 30 years to finish the game. As amazing as the thought of cities this big and realistic is, it's completely untenable for gameplay. You'd have to have dozens of quick travel spots in one city just to not take hours doing minor fetch quests.
@@schadenfreude3236 Then stop making fetch quest your primary mission goals in the game, size is not the problem, being completely inept at game design is however.
@@SMGJohn - Use your brain. If a fetch quest takes that long, so would everything else. Making something to this scale, while pretty, would destroy game flow and would be the epitome of poor game design. Overcompensation, one might say.
@@schadenfreude3236 Huh, you do realise Elder Scrolls 1 and 2 already had monstrously large worlds and did not have any problems of what you described chump? You do realise there something called a local quest system where quests can remain localised within an area. It may come as a shocking surprise to you, but quests does not need to spawn the entire map, wow I know such big brain moment.
@SMGJohn - 1 literally has localised questing and Daggerfall is a massive time sink that no one has or will ever replicate for that reason. It was wasteful and pointless vast empty space no one bothered exploring. And yeah, it apparently is a big brain moment when you can't sort out why literally no one has done it. You've also clearly not taken design courses or listened to all the people already complaining the world is too big and too empty. A studio could never fill a space that huge with content. It'd at least quadruple dev time and cost. It would be pretty, but would be completely untenable as a game. Sorry about your feels.
Just stunning. Thank you for another fantastic true-scale video ❤ the mountains especially took my breath away. What a sight that would be to wake up to
For a city known for Black Briar and Thieves Guild, its not really reflect the notority of the latter, was expecting more dark alleys and shady waterways. But you nailed the drab and depressing nature of the city
This honestly dunks on Skyrim even harder knowing that Bethesda will only ever be capable of pulling of stupid theme park like worlds. Playing the game now just feels off.
Now we have to find screenwriters who will be able to write exciting quests to fill such a space, which is a feat that humanity has not yet managed to accomplish.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![The True Scale of Falkreath: Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]](/img/n.gif)
Riften was definitely my favourite city in the original game, and this adaptation might be my favourite one that I’ve made so far too…
ArtStation: www.artstation.com/artwork/QKKErZ
Soundtrack: ‘A Long Awaited Journey’ & ‘Lights of Destination’ - Helmut Schenker.
This is so Cinematic. Only hoping ESVI may have this type of vibe!!
Question: Where do you find the information to base of your true scale video ?
@@NuneAkaMrPropane After Starfield? I have serious doubts about that...
This is really good
@@rosesareredbutzerglingssti9290doubts for a game that hasn’t even had a real trailer yet?
One very minor criticism I have, in the game outside most of these cities are a few farms, and if you're upscaling the cities into actual cities, it would make sense to upscale the farmland to provide enough food to support such a population.
Fantastic work though, especially the street view
Yes! Medieval fantasy cities need sprawl, and enough farmland to look like it would realistically support them. Having the outside of the walls just be trees makes it feel unrealistic. Any wood within a days walking distance would have be cut down for building materials or firewood or to make pastures or farmlands, only leaving some well maintained copses.
Isn’t Riften a fishing city so wouldn’t they get most of their food from the sea by ship? I’m not saying their shouldn’t be farms but if your a massive port couldn’t you supply enough fish to support the population of a city very easily?
Witcher 3 is more closer to realism. Noivgrad is really large and thats what a medieval city should be like.
When you later go to oxenfurt. It looks really small.
@@austinbailey312 They still need building materials and firewood, even if they did not farm anything the forests would be cut down.
@@austinbailey312 It's next to a large lake, not sea, which would limit the catch in quantity and quality, even if the lake as well was scaled up realistically. I doubt the people would only be eating fish and crabs. There should be farms and orchards. Before trains and trucks, importing all grain, oil, fruit, and vegetables from wherever else would be expensive. The rivers in the mountainous Skyrim are mostly poor for transportation as well.
By the nine! Can't imagine how big could be the ratway beneath
There are only Eight of the weak Aedra, Talos is a false god, a human that abused their dragonborn abilities to make themselves a god, but they were no true God, just a pathetic power hungry man
@@samuelhaverghast2442 Ysmir is the god of men, the true ascension of the mortals amongst the divine. His mere name is a threat to the pride of the Mer, and so they must shun his glory. No matter how they, and you, may disparage his name, his place amongst the pantheon is as undeniable as Masser's place amongst the sky.
as expansive as the city since it is the sewer of the city .
@@samuelhaverghast2442 average pathetic mer sympathiser, to oblivion with you
That's why they called it a city under a city.
I love how there is Skyrim related content still being made after all these years.
What do you mean? It was only released like last year!
Long live Skyrim
Not exactly a good thing considering this is people going "fine, I'll do it myself" in response to Bethesda being Bethesda.
@@SonnyFRST Skyrim is a decade old. Graphics cards or consoles did NOT support 4k until 2013 or 2014. So how were they going to implement this amount of work and quality when the tech back then was not ready? Bethesda today does not need to go back to a 10-year ol game to implement these graphics. Please stop with these brain-dead comments.
@@LudwigVanSkorm I wasn't talking about the graphics. Also not saying they need to go back to Skyrim, quite the opposite, my complaint is that in all this time the only things they done in TES was shitty mobile games and fucking ESO.
I ran a TES themed DnD campaign a while ago, and you have No idea how valuable these videos were for my vision. Incredible work.
Thanks! Glad it was helpful!
I can't help but imagine a previous scene in a Elder Scrolls movie, with characters discussing a heist on the Thalmor Embassy, and one of them says something like: "By Ysmir, for this to succeed, we'll need a blasting good thief!" _"I think I know the perfect lad."_ "Well, Gumnar, were is he?" Then, this establishing shot of Riften, bold letters and all.
Now THAT is a hold capital! And city vibe is preserved so well; shop stands in the canal look exactly like a place criminal underworld would thrive in, and is this entrance to the ratway snuck in at 3:34 on the left I see? 😄
Good eye!
I would like the biggest Riften you’ve got.
No that’s too big.
"I found it!! I finally found it!!" "By the gods! The quill of Gemination!" "Well, what took you so long??" (Points to the new size of the gawt damn harbor)
Imagine a game like this, it would truly be incredible
I think we could get a game like this but we probably never will because Bethesda refuses to ditch their stupid creation engine which sucks, and is incredibly outdated. I really wish that they would use something with modern features like unreal engine.
Yeah. We need a TES game with the scale of games such as Arena or Daggerfall. I'm tired of the bite- size cities made with the "Creation Engine".
@@TheLoneWolf449there is a reason why Bethesda can’t use Unreal Engine. They released a UA-cam video about it. Using Unreal Engine would mean giving up the potential for mods and since everyone loves using mods, well, you see where I’m going here
When this game came out. It was like this. Or at least it felt like it. Still does but nothing will ever compare to first time playing.
We never will
Because the new generation of consooomers are clueless, and "herp derp" throw money at anything shiny..
Skyrim wasn't that good guys, you all three money at it endlessly.. now the bar is so low
@@TheLoneWolf449
That waterfront is HUGE. Just looking at it evokes the smell of the fish market in my nose
But at the same time it would probably smell like rotten excrement too, because why use toilets when running water is beneath the feet... lol
This is incredible. I need this as a functioning game.
Cheers!
Yeah! A game set entirely on Riften where you are a member of Riften's underworld (maybe something in the style of the Thief series of games?) navigating its dangers and trying to survive for another day.
add NPCs and essential game functions, and you won't be able to run the game anymore 😂
@@Simon-ml3yd unless you have one of those supercomputers at NASA.
my PC crashed only by watching it
Sometimes I forget that the game is...that. A game. And cities are scaled down for gameplay. Lorewise, however, they surely look more like this. Incredible work mate.
Cheers!
Honestly, man, this is wild! Ingame, Riften is just a bit more than a dozen houses and a painfully obvious "hidden" Ratway... It definitely feels like a city for thieves, but still.
I get that it's not possible to make cities that big (from technological perspective) and still fill it with enough content, but when I look at The Witcher games, especially Novigrad, Oxenfurt, and the often overlooked Wyzima, I feel like it's doable in a balanced way. Those cities are large without feeling empty, so it seems possible to pull it off in Elder Scrolls 6 too. Hopefully.
It’s also that the devs wanted to scale it down for player convenience because if the cities were this big it would be really annoying to constantly traverse. it is possible to make it fun, it’s just also harder and riskier
It is possible to make it this big and also fun. The A.I. have their own scripts. The vendors go to their shops, workere to their workplace, and guards to their posts from X hour to Y hour and then, on their free time, to either a hub, or to a meeting place woth other NPCs, and then back to their homes to sleep. Throw some travelers as visitors that can have random scripts like shopping, drinking at taverns, sightsreing, trouble making, etc. And you already havr a living vibrant city. Add a few random events that require your involvement, and some that dont, and you are immersed.
Traversing from point A to point B can be a bit annoying, but with the randomness of whst could happen in the cities, players would def not get bored. And ofc, add fast travel points in the city, like a tavern, the palace, the jailhouse, etc. That way, if you arent interested in running for 3 to 5 minutes from point A to point B, you juet fast travel.
Now, in tearms of how hard it will be on the consoles and PC, that is the challenge. But as you said, The Witcher 3 did it phenomenally, and with far better graphics than Skyrim. So it would have been possible. But Bethesda arent as passionate of their things as CDPR is with theirs.
@@KolonelCeanders Nah, there's really no excuse for Bethesda. Gamers can handle walking through a city that takes longer than 20 seconds to traverse the entirety of.
It also technically doable to mod the everr-living paste out of Skyrim to be more on par with games like the Witcher. However, at that point, why not pull a SkyBlivion level overhaul and expand the whole game?
I feel like a safe size for videogame Cities is to more a realistic Hamlet not full scale city IMO. TES games set an expectation that the world is teeming with lore and secrets. So for the secret hunter you want to peel back all the curtains. But for the RolePlayer you want an immersively immense world with diverse options to travers that world for large journeys. Mages being able to teleport. Rouges and warriors and their favourite steed.
But you also don't want to overwhelm the player with so much that exploration seems unachievable, but the world not be so small that you lose out due to the other end of the spectrum (IMO).
And with the subjectivity of taste, there's a different "perfect world scale" for everyone.
Personally, I feel Skyrim could stand to be 3x its current size, be made to be equivalently just as rich with content for updates sake.
What do you think?
@@blebcat I’m not saying it was a good thing, I’m just saying that was also likely taken into consideration when making the cities
Incredible! I love Riften, it's definitely my favorite city design-wise. Can't wait to see the true high king's capital!
Nord dog.
He's already done Solitude.
This is GOREGOUS! Brings me right back to when I first arrived at Riften. Can’t wait to see what the rest of Tamriel looks like. I would love to see Daggerfall get similar treatment.
Thank you!
Wake up babe, new True Scale of just dropped.
Hey you, you're finally awake
Cringe
I’d play the fuck out if that
@@donfrank2544you used the term cringe correctly here. I love it.
"...of just dropped"?
Now remember, TES VI won't even come close to being like this, it'd be the same 15-house villages with 20 NPCs.
Which is frustrating cause games like assassins creed for example have made cities with tons of people years & years ago. It isn’t rocket science
@@Max_mif Bethesda ditches creation engine than the mods won’t be as good.
I prefer the smaller cities for gameplay frankly. Compare with Daggerfall where there hundreds of very large cities and they are all generic.
Exactly, look at games like Cyberpunk or Gta where most buildings are not accessible and NPCs are lifeless
@@quesoturtle739 I mean I’d be okay with that
My brain can't even wrap iteself around all those individual objects in the canal walkways to render!!! This is both technically and aesthetically a giant leap forward.
The walk through the stalls is crazy good. The rain splashing on the ground is a nice touch.
Now I want to walk through it in VR and talk to NPCs that look equally good who can chat in real time using AI
I was hoping for riften for so long - and this is just magnificient. You managed to capture the lush athmosphere so well.
Your shots, compositions, editing and sounddesign are also cinematic af. I wanna see this on a big screen - outstanding work!!
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
0:49 Forelhost's just behind/atop that mountain 😊
Man your stuff is so good I rewatch it every now and then. Really makes my mind wander into a world where this is what Skyrim and similar games looked like
Thank you!
You need about 2 acres of farmland to support a family of 4. That's with modern farming techniques (primarily fertilizer and pesticides) and modern calorie consumption. Double that for older techniques, and double the calorie intake back in the days before we got most of our work done manually (instead of burning wood, coal, etc). So realistically, you'd need about 2 acres of farmland for every medieval person.
If you figure Riften's population is 250, that's 500 acres (about 200 hectares, 0.78 sq miles, 2 sq km) of farmland needed to support it. That's small enough that a surrounding community of farms could support it. But you can see how just the logistics of growing and transporting food placed a cap on the size of a city. At some point, it because easier just to set up a new town, rather than collect a bunch of food from far away and transport it to the old town.
People vastly underestimate how much land is needed to grow food. If you've been thinking you could grow a backyard garden and never have to visit the grocery store again, you're sadly mistaken. Just the labor involved in maintaining enough land to feed yourself is nearly a full-time job. It's why we've consolidated and mechanized it.
They probably get much of their food from fishing.
Dunno where you’re getting 2 acres from for a family of 4. But that’s wrong.
Everything you said about backyard gardens is entirely wrong.
Was literally looking for this video yesterday. Great timing!
The thing that these true scale videos do better than Skyrim is showing why the Dragonborn is truly a legend even during the events of the game. The fact that a guard in a city of 15 people cannot fathom who the Dragonborn is despite said Dragonborn being the most obvious person imaginable makes your character feel completely unrealistic as a legendary figure. Instead imagining cities this large, news traveling slowly and not through a teleporting courier, and debates about ideologies and the Thalmor Elves undermining of such debates, shows how one person traveling on secret and lonesome roads would be talked about and revered or despised as said Dragonborn.
Feels like vanilla wow experience
Astounding. A true work of art, and I can't imagine the amount of work that goes into it. I'm amazed that I can tell where in the city you are when you show the street-level views, even the non-walking stills near the beginning.
Now populate it with NPCs and you will crash your 14900K.
Love it! The market was super cool to see.
The walkways with no fencing or rails made me anxious because I could totally see a random thief running out of a house or away from a stall in such a hurry that you get knocked off the path and unalived.
Well done, sir. These are a delight to behold!
Thank you!
Dude, this guy never disappoints. Please remake Skyrim in this scale. 🙏
I've recently been replaying Skyrim and just arrived in Riften "a few days ago". 🙂 Cool to see such a wild project in Uv5. Nice!
I wanted to let you know, that these videos, In my story, I am basing the Cities of Skyrim and tamriel off of them!
Just wow 😮 ud absolutely LOVE spending my game time adventuring through all your true scale lands!!
Cheers!
I really like this channel. Honestly, I like all things Skyrim
I’ve always loved riften. Something about a lakeside city with autumn colors
Your videos are some of my most favorite on the internet. Playing Skyrim, I always put immersion first and imagined just how would those cities look on a realistic scale. You made all my fantasies about that come real, thank you for that.
The music you use in those videos is also so fitting and nice, adds a lot to the atmosphere!
Thank you so much!
this reminds me that I'm convinced bethesda should make one of their games set entirely within a city, just to bring the real scale of the world to life
@@RG-qi2ho that's not at all what it is, despite the name
@@blueshit199 word
The last part of the video caught the autumnal feel of the Rift exceptionally well, thank you
Cheers!
There will come a day eventually when Skyrim has been remade scaled up like this and I can’t wait to play it…
i have just downloaded unreal engine because i want to develop landscapes i can take "walks" in. I love nature, and have been inspired by modding skyrim heavily for the same purpose. These videos are really inspirational, your work is incredible. I can't wait to get started.
The biggest problem of Skyrim IMO is all the towns/cities have like 10-15 buildings. One blacksmith, one mage, one general store, one apothecary, one inn. I understand they had limitations for how large the game could be then, but the cities should've all been 3x as large to give the impression of the scale.
If Skyrim actually looked this good, I don’t know if my family would ever see me again.
Lion El Torres has done it again.
Utterly fantastic, not only expanding it to the size of a believable city, but also keeping the vibe and feeling of the city. I also like that you took inspiration from ESO. Truly a city worth the title of Hold capital. A shame Bethesda stopped doing large Cities with Daggerfall.
Your rendering and lighting has really really improved with this one holy cow. Those shots of the ratway docks with the water just 👌 photo realistic
Thank you!
Another great video. Love this series. I know it would be extremely time consuming to navigate a game in a world so large, but it would be quite nice to have something in between this and what we actually got in both Skyrim and ESO. I'd love to see you tackle some of the cities from the other games. Vivec, Mournhold, Anvil, Bravil, Leyawiin, Wayrest, Sentinel...there are so many!
When I saw the quality of the city I immediately said to myself that it must be your favorite.
haha - true!
I can see the Townsend's Skylines bit now.
To travelers who may be taken aback by the brisk weather, you may prefer a forest region closer to home. On the east banks of Lake Honrich we find one of the oldest settlements of the Nordic inhabitants, Riften. Set into the iconic red birch forest coating the region referred to as The Rift, the local ecosystem enjoys a far longer autumnal season owing to its unique placement between the mountain ranges to the north and south. While the Ysgramor's Teeth range blocks much of the cold wind from the Sea of Ghosts, The Rift itself is far lower than the Jerall range to the south like Bruma is situated on. This temperate balance supports a vibrant forest where travel, trade, fishing, and agriculture are far more abundant.
In spite of its historical age, many of the buildings in Riften are relatively recent. In the aftermath of Hosgunn Crossed-Daggers' 30 year rule over Riften the once proud center of trade in Skyrim fell from grace in the wake of crippling tariffs and curfews. Poverty, famine, and plague ravaged the city when the townsfolk rebelled en masse, setting fire to the jarl's hold and devastating much of the city in the process. Over the next five years, Riften's people worked to remake their once beloved city into the much smaller settlement we see today. As bleak as it seems now, it serves as a monument to population's willingness to stand against tyranny and build back from adversity.
Many citizens now live in the walls of the canals running through Riften proper, and many merchants are out peddling their wares in stands on the docks and across the bridges. This can range from locally sourced crops and forged equipment, or exotic goods from the neighboring provinces. The biggest market today is the mead business, funding various estates to raise bee farms for honey so that the Black-Briar Meadery can mix it into one of the best quality beverages in all of Skyrim. The texture of this beverage is said to-
Yngvar where is my mead?
Yngvar the mead was in my pocket the moment we started recording, who took my goddamn mead?
So neat that Mjoll won’t have anything to do
This is insane, absolutely beautiful job with that scaling, you've gained a subscriber
Cheers!
ART
Now this is the one I've been waiting for, good job!
Cheers!
You just hear for the shadows: "Haven't worked a day in your life for all that gold you're carrying, eh lad/lass?"
Anyways, incredible and mind-blowing as always! I love the design, the port section reminds me of Nuln from Warhammer Fantasy for some reason.
Thanks!
I've been waiting for this one, Riften looks beautiful, well done!
Thank you!
The Skyrim we remember
The Skyrim that Bethesda could have made as a reboot if they cared
If I was Todd I would focus on a remake new game release pattern. So after fo4 I would have worked on a dagger fall remake (so we can use a lot of the stuff from the hammerfell to use in es6) that would have released in place of Starfield and we now still be waiting on es6 but the itch would at least be partially satisfied.
@@PlayerJay425 That would suggest that management could make a consumer focused decision rather than a "lets just re-release what we've got now and sucker them in" decision. I might not like Todd very much, but even I won't blame him for that one.
So another Skyrim re-release then? I still don't get why are people so obsessed with reboots and remakes. It is okay to let go.
@@vanjaarsic1616 We should let it go. Because even if they did do another remake they wouldn't do this.
I really do believe that this is your best one yet. Truly amazing!
Thank you so much!
For the people saying "I wish we had a game like this, with these big cities instead of the small ones we got", I just have one thing to say to you, no.
As much as big cities like this are beautiful and the creator of this video did an amazing job, we can't have big cities like this.
I mean.. we can.. but the problem comes with quests.
I'd LOVE to spend my days exploring a Riften like this, but I wouldn't love to spend days just walking to a singular quest.
This exactly. There are whole teams of game developers and level designers whose sole existence is to ensure games aren't too big, cumbersome, or difficult to navigate. The idea seems fun until it takes you two hours to cross a city only to realize you didn't put down a new marker and are just wandering towards the town gate.
Agreed. It's pretty, but is it fun?
@curlzncrush - Definitely gorgeous and it would be fun to get lost in for a short time, but you could never make a game this big and fill it with enough content to prevent it feeling empty and dead.
Then they shouldn't make maps that are supposed to represent entire counties.
If you've never been to Riften, be sure and visit the Black-Briar Meadery. A few mugs of that and you'll forget all your troubles.
This True Scale series makes me wanna see the True Scale of Night City
I thought the size of the downtown areas are good but the city should extend further away with more suburbs and smaller buildings
It's only a medium sized city, and everyone is packed in
@@christopherpekel6096 Nah, the entire City Center and Heywood area combined is only about the size of the suburban housing neighborhood where I live, obviously scaled down for gameplay purposes and limitations.
@@indiexanna there's supposed to be 6 million in night city. If you're in the USA your suburban area is likely the same as a district of somewhere like Tokyo that might have half a million people
Overlay American or Australian cities over Asian or European cities and you'll see what I mean
It's scaled down but not as much as some think
Hard for many Americans to comprehend how many people you can fit in a city if they have never left the country
Saigon has 8 million people and I was able to ride a scooter from almost one side to the other in 20 minutes at night
Double night city's in game size and I reckon it would be realistic, those mega buildings would hold a hell of a lot of people assuming apartments are small and most don't have windows
We also have to assume that V has a large apartment and most people have rooms a third of the size, which is more lore-realistic
@@indiexanna you know what, you're right. Looking at the map superimposed over other cities it would need to be several times the size to fit that 6 million, even with insane high density and all the mega buildings.
It's smaller than I remember it being when seeing it placed over world cities
@@christopherpekel6096 I live in Jakarta Indonesia, 11 million+ people lives and works here. Thousands of people lives in the suburban neighborhood I live in, it's like a housing complex consists of many roofed houses, some SOHOs, traditional market, several schools, and one apartment complex, kinda like the Rancho Coronado area but obviously larger in scale.
Scaled properly, the Night City district itself, Watson + Westbrook + City Center + Heywood + Santo Domingo, should be at least 3 times the size of the entire Cyberpunk's map. Pacifica on its own should at least be the size of Pacifica + Night City district minus Santo Domingo, Charter Hill, and North Oak. Aldecaldos Camp on its own should be the size of the entire Santo Domingo.
CDPR did a great job delivering the illusion of a massive city, they condensed everything and yet it's still believable in size when you play it just like GTA Vice City map from back then which is not even the size of Santo Domingo I believe but boy did it feel real that time.
Plot twist: You have a game dev friend who works on The Elder Scrolls 6 in Bethesda and you got this from him.
Gorgeous.
Thank you!
Riften was/is always my fav city. ❤
Great job, u did it great
Looks like big and prospering city, rich too. I wonder if they have corruption and thievery...
It's a solid bet
Imagine your life there. Friends with the kids on your street. Dad takes you down to the docks sometimes. The harvest festival in fall. Swimming in Lake Honrich all summer. Sneaking some Black-Briar mead with your buddies on a camp-out out past Merryfair Farm.
I really hope that elder scrolls 6 makes everything on a larger scale than they have been in the previous games, I don't expect them to make anything like what you've made, but something at least a little bit more believable would be nice.
While the guys at Bethesda Game Studios continue to use the Creation Engine, I don't see how that could happen. 😢
@@rosesareredbutzerglingssti9290 Creation engine is the biggest weak spot for Bethesda
@@TheLoneWolf449 at this point they should give up the TES ip to someone else who knows how to make huge games with detailed worldbuilding and good stories
@@shahriar4706_ I'm not ready to make that call yet. They've got new leadership with Xbox. Elder Scrolls 6, Will be the first game fully developed under Xbox, out of their three big RPG series. Xbox was only with Bethesda for the tail end of Starfield.
@@shahriar4706_ KCD makers.
My favourite Skyrim City, likely the best video, seeing the great amount of effort, put into it.
Thank you!
I just love these videos and I SOOO wish these were real
Thank you! Glad you like them!
Likewise.
If I may make a small suggestion, I think the foot of the mountains should not be covered in snow, when Riften, at a similar altitude, is seemingly still in autumn. Great video as always!
Oh hell yes! Been looking forward to this one since the start of the series!
god i would so love to see balmora like this
Aren't you worried about having the powers of a god?
Finally, a longer street view 😭 Fantastic work as always 💯
Cheers!
Skyrim: "i heard the thief's guild is in Riften" bruh the thief's guild IS Riften. This feels realistic
Riften then Markarth were my favorites, this is so beautiful. Fantastic render my friend.
I'd pay premium dollar for a fully realized UE5 Skyrim game with these scales. I will literally not play anything else for years.
That riverside marketplace really looks like it's been designed to facilitate pickpocketing and petty theft! Which means you nailed it! ^_^
Imagine the underground thieves guild…
Breathtaking.
Man, I can hardly wait until we can finally get games of this scale and magnitude.
Thanks!
skyrim if Bethesda updated their engine:
I am BEGGING you!
Do a lore accurate Alinor, glistening insect like skyscrapers showing every color of the rainbow against the emerald sea. It would be nothing short of glorious.
Damnnn if only they'd remake Skyrim in Unreal today... Idc I'd spend $200 to play it!
I can believe that a city like this has a hidden ratway that not anyone can access
You're saying Riften has a population larger than 10?!
Imagine Skyrim being how big it was in past lore.
Imagine the Oblivion area being a jungle and as big as it was supposed to be.
This is how Riften looked to all of us in 2011
Under-rated comment. Rendering is impressive but the game geography was exactly the size that it needed to be to tell the story.
It's so beautiful it's like a Hollywood live-action movie.
This is better than anything Hollywood has made in 20 years
This would be awesome in VR
This. Is. Phenomenal. Absolutely my favorite place that you guys have done! You've brought Riften to life like I've never seen before. Truly stunning. I'd give anything to play a to scale Skyrim. Just. Wow. Also puts into perspective why Inigo loves it so much 😂 fish, money, Mead? I mean why not?😅
Квест: найти гильдию воров в Рифтене 😳
If Skyrim was this kind of scale, it truly be an experience for 30 years.
If Skyrim was to that kind of scale, it'd take 30 years to finish the game. As amazing as the thought of cities this big and realistic is, it's completely untenable for gameplay. You'd have to have dozens of quick travel spots in one city just to not take hours doing minor fetch quests.
@@schadenfreude3236
Then stop making fetch quest your primary mission goals in the game, size is not the problem, being completely inept at game design is however.
@@SMGJohn - Use your brain. If a fetch quest takes that long, so would everything else. Making something to this scale, while pretty, would destroy game flow and would be the epitome of poor game design. Overcompensation, one might say.
@@schadenfreude3236
Huh, you do realise Elder Scrolls 1 and 2 already had monstrously large worlds and did not have any problems of what you described chump?
You do realise there something called a local quest system where quests can remain localised within an area.
It may come as a shocking surprise to you, but quests does not need to spawn the entire map, wow I know such big brain moment.
@SMGJohn - 1 literally has localised questing and Daggerfall is a massive time sink that no one has or will ever replicate for that reason. It was wasteful and pointless vast empty space no one bothered exploring. And yeah, it apparently is a big brain moment when you can't sort out why literally no one has done it. You've also clearly not taken design courses or listened to all the people already complaining the world is too big and too empty. A studio could never fill a space that huge with content. It'd at least quadruple dev time and cost. It would be pretty, but would be completely untenable as a game. Sorry about your feels.
You're doing all this in your spare time, yet there's no actual game that has this kind of graphics. Is it actually ever going to happen?
Just stunning. Thank you for another fantastic true-scale video ❤ the mountains especially took my breath away. What a sight that would be to wake up to
Thank you so much!
Beutiful
Thank you!
For a city known for Black Briar and Thieves Guild, its not really reflect the notority of the latter, was expecting more dark alleys and shady waterways. But you nailed the drab and depressing nature of the city
This honestly dunks on Skyrim even harder knowing that Bethesda will only ever be capable of pulling of stupid theme park like worlds. Playing the game now just feels off.
Now we have to find screenwriters who will be able to write exciting quests to fill such a space, which is a feat that humanity has not yet managed to accomplish.
First
I’d love to see some more Oblivion cities. Maybe like Chorrol, or Cheydinhal.
When people ask me why I'm still hyped for ESVI, it's because this is what I've always imagined since I was a child.
This upscale has shown you could have an entire game in each of the holds
“I like Riften very much” Inigo the Brave