The True Scale of Whiterun: Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5!
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2024
- I made Whiterun in Unreal Engine 5 - at a more realistic and lore-accurate scale!
The purpose of this particular project was to visualise a more real-life scale to Skyrim - specifically the holds and cities. Now with traditional video game technology, that was rightfully impossible, especially eleven years ago. But now we have UE5 - and more importantly - we have Nanite. So let’s see how big we can go!
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Now, there aren’t any hard numbers as to the real-world populations of Skyrim - all we can say for certain is that it was much more than what was seen in-game.
As Todd Howard once mentioned in an interview: “All of our lore is obviously written as ideal, to say X province or city has so many people, but you can’t always actually pull that off on screen, or even store it, so you try to create a scale that feels good in game, that plays well and is fun. So the scale of the terrain and the number of NPCs is always geared to the gameplay more than the lore saying how big or small something is.”
The only concrete number we have for any city in Tamriel is Daggerfall with a population of 110,000 as of 3E 401 - and do keep in mind that even that could have just been a throwaway number.
I found this article in particular to be very interesting: ( / notes-on-medieval-popu... ) and used it along with referencing real-life populations for medieval Scandinavia as a rough base-line, keeping in mind the agricultural situation in a tundra, along with the constant conflicts (and bandits!). Rough neighbourhood, Skyrim.
But, at the end of the day, this is all pure speculation, so take it with a large grain of salt. I’m putting this version of Whiterun at around 9,000 - 10,000 people - with maybe up to 11-12k if you factor in another couple of thousand in outer hamlets/villages etc… plus travelling merchants and people simply passing by and staying in inns. Also factored in was the increased prevalence of multi-generational households in medieval times, as well as the on average higher number of children per family.
I was originally placing it at around 20,000 - 30,000, but I do think that Skyrim’s climate, with bitter winters and permafrost in the ground, would make agriculture difficult - less food=less people, and so a smaller overall population would seem to make more sense. But again, this is pure conjecture...
From a playability standpoint, I’m not sure that you’d actually want something this big - it’s a lot of work for the artists and you run the risks of making a big, empty world with not much to do. But for lore visualisations like this - not really an issue!
Rendered in Unreal Engine 5.2 Preview on a 3060ti at 30fps in a 2:39 aspect ratio. A mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled in Blender, textured in Mixer. Nanite was used for all models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections.
Please NOTE: This is a FANMADE cinematic tech DEMO inspired by Skyrim.
Soundtrack: “Skies” and “Surroundings” by Helmut Schenker.
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.
0:00 - Cinematic
2:04 - First-Person Walkthrough
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Soundtrack: “Skies” and “Surroundings” by Helmut Schenker.
but the real question is....
do you get to the cloud district often?
i swear i hope to fucking uncle sheo that they updated their engine to match this capabilities wise at least and that when it comes to the size of the world, they dont go small but just let loose..... hell honestly i would happily give up modders being able to do as much as the can if it meant that the basegame looked and played this damn good that super high end and weird and amazing mods werent needed and hell when you look at other big name games that have limited mods, they still at least have more than enough ability for modders to change shit like combat, perks, traits, and general gameplay.
there is something that i cant identify that makes my eyes believe that it can be real footage despite the fact that i see for sure that this is a cgi.
Your editing and video is stuning, ilove your representation of Whiterun and the first person Walkthrough just got me so hard iam dowloading skyrim again. if you ever gonnna do more elderscrolls stuff, i would recoment Tel Mora or Vivec from Morrowind, people would die for that.BUT EVERYTHING U MAKE LOOKS JUST STUNNING.
@@turnerd20 No, of course he doesn't.
Man if THIS Whiterun could look this beautiful in Unreal, imagine how jaw-dropping the Lore-accurate Imperial City would look like
Rough estimates put Impeirial City at at least around 1 million people+, so yeah - that would sure be something! Captial of an Empire!
@@lion_towers3d
Oooooh, Rome + Constantinople at its height. That'd be marvelous to see.
@@lion_towers3d no way a computer would be able to handle all of those NPCs though also the amount of time it would take to get anything done would be like playing a FTP MMO.
@@zebfirehd9102 Haha people have been saying no way since pong showed up. We'll get there :) Games are only moving faster and faster, before the end of our lifetimes full on VR adventures will be a thing. True deepdive VR might miss us by a few decades however, but do not underestimate the fact that smartphones where laughed at until around 2007 -2008 when they truly became a real thing, and those phones were barely better than a nokia 3310.
Now we have smartphones that outperform laptops released just a few years ago, and they are getting more and more powerful.
Just look at games from 2017 to now, a mere 6 years, the graphics have doubled if not tripled in quality. You are severely understimating the speed at which technology is moving along. We're racing through improvements at breakneck speeds, even with the semi-conductor shortage.
Again, stop underestimating humanity like that. It will be done before you know it.
Blackreach.
Can you imagine actually playing at that scale? Even at a run it would actually take you nearly half an hour just to get to Dragonsreach.
Nazeem: "Do you get to the Cloud District often?"
Dragonborn: "Do you?"
Nazeem: "Well, no. Not at this scale."
and it would be 100|% worth it.
Horses would become a lot more valuable.
But that would actually make him (very slightly) less of an asshole if it's like, actually harder to get to the Cloud District.
@@BaldorfBreakdowns So would fast travel
Random bandit: NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME HERE!
Dragonborn: WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT TOOK ME LIKE 4 DAYS TO GET HERE, DON'T TELL ME THAT
This actually brought Skyrim to life in my mind, in a way that I hadn't seen before. All the towns are so small it never felt like there was enough people to even have a war. For the first time I can sort of picture the scale and scope of the city which helps put in perspective the rest of the country. You are a seriously gifted, talented artist
Thanks so much!
@@lion_towers3d You are very welcome. It was a joy to watch!
Yeah, “war” in Bethesda games actually was 5-8 people on either side haha. Still love the games tho
All the settlements are hamlets.
yes
the cities in skyrim is too small, they have only few people in the town
if the skyrim is real, it equals to germany+poland
tamriel=europe
whiterun=munich
When recalling that Riverwood is just behind mountains and then look those massive snow covered mountains at horizon... Riverwood suddenly feels like far away village.
В реальности деревень вроде Ривервуда сотни или тысяча
The actual game feels like a Lego set compared to this
not a 3 minute walk 😂
Yeah in lore one hold is huge so would not be five minutes to riverwood more like hours.Only so much tho can do in game and on bethesda crap old engine.Also whiterun here is like lore.Its a huge city with thousands supposed to live not 20 people lmao
@@wildbodymovement6674More like a 3 hour walk lolol. Maybe even 3 days!
Please do the rest of the cities overtime, this is amazing! ❤
Thanks! And yeah - might make this into a series!
@@lion_towers3d Please do, this is genuinely amazing
@@lion_towers3d Or make all Nirn and send it to Todd for future reference :)
@@lion_towers3d If you do the other cities... do that one that's next to the ocean pretty please... that's like built on this huge rock or whatever?
@@MRSketch09 Solitude
This looks absolutely incredible. You managed to perfectly mix graphical fidelity with the artistic identity of TES
Thank you!
@@lion_towers3d I know that it takes quite a long time to make this and it’s ultimately “”useless”” but it would be so incredibly cool to see Riverwood remade like this
@@lorenzorosadini3248 I think I saw it in one of his videos
Man it would be so cool if the ES cities actually were this big and you had to travel *within* cities just to get to certain districts
Not quite, but it was *a bit* like that in Daggerfall - the big cities were quite sprawling, though nothing in comparison to the excessively large world in that game (still not beaten by any other game, I believe) with its vast open spaces, most of it generic though, with lots of very similar towns.
@@TomteeriffNash-zh2vn Remember they could easily just incorporate a fast travel system for major landmarks within the city making it much easier to traverse.
I honestly wish the cities would've been like this they always just seem so tiny compared to what they could be.
They were this big in Daggerfall. (Or at least significantly larger than later ES games, Though less interesting)
Like the Imperial City in Oblivion.
@@TomteeriffNash-zh2vn If you ever played Witcher 3, it actually works pretty well. Especially if they add fast travel points in the various districts.
I wouldn't mind the cities being huge and full of NPCs just going about their business. I don't need to be engaged all the time - wandering about an immense, beautifully crafted world and only occasionally stumbling across actual quests other than the main, branching story lines makes the experience more immersive and the quests feel more meaningful.
But that's what make bethesda's rpgs special, that everyone is interesting. You can have your filler NPCs in any other game
@@Linkale_ i think what he's tryna say is that when almost every npc has some kind of purpose in a quest it can sometimes feel kinda artificial and immersion breaking knowing that they are there probably only for that quest idk just a thought
I always felt like whiterun was too small. Especially as much as Nazeem talked about the cloud district. This is amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I remember thinking that the cloud district was somewhere super fancy up north, maybe even floating or something. And then I discovered that it was just these 5 or so houses
I do this that Bethesda sized it well for the game though. I always played Skyrim very "role-playlike" as in I took it serious and had characters who'd only make certain choices etc, so what I mean by this is I took the game seriously, but I never felt the cities were too small to enjoy. If they had been as large as this video it would have been realistic but would also have been tedious from a fun PoV, having to travel SO far to see the Jarl etc. With the scale in game, you could just imagine it is larger so it didn't bother me.
“DO YOU GET TO THE CLOUD DISTRICT VERY OFTEN?”
You should see the cities in Daggerfall (Elder Scrolls 2). They're absolutely MASSIVE. Although tbh, extremely boring and flat considering the randomly generated nature (and the age of the game lol).
Even Todd thinks the Skyrim "cities" are to small.
Imagine being over-encumbered and having to get up to Eorlund in _this_ Whiterun... 🤣 Sir, you've made me one happy homesick Nord 🏆
I use the Necromancer method. Your corpses are my portable inventory.
Sniffing women’s fart gas for sexual pleasures
In my book, it's OK to tgm in this instance, since you're just saving time
Well if we talking about that level of detail, you will have to bring a cart or two with you as well)
Also, how hard would it be to mountain goat up those giant mountains?
I REALLY hope this is what the cities in Elder Scrolls 6 will feel like. Actual cities to explore with more than twenty people voiced by only 7 voice actors, I might be biased because I tend to do a thief character and want more places to rob but even if only a quarter of the people and homes are actually important for main/side quests, I'd rather have a nice big populated city that I'd need a horse or fast travel to get from one side to the other in less than ten seconds
Since newest gen consoles or systems are more powerful now to handle more stuff like this. They don't have an excuse anymore for these limitations unlike back then.
@@Redsword603 it's likely that TES6 will be grander scale.. the overarching plot of the games is coming down to the battle of balfiera between the thalmor, who want to tear down ada'mant, and those looking to keep lorkhan's creation in tact. It's likely we'll be getting content in both high rock and hammerfell (which is fitting considering this whole story arc will both start and end there, from TES 2 to 6) so the sprawling cities of the feudal high rock and the vast deserts with oases of civilization that is hammerfell. They said this game woud take a while to make because the technology wasn't there yet, well now it is. Also they've been doing photo realistic scans of real life environments so it should look so much better, especially after star field which is a tech test for them with the whole 1000 planets testing how well they can optimise larger environment scales.
@@louthinator it's likely TES6 will be no better than fallout 76
@@kiryls1207 based on what exactly? The team behind TES6 didn't make fallout 76... that was a different team. I'm waiting until starfield comes out before I make a judgement on TES6 since starfield will be the first game that team has made and released since fallout 4
@@louthinator based on memes duh
When fully realized like this, you can plainly see the inspiration behind Whiterun in the city of Edoras. Magnificent work, thanks for sharing it with the world.
The Horse sigil and it being settled on a hill surrounded by open plains was already a dead giveaway.
i love how you scaled the size of the city so well
woh Welyn in the wild
woh Welyn in the wild
woh Welyn in the wild
pumkinnnnn
yes welyn, that was the point of the video
Man if you can do this with Whiterun, I can only imagine how Markarth would look! This is freaking amazing! Thank you for taking the time to create this and share it!
imagine solitude. breathtaking.
@@harrybeast58 windhelm whould be amazing XD
I would imagine it would be this massive dual layed city like. There is the above part of it but then there is the entire other half of it built underground to make use of all the space the Dwemer have made with their mining. There would be pipes spewing lightly with steam, cogs and gears that move and perhaps some of the best forges around or other technology that they left behind.
Solitude would be mind blowing
todd howard: so you're saying there's a chance i can sell this game one more time..
Traveling to a place like Falkreath would give the vibe of LOTR with the fellowship traveling and you see all these crazy pans of the wilderness. Like a real adventure, and adding in a survival mod would be absolutely insane with the immersion.
But you’re always on survival in Skyrim
I think they mean like if it goes more in depth, like if you had to actually eat and hunt/forage for food and whatnot. Interestingly though, I recently heard Skyrim actually does now have a survival mode where food/rest/temperature matters. Because temperature matters that would also mean you can't just go willy-nilly all over the map like before and have to actually carefully plan out your travels haha.
Man, I would buy Skyrim for the third time if it was remastered like this!
"Todd will remember this"
This is absolutely beautiful. Whiterun is my favorite city in Skyrim and in any game I've played. To see it made into an actual city is nothing less than breathtaking.
Play cyberpunk, you will find it’s setting quite breathtaking
Just gotta comment on “Actual city” and point out that as real as this looks, it’s still a game engine and still not an “actual city” lol. Just an insane visualization of how far game engines have come.
@@greendude0420 KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
@@AndyWoodallMedia Nah I think he means more literally not visually. Like Vanilla Whiterun isnt really a city, its more of a town. Hes pointing out how this is like if they actually made it a giant city.
@@AndyWoodallMedia I think they were using the term “actual city” more figuratively in terms of the scale that is depicted by the video
In the original game, it’s called a city but it’s about as big as a small town
In this video we get to enjoy a depiction of how whiterun looks like with the actual scale of what a city is
I'm at a loss for words, you've taken what was essentially my childhood imagination when it came to the city and made it an absolutely beautiful reality. Found this video through recommended feed and I am not sure what your plans are regarding this, but I hope whatever it is that you succeed greatly.
Thanks! And I'm actually thinking about making this a series - 'lore accurate Tamriel cities tour'... Lot of work though...
Sounds abit flamboyant to me mate.
Exactly my thoughts! Epic!
@@lion_towers3d more like a ludicrous amount of work!
@@lion_towers3d this is truly a titanic work! I wish you success, of course!!!😮👍🤝
It looks fantastic, but let's take some time and appreciate this top tier production quality and edit. This whole video and the work behind it is insane. Thanks for sharing this wonder
I've been playing Skyrim since I was a teenager. Whiterun in this video has been reborn as a sprawling metropolis to fit the setting. But the arrangement of little things and the impressive building made me feel nostalgic. I was in tears by the time I finished watching the video.
Thank you for recreating my best memories with the best quality and technology.
I'm Japanese and I'm using the translation function to comment.
I'm sorry if there are parts that are difficult to understand.
Thank you so much!
Translation was perfect!
translation is fine actually
I would love to see the Imperial City, Vivec, and Markarth to scale like this. This is absolutely incredible
I'm totally going to get lost in Vivec (again) XD
@@lasyotter2690 придется блуждать без маркера😂
I feel like Vivec is actually a pretty well scaled city. It looks like thousands of people could live and work in it. Those cantons are massives, now the insides could use some more fleshing out with apartments and storefronts, but, on the outside, Vivec is pretty close to medieval city scale.
I agree. Seeing the imperial city like this would be amazing.
Shouldn’t you be watching your Night Court tapes?
This is amazing! One thing I think you could add along with the grander scale is that large cities would be surrounded by the farms, orchards, and pastures to support them, which is commonly forgotten about, even in things like the Lord of the Rings. I think that would be a neat touch to add realism.
Have you heard of the pelenor fields?
yeah that was one thing i never understood about middle earth, how did races like dwarves grow crops from underground and without any sunlight?
@@jimboringo9958Mushrooms
@@jimboringo9958 mushrooms, and trade. The Dwarves of Erobor for Example traided with Dale and Seatown
Id also argue the entrance of white run in particular should be given a larger and more in depth "trading market" district of tents for the various trading caravans considering that white run is a MAJOR trade hub.
My jaw dropped as soon as I hit play. It looks so real I would believe someone if they said this was footage of a real life movie set. This is beyond incredible. It's astounding what graphics and engines are capable of now. Excuse me while I replay this 10 more times
Thank you!
I've never had a video make me feel like I was home before.
You turned a childhood memory into just a living breathing world.
It's beautiful.
That's exactly how I felt seeing the Solitude one
The amount of love players put into their elder scrolls passion projects is always amazing. I really hope bethesda puts in that kind of effort for the next big one
So many passion projects that turn out amazing stuff. Sadly many get closed down by the original companies because they hate fan projects and care only for "copyright infringement money". Glad this thing is still alive. This must be one of my favorite projects I have seen in years, together with the Simpsons Hit and Run remake by Reubs. I am so sad that neither of these projects will ever be playable for the public. (But it is probably what keeps them from being struck down)
Your optimism for Bethesda making the right decisions is both ignorant and funny yet sad.
You're kidding, right? A corporation, and Bethesda is full on corporate now, doing anything other than seek max profit out of all things isn't gonna happen.
@@unoriginalhazard cool
@@jollyvoqar195 ok
It’s funny how seeing stuff like this can make you feel. TES has been a part of me for my whole life, and Skyrim saw me through some of the most difficult times. This might be weird to say, but it’s almost like a second home to me in some way. A home for my heart and mind.
TES and Fallout, are best fabular game series ever made. Those have their own atmosphere. Cant wait for next parts.
I feel the same way bro! When the chips are down and the world is cruel I just put Skyrim in and forgot my worries
I know exactly what you mean!! Skyrim is such an important game to me, it’s like my comfort game lol
I'm an advocate for videogames as therapy for Mental Health issues.
For me it’s Warcraft and Skyrim… played those games for so much time that somehow a part of me still exists on those dimensions.
This video made me look up on "Skyrim climate and agriculture", "ages of holds in Skyrim", "scale and layout of real cities, towns and villages in ancient times", "rome 700 bc" as well as "city of rome's development from beginning to now"
almost there
Absolutely amazing as always. The snow transition/build up was flawless.. great work
Absolutely stunning work! Your ancestors are smiling at you, Leo.
DUDE! Just yesterday I was thinking about how Whiterun was awfully small and about how it would expand for the population. This is truly unreal thank you so much for doing this!
The reason it's so small isn't because the population is small, but because it's been massively scaled down for gameplay purposes.
Game devs generally have to choose between scaling down, or limiting your access to large portions of the city.
A notable exception is The Witcher 3, the city of Novigrad, which is built to fully the scale of what a medieval city would look like. Even many of the small towns and villages are bigger than the largest "cities" in Skyrim.
It's so unreal, it's unreal 5.
@@jeremiahthompson9367 all of this is true except for the part about Novigrad. Novigrad is exceptionally big for open world games that aren’t just set in cities, but it’s still incredibly small compared to how big it’s supposed to be. The city is supposed to house around 20,000-30,000 people but in game it barely has enough residential buildings both in and on the outskirts of the city to house 3000 people. While it is impressive for a game that’s not set strictly inside a city it’s nowhere near the size of a real medieval city.
@@jeremiahthompson9367 no Its small because the game was developed in 2009 and finished in 2011 all with that generation's consoles in mind which were massively weaker than conventional gaming pc's at the time
@@jeremiahthompson9367 "for gameplay purposes" yeah 5 houses and 10 people is "gameplay purposes" no its the game engine and the potato console hardware at the time.
This made me feel wonderful, the mountains around it reminds me of the rocky mountains, and that combined with an almost whiterun combined - giving me two glimpses into half-homes for myself.
I'm glad to see you added an actual cloud district. I was always confused as a kid when Nazeem mentioned it in his famous quote, because obviously there's only one district in the whole "city". Found out later that literally just the keep counts as the cloud district, which is so silly.
This is actually perfect, I'm running an Elder Scrolls tabletop campaign, and I'm trying to convey to the group that Tamriel is actually much larger than is depicted in the games, including all of the cities. This is a perfect reference for exactly what I meant. I'd love to see more of the cities from skyrim! and maybe the imperial city from oblivion! Great work!
Of course, it's described as a whole continent..
if the game size is to believed, you could walk from hammerfell to elsweyer in like half an hour..
imagine being able walk from Paris to Moscow in 30 mins??
😂 My buddy ran a D&D one-off and invited us to make silly characters. So I roleplayed a glitchy Nord town guard from Skyrim and spoke using ONLY the scripted dialogue from the game. Even made a homebrewed feat that allowed me to halt other characters to force dialogue interactions. Best part was that the DM unwittingly made the villain a Dragonborn character. It brought the boss fight to a screeching halt when he used his breath-weapon and I used my reaction to ask him to "stop that...shouting. It's making people nervous."
@@EvilGremlin100 At least in Daggerfall, it took you about 60 hours (on foot) to travel through the whole map. Later Elder Scroll game maps were MUCH smaller! 😳
@@IgorRockt are you sure about 60 hours? a friend of mine put a stapler on his keyboard for 12 hours to see whether you could actually run from location to location and in that time i remember him saying he only went a very tiny portion of the map, like one random location to maybe one of the closest ones to it on the map.
@@jp-sn6si I haven't tried it myself, but that's the number I heard from others a few times before.
Really want a whole game like this, don't care at what cost.
No more mods will be the cost
@@cactuscob With Starfield happening and Creation Engine 2 its definetely 98% possible, mods and bigger scale.
The thing is, will Bethesda even bother at older TES games at this point?
You have to sacrifice two puppies
the huge system requirements and size of a game like this are possibly the main problem when it comes to modding the game.
its probably going to take a lot more scripting and coding, there fore more man hours to get anything done.
i dont even wana say it out loud cus im a big fan of modding games.
but the golden times of game modding might just be behind us anyway.
singleplayer games have been loosing love over the years, like todays young gamers seem to stick to multiplayer games only.
and this all fits perfectly whit where i feel recent mod efforts have gone...
cheats and more cheats for GTA online and ofc CSGO.
thats how decent modders can make some real money after all.
@@OldWarriorOnTheRun Pretty small price to pay honestly.
I wish the city was that size in the real game. Imagine a total-war-esque commander mode where you can command the armies of either the Stormcloaks or the Empire (even individual generals armies like Jarl Balgruuf) and then fight alongside them.
Seeing something like this just makes me want it that much more :(
You have done such marvellous work, my friend. Now, it's making me all excited the explore the city. Fantastic...
This is awesome!
Now imagine Imperial City in realistic scale like this!!
Thanks! And yeah given a lot of estimates for imperial city put it at around 1 million population - at least - that'd be something!
not gonna lie this is one of the best thing i’ve seen all year. seeing the game that I’ve devoted so much of my childhood/adulthood to come to life in a real way is just beautiful. thank you for this.
This is gorgeous, but I gotta be honest, I like the feeling of the original Whiterun better. Though small, I appreciate the scale of it. The size of the buildings, the feeling of enclosure... I also appreciate that the original Whiterun felt warm and inviting. This one, while incredibly detailed, feels a bit cold. I really appreciate the work that went into this, but i do believe Skyrim is a gem not only because of its limitless possibilities but also because of its limitations. Whiterun you just KNEW. That in part is because of its limited size.
I clicked the video bc I thought it would be cool, but when I watched it, I teared up. Skyrim was my childhood and seeing it look this close to reality just brought me back to the wonder and awe I felt when I was playing back then
Incredible work. It's like going back to Whiterun and it being even better than how you remembered.
One thing i will say is though that i think you missed some of the hills / landscape aspect of the city. This Whiterun is very flat, whereas the original has a clear upper and lower district layout. It would have been cool to see that steep terrain shown more in this render. But other than that, it's great.
Thanks for doing this.
The hills look the same, as in actual height and incline. The issue is they only look smaller relative to the enhanced size of the city
only it looks more abandoned and unkempt. Most cities in skyrim felt cared for and appreciated.
Only to be harassed by an npc just cause you don’t go to the cloud district.
This is literally what I kept wishing in-game Whiterun should’ve been. Wow great work! It must’ve taken so long. Thanks for this!!
You do realize this game is from 2011?
Give it another 20 years and maybe we will have such a game.
My God, you've created one of the most beautiful rendered settings I've ever seen. I grew up playing the original Skyrim over 10 years ago in 2011 and you captured the same wonder and awe I felt back then as kid and made it so much more. I realize the game back then was, smaller for hardware and gameplay limitations, but to me it felt like a living world. Your beautiful art made those same feelings come back when I thought i would never experience them again in Skyrim content.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm subbed!
Thank you!
I had not played a video game in 15 years, then was given a console and Skyrim. I was blown away, of course, but also realized that technology was limiting the scope of the visuals. Right away I thought, Oh, everything is at least ten times bigger that it can be shown. The geographical areas, the number of houses, the number of people. I imagined everything times ten. Places like Whiterun and Solitude would be packed with people. The poor, the wealthy, merchants, soldiers...like in many movies we've seen. And so on. And this engine, wow! Fantastic work!
Its incredible how well everything is seated in this environment, it felt like any moment theres gonna be real life Nazeem waiting for us around the corner lol
And i love that u mentioned the limitations of technology back in 2011, some people tend to judge things from a more current perspective without much consideration for these things.
So great job on all fronts, gotta keep an eye on this guy here!
Thanks! And yeah - always important to appreciate it for what it was!
Old open world game cities now look a bit claustrophobic (Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Gothic series). I remember Khorinis from Gothic II was deemed to be the most populated game city of that time, now it looks rather small compared to Novigrad from Witcher III. Or this interpretation of Whiterun if it were populated :)
Yes, but I don't think it's only tech limitations. TES is about utter freedom and exploration. Imagine if every single one of those houses was enterable, had its own interior layout, items, and possibly a named NPC to match? That'd be epic but _waaaay_ too big to not be the only city in a given game, and it'd probably get boring to traverse. Games like The Witcher 3 can get away with bigger cities because there's very few "actual" buildings you can enter. I kind of prefer Morrowind, Oblivion, & Skyrim's more "limited" approach where every corner can be hand-built and interesting.
For the cinematics tho, I mostly love it! It's beautiful.
It's not just the limitations of 2011 tech. The Gamebryo MkIV engine is much older than 2011, despite whatever black magic and necromancy Bethesda uses to keep it "running". Even with that taken into consideration. There are mods such as Open Cities that allows all the cities to occupy the same world space as the rest of Skyrim with exceptions of interior spaces like the inside of forts, caves and houses. So, technically Bethesda could have made the map to scale. Parts of the city would load in, and parts would load out in the same way that the rest of the Skyrim landscape works. The problem with making Skyrim to scale would have been populating the map with enough things to do. There'd need to be a lot more towns, hamlets, settlements, mines, etc... to make the map have the same level of detail as the current model does.
@@TristenSarelvun An even bigger hurdle is simulating all the NPCs like BGS games do. Even when off screen most named NPCs continue to be updated and run their schedules. So if just one city had enough space for 100+ characters then doing all 9 holds like this would lead to nearly 1000 NPCs all needing to be simulated. That's pretty demanding.
Though there are probably tricks that could be done to significantly lower the load, you could have a queue so that only like 10 at a time get updated every frame when it starts updating if they're far away and stuff like that.
man this made me unironically emotional, I think its an inevitability that we'll one day be able to get real games on this scale, I just hope I'm alive to see it
Omg yes. I would freak if someone somewhere out there made a remake of Skyrim in UE5, not like anniversary edition but a real remake. With real scaling and this amazing realistic texturing. Im sure I'd cry, Skyrim WAS my childhood coming from an abusive home so Skyrim is very precious to me, my father even got me an official amulet of Talos from Bethesda's store for around $100 for Christmas, I love my dad so much
Remember also to read Dragonborn Saga Novel, as a comparison =]
@@hotbread1004 So, i guess you lived with your mum and she was abusive? If yes, then it was like me. Wish i had a father and does a thing like yours. Be happy😀
@@hotbread1004 I was lucky to never go through something like that, but even so, I agree, Skyrim really feels like home for me in a way I can’t explain. I hope we get to see a remake like this one day… :,)
Man, if you live a natural lifespan, you'll see it long before you're gone. It's not that far off.
- Do you happen to come to the Coulds district often?
- No, its too far away, I'm living in the other part of town
I WAS LOOKING FOR A NAZEEM JOKE AND IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT 😂😂
“Love! Love is the answer!” *THUNK!!!* *Arrow lands on his head*
I know this is probably a weird thing to say, as generally the draw of Bethesda titles is that you can kinda talk to anyone, I wouldn't mind if they filled their worlds with more "Good day" and "Buzz off" procedurally generated characters that stuck to a basic day cycle script, to flesh out the cities more. I always felt like a missed opportunity was random city encounters, that a more sprawling design could facilitate well. More interesting city experiences would be a whole new level to the Bethesda RPG experience. Of course, this is amazing, great work!
The thing that bothered me was the scale of all things. Like there's like 12 houses for like 40 people, and that is the same for the capital of Skyrim. Everything just felt so small. I think some bandit outposts had more people living in them than in Whiterun. Idk if the size is like correct lore wise but it should've been much bigger
I really missed an equivalent to the imperial city from Oblivion in Skyrim.
They had that in Oblivion, not sure why Bethesda didn't improve the dialogue and implement in Skyrim, huge miss on their part.
I imagine if they did that, there would be hundreds of people complaining that Bethesda “downgraded the ai” or something.
@@VinnyVinceViper They had that in Morrowind too.
I think its beautiful that we all have a game that's special to us and has helped us through tough times. Some people Will never understand that there are games that simply aren't "Just a game" to us.
You said it perfectly !!!
Really well said man. Skyrim was a real place for me when I was growing up. I knew the names of its inhabitants, I had my favourite spots to go on walks, I had a collection of books to read when I wanted to relax and learn the lore. That game has been a trusted companion for half my life and I’m so grateful for it.
@@HFH-Official You talk about leaving the basement yet here you are trying your best to spread negativity.
Also I know your only here to be a troll but your statement about exercising and going outside makes no sense. Mum just died, better do some push ups. Dad tried to kill himself, better go outside. Doesn't make much sense does it? That's the point I'm making when things like this happen you want to escape reality because this "Beautiful world" Isn't as "Beautiful" As you think it is. Maybe take your own advice and leave the basement then you might understand the point I'm making.
Alot of evenings of university spent in skyrim, cause mmorpgs were only fun to me when I had real life friends to play with. Totally get what you mean.
Amazing work. Great camera and lighting. Excellent post process volume settings.
beautiful, what a great work with the scale and very nice shots, lovely
If there was ever any work that epitomizes a labor of love, this is it. Stunning and breathtaking attention to detail.
Thank you so much!
Looks absolutely stunning, it actually made a bit emotional. I’ve spent countless hours in this game over the years and probably spent the most time in whiterun of any city. It’s incredible to see it brought to life in such a way. I’ve always dreamt of visiting Skyrim and the wider Tamriel in such detail and I hope we can in game one day. Thank you for all the hard work this must have taken.
"Do you go to the cloud district very often?"
"Yeah, I might if it looks like this."
Thanks Leo, these are great! I appreciate your work.
Man I can't wait to see how immersive future RPG games will be. Exploring worlds this beautiful would be quite unreal.
So long as Bethesda doesn't try to make them with their crappy Creation engine, we're good. One of the many reasons all the cities in Skyrim are so small is because the Creation engine can't handle that many buildings and people.
@@WisteriaDrake x2
Game studios and their shitty corporate leaders are too dumb and lazy to make anything like this possible.
@@WisteriaDrake but, we won't have an as easy to mod game. I feel the major reason why Skyrim has lasted so long is because of its ease of modding.
That said, i really want to see a greatly optimized and improved engine whatever they use for next elder scrolls game.
This is incredible. It would take hours to just explore this city and I love that idea
After watching this and loving it 100x, what I love are the simple things... the snow accumulation, the differention in the houses, and it all feels so good, so welcoming, so real.
This is simply divine! Superb work!
Absolutely stunning, makes you think; if this were the scale of Whiterun, and if the rest of Skyrim were on the same scale, it would take a day's travel just to get to the next city. What an unimaginably large endeavor to explore all of Skyrim would be.
It'd make having a horse or something like that a necessity. Which would be cool!
They could do what they did in Daggerfall and fast travel to any area that your character has even heard of, and then choose either to travel safely or quickly, then risk getting ambushed based on your choices and character stats.
This is beautiful! I'm surprised the snow actually accumulates on the ground. You don't usually see that in games 😮
If games would just take their time, we could have this.
Yeah and then again players would get bored quickly with all the running around from one end to another and whatnot, or complain about empty spaces with nothing to do. I think that The Witcher 3 struck a good balance with Novigrad being both traversable and delivering on the feeling of realism when it comes to size.
2011
They should take their time with Elder Scrolls 6. It's not like theres a deadline
I don't know.
I mean Elder Scrolls games are always kind of endless. You can have a massive city and choose to explore it and every quest you can find in there, or not.
A city as big as this one would probably be a bit much, but who knows unless someone tries for once🤔
I promise you this took a very small fraction of the time it took the team at Bethesda to make the actual Whiterun. The only appeal of such big cities is the beautiful aerial shots you can get from them, which you don't get many of in game anyways. One of the things that makes Bethesda games awesome is the amount of details they put that makes everything so unique; look at the First-Person walkthrough of this video, there are no details at all, only a handful of recognizable landmarks so you can still tell it's Whiterun, but other than that, it's just a few different buildings that are repeated over and over again. Now if you take a closer look at the aerial view around 1:13, you'll see how a LOT of these buildings aren't even connected to a road, and if you pause and pay attention, you'll start to realize just how much the same buildings are copy pasted all over the place.
I promise you, you'd be bored after 2 minutes of exploring this "city".
This is truly an amazing work. All your beautiful cinematics about Skyrim are amazing but, for me this is the one that made me feel completely inside a real ancient nordic city. Very well done.
Thank you so much!
It's like the version in my head. This is absolutely breathtaking.. coolest thing I'll see on the Internet today. It's so crazy seeing it look so real.
Cheers!
Lore accurate. Obviously in 2011 it would have been impossible to make each city this sprawling but I hope tes 6 does that.
Honestly, what would'd Skyrim gain if the scale was on this level? I think it even lose some of the key elements that makes it so immersive.
@@Pmurder3 Yeah it would take an insane amount of work to put enough interesting npcs and quests with legitimate backstories. Also I don't think many people will have enough time to immerse theirselves in such a huge map and game
@@ansonauyeung4011 Why? Not every character needs to be a quest giver.
Surely if it was more immersive there would be plenty of citizens just living out their normal lives in each city. You could throw in a bunch of other merchants for the more mundane and normal jobs for a Medieval setting. They could have a bunch of standard dialogue like asking for directions and rumors, or hiring them for the player's homestead.
You could actually have fleshed out ruling classes with more quests with intrigue and more potential homes to rob, and the key families of the jarl and thanes further developed. These need not be customised. Imagine how the Shadow of Mordor or Crusader Kings games generate interesting personalities. These could fill out the ranks of the families, who might not be important until enough of the main characters die and suddenly the second cousin of the patriarch of House Battleborn is the logical choice for the moot to choose as the jarl...
You could also have more beggars and more travellers and merchants travelling between cities. You could have more inns and taverns too, because it's unrealistic that there is only one per city.
To make this more manageable from a gameplay perspective, you would have fast travel points throughout the cities, and like a Medieval city, all the similar shops are congregated together. You could have key hubs you go to for quests like the jarl's palace, the taverns, the guild buildings and public meeting spaces. Others would be more like random encounters in the wild. You could also improve travel and carrying capacity by having mounts, maybe pack animals you can use for the overburdened loot, or middle men merchants at key points who will buy your useless stuff on behalf of the merchants guild, so you don't have to find a shop to sell all your loot.
There are ways you could make this feasible without making it impractically difficult, just by fixing a number of game mechanics.
@@Pmurder3 Witcher 3 still feels immersive despite it's scale and barely interactable NPCs, let's just say we all wait and see how will Starfield does it's stuff, considering it's a space game, and being space, it's certainly must be big and cannot be small like the usual TES games.
it's still impossible
That is stunning! Beautiful work.
By the 8 this is a thing of beauty!! You are making me homesick for Skyrim...😢 I'd never quit playing this game if it looked like how you've envisioned...bless you for making my heart feel full.
Pardon, but this is Skyrim, more importantly Whiterun, home of the Nords. We pray to the 9! PRASE TALOS!
A game that inspired a whole generation.
So amazing to see a demo of what it will eventually become
''a demo of what it will eventually become'' 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yea. It's already in making by santa and elves
Do you need help? This is just a fanmade unreal engine thingy.
Elder scrolls 6 will not be like this
Incredible work Leo, a labour of love :)
You should be very proud of yourself sir. What you have created is nothing less than a masterpiece. Thank you for sharing this. I specially love the realism of the small details like the flames and the birds just flying by. And the first person tour through the town felt like travelling back to the viking era! I look forward to see more from you!
Thank you!
My god, This is the most impressive thing I have ever seen. It makes Skyrim feel like more than just a game, it makes it feel tangible and real. I can't describe how awesome this is. It's as if Skyrim was a real place, that could be visited if one pleased. Thank you for making this.
How is this impressive? Making a video from a pregenerated terrain with probs, but without life, interaction, NPC etc? This look (without all the NPC etc) is nearly doable in the old engine?
@@TheAlphateddy Regardless, I still find this extremely impressive. While NPC interactions and such would have made this even more epic I still find this incredibly amazing.
@@TheAlphateddy True, guy needs to calm his tits.
@@TheAlphateddy
"How is this impressive?"
You do this then get back to us.
@@FantomPhoenixJust his name tells us everything we have to know about him. Pathetic Human being.
At this point, hes gonna do all of Tamriel before ES6 drops
Looks amazing, probably the best re-imagining of Skyrim in Unreal 5 I have seen. Always thought the towns and cities looked too small in scale in Skyrim. This takes it to another level!
This actually fits what Whiterun was described more accurately than the one in the Skyrim game.
Its the trade capital of Skyrim, so it wouldnt be small it would be a larger town and its snowy but far better than the northern cities
this is so gooodddd your work needs more recognition like imagine this is a mod for skyrim a total rework of ther whole map brahhhhhhhh
I so SOO love lore-accurate scale of Tamriel's cities. And I'm so SOO happy this video exist. Well done and props to you who made this stunning rendition of one of my favorite cities 💯❤️
Hopefully we can see the Imperial City soon. The same way I viewed it in my past artwork (or even better)
I absolutely love this! The feeling within the walkthrough was incredible, and definitely does justice to the lore surrounding the city. Would love to see the Skyforge and Jorrvaskr in detail as well!
This is gorgeous and at basically the perfect scale. Population wise, I'd compare The Elder Scrolls Empire to that of mid-early Renaissance Europe, and of it's constituent countries, Skyrim is fairly sparsely populated. In Skyrim, Whiterun is a medium city (it's definitely smaller than Solitude, which has a much smaller hold population, but more concentrated in the city itself). From that, you'd expect an actual population of around 15-20k, and that looks like it fits that bill perfectly.
Excellent job, I'd love to see you do some of the other holds (Solitude would be STUNNING)
All I could say was "...Oh wow..." I'm blown away, and quite moved.
I can imagine the extreme task it would be to do this same level of work with any of the bigger cities.
White rum has always been my favourite place in Skyrim, and now it looks even better.
This is magnificent! I have always dreamed of seeing the province this way. Vast, spacious lands to explore!
Как будто побывал в Древних Свитках 6!!! Спасибо автор.
привет Ваня
Ооо да кот))
Вань привет)
Согласен Ваня
Привет Вань. Зашёл сюда чтобы лайкнуть твой комент
Wow, this is stunning! Gave me goosebumps seeing familiar places and landmarks updated! Thanks for making this!
When Todd Howard/Bethesda says that they're waiting for the technology to catch up, THIS is what I have in mind. Not shitty Starfield.
For the sake of the gameplay, I can understand why the Holds of Skyrim are as small as they are; especially Whiterun. It's to give the player easier access to all the important stuff.
BUT _DAMN_ this looks so cool! Like, in terms of the lore of the franchise, _this_ is what I'd imagine a long-standing Nord city-stronghold to look like!
Looks amazing! I've always thought about doing something like this in Skyrim, but the scale of the project scared me off. Seeing someone actually do it is insane. I completely agree that 10,000 people is a good upper limit for Whiterun. In fact Solitude and Riften are the only cities that I would expect to break the 10,000 people mark.
Amazing work and it does Whitetun justice but I think it'd be cool to also have farms and small villages right outside the walls, it's often something developers miss as being a part of medieval cities
Beautifully done and so,so clever.
Would have been good if we saw a bit more of the cloud district. We don’t go up there often enough since that arrow in the knee.
This is exactly how I imagined Skyrim was supposed to look like when I saw the trailers after playing the game first lmao
I never thought I'd get to see the AMAZING visuals, so, Thank you so much for your hard work! I really look forward to the videos of other cities!
It’s like visiting a place you remember from childhood and it’s even more beautiful than you remember it.
This is a very beautiful and precise way to describe this video!
@@ameliezhou8887 Thank you. It’s honestly how I felt. Full credit to Leo for inspiring that emotion through countless hours of hard work.
I wrote a fanfic in which I scaled up Skyrim to the size of Canada. Your vision of Whiterun could easily fit with my story. Excellent job and I wish the entire game could be scaled like this!
looks very nice, thanks for your work
I remember the first time I read Return of the King as a kid, I imagined Minas Tirith looking a lot like this, only with more walls dividing up the sections. The ingame version of Whiterun reminds me a lot of Edoras from The Two Towers, ironically enough. Skyrim and Lord of the Rings have always reminded me of one another.
Really good job, you really captured the magic with this one.
Whiterun is directly based off edoras
The landscape in the video is based off my Sunday where they filmed edoras
Have you met my father? He's the steward up at Dragonsreach
Your Dawnstar and Whiterun ones look insane!! Is there a possibility that if you end up doing all the cities, you can put them all together and make it an explorable map? I'd happily pay to have an experience like that, whether it's through Patreon etc.
Love it! Well done!
This is gorgeous!! I love how big it looks. I'd love to see Riften or Solitude next!
Beyond Speechless. This is honestly inspiring. Did you do this by yourself? If so, how long did this take???
Yeah! Bit of a personal project for the last month and a bit!
@@lion_towers3d A MONTH AND A BIT! It takes me longer to get around to putting some shelves up!😲
@@Paul-jl2vo No bathroom breaks. Had to hold it in the entire time. 🙂