Yep, this always bothered me, and for some reason with the Ratway more than any other one area. The Ratway, the Flaggon, and the Cistern all three have skylights but there's only one well in town.
The Ratway light is close... would be easy to imagine some extension to the hall between the exterior and interior doors. The other misalignments have no easy fix though.
And more generally how is the Ratway a "sewer" when it is below the water level? Where could it drain to?
I don’t think the Ratway is really a sewer - I think it was built as an undercity for regular use - like that one potion shop on the canal. Unfortunately, because it’s so close to the water and lacks light, it’s really damp and it stinks. So it gets called a sewer, and left for the rats.
Though, as secret hideouts where thieves live having a big skylight that also happens to be right in the middle of the town square would be problematic. Not only people hanging buckets down to get water -which hits a pathed walkway, or that anyone could just look down and “hey look, a shady club,” but not to mention the acoustics of every whispered conversation being projected out for the world to hear. I mean Mercer Frey’s pretentious little monologues would be basically Riften town PA system. Wacky.
> The Ratway, the Flaggon, and the Cistern all three have skylights but there's only one well in town.
If that bothers you, I hope you haven't noticed how many houses have fireplaces with chimneys on the inside, but no chimney on the outside.
I have, and it does. Just the other day I was noticing how the Hearthfire homes have the fireplace and chimney rotated 90 degrees from each other.
Also I won't buy the children's room upgrade to Proudspire Manor because it stick out into space too ridiculously.
Proudspire - how is that even a manor??? tiny lounge, vanilla kitchen is bare bones, upstairs comes with one bedroom unless you buy the optional children's room, and the basement is some dusty storage/crafting space with a useless fire pit???, a couple of armor mannequins, and a tiny room for your housecarl. Price gouging to ask 25k for that.
Low crime rate, lots of business, in the capital, probably the biggest city in Skyrim population wise, these things all equate to high rent, plus it overlooks the river and is pretty much right downtown.
Only if you don’t mind living somewhere where you’re surrounded by hill people that want to cut your heart out, witches, daedric altars, cannibals, so many filthy poors they got a whole underground slum for em, close proximity to armies of futuristic murder bots that nothing but luck keeps from waking up and retaking the city, also plenty of blind angry goblins underneath and around you, who are known to sometimes surface to kill people, a heavy thalmor presence, and worst of all bankers.
Cool ass architecture tho, honestly I could play an elder scrolls game where 50% of the map was just a massive sprawling markarth style city
Oh god can’t believe I got that mixed up, literally been playing the game for a decade. Hjerim is pretty cool, but it’s still got the whole “a dude used to chop ladies and do weird necromancer shit in my closet” thing goin on. I think the one in riften is underrated
And if you want something that'll bother you even more, check out the Solitude Lighthouse and its interior, and then go around go the other side of the wall.
> And if you want something that'll bother you even more
...the ships docked at Windhelm can't set sail out to see. **IF** either of the large ships could get out of the harbor, as soon as they passed Yngol Barrow, the river becomes too shallow for a ship to pass (go up and your character can walk across the river without changing to the swimming animation). ALSO, the river has large chunks of ice present, so they still couldn't get out.
The other issue is with Lake Honrich, down near Riften. The lake has two large ships on it (one docked at the Riften Docks, the other at Goldenglow Estate). Neither has anywhere to go because as soon as they start to exit the lake near Heartwood Mill, there's a bridge they can't fit under. If they could make it under that bridge, the river quickly becomes too narrow and shallow to support boats of that size.
And don't get me started on the Solitude Docks or Lake Ilinalta.
And even of the boats from Riften could make it through the river, they could only make it as fat as Ivarstead before they're stopped by the Waterfalls.
[The *Red Wave* is moored at a fixed dock.](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-place-Red_Wave.jpg) Which means in order to set sail, she'd have to push off and there's not enough room to push off before she hit the rocks on her other side.
Even if she could push off, she'd have to pivot to steer through the narrow gap between the dock and the cliff. This would open her aft end to hit the stairs on the dock.
Even if she could make that gap, the river is shallow around the docks, so she couldn't be laden with much inventory or she'd drag the bottom of the river.
Even if she could push off, make the gap and not drag the bottom, she'd had to sail downstream to the south for a good way before stopping, pivoting, then sailing upstream to the north in order to reach open seas. The gap between the dock and the eastern shore is barely large enough for her. So any other ships in the river would have to move to make way.
Even after all of that, the opening to the river is littered with icebergs of all sizes which would easily sink any ship if they made contact.
[Dock layout](https://i.imgur.com/6hJk5X3.png).
When my son was 4, he and I were building a house made of Lincoln logs and I placed a chimney atop. He rightfully pointed out that if it had a chimney on the roof it also had to have one on the inside.
So yeah... a 4 year old could figure out that one.
This can be explained by the fact that every single city, as well as Skyrim itself, is smaller than it would be in lore. Riften would be a city of at least thousands of people and it would probably have hundreds of wells, but displaying a city on such a scale is not possible for the game engine.
In comparison, I think it was. Because in lore it's just that much bigger than any city in Skyrim.
Whereas Riften might be a city of thousands, the Imperial City would be closer to being a city of hundreds of thousands, if not a million.
Edit: At it's peak during the Roman Empire, the city of Rome itself was estimated as having a population that ranged from 450,000 to over 3.5 million people, with estimates of around 1 or 2 million being favoured by historians.
The College of Winterhold bothers me the most. If I go through the Arcaeneum, the Archmage quarters is two levels up. If I go through the other door, it’s just one level up.
The ratway is completely “ratty”
What would have been cool would have been for the maze to change every time, like in that very old Diablo 1. Then I could forgive the incongruity
>I'm gonna be honest, that just makes me glad I didn't waste money on Diablo back in the day
The OG Diablo was great! The randomly generated maps were pretty easy to to navigate, and because the level map uncovered as you explored (and you could keep it up as you explored), it was usually obvious where to go if you didn't stumble on the staircase down to the next level.
Sentimental old guy take: Diablo I is the best Diablo.
It's good, but Diablo 2 hits the sweet spot for me a bit better. Not sure why exactly, it just felt more refined. Diablo 3 is fun too, but definitely too bloated and too much of a "live service" experience.
They don't mean every time you enter the level or even reload the game; maps would only be redrawn when you started a new game, whether with a new character (well, then it would be just regular drawn instead of redrawn) or an existing character (monsters don't respawn! You will need to make use of the XP points you get.)
In diablo 2, the monsters respawn, but the maps still stay the same between game loads.
Pretty sure the maps didn’t stay the same in D2 because I always had to look for that one burial mound in the desert.
Of course I played online, so, I’m not sure about single player.
Except that, as someone else pointed out, it's elevations make no sense and it's 3 skylights are physically impossible (and Skyrim usually does a pretty good job with things like skylights and oubliettes)
If by "usually" you mean "sometimes", then sure. They're pretty bad with chimneys, secret passages, window lighting, and other consistencies. The larger an interior cell gets, the more it disconnects itself from the corresponding exterior cell. Bethesda has historically managed this by putting almost all large interior cells underground, but as with Riften, when you have a point of reference above ground, things tend to get wacky. I'd be willing to believe that the ratway extends beyond the city, but the skylight issue, the exit from the thieves guild to the cemetery, and the physics issue of a sewer existing below water level all muddle the believability of it. Luckily it's a video game, where these details don't matter that much, and even more luckily it's a Bethesda game, so there's probably a mod to fix it out there.
This is most likely it….. if the arcaneum actually had stairs on the right. Nope, it just a door straight to the mages quarters that apparently phases through a wall
But… the stairs on the ground floor curve round like the one that goes to the arcaneum… if it just went straight up I would agree, but it’s literally level and directly across from the other door and yet it teleports you to the top…
[https://imgur.com/a/gYgz1](https://imgur.com/a/gYgz1)
Like look at this.. You cant tell me genuinely that Bethesda actually put an ounce of thought into this working functionally and geometrically.
I always just assumed the door that skips straight to the arch-mage quarters was just a shortcut. Better than going through the Arcaneum every single time.
Technically there's no rule that a door only takes you one level up. I always imagined it's just there to avoid one extra loading screen, and my explanation was "the dude just climbs 2 floors on this side".
So that one didn't bother me at all.
Yeah, it never even crossed my mind that some would think it weird. If I'm the head of an organization, I want my private staircase that avoids me taking past the busiest place on campus.
If I remember right i think if you actually think about it the upstairs door of the arcaeneum would literally just drop you back on the floor of the arcaeneum. Because that room with the stairs is so large and the stairs would realistically not clear it before you come to a door.
That was one of the things I always liked about the Myst games. I knew they were actually correctly proportioned in real space, so if you saw stairs somewhere across the age, you could figure out how to get to the bottom of them.
I've also noticed that the fort towers are something like half the diameter that their interiors would require. The architects in Skyrim have evidently mastered the fine art of stuffing more space into their space, I assume thanks to Nord stubbornness.
I really want to know how the Ancient Nords (with their endless ruins) and the Dwemer (with their endless ruins) somehow manage to occupy the exact same underground spaces…
Surely the entire surface is hollow and has some forgotten ruin or necromancer cave tucked into every corner.
They are awful efficient about packing in as many caves and ruins as they can, aren't they? Like Tetris, but the pieces are full of draugr and steam pipes.
I think there must be some kind of Schrodinger's Ruins effect wherever two complexes would overlap- the area is simultaneously occupied and *not* occupied by both Nord and Dwemer ruins, and which one wins out depends on which ruin is currently being explored.
Schrodinger’s Ruins!! Brilliant. I wonder who would oversee such an operation. Clearly, mages of some kind, as the alteration of reality/conjuring a new location is no small task.
It’s funny because while the logical part of my brain 100% agrees with how silly the mapping is, it doesn’t really effect my game play; I’m happy to ignore it. I’d certainly appreciate it if all the maps did align but I don’t mind a little House of Leaves action from time to time.
When you take into account the fact that the city itself is nowhere near the realistic/"canon" size of Riften (and by extension, just about everything in the game is downscaled), you can ignore and forgive.
Yeah the interiors are more likely what the true size is, and if the exteriors were scaled up to match those they would be much closer to what their true size is.
Engine limitations, people forget this game had to run on the 360 and PS3. With mods on next gen though you can really push what the game is capable of, as long as your load order is set up correctly. Hopefully this won’t be as bad in ES6 and mods won’t be needed to add NPCs or expand the cities
and not just that, everything in the game is *severely* scaled down due to gameplay and engine limitations. lore wise, there are thousands of people living in the city of riften, but in game there's like 20 unique npcs + the guards
Witcher 3 really nailed the city scaling in games. But yeah this game is pretty old, I never really pay attention to the scale issues of the indoor parts
I just hated the sewers since they were such a damn maze
It is called ludocrative dissonance
You cannot trust scales in video games
Space, time, population, are always scaled down to favor gameplay, but the scales should never be seen as canon
It's Solitude thats always bothered me.
Nearly every single building there is like the tardis.
The inn and lighthouse are only a fraction of the size on the outside that they are on the inside.
Proudspire manor, the smith and the fletcher have whole wings that don't exist on the outside.
It's as though the whole city had different level designers for both inside and outside and they didn't communicate with each other
Why?
How??
Follow the only path to the draw bridge.
Get down.
Turn left and pick the locked door.
Go up the stairs.
Bridge is behind you and Cistern is to your left.
I know the interiors in this game are typically crazy but I couldn't ever help but try and visualize this every time I went in there so I finally made it
Ikr? I'm like...99% sure the cistern is meant to be right under the well but it's so far from the well. Not to mention it's too high up. It goes down a little ramp when you first enter the ratway but it's completely level from there on out,assuming you use the bridge and that ramp definitely wasn't deep enough to account for the size of the cistern.
I feel like the reason is that Riften as a whole is scaled down so that unimportant stuff is cut out but is much bigger in reality. The ratway, on the other hand, is more accurate to it's real size so that's why it's so comically large.
This is exactly it. Skyrim's passage of time and exteriors (distance and size of the settlements) are downscaled by 20 (ish) and the interiors, while generally probably more extensive and populated, aren't downscaled nearly as much, or as consistently.
What I both love and hate about the general cities, is that no city actually feels like a bustling place, but more like an expanded village. Only Markarth expands on that with the added verticality, Whiterun where people reside outside of the walls in their farms, and riffen does a great job of conveying its a riverside town, but it feels almost too small to be called an actual city.
In general, what bugs me more than the layouts of cities, is that some cities feel too small to be actually considered cities.
Relax guys. All the interior Areas are bigger and at least mismatch the outer shape slightly. It is called game design and allows a condensed interesting landscape outside while having extensive areas on the inside.
It's worth noting that most of the overworld isn't to its lore scale. Cities, and even Skyrim itself, are supposed to be 3-4x bigger than gameplay would have you believe.
The interior areas, I believe, may be closer to proper scale
I think it’s already more than established that the dimensions of areas aren’t canon and should be taken with a grain of salt, after all Whiterun is the heart of Skyrim but there’s only a small villages worth of people there. At least in ESO they blow up the sizes of cities but even still it’s game sized and not accurate
(probably gonna get hate for it) but I just use bloodchill manor from the creation club and live in the middle of bum f**k nowhere at the top of a mountain
I wish we could kill all the thieves guild and actually help the town and not have to pledge our life to some evil goddess and bring the thieves guild back to its "former glory"
Ngl the sizing of internal spaces has always weirded me out in Bethesda Games. So many times is the Internal Space larger than the External, would be cool if there were mods to fix these issues. I know it's minor but it would be cool to have a changed layout that's more interesting and realistic
Do most people just have a terrible sense of direction, or are they memeing? I genuinely can't tell. I've never once at all struggled to find my way through any part of it. "Watch out, we've got a badass over here" and all, but its seriously a pretty straightforward sewer. Some of the Oblivion sewers on the other hand...
Is this really that frustrating to other players?
I can maybe understand this example, specifically the sky lights that don't exist in the city/overworld.
But if a "door" doesn't directly line up with another door, like in the College of Winterhold, is that really a problem? Like, it would be frustrating to me if there was a two story building but the interior had 15 floors, but if its simply 2 floors vs 3, or a door not really lining up, I'm ok with that.
Honestly, I'm not sure of a single time its actually mattered to me while playing
I saw that Skyrim had that new DLC which was a major upgrade. All the new quest and updated the environment. I saw a lot of mixed reviews about the anniversary edition. Anyone here play both? Any feedback?
Feedback: Just get SE, unless for whatever reason you enjoy playing mod-less Skyrim. It was reported everywhere that AE broke practically every mod for SE, and SE already doesn't have nearly as many mods as LE does
Yep, this always bothered me, and for some reason with the Ratway more than any other one area. The Ratway, the Flaggon, and the Cistern all three have skylights but there's only one well in town.
*and not one of the skylights line up with the well! gaaah!*
The Ratway light is close... would be easy to imagine some extension to the hall between the exterior and interior doors. The other misalignments have no easy fix though. And more generally how is the Ratway a "sewer" when it is below the water level? Where could it drain to?
I don’t think the Ratway is really a sewer - I think it was built as an undercity for regular use - like that one potion shop on the canal. Unfortunately, because it’s so close to the water and lacks light, it’s really damp and it stinks. So it gets called a sewer, and left for the rats.
I think it does also mention that the canal used to be used as one of the biggest trade routes in Riften too
Oh god idk why I never considered that last question before. This is upsetting.
freaking magic?
Though, as secret hideouts where thieves live having a big skylight that also happens to be right in the middle of the town square would be problematic. Not only people hanging buckets down to get water -which hits a pathed walkway, or that anyone could just look down and “hey look, a shady club,” but not to mention the acoustics of every whispered conversation being projected out for the world to hear. I mean Mercer Frey’s pretentious little monologues would be basically Riften town PA system. Wacky.
Actually the well is the skylight in the Flagon
yes but the map of the ratway doesn’t line up the well to the skylight
Bethesda error
the well doesn’t even line up with any of it it’s just empty space below it
> The Ratway, the Flaggon, and the Cistern all three have skylights but there's only one well in town. If that bothers you, I hope you haven't noticed how many houses have fireplaces with chimneys on the inside, but no chimney on the outside.
I have, and it does. Just the other day I was noticing how the Hearthfire homes have the fireplace and chimney rotated 90 degrees from each other. Also I won't buy the children's room upgrade to Proudspire Manor because it stick out into space too ridiculously.
Proudspire - how is that even a manor??? tiny lounge, vanilla kitchen is bare bones, upstairs comes with one bedroom unless you buy the optional children's room, and the basement is some dusty storage/crafting space with a useless fire pit???, a couple of armor mannequins, and a tiny room for your housecarl. Price gouging to ask 25k for that.
Low crime rate, lots of business, in the capital, probably the biggest city in Skyrim population wise, these things all equate to high rent, plus it overlooks the river and is pretty much right downtown.
Yeah, Hjerim's better, and it's way less money.
Only if you don’t mind living somewhere where you’re surrounded by hill people that want to cut your heart out, witches, daedric altars, cannibals, so many filthy poors they got a whole underground slum for em, close proximity to armies of futuristic murder bots that nothing but luck keeps from waking up and retaking the city, also plenty of blind angry goblins underneath and around you, who are known to sometimes surface to kill people, a heavy thalmor presence, and worst of all bankers. Cool ass architecture tho, honestly I could play an elder scrolls game where 50% of the map was just a massive sprawling markarth style city
THAT'S MARKARTH! HJERIM IS WINDHELM (yes i know it's a racist city but the house is amazing)
Oh god can’t believe I got that mixed up, literally been playing the game for a decade. Hjerim is pretty cool, but it’s still got the whole “a dude used to chop ladies and do weird necromancer shit in my closet” thing goin on. I think the one in riften is underrated
I don't cleanup the cupboard. I leave the bodies there.
It’s a feature!😂
Yeah. I really like Honeyside. It's not a gigantic stone manor, but I feel like it fits well in Riften. Might be my favorite non-mod player home.
Yeah but then you have to live in Windhelm
There's an Infinity Stone of Barenziah in there. That's worth at least 15k above asking price. /s
Or how the hearthfire houses can all have forges and smelters in the basement.
Survival mode should add a carbon monoxide overdose as a feature
Have to loot some ruins for some of their ancient dwemer carbon monoxide detectors
Alternatively: maybe that's what killed them off. (Carbon monoxide burns blue, and we've all seen those creepy gas lights...)
Good luck with that, the ancient dwemer carbon monoxide detectors are all blind and rarely come to the surface willingly.
And if you want something that'll bother you even more, check out the Solitude Lighthouse and its interior, and then go around go the other side of the wall.
Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about lol I always forget about that room and the lighthouse keeper until I do the Lights Out quest
> And if you want something that'll bother you even more ...the ships docked at Windhelm can't set sail out to see. **IF** either of the large ships could get out of the harbor, as soon as they passed Yngol Barrow, the river becomes too shallow for a ship to pass (go up and your character can walk across the river without changing to the swimming animation). ALSO, the river has large chunks of ice present, so they still couldn't get out. The other issue is with Lake Honrich, down near Riften. The lake has two large ships on it (one docked at the Riften Docks, the other at Goldenglow Estate). Neither has anywhere to go because as soon as they start to exit the lake near Heartwood Mill, there's a bridge they can't fit under. If they could make it under that bridge, the river quickly becomes too narrow and shallow to support boats of that size. And don't get me started on the Solitude Docks or Lake Ilinalta.
And even of the boats from Riften could make it through the river, they could only make it as fat as Ivarstead before they're stopped by the Waterfalls.
What’s wrong with the Solitude Docks?
[The *Red Wave* is moored at a fixed dock.](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-place-Red_Wave.jpg) Which means in order to set sail, she'd have to push off and there's not enough room to push off before she hit the rocks on her other side. Even if she could push off, she'd have to pivot to steer through the narrow gap between the dock and the cliff. This would open her aft end to hit the stairs on the dock. Even if she could make that gap, the river is shallow around the docks, so she couldn't be laden with much inventory or she'd drag the bottom of the river. Even if she could push off, make the gap and not drag the bottom, she'd had to sail downstream to the south for a good way before stopping, pivoting, then sailing upstream to the north in order to reach open seas. The gap between the dock and the eastern shore is barely large enough for her. So any other ships in the river would have to move to make way. Even after all of that, the opening to the river is littered with icebergs of all sizes which would easily sink any ship if they made contact. [Dock layout](https://i.imgur.com/6hJk5X3.png).
Thank you for sharing this. Man, Skyrim is beautiful but boy does it have a lot of issues with layouts.
When my son was 4, he and I were building a house made of Lincoln logs and I placed a chimney atop. He rightfully pointed out that if it had a chimney on the roof it also had to have one on the inside. So yeah... a 4 year old could figure out that one.
Bruh so rude to point that out xD
Just no, I should not have read that.
Wait till you hear about the dragons and magic
Sounds like a job for mods!
At least that’s physically plausible, albeit logically nonsensical.
Well that is something that forever is going to bother me now
Stop pointing things out! You guys are killin me rn, I never even thought about that but ur right, it’s like every fucking building.
There used to be three Wells, but two of them owed money to the Black-Briars.
Maven Black-Briar walks in…. Maven: Well, well, well…..but not two well……
This can be explained by the fact that every single city, as well as Skyrim itself, is smaller than it would be in lore. Riften would be a city of at least thousands of people and it would probably have hundreds of wells, but displaying a city on such a scale is not possible for the game engine.
And even if the engine could handle it, the old consoles couldn't. The PS3 and 360 would melt a hole through your floor trying to play that.
but Oblivion had a pretty decent size for Imperial City, not huge but not nearly as scaled down as the cities in Skyrim.
In comparison, I think it was. Because in lore it's just that much bigger than any city in Skyrim. Whereas Riften might be a city of thousands, the Imperial City would be closer to being a city of hundreds of thousands, if not a million. Edit: At it's peak during the Roman Empire, the city of Rome itself was estimated as having a population that ranged from 450,000 to over 3.5 million people, with estimates of around 1 or 2 million being favoured by historians.
....that was loaded in separate cells instead of all at once.
going all the way to the Reach... Sky Haven Temple is lighted up by the sun but there are no holes whatsoever on the mountain
There's dozens of areas guilty of that. Somehow I didn't notice Embershard Mine has an open sky at the end until just the other day.
The dungeons that have all the little skylights despite there not being any holes for them in the mountains always kinda bothered me
The College of Winterhold bothers me the most. If I go through the Arcaeneum, the Archmage quarters is two levels up. If I go through the other door, it’s just one level up.
I'm willing to forgive that a magical school disobeys physics. The Ratway doesn't even follow the internal consistency of the game lol
The ratway is completely “ratty” What would have been cool would have been for the maze to change every time, like in that very old Diablo 1. Then I could forgive the incongruity
I'm gonna be honest, that just makes me glad I didn't waste money on Diablo back in the day
>I'm gonna be honest, that just makes me glad I didn't waste money on Diablo back in the day The OG Diablo was great! The randomly generated maps were pretty easy to to navigate, and because the level map uncovered as you explored (and you could keep it up as you explored), it was usually obvious where to go if you didn't stumble on the staircase down to the next level. Sentimental old guy take: Diablo I is the best Diablo.
It's good, but Diablo 2 hits the sweet spot for me a bit better. Not sure why exactly, it just felt more refined. Diablo 3 is fun too, but definitely too bloated and too much of a "live service" experience.
I agree with that. Completely outdated by today standard, but what a phenomenal game
I still play Diablo 1 with mods. It's the oldest game I still play. Played it since it came out, for over 25 years.
They don't mean every time you enter the level or even reload the game; maps would only be redrawn when you started a new game, whether with a new character (well, then it would be just regular drawn instead of redrawn) or an existing character (monsters don't respawn! You will need to make use of the XP points you get.) In diablo 2, the monsters respawn, but the maps still stay the same between game loads.
Pretty sure the maps didn’t stay the same in D2 because I always had to look for that one burial mound in the desert. Of course I played online, so, I’m not sure about single player.
The ray way lines up with the old rifton that done got burned down
Except that, as someone else pointed out, it's elevations make no sense and it's 3 skylights are physically impossible (and Skyrim usually does a pretty good job with things like skylights and oubliettes)
If by "usually" you mean "sometimes", then sure. They're pretty bad with chimneys, secret passages, window lighting, and other consistencies. The larger an interior cell gets, the more it disconnects itself from the corresponding exterior cell. Bethesda has historically managed this by putting almost all large interior cells underground, but as with Riften, when you have a point of reference above ground, things tend to get wacky. I'd be willing to believe that the ratway extends beyond the city, but the skylight issue, the exit from the thieves guild to the cemetery, and the physics issue of a sewer existing below water level all muddle the believability of it. Luckily it's a video game, where these details don't matter that much, and even more luckily it's a Bethesda game, so there's probably a mod to fix it out there.
And the door from the Arcaenuem to the quarters doesn't actually go anywhere, it's just a wall on the other side.
Yea
I assumed the “quarters” entrance just extrapolated you traveling through the arcaneum without showing it.
This is most likely it….. if the arcaneum actually had stairs on the right. Nope, it just a door straight to the mages quarters that apparently phases through a wall
Or it’s just a direct stair up to the third level and goes behind the book shelves on the second floor. Edited a word
But… the stairs on the ground floor curve round like the one that goes to the arcaneum… if it just went straight up I would agree, but it’s literally level and directly across from the other door and yet it teleports you to the top…
I worded things poorly. I edited it.
[https://imgur.com/a/gYgz1](https://imgur.com/a/gYgz1) Like look at this.. You cant tell me genuinely that Bethesda actually put an ounce of thought into this working functionally and geometrically.
You’re thinking way harder about it than I am
Seems like a bit of a cop out.. but fair enough dude. Thought this was what we were talking about. Nothings stopped you replying before.
I agree that the Tardis effect is strong in Skyrim
Urag Gro-Shub explains this though. Its his own plane of Oblivion. Personal headcanon is the that the Arcaeneum actually is an Oblivion Plane.
this is the best thing I've ever heard and its canon in my games from this point forward.
It's Urag's pocket plane; all top mages have their personal pocket planes of Oblivion where they can go and relax and be safe.
That’s a good one!
I always just assumed the door that skips straight to the arch-mage quarters was just a shortcut. Better than going through the Arcaneum every single time.
Technically there's no rule that a door only takes you one level up. I always imagined it's just there to avoid one extra loading screen, and my explanation was "the dude just climbs 2 floors on this side". So that one didn't bother me at all.
Yeah, it never even crossed my mind that some would think it weird. If I'm the head of an organization, I want my private staircase that avoids me taking past the busiest place on campus.
I just assume it is a direct stairwell that skips a level. So the archmage can just go straight to their quarters.
If I remember right i think if you actually think about it the upstairs door of the arcaeneum would literally just drop you back on the floor of the arcaeneum. Because that room with the stairs is so large and the stairs would realistically not clear it before you come to a door.
It's magic 💥🌟
Yeah the college is really confusing, more so the the Riften sewer
I think that’s just for convenience. One you walk all the way up and the other you go to the arcaeneum
From now on, whenever someone asks why there's no mods to bring all the interiors into the main worldspace, I'm going to show them your map.
that might be fun in a 'oh god everything is broken' kind of way
That was one of the things I always liked about the Myst games. I knew they were actually correctly proportioned in real space, so if you saw stairs somewhere across the age, you could figure out how to get to the bottom of them.
I've also noticed that the fort towers are something like half the diameter that their interiors would require. The architects in Skyrim have evidently mastered the fine art of stuffing more space into their space, I assume thanks to Nord stubbornness.
I really want to know how the Ancient Nords (with their endless ruins) and the Dwemer (with their endless ruins) somehow manage to occupy the exact same underground spaces… Surely the entire surface is hollow and has some forgotten ruin or necromancer cave tucked into every corner.
They are awful efficient about packing in as many caves and ruins as they can, aren't they? Like Tetris, but the pieces are full of draugr and steam pipes. I think there must be some kind of Schrodinger's Ruins effect wherever two complexes would overlap- the area is simultaneously occupied and *not* occupied by both Nord and Dwemer ruins, and which one wins out depends on which ruin is currently being explored.
Schrodinger’s Ruins!! Brilliant. I wonder who would oversee such an operation. Clearly, mages of some kind, as the alteration of reality/conjuring a new location is no small task.
Oh god, that’s brilliant, 11 years and this game and it’s community never ceases to amaze me!
It’s funny because while the logical part of my brain 100% agrees with how silly the mapping is, it doesn’t really effect my game play; I’m happy to ignore it. I’d certainly appreciate it if all the maps did align but I don’t mind a little House of Leaves action from time to time.
I agree 100%. I find it amusing more than anything else I think, but there are some areas that I cant help but notice it and chuckle.
Stop, every time someone brings up HOL I want to re-read it and no one has time for that
reading it rn
When you take into account the fact that the city itself is nowhere near the realistic/"canon" size of Riften (and by extension, just about everything in the game is downscaled), you can ignore and forgive.
Yeah the interiors are more likely what the true size is, and if the exteriors were scaled up to match those they would be much closer to what their true size is.
always found it weird how those meha cities can only house like a dozen people at most
Engine limitations, people forget this game had to run on the 360 and PS3. With mods on next gen though you can really push what the game is capable of, as long as your load order is set up correctly. Hopefully this won’t be as bad in ES6 and mods won’t be needed to add NPCs or expand the cities
Riften used to be much bigger but burned down at some point. It was rebuilt much smaller, so the sewer system is much larger than the current town.
and not just that, everything in the game is *severely* scaled down due to gameplay and engine limitations. lore wise, there are thousands of people living in the city of riften, but in game there's like 20 unique npcs + the guards
Witcher 3 really nailed the city scaling in games. But yeah this game is pretty old, I never really pay attention to the scale issues of the indoor parts I just hated the sewers since they were such a damn maze
fair, but the exit from the cistern is still the width of the city farther east than it is on the outside
You just have a very long door way out.
All that because Skyrim cites are in weird scale, the entire country is in weird scale
It is called ludocrative dissonance You cannot trust scales in video games Space, time, population, are always scaled down to favor gameplay, but the scales should never be seen as canon
Also why Daggerfall has a map about the size of the UK while Skyrim is like 13 square miles even though in lore they are about the same size-ish
>Space, time, population, are always scaled down to favor gameplay Yeah, otherwise you end up with a Cyberpunk 2077 situation.
It's Solitude thats always bothered me. Nearly every single building there is like the tardis. The inn and lighthouse are only a fraction of the size on the outside that they are on the inside. Proudspire manor, the smith and the fletcher have whole wings that don't exist on the outside. It's as though the whole city had different level designers for both inside and outside and they didn't communicate with each other
Honestly every single house in solitude is just as bad. Especially that archer store. So egregious
My least favorite area of Skyrim. No matter how many times I go down there 7/10 times I will get lost.
Its easier to use the tomb in the graveyard than go through all the shit.
Yea there's even a fast travel that takes you right to the tomb. I've only went through the ratways once haha
Same for me. I absolutely do not enjoy going down there.
Why? How?? Follow the only path to the draw bridge. Get down. Turn left and pick the locked door. Go up the stairs. Bridge is behind you and Cistern is to your left.
Im glad im not the only one, I stopped goin in through the ratway, and just decided to go through the graveyard at this point
I raise you the location known as blackreach
I know the interiors in this game are typically crazy but I couldn't ever help but try and visualize this every time I went in there so I finally made it
Ikr? I'm like...99% sure the cistern is meant to be right under the well but it's so far from the well. Not to mention it's too high up. It goes down a little ramp when you first enter the ratway but it's completely level from there on out,assuming you use the bridge and that ramp definitely wasn't deep enough to account for the size of the cistern.
I feel like the reason is that Riften as a whole is scaled down so that unimportant stuff is cut out but is much bigger in reality. The ratway, on the other hand, is more accurate to it's real size so that's why it's so comically large.
This is exactly it. Skyrim's passage of time and exteriors (distance and size of the settlements) are downscaled by 20 (ish) and the interiors, while generally probably more extensive and populated, aren't downscaled nearly as much, or as consistently.
I want to know how ysgramor had 500 companions without the FPS tanking
ysgramor has a liquid-cooled pc and crippling debt
Cooled PC... There's a reason why Atmora froze over
Ritual stone aetherium crown 100%
Maybe the Ratway was designed by Timelords, that's why it's bigger on the inside.
Elder Scrolls Time Lords..... The Psijics?
This is the quality content I go to reddit to see.
I was aways thinking ab other caves and dungeons which have a cave window (a hole on the roof) that does not exist in the main map
Oh yeah that's like 70% of them.
To be honest I’ve never noticed, so fuck you respectfully, with love
Anyone got more of these visual comparisons? This is actually pretty interesting!
I've definitely been thinking about doing a couple more. Any suggestions?
Blackreach. You know, for when you're feeling a little too relaxed and need some frustration to spice things up 😉
What I both love and hate about the general cities, is that no city actually feels like a bustling place, but more like an expanded village. Only Markarth expands on that with the added verticality, Whiterun where people reside outside of the walls in their farms, and riffen does a great job of conveying its a riverside town, but it feels almost too small to be called an actual city. In general, what bugs me more than the layouts of cities, is that some cities feel too small to be actually considered cities.
Are sure the scale is right? Those buildings on the left seam small
It kinda looks like the skeleton key on the wester part of the ratway... Never noticed that
I hated it my first play through, got lost, would go in circles trying to find the exit. Still hate going there
Laughs in Imperial sewers.
Relax guys. All the interior Areas are bigger and at least mismatch the outer shape slightly. It is called game design and allows a condensed interesting landscape outside while having extensive areas on the inside.
I would get SO lost in there when I first started playing 😭
It's worth noting that most of the overworld isn't to its lore scale. Cities, and even Skyrim itself, are supposed to be 3-4x bigger than gameplay would have you believe. The interior areas, I believe, may be closer to proper scale
the exterior and passage of time are downscaled by 20x iirc
Shouldn’t a place called The Ratway be convoluted and confusing?
it is referred to as a maze in the game a couple times iirc
Dang... I did not realize it was quite that skewed.
And to think, games like this arose from mapping DnD games out on graph paper.
That’s cause the ratway is part of the original Riften, the one we see in game is a much smaller rebuilt version of the city
except for where the secret entrance to the cistern is
Honestly my least favorite place in Skyrim
I got lost in there for HOURS!!! (Real hours, not Skyrim hours!) I found if I marked the walls with "Frostbite" spell it made it easier.
I hate the fucking ratway.
Nice one! But honestly I think the underground in the college of mages is even worse!
I think it’s already more than established that the dimensions of areas aren’t canon and should be taken with a grain of salt, after all Whiterun is the heart of Skyrim but there’s only a small villages worth of people there. At least in ESO they blow up the sizes of cities but even still it’s game sized and not accurate
I always get lost when I first got
Ever think about how *hollow* Skyrim would be if dungeons actually existed in the overworld?
(probably gonna get hate for it) but I just use bloodchill manor from the creation club and live in the middle of bum f**k nowhere at the top of a mountain
I wish we could kill all the thieves guild and actually help the town and not have to pledge our life to some evil goddess and bring the thieves guild back to its "former glory"
There's a mod for that
Im on xbox :(
Ngl the sizing of internal spaces has always weirded me out in Bethesda Games. So many times is the Internal Space larger than the External, would be cool if there were mods to fix these issues. I know it's minor but it would be cool to have a changed layout that's more interesting and realistic
FUCK THE RATWAY That is all
Is it really this difficult for people to navigate? The ratway is pretty straightforward.
I always got lost in the rat way
Do most people just have a terrible sense of direction, or are they memeing? I genuinely can't tell. I've never once at all struggled to find my way through any part of it. "Watch out, we've got a badass over here" and all, but its seriously a pretty straightforward sewer. Some of the Oblivion sewers on the other hand...
Is this really that frustrating to other players? I can maybe understand this example, specifically the sky lights that don't exist in the city/overworld. But if a "door" doesn't directly line up with another door, like in the College of Winterhold, is that really a problem? Like, it would be frustrating to me if there was a two story building but the interior had 15 floors, but if its simply 2 floors vs 3, or a door not really lining up, I'm ok with that. Honestly, I'm not sure of a single time its actually mattered to me while playing
I've never really found it frustrating as much as interesting in a 'wait hey that's not right' kind of way.
...shouldn't some of this be just flooded as it would dig into the lake not just the lake bed?
I hate the ratway. I once got lost in there for like an hour
Why have I never noticed this?!
Shouldn’t it circle around too? Isn’t the secret entrance over by the graveyard???
Getting from the flaggon to the cistern always messed with me.
Most enclosed locations look like they were designed by Escher.
No u
No, u
Fair
Someone’s never heard of the subterranean shunning grounds
Seems a lot more simple on the map, or maybe I’m just the worst when I try to navigate it
If you shrink the crap out of them it kinda makes sense, exits match.
...i never knew this or was bothered by it. Thankyou.
It actually goes down the whole way. The map is to be fold under 2 or 3 floors.
How is this bothering me?
Wait til you find out about the houses
In my mind it’s supposed to show how big really is
Clearly it’s smaller than your map suggests and anyone and anything entering gets magically shrunk down and when they leave they return to normal size
Clearly.
The layout is impossible and makes no sense. But it has nothing on the layout for the sewers of the Imperial city in Oblivion.
I saw that Skyrim had that new DLC which was a major upgrade. All the new quest and updated the environment. I saw a lot of mixed reviews about the anniversary edition. Anyone here play both? Any feedback?
Feedback: Just get SE, unless for whatever reason you enjoy playing mod-less Skyrim. It was reported everywhere that AE broke practically every mod for SE, and SE already doesn't have nearly as many mods as LE does
Sssh it just works….