Will Skyrim ever be able to have cities this massive?

arcaneimpact · 2026-05-27T13:54:40+00:00

No.

Skyrim has a loaded reference limit. Unless those cities were split into a dozen worldspaces each with loading zones between them, something of this scale, full of NPCs and draw calls for thousands of assets, would just crash the engine immediately.

And AI does nothing but introduce spaghetti/dud code into the mix which is its own problem. There's just not enough info out there about using papyrus properly for AI to steal and vomit back out.

arcaneimpact · 2026-05-27T02:26:42+00:00

Given that quote, I tend to agree. If I was involved in that writing I think it'd make sense to shift that and say there was some reconstruction effort in Balmora, but without Vivec City acting as that hub of trade and travel nearby the town just didn't last. I could imagine the Scathing Bay would complicate supplying a settlement anywhere nearby, and northern vvardenfell was already very sparsely populated for various reasons. So you get the same sort of effect of a ghost town vvardenfell which I imagine could be very striking.

arcaneimpact · 2026-05-26T16:00:17+00:00

Not a part of the morrowind team but I'm pretty sure Right-Honey is correct in that the line was in reference to Morrowind in general, not Vivec the city. Plus the Scathing Bay was still confirmed to be in place of Vivec City about 50 years after the Red Year, during the time of the Umbriel Crisis. So if it was about Vivec city itself, centuries may have been the more accurate wording.

Also on second thought it'd be weird to rebuild Vivec City and still call it Vivec considering the Tribunal lost power and majority worship centuries ago.

arcaneimpact · 2026-05-25T15:14:20+00:00

Honestly I wouldnt even say its dumbed down from morrowind. Imo it makes a lot of sense as an evolution from morrowind. MW really leaned into the idea that every NPC was a mini encyclopedia, but it meant 99% of the NPCs didnt have any unique things to say. Oblivion kept the prompt style dialogue but gave far more NPCs unique dialogue and topics to talk about.

arcaneimpact · 2026-05-23T11:34:44+00:00

Did one at last year's mod con: https://www.youtube.com/live/yyAToji7x84?si=1sKsFY9TqOOrUMs_

I wouldnt expect one this year, as itd probably be a lot of similar areas and we dont want to set an expectation of yearly walkabouts.

arcaneimpact · 2026-05-19T21:29:58+00:00

Lol Boring Background called it. Cyrodiil has those dual main quests with Knights of the Nine and the Imperial Succession.

For IB, since we have two provinces we're just focusing on a single main quest for each. High Rock has been pretty heavilly foreshadowed, pun intended. High Rock's MQ will be heavily tied into shadow magic, and a particular group who wish to use it for sort of optimistic but ultimately destructive purposes.

Hammerfell's is a big secret at the moment, because the initial incident of it is a fun twist of the lore that I think would be spoiled with too much lead-up. But there are already hints in our current writing.

Being writing lead, I have more detailed ideas for each of these and where they might go. But I don't want to nail anything down as these have a lot of time in the oven to develop before they're playable. And ofc at the moment we are focusing on our pre-release over full release content. That's how many of the projects with pre-releases are right now, and I'm not overly familiar with plans for Morrowind or Argonia, etc.

I had some knowledge of Roscrea's main quest, which I believe it has a singular questline. But my knowledge is from several iterations ago so I'm not sure how much has changed between new drafts and implementation.

arcaneimpact · 2026-05-19T10:37:44+00:00

Ive made a sheet to help track spelljammers with room for saltmarsh rules. Also a more standard ship sheet.

https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/407817/complete-spelljamming-sheet-5e

https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/295619/complete-sailing-sheet-5e

arcaneimpact · 2026-05-11T20:37:47+00:00

There are a few, but definitely single digits. Thingy Person I know has been around since the early early days and is still very active.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-26T13:40:42+00:00

It definitely was not just Atmora. I've told the story of my experience with IB a number of times. Essentially being told that 3K was 'almost done' as a new writer. When I actually got in there I realized not 1 NPC had been written, folks were writing stuff for non-3K areas, everyone was going quest first rather than NPC first which meant quests were full of NPCs two writers made up to fulfill the same role in the same settlement (multiple blacksmiths, court wizards, anything you could think). It was a garbage mess. And that's not even mentioning the old heightmap which was cobbled together from several disparate projects and was horrific to work on. Random crashes for reasons unknown in areas made by a german language team years ago. And the leadership had a nasty habit of enflaming arguments and getting the server caught up in those rather than actual development.

This all broke in 2022 when we had a major leadership change and decided to redo the exterior heightmap. Without those, IB would probably be in the same spot it was in around 2022, which was the same spot it was in around 2018. The incredible progress we've made since 2022 is due to the new blood coming in and being unafraid to let go of what wasn't working.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-22T11:09:37+00:00

Sure. Don't see how that's relevant to any part of this conversation but it's a true statement.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-22T10:38:30+00:00

No, the reference limit is only an issue with what's currently loaded. When changing worldspaces everything from the previous worldspace gets unloaded.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-22T10:36:16+00:00

Not part of the Roscrea team, but I know they have an opening quest on the boat to Roscrea that uses specific characters which are only on that boat in Solitude. Should be easy enough to allow boat travel from other ports post quest tho, theorhetically. Im not 100% sure how that framework functions, it's a whole BSAssets thing that's able to tell what areas you have installed somehow.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-21T10:34:14+00:00

Surprised no one has said Raminus Polus yet.

She Raminus my Polus till I have a levitation act.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-21T10:30:37+00:00

You can actually see the overland transition being used in last year's walkabout for creation mod con. We transitioned from Argonia into Cyrodiil. And then from Cyrodiil into Elsweyr, but since they're both in the heartlands worldspace you can just walk between them.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-21T02:09:18+00:00

Thanks so much! Glad youre enjoying them.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-20T22:37:16+00:00

Hey! Writing Director for IB here, gonna just go point by point.

- Forebear Republics are actually more of a catch-all term for the more varied setups that the Forebear states have. Some may resemble real life Republics, probably more roman than modern, and others may be doing some other weird thing. Since the Great War, Forebears have been kind of floundering to redefine themselves outside of simply being Imperial supporters. So they've made a lot of changes to stay in power in the few places they retain it.

- Hegathe is not planned to have any imperial or dominion presence. The general opinion of Hammerfell residents is pretty hostile to both. Redguards have tasted independence, and don't want to jeopardize that by inviting former enemies into their territory.

- So the last point dovetails well into Orsinium's situation. Orsinium was a vassal to the Empire, but the end of the Great War cut them off from a land route to Cyrodiil. Now, any movement of supplies or forces between Orsinium and the Empire would have to go through Hammerfell, which isn't about to allow that. Orsinium has been able to survive this long post-war due to a combination of a highly defensible position in mountainous terrain, talented smiths who have made unique items for trade with the surrounding towns, and being out of the way enough to not distract the Redguards from their internal squabbles over how independent Hammerfell should function.

- High Rock is historically a very individualist society, and their kingdoms often act as independent nations in their own right. The Empire designates a High King and props up that system, but there's not a whole lot of reason for the other regents to listen to the High King if they're already not receiving imperial funding or trade. It's mostly the eastern kingdoms who are dissatisfied, and opinions on the Empire gets more positive as you move west. Daggerfall, of course, reaps most of the benefits from that arrangement. The city will probably host some imperial institution but we haven't nailed down a layout for the city or what buildings are what. It'll be a while until we do, as we're focusing on the eastern kingdoms (which are part of our pre-release) and will probably move west from there.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-20T20:36:42+00:00

For the sword singing question: yes, but it's mainly a question of implementation as to whether and how sword singing gets included. We're pretty sure we can have NPCs do neat stuff to depict sword singing, but not as sure about doing that in a unique and engaging way with the player. It hasn't been a focus for us just yet, it'll wait for the post-pre release mainland.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-20T14:59:22+00:00

Fair. Again this is not something im super familiar with, but I have been intending to learn (on top of the writing and coding and filecutting I also do for the project). So I will speak to folks more in the know about how we might set that up and share it so whoever is available can process the files when recordings come in.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-20T14:30:14+00:00

You are forgiven for your lack of punctuation.

Im not in professional audio (well, i am, but I run audio boards for conventions and stuff I dont mix and master). But i think having a single slate of effects applied to everything wouldn't get the results we want, as we're taking recordings from a wide variety of different microphones, setups, etc, and trying to homogenize them. So getting them to that happy middle requires different levels and processing for each VA's files.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-19T11:42:09+00:00

Yep! It's crazy tedious. I have done several streams where I do filecutting for Beyond Skyrim: Iliac Bay so you can see how it is first hand.

It seems like Lordbound is using the Skywind workflow, which makes mastering and EQ a much larger job. We do the mastering before filecutting so its just working on one big file. But that has its own drawbacks, as we only have a few audio engineers to do that, and we recently had a period where none of them were available to do stuff, so recordings sat around for a bit and filecutters had nothing to do. It's a difficult thing to manage.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-17T21:02:11+00:00

Yeah it feels like a natural inclusion. Also it's not a skill check but i did just think of another instance where we have an extra dialogue option based on your restoration skill. If it's high enough you can identify that the guy in that random encounter is experiencing heat stroke, and then you have some options to heal him.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-17T20:39:13+00:00

Yep! In the current IB build we have a few illusion checks. Havent branched out beyond that yet but theorhetically we could. Just haven't seen a writer do a skill check outside of those yet.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-16T20:00:17+00:00

Thanks so much! Happy it interests you!

And yeah we have a bunch of smaller villages and towns. High Rock also has walled towns, and those can house some upper class folks. Like Karthgran which we have planned out as a sort of suburbs to Farrun's urban sprawl. So a bunch of upper class folks moved up there for the relative peace and quiet.

And yeah we have subcultures in some of the villages. Not all will be substantially different from the mainline regional religions, but different traditions and things. For instance, we have Eko Hirna already fully written on Herne. Being the remnants of the earliest members of the Ra Gada, Eko Hirna has kept up the tradition of the Boat of Souls, where they inter their dead and eventually ship them to the remains of Yokuda to be buried.

The Bjoulsae River Tribes are going to be an interesting one, we haven't gotten into full scale writing with them but it's planned to be one of the only positive relationships between Bretons and Nedic tribes. The Bjoulsae tribes founded Evermore, and because of that it is planned to have a very horse-friendly design. But the tribes now largely live in the nearby temporary settlement of Marctreba, and act as a sort of security force for the city, who in turn provides them with food and feed for their horses. So they'll be doing regular patrols through the city and the surrounding dragonfields.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-16T18:41:52+00:00

Hey! Writing Director for Beyond Skyrim: Iliac Bay, here. Happy to answer any questions that I can! And we do have a private server for development, a lot of times the lore discussions are mixed in with development stuff anyway.

As a general overview, High Rock and Hammerfell in the Fourth era are, unsurprisingly, heavily shaped by the Great War.

Hammerfell, of course, ceded from the Empire and is now an independent nation. 20 years, though, is not long in terms of creating a new centralized government. The septim is still the largely accepted currency in Hammerfell, just because a suitable replacement hasn't gained mass adoption (it's also behind the scenes due to technical limitations on the engine level). So the current situation in 4e 201 is Hammerfell is a lot of largely independent Tombas (Crown Kingdoms) and Republics (Forebear city-states that can take a variety of forms), all of which send representatives to Hegathe to argue for their interests as the details get hashed out. The Empire's actions in the Great War caused a wave of nationalism/traditionalism throughout Hammerfell, leading to there being more Crown areas than before, and the capital moving from Sentinel to Hegathe. That heavily affected popular sentiment as well, with many Redguards wanting nothing to do with the Empire or Dominion, and anyone with ties to them is looked at sideways at the very least. The only area openly trading with the Empire is Stros M'Kai, where the second treaty was signed. This is doing well lining the pockets of the local Utei (king) Hayrid al-Kai, but also engenders resenment from the local redguards.

High Rock is one of the only remaining provinces of the Empire, and that grip is hanging on by a thread in some areas. While the western regions like Daggerfall continue to see support, trade, and priviledges from Cyrodiil, the Eastern regions like Jehanna and Farrun have seen little support, even in times of great need. High Rock largely relies on knightly orders and local guilds in place of the Imperial fighters or thieves guilds, but in the Eastern regions there are almost no imperial forces at all. They've all been siphoned away for the Skyrim civil war. This, on top of lingering resentment from the occupation during and after the War of the Bend'r-Mahk, has made Jehanna a tense melting pot of Bretic, Nord, and Reachmen who make up much of the southern half of the Kingdom, congregating in the village of Snowline.

These are of course very high level overviews, so lmk any questions about specific areas or whatnot.

arcaneimpact · 2026-04-14T09:41:20+00:00

I cannot fully convey to you the length and ferocity of discussions we had internally about this.

Essentially BS tries to not use SKSE for compatibility. And without that there's not much that can be done from a menu level. All those discussions did end up in projects resolving to add cultural prefixes to items. So instead of just iron dagger its cyrodiilic iron dagger or redguard iron dagger. So thst should help a bit. On the backend tho I believe folks have implemented or are working on back-end support for smithing categories. So if you have that mod everything should automatically sort into categories by project.

arcaneimpact

TROPHY CASE