The Elder Scrolls is known for its open worlds. Despite the size of the maps in Bethesda games like Skyrim, the studio still has to employ some clever tricks to create the illusion that an area just a few miles across is, in fact, an entire province.
In Skyrim, mountains play a huge role in this. Although Skyrim was able to rely on its extreme topography to perfect its open world, the success of Skyrim's mountains won't necessarily be applicable to future games in the franchise. Bethesda may have to come up with some new solutions to one of the series' oldest challenges.
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Lines of Site
Skyrim's map, in reality, isn't particularly large. The northern province isn't much over 14 square kilometers, and with almost a quarter of that inaccessible to players the actual area of the game is closer to just 10 square kilometers – about four square miles. Although Skyrim now feels far smaller for players who have spent hundreds of hours over the last decade scouring every crack and crevasse in the game's open world, there are a few key tricks that help Skyrim feel larger from the player character's perspective than it actually is.
The first is the organization of the roads that run between Skyrim's Holds. These roads are often winding, taking inconvenient routes that are hard for the player to notice but which make travelling through the game take longer than it would if they were travelling by air. The second are Skyrim's mountains, which play a more deceptive role than many players might realize.
There are some obvious examples of how Skyrim's mountains help make the game's world feel larger than it is. When travelling from Riverwood to Whiterun – one of the earliest journeys most prospective Dragonborns make in the main quest – the mountain housing Bleak Falls Barrow helps hide just how close the two towns really are to one another. Without that mountain as a divider, it would become clear that Whiterun is no more than a few hundred meters away from Riverwood, and the transition between Riverwood's green Nordic forests and the Rohan-inspired planes of Whiterun Hold would be jarring.
Elevation
Skyrim's mountains play a bigger role than just blocking the player's line of sight. As with Skyrim's winding roads, they make travel far more treacherous, and the time Skyrim's mountains add to any journey across the province complements the game's twisting pathways. Most players remember their first journey from Whiterun to the Throat of the World, which, unless the player takes a shortcut through the mountain itself, requires them to go around the side of the game's largest mountain, along the border with Eastmarch, into the Rift, and finally up the seven-thousand steps.
In many cases, mountain ranges simply jut up out of the ground, preventing the player from seeing far enough into the distance to realize just how small the game's world really is. This isn't the only way that Skyrim's mountains help hide the game's true size, however. The elevation differences between Skyrim's different Holds are immense. It's harder for players to notice while travelling in first-person, but when Skyrim players ride horses the combination of third-person views and the horse's body shape makes the extreme angles far easier to notice. It's even become a meme, with Skyrim horses known for their ability to ascend slopes that are almost vertical.
This plays a huge role in making the short distance between many of Skyrim's holds feel longer. When walking up the path from Eastmarch to the Rift, for example, the player is first given the impression that they are simply scaling one of Skyrim's many mountains. In fact, the entire Rift sits on top of a massive plateau which is above Eastmarch and the surrounding Holds. On its northern flank the difference in elevation is hidden by the huge drop, while the Throat of the World is big enough that many players don't notice just how much further up the mountain they are when departing from Ivarstead compared to Whiterun.
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Illusory Size In The Elder Scrolls' Past And Future
Skyrim may have almost ridiculously intense topography, but that ultimately makes its world feel much larger. In contrast, Oblivion's version of Cyrodiil is much flatter in the middle. The Jerall Mountains in the north create a huge border that helps hide places like Bruma and Cloud Ruler temple, but unlike Skyrim, major locations like Chorall, Cheydinhal, and the Imperial City are more level with one another. Oblivion could rely on shorter draw distances that prevented players from being able to see how small the world was.
This raises a question for The Elder Scrolls 6. With modern technology, players will be expecting to see across ginormous landscapes, with the game rendering as far as the human eye can see. No matter how big The Elder Scrolls 6's setting is, it's unlikely that Bethesda will be able to create a world that feels nearly as large as its setting is supposed to be in The Elder Scrolls' admittedly ambiguous lore.
Nevertheless, open-world games which released after Skyrim like Red Dead Redemption 2 show that is is possible to have long draw distances that allow the player to look across stunning vistas, while still using mountains and varying elevations to hide recognizable towns and landmarks that could make the game's world feel smaller than it's supposed to be.
The Elder Scrolls 6 will have a greater challenge hiding its world size, but as games since Skyrim show, that challenge is not insurmountable with the right design. Just how big the next game's world will be, and the types of environments it will portray, have yet to be seen. Skyrim was able to make great use of mountains, but it was also set in one of Tamriel's most mountainous regions. Very different biomes, like the deserts of Hammerfell, could provide some new challenges for the studio to overcome.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim – Anniversary Edition is set to launch on November 11, 2021, on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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