Skyrim Cities RANKED Best to Worst | The Elder Scrolls Podcast #72

[Music] what is up ladies and gentlemen welcome back to fudge muppet this is the elder scrolls podcast i'm scott here with michael and drew as always and today we have a little bit of a fun sort of challenge one we are ranking skyrim cities and that's it we're basically going to use using things like um we're basically looking you know the aesthetic the architecture the kind of look of it the feel the vibe the atmosphere but then we can also factor in things like sort of quests and so on and and characters or you know even moments or so on this is largely a subjective list yeah and and i guess i'd also say that it's kind of set during the time that elder scrolls five skyrim takes place you know hence you said the quest so we can include like law and stuff as well but i think at the end of the day there will be some cities that may have sounded really really cool in the law but we're gonna weigh what the reality was when we played skyrim heavier than what it was meant to be like for a place like winterhold where the former capital of skyrim where half of it has you know been a part of that great collapse that destroyed the city we can't really give it credit for being a formerly good city wait wait you don't have a win to hold in your top three yeah believe it or not let's let's so let let's be real i don't think personally this is a first take let's let's see we can divide and we can sort of start with even the bottom of the list but let's just quickly say all the cities are included too you know even the little ones the minor cities major cities whatever you want to call them yeah we'll look all the whole capitals on the list yeah all of the whole capitals and what i was going to sort of say is clearly market solitude wind town and whiterun and rifton are superior in terms of their like execution their aesthetic stuff like they have had way more attention to detail and so on maybe i can be slated either way but i don't think any of the um others really pick up but let's actually talk about because i think there would be the bottom half of the list the sort of you folk reef your morthal winterhold dawn star i think they are the bottom of the list and personally i'm going to throw and start us out i actually think winter holds the worst like outsider like college you went to hole i don't think i agree with that because what else because for me the personal thing i would say about that with i know i understand the college win holds there but like that's almost like oh the faction's like okay it's like a major thing but outside of that winterhold is like dead there is like one shop and like one bar with barely anything happening in it and uh yeah i think you have to include the faction headquarters as part of the city for sure like rifton having the thieves guild is definitely part of it i mean simply put i know this is more of an architecture thing it's so hard to ignore and it's not hidden i mean neither is the college of windsor hold but you wouldn't exclude your vaska from white run right like that's a pretty like central part of the city and the fact that the companions are there is cool um despite all the problems we've talked about with the companion storyline it's cool it definitely adds winterhold will lose points because there's much less to do there but there's something about the kind of you know they're the buildings that are halfway down this cliff and there's like you know parts of it that have crumbled and fallen into the the sea of ghosts gives it some credit for just having an a very interesting atmosphere just make sure yeah yeah yeah don't conflate it too much with the mod because in the vanilla skyrim there's barely any buildings a few cracked walls that was one of my concerns yeah i've been playing a modded version for so many years that it probably looks a bit worse i was going to say that like mods would change my ranking list completely dude we used our current skyrim setup yeah difference winterhold is proper like a few farm buildings a few burnt out ones and then the college of winterhold and like the altar why is dawn star better like oh i just hold on hold on hold on remembering that winterhold has the college and everything in the college and the aesthetic of the college going out why is star which you know is meant to be some big trading hub and it's not oh you know the vibe's there but it's nothing crazy why does dawn star stand out to me i like it for the night caller temple quest and also when you go to the dawn star museum and that's the whole mythic dawn sort of set off and also it's where the dark brotherhood sanctuary is by the end of it and so on so it's got these like little things going for it um i don't by the way dawn star is 100 not like any top-tier city on my life i guess what we have to talk about then is are we including quests that you get there because when i think of and then they take you somewhere else i suppose you have to but in my head i'm thinking like for example force one conspiracy a lot of that takes place in markhav the the haunted house there um yeah for mo like bows quest is is is there whereas knight caller temple is not indonesia i would i would i would kind of say i would say you extend it out a little bit if the quest really takes for example i wouldn't mind if you said the dark brotherhood sanctuary attached to falcreath or something or even the clavicus vile quest or um consider things like uh more vath's layer for more for the mark harth quest okay it's so attached oh yeah yeah for more full sorry okay okay so you reckon that defeats when to hold i think so but then again but like okay let's let's cycle through that i don't think fall creature is the bottom of the list for sure mortals are content why not more because great is really cool in the law but it's literally you get there and you're like it's just back in riverwood oh oh it's a bigger riverwood it's falcon look at the vine the forest of the environment also the sending quest the whole werewolf like the vibe of that area when you first go in there and it's like you get the werewolf questions the reason they put two daedric prince quests there is because it's boring yeah like we need to make this better so we're going to put clavicus vibes like her scenes quest ultimately out of them i think it comes it's like it's the environment and atmosphere is a big part of it for sure like they're just it's it's the most dense forest area that you kind of kind of get out of all of them but personally dawnstar and morphle would both be at the bottom for me because that not only are they boring but they barely look any different to each other in my opinion you know unless you give more for the credit for all the swamp land nearby the more mod is pretty good at making it more more fully mortals pretty like look morthl does have falli in there it does have some of the spooky quest things i actually also really like the y'all like the idea that she's sort of this seer or someone she's one of the more in the igrowed ravencrone like she's one of the more interesting y'alls um but i don't know maybe it's maybe it's just my own like head but like i feel like there's more going on in dawnstar than there is more i feel like more fullers literally go in and you do that you either you cure a vampire with fallion or you do the you stop playing this but that quest is pretty cool but yeah there's not a whole lot there going on but there's not much in dawnstar there's the dreams quest and dagon's quest again two daedric prince quests put somewhere boring and a dark brotherhood sanctuary there and even even dawn star in terms of atmosphere and i know it's such a small thing but when you first walk in and you have the y'all fighting with the imperial um dude and saying oh like you know why does he still wear that arm and that kind of thing like i don't know like you feel those little moments and stuff and interactions in the cities do help give it a little bit more life which i think i can only get seem like the city is alive before you get there the biggest problem with me for cop for winterhold is winterhold feels lifeless i mean arguably even the college of winterhold feels life lets itself out of all the factions so if that's what gives it a specific vibe for me to interrupt but that that yeah weirdly i would play that into why i find winterhold a bit more interesting i guess it's just not what i'm looking for in a city it's because the quest line was not good i reckon if the win college of winterhold was legitimately like a star of a faction and you were just in love with how much you had playing it you would rank winter but i don't know if you how much i'm letting the quests actually like the quest like the factions like for example companions isn't the sell for white run for me no like that you could remove your arguably could be a big argument for white run to be honest like the white run stuff for me is that it looks like eras and it's such a center of the entire world and overlooking the planes it's the environment the theme the vibe it's it's seeing it on the horizon that kind of makes that that will be one of the reasons why white run gets better and it has way more intense attention in terms of things going on like the grey main sort of battleborn kind of stuff it's centered around the main quest i have a confession to make okay i'd probably rank winterhold last i've just been playing devil's advocate but i'm not sure it's down there with mortal and and and dawn star still i just don't think it's that great although let me ask you this and this everyone in the audience i want to know have you been to jail in winterhold you probably haven't you probably don't know where it is uh because why would you get in trouble with the law in winterhold right there's not a whole lot going on there but there is a jail and this may be uh things you you thought you knew everything about skyrim and now you learnt something new but there is the chill the chill is basically the winterhold jail located on an island northeast of the college of winterhold and that's where you're sent if you're arrested oh my god is that the one with the shrine i know the location i think you know the chill is not marked it's not marked on the map yeah but there is is there a shiny one i swear i know i swear i know the location where the jail's like out on the land i've been there so many times yeah like definitely i've never been in jail yeah winterhold's not last i mean like that on top but i was i was gonna say anyway that really if you think of the most iconic images of skyrim i think the college of winterhold on that spike of land is one of the coolest sites in the whole game in my opinion yeah i can't do it i can't put it last night scott i mean i don't mind i don't i don't have to it could be i mean i can see you tearing up a bit okay how about this first suggested order if i was just to throw it and then we can workshop it morph will last when to hold dawn star fall creek but why is dawn's star better i just can't see dawn star is better but i'll i'll accept it then all the ecology want to hold oh i think to me it's just because think of the environment around it too like if you include all those ice like the the kind of glacier top area of winterhold and um like the of sigma's outpost and uh i think knowles barrow's up there and all that kind of stuff i guess if you just asked me where i would rather live i'd rather yeah we're not but nobody atmosphere and vibe and so on atmosphere and vibe like i don't know dawnstar to me still at least feels like i know they're all like not as good as a proper city it's like a town but it feels like a town my problem with college of winterhold is it doesn't feel like a city at all let alone a town almost like it's got like four people like it's so you wouldn't want to live in uh you wouldn't you'd probably rather live in folk wreath than than winter uh sorry then uh windhelm for example because yeah pretty miserable but there's other things going for it yeah i understand that you it's all of this is a subjective collection of things but i'm just saying that winterhold as a city where ranking cities are is the abysmal for me it's just because it's basically not a city it's basically the college of winterhold hold on we're not ranking it on how city life not how city it is but i'm just saying my problem is we're ranking cities and it's the least city of the cities so my only my main counter to that would be that size irrelevant if we if we if we are going to throw any bones to bethesda for like they kind of limited this whether it be time or technology but what what it's kind of supposed to give you as a player when you go there if you let your imagination take over a bit the atmosphere and vibe of winterhold even though it's depressing is far more memorable than dawn star or moreful by the end of this podcast i will have winterhold ranked number one and there's nothing you can do i just i i cannot justify having winterhold higher than second last like i could convince others but like no way you're going to tell me it's better than falkreath dawnstar and morphle yep no that's not better than falco i think fall creep is i would put more for last dawn star second last then winter holds and then that's the list i've got built here on this little notepad i've opened up okay it's kind of like my uh list that synthesizes all of our thoughts but let's move on okay let's forget these minor cities for a bit we can always come back yeah yeah well okay so what what do we got at the moment are we going to run with what that we've got our bottom three yeah what's the bottom more mortal then dawn star then winterhold than four creed you don't agree with this so so much i don't know i just like i hope i do get vindicated in the comments and that there's people that are like i hope i'm not the only one that's like winterhold's not a good city but it's not like it's pretty but it but it beats it has to win on on i don't know i yeah all right okay all right and that's the that's the way to get vindicated is you say that so then everyone heads down and they're like me and all my homies hate winterhold if you disagree with scott just comment and dislike before the dislike bar disappears no don't do that yeah okay let's just talk about major cities for a second because you know you've got windhelm rifton solitude white run i'm just writing them in order okay well we can should we talk about why full creep is better than those three okay what because we haven't actually talked about full creep at all about a little bit oh my main thing is honestly it is honestly just the environment around it's beautiful is the main part of it and if you do with the look part of a component i know it's obviously in terms of execution it's just the graveyard but it does have this sort of like stickers as being like it's fought over all the time i also like in its law that it's like was like a clothing estate and then it's been a nordic estate and so on um nordic uh hold sorry also the whole like werewolf quest and so on like and you and you go around in the in the dog the it starts there but it's not huge but then there's also the dark brotherhood sanctuary which is really close and you go in the forest it's sort of the high i just think that if you took out those daedric prince quests and scattered them around somewhere else in sky yeah but that's what you would be left with is another rorix dead type place that no one really cares about no but it's it's just more beautiful as well really it's also like ultimately i think it's just i think it's beautiful like what would you okay michael what would you put it as what would you put folk creek out of those bottom four you put it what bottom i don't know like potentially even though that feels extremely wrong to say i just think that it is not unique as far as the other ones go and okay there's a small graveyard mortal stands out as unique you you could never run into morthl or dawnstar and think to yourself i've just stumbled upon another riverward or another roar extent or another settlement if if i didn't mark folk wreath as a if it wasn't marked on the map as like a key city and you didn't know about it in the law you could just think this is a big river yeah but like for example if you're ranking like riverwood's a beautiful town a beautiful city like that's kind of what it's not beautiful but i can't if there's all these other places in skyrim like look like can we be frank like in the middle by comparison things like that like all the other cities are ugly by comparison dawn star mortal and winterhold easy i don't know if i would say that oh sorry are just extremely similar and they both detriment each other for that reason for me because they at least fall creep stands out as its own city i know it looks a bit at least fall creek does actually have like it's a like i like the the yarl's thing was a little the headquarters a little bit taller and looks a little yeah so it's like it's like riverwood for five seconds and you're like wait a minute but it isn't riverwood no it's the gator but dude saying that anyway is only a cell to me anyway because river wood is a really cool town i think it is a unique looking town i think dawn star looks closer to like rorick's dead take rickster just put it in the snow because it's just plain all around it's just like playing i mean there's literally boats on the there's literally boats on the water at dawnster yeah yeah but i'm just what i'm trying to say is like we're not look none of these cities in terms of just like literally each individual buildings look that unique at all except you go winter whole as the college of winterhold there but outside of that it's all that basic farm building look so a lot of what you're looking at in terms of just the aesthetic of it is like its layout and what's around it and so on who would have thought that the bottom four would be so controversial i i i thought this would be something we just skipped past of the bottom four i think folks is the top in my opinion and drew if you agree that that would give it top place on our on our cope look if it was if i had to choose it would be that or winter hold but i'm not going to try and push winter hold higher then then valkyrie then fall create can win and wins hold clearly takes a second okay i mean look dude i'm not that invested in the bottom of the list they're all kind of poorly done by comparison to the others so part of me wants to rank mortal above dawn star but i don't know it's just not enough i just i just really it's only because i really like the whole movath slayer kind of thing but i know that's very not what mortals about so i'm happy to put it at the end i just got more of a it's probably nostalgia i got more of a memorable vibe from this strange you know red guard wizard and and it's all in the swamps and spooky and there's you know this whole like house burnt down quest that leads you into this whole vampire conspiracy to like infect the town i found that quite interesting i guess i wonder how this will like factor into you guys but i really do like cities for being cities as part of it so i want there to be i want there to be an atmosphere of a city so when you go to dawnstar there's like there's the dawnstar museum there's like oh there's these whole nightmares playing the thing there's a little political conflict when you first come in that sort of establishes things there's the mines going on it kind of feels like a city whereas more than you go in i don't even know if there's barely any shops by comparison but you it's very like it's different it's a cool place but as a as a city i think it's the less and that's the same reason i don't like college of winnhold as much no that makes sense all right we can put we can put more for last we'll put dawnstar and winner hold on like equal playing ground for now and then fall crease at the top i mean you really do need a marketplace if you're going for that that city aesthetic like really if we boiled it down we could say if we're ranking skyrim cities none of them would qualify except maybe solitude um what do you mean marketplace solitude whiterun has one as well no no i'm saying i'm so that's why i'm saying more for some of these smaller cities don't feel like cities kind of need that place where people go and interact with each other that's what you so you know that's the other thing i think that makes dawn staff feel a little bit better to me is that it's kind of got that like upper row and then there's the lower row around the docks yeah whereas is kind of you walk in there's a little bit around the water and you go across the bridge and it literally is just one house in vanilla yeah versus you know winterhold it's literally one shop one bar with a yell thing next to it a path to the college winterhold which is the only reason you're in winterhold look i guess at the end of the day we all enjoy all that have enjoyed all the cities of skyrim and i think i can put my fond memories of more full behind me and put it at the bottom of the list easily scott is slowly tempting me to put dawn star above winterhold but i think we'll move on and come back yeah all right well what do we think i'll hear your guys opinions on what do you think is the bottom of the the top five the well executed that's actually tough because i i love them all for different reasons um and i can really get into the mood of a certain city or even a a playthrough that i had for example i absolutely love rifton heavily because i had that argonian play through who lived in honeyside and was a like an argonian frost mage with alchemy it's so random but it was one of my if not my favorite playthrough of skyrim and so i have a lot of fond memories of rifton specifically um despite knowing that it's probably not as cool as some of the other cities on paper i'm tempted no one said this because i asked on twitter what's your favorite city and i'm not surprised everyone was like whiterun whiterun whiterun which i think runs cool but i probably wouldn't put it at the top so i would agree that you know there's something special about white run because i'd say it's probably the city i've spent the most time in casually playing and and you know obviously when you first play the game back in 2011 and you leave riverwood and you kind of come over that rise and it drops down into the into the plains and you've got as scott said the edoras style um city just sitting there in the middle that stronghold where you can see dragons reach reaching up into the sky it's it's amazing experience where did you say you left uh sorry riverwood yeah like oh it's riverwood oh sorry yeah anyway go on yeah look at that it's an easy mistake to make fairies yeah yeah but i would say white run probably has to be last of those for me oh really of the top five okay i thought you'd i thought you'd rank it a bit higher i mean i do love it i can be like the main thing i think with the reason people get so attached to obviously like you said spend so much time there and it's kind of like the headquarters or central sort of part for the rest of it like for example like it's the only place where you have i feel like an emotional connection to the yarl because of the main quest like you go there bulgarov and when you do the civil war that takes over a main city that doesn't happen for the rest of the city so it becomes even more significant because if you have that kind of quest you go into the throne room and even if you're overthrowing y'all belgruff um i remember doing it because i did storm cloaks the first time through i remember feeling really bad because i didn't want to overthrow y'all bulgar if i wanted him to like joy or break him like you know that was one of the first times i discovered um that you can do a jew wielding attack with with daggers on my uh kijit that i talked about in the previous episode and i remember feeling so cool because as he came down i must have been really high leveled for the civil war or something but the two guards escorting him came down and he came down and then i basically did the power attack and as i spun around i basically killed both guards in like the one attack some even blocked it and just died and ugh i felt i felt so much cooler than my character really was real quick one thing also like i was sort of saying like you want to kind of like at least how i'm doing is trying to think in terms of like a city but also like cities as in like do i want to be in them like i quite enjoy walking around not living not forgetting that but literally playing in that city like i enjoy walking around whiterun and like the the life like the thing that does would get whiterun ranking higher for me is is kind of the layout but when you go through there's that market district in front of the bannered mayor and you get people talking and crossing and stuff or at least it tries to give you the vibe of that you go up the go up again and then there's the temple priest and the talos praising from home skier and so on i think in terms of atmosphere white run is a is well executed and so on and so i think it and then obviously like i was sort of saying before you get like the battleborn versus grey main you've got the companions there and you've got the like are it's gonna end up with white runners number one well you go past and you know how you get like that red guard woman talking to um the the guys like lost the family sword like and i think that's because bethesda put a lot of effort there because that's where everyone's gonna go at first but i think it's just well executed the land around it looks really cool like the big golden fields and stuff and the thing is you see that land all the time from where you are like sitting there and you can see high froth garages it's a massive landmark it's yeah so you see it all the time i think whiterun will rank very high i'm just not sure if it'll rank number one yeah what do you think about windhelm being ranked lowest even though there's a lot to like about it um and i made that video about how windhelm is basically the most tragic depressing city in all of skyrim for many more reasons than you'd think at first there's a lot of reasons that are all in that video which you should check out um but windhelm for me is a place that i really like when i'm role playing a certain type of character which is basically a stormcloak rebellion character but and the grey quarter and stuff that's cool like that's going on um maybe i have a bias because i have a lot of bad memories in windhelm due to glitches in the blood on the ice quest like early days xbox 360 game broken on multiple builds because of that quest um but i feel like it could be put in last place compared to the other five unless one of you is going to chuck rift so one thing about i mean like taking it from whiterun to windhelm whiterun kind of like you know you've got nazim and then you've got this kind of vertical tiered system where it does give you the impression of kind of like the further up you go the higher class you are the more important you are but even though windhelm doesn't really have that vertica verticality element um you can really feel the disparity in the quality of life from one side of the city going down into the grey quarter and then all the way down to the docks and you can really see how divided it is you know when you've got like the cruel sea home and um that other family they've got these giant mansions you go through the middle and then you get down to these absolute slums but the slums look really interesting and yeah windhelm windhelm does a better job for me than whiterun of giving you this feeling of disparity and conflict between the people who live there yeah whether or not that's a good thing like the law like in terms of law and like select the city execution like what they do often with the cities anyway is because they're like limited by the size the way to do it is like to break it up like you're saying with the docs in the grey quarter even though like the actual land space of windhelm's not crazy big compared to any of the others or anything it does create that sort of tiered feeling and so on and there's also memorable quests there like there is the hold up blood on the ice um the whole blood and the ice thing even the experience when you go to aventis um arantino we're doing the black sacrament so on you know the the palace um the hall of kings is really really cool like when you go in there um and all freaks they're like it's really well laid out it also has rise in the east which is one of the best side quests ever though it doesn't you know it takes you out of windhelm but that is really cool i really like how cramped it is i think you know rather than having the spread out kind of typical you know like wooden fetch longhouse type buildings you've got these tight nordic stone structures where walking down certain alleyways you feel kind of like choked by it which is kind of like you know like a medieval european city like even a like the feeling of london it kind of gives me jack the ripper london vibes victoria near london are we going to end up ranking this above riften well real quick i don't know one thing i'll throw out there is that architecturally also really like it too and it's got that it's like got that cold ancient nordstone sort of look as well which you really like but i i wonder what you guys think of this in terms of despite on paper i can go all these reasons wind tone's really good when i'm in it i don't really like being in windhelm when i'm playing the game i just don't actually enjoy walking around windhelm same as the area around it it's it's like pretty much that kind of like just snow everywhere as much as that skyrim it's like there are the other cities i think have a lot more going on around it like if you think of markov the reach that's a like that's a place no one thinks of like you know the hold around windhelm as much yeah there are obviously cool terrain like in unique areas there but not maybe not the same as the other cities i honestly like this is the hard thing because we're dealing with like the top five cities anyway out of it like i could put wind helm at the bottom um i think just because i have to factor in that i just don't like being in windhelm that much like yeah i actually agree with that completely like if i had to spend time in one of them i'd much rather be in whiterun than in windhelm even though i think windhelm get like in a way gets credit for that uneasy feeling of being in there and that it feels very inhospitable if we're using that as a heavy kind of um thing to help us decide then i feel like later you're going to convince me to put winter hold down under dawn stuff i mean i mean that's 100 it's like i never go to windhold unless i'm going for the college yeah like that's it of course um but well let's let's talk about another city let's talk about rifton okay um i obviously think that i mean you two know it's one of my favorite cities i've said it already um but i know it's super subjective i just really like the like poor rat ways vibe and like all the little wooden um walkways underneath the top part like the verticality that goes down instead of up and the whole water system running through the city um it's also remarkable yeah the area around it is when you go on the dome i used to be grinding up my alchemy there by catching the cyrodilic spade tail fish i used to have to get so many of those um and it's it's just i don't know it's just cool there's more doors into it than you'd expect though you could say that for all the cities um the whole thieves guild secret entrance and everything happening in the thieves guild and the ragged flag in and all the characters there um maven blackbriar and all of that going on with all the controversy and the corruption and things like that being bob is a decent tavern as well i do feel like with these cities especially skyrim cities for me at least um especially like you know the top five properly done ones are all pretty on par like to me there is no hyper clear winner there's nowhere like oh this one really sucks and this one's great it's really out of those top five i kind of get a little in my opinion it has the best player home as well honeyside yeah i love it because i i was honestly considering rifton to be potentially my number one okay um but yeah i i absolutely love i i love everything about it and and it's location kind of on on lake on rich and just the the color palette for rifton and the rift in general is so good and as you said the verticality and kind of like having all of this this city underneath the city in the form of the rat ways and the ragged flag and all of that yeah well i mean i also i also objectively i want to put solitude up there because solitude is a really cool city but it's subjectively not my favorite um solitude is the citiest city yeah of all the cities in skyrim cities yeah i i don't know like it's hard i'll have to think about more of them but i i do really like um rifton and there's obviously there's plenty of stuff there also got the same vibe like you've got the uh maven black brows here she runs this whole joint and you have other characters kind of reacting to that like the people that live are in the in the media and so on and and you and you know the whole existence of the rataway rat way to be fair like um factors and the god trying to shake you down at the front it just gets that feel straight away that this is the the backwater bandits kind of city you know yeah like it's it's not a friendly place there's mall there straight away who i always avoid but on your first playthrough you've got to think first playthrough the vibes are nice it's not my top but like it's definitely high i like okay but then but then like macarthur is one of the best cities ever too yeah marcoth has the potential to be number one based on the fact i think it's objectively the best well forced one conspiracy with cydna mine it's got just the force one around the reach in general and all that stuff's really interesting with modern arc things like that you've got the silver bloods there obviously the big key is the dwemer architecture the dwemer museum the fact that there's a city made in skyrim out of an old dwemer place and they keep the house of horrors quest is memorable and so is the um when you go into the uh the oh my goodness the tomb basically whether the cannibal yeah yeah i wanted to say funeral but i'm like that's not that's not what it's called yeah the whole of the dead right the hall of the dead yeah going in there in that whole like cannibal quest that comes out of that and then how there's also hidden cannibals within the city itself like you could even buy a dog out the front i don't know i like i just that's another thing you buy a dog companion but like um and mark harth like there is no better like entrance like welcome to marcotte when you walk in and then someone gets stabbed in front of you like it's a pretty memorable sort of like a thing going on there and the aesthetic's really cool like all the mines that go down like if we're speaking about verticality marcoth is a clear winner oh and in terms of history too like i think it's one of the better examples of the whole forcehorn deal anyway and having that interlinking with ulfric so it becomes far more relevant to like a main character's story and that the whole interaction there and so on with and the man and i can all that but like i kind of like that that there's it's different to rifton in the way that it's riften's like oh welcome to the seedy city and there's a lot of thieves everywhere and so on whereas markarth it's like it presents itself as not but then there's this darker underbelly there's all of these like you know um with the whole conspiracy the silver bloods keeping man and arc in the mind and then there's the four swan reachmen stuff all around and that sort of like latent threat that seems to exist and yeah i i kind of and obviously like i said like all of the dwemer kind of stuff it's just super cool like in the same way if you were to go to like morrowind cities and you'd be like oh what are the unique cool ones oh sad with more it's a big mushroom talvani house i mean like this one's in a dwarven ruin like it's pretty unique you're used to it now because you've played so much skyrim but it stands out a lot um amongst the rest so i i even have like cool memories of going for the dark brotherhood quest where you go meet murray and um and all of that stuff calcemos museum when you when you get the the snow the family thing you jump down and at the end yeah to get and you get the dwemer cube on the way like yeah i think mark harth could take the cake today but we'll just see um we'll talk about some of the other cities as well would you okay let's just talk solitude for a second because we haven't had a big discussion about it solitude from the outside especially is incredibly cool again it's something you get used to seeing the side of but in a similar way to white run it's a bit of a landmark you know you're in skyrim you look out if you're in that area you see the big you know kind of rock overpass with a city built on top of it the thing for me about solitude and i suppose you need this in skyrim because you know it's it's kind of like the the seat of the empire more and it's it does differ to the other cities in term of terms of architecture but it's a bit classic for me like blue palace is unique compared to other things in skyrim but when i'm in there i've just it just feels a bit typical a bit like um i don't know you can expect what you get again there's no surprises except the shea gorath quest but there's no like surprise surprise i guess to me funnily enough i mean i often did buy proud spy mana just because it was the most expensive house and characters and so on but the other thing too for me there is like i actually spent a lot of time there it became like a weird like a central kind of location that area i don't know but i also like when you first enter and there's the whole like execution i think that's a really cool like opening to the city as well which has done well but then there's the presence of the imperials and the forts and so on it's a very imperial feeling but there are lots of cool quests that surround it like even you know the whole um when you team up with the argonian guys lights out like that's a really cool quest there is the bard's college which wasn't as i think i think that deserves a lot of credit including like king olaf's burning you know that ceremony even though obviously the quest line is far from what we want it to be the presence of the bard's college combined with the fact it's the capital and feels like the capital it does feel like if you if you are successful in skyrim you will gravitate to solitude as opposed to anywhere else and i like all the all the like kind of um ways in and out of the city that especially the one you find when you do the dark brotherhood quest where you you're the chef and you basically poison the emperor's double and you have to flee the city yeah and you're like going down that tower and go out that exit gate and obviously all around solitude you've got like the all the different uh boats and things like that with pirates on them the lighthouse as we said and you've got the thalmor kind of outpost to the northwest which is kind of it's cool too that like i think it's one of the most like um like tip like like i saw saying classic city but the idea that you go down there's the port also that whole like a hangar yeah underneath is cool but you go you go up and you as you go up you sort of get the feel that you are following to richer and richer as you get to the houses close to blue palace and so on also there's a temple of divines there however like we were sort of saying that they're all like close i could easily put it as number four you reckon it's better than rifton i feel like so whatever one i talk about number four better windhelm sorry windhelm's the bottom of the fight what i meant to say was do you think that rifton is better than solitude i think riff after you talk one up i always feel like changing i think riften is better than solitude yeah objectively i do objectively i feel like it's could be strange to say because they're sort of a mix i mean at the end of the day it is all like a subjective kind of thing but yeah we could throw in like objectively solitude is the most city feeling city in the way that it's like its layout but also it kind of expands a bit and you get the feeling oh there's stuff going on here there's boats going to other countries there's oh there's the imperials here in the fore there's the stuff going on in the blue palace like there's like a a life or someone's getting executed out here at the front there's like the secret storm cloak camp that everyone should know about yeah but there's the bars college there it does even dragons bridge and and all of that outside of it is quite nice i don't know if i can put it in fourth i look at a lot of this white run as good as you think a lot of these ones can be so like like i said i could be switched around in any day i'm pretty certain at the bottom of the five yeah me too that's fine but i also feel pretty certain with macarthur at the top yeah me too so if what we're doing right now is more or less trying to decide the order of the three in the middle yes nah like i personally and this could just be because i've seen it so much but i personally i know you talked about the y'all and stuff but uh putting white run down like i don't know if whiter on i don't know i don't know and then you go to the dragons for each balcony and you look out and you're like this is cool like this is the seat of a yacht like look out there ha decisions decisions i will tell you rifton as much as it feels like it is um rifton has the least grandeur of any of them oh yeah um which to me sometimes i kind of do like that like when you're going up to the to the glad district and especially as you look at the balcony it feels like this is the seat of a king which is essentially what a yacht is kind of like you know should should be not like a high king um but and it kind of feels big and when you especially when you're into dragon's reach like you're in a yarl's palace same as when you enter um uh what to call it even the blue palace and so on as matches is not the big size is grandeur the seeding of it the big on this arch it overlooks everything whereas rifton's palace is pretty low-tier and you could say the same for under stone keep is that eve you know even though it's a much different vibe and aesthetic oh the others it is very grand and it feels like the seat of a king yeah yeah you're sitting on the throne of ancient race like it's kind of like yeah it's pretty cool so i should we put rifton at four then like i've got to be honest in this weird subjective way i can say that riften and marcoth are probably my favorite cities but we're not here to say favorite cities i feel that as much as this is all super subjective there is this objective element to it like we've been talking about different factors and and things that make it like a better ranked city you know so i think that rifton even though i love it could be in position number four i kind of agree i agree okay this is the thing the things also just to consider for who like out of their top five like a lot of them are so close and it depends the kind of vibe you're in it can change yeah but like i said like we'll try and ground it in a few more things like the most city like cities but things like grandeur and stuff too like when you why is the imperial city cool because you go in there's imperial palace there's all these districts and there's huge buildings it looks cool why is skin grad cool ah because it's got like you know the lower part and then there's the castle up there and it kind of feels like welcome the skin there's a lot of factors going into this ranking because for example like if it was grandeur we'd put wind home above rift and easy yeah but yeah but it's all factors just just ain't it chief the important thing is that the bottom four cities are night and day compared to the top five like i'd say position five is is closer to number one than it is to number six so where we draw the line here isn't as important but the top five are the top five so okay i guess then we're deciding between two and three with white run and solitude do you know this is a really like reason i'm gonna put i think so close i think i'll put white run it too because panda to the audience it feels different it feels yeah yeah it feel a all the central reasons stuff we said before it feels more nordic to me it feels more like this is the seat of a yall like this is like welcome to skyrim look at all of this like this big step that i control i'm on my cool palace dragon streets dragon's reach has a really cool history with olaf one eye and so on the companions are there there's the sky forge white run feels like epinephrine as well and the city itself in terms of its law and even in the execution feels like it has a lot of history there's clans that have been feuding for a long time the companions have been here for you know four and a half thousand years or whatever it is like it feels like kind of like the most important city in white run and then there's also the whole like you fight in skyrim i mean um but then you're fighting over it too in the civil war and there's that whole like it's that tipping balance i think that what's going even to the plot of skyrim it feels so central like it i mean it is it's the main part it's the tipping thing of the civil war and i just i feel like for all of those reasons and sort of combined i would put it at number two over solitude i think i agree yeah yeah and i think we all just love mark harth here well i think the reason marcoth wins out is honestly the x factor over the type i just still think we're not giving win to hold enough credit top three all right okay so the list as as as it stands right now if i were to do a recap as much as i love rifton so we've got harth whiterun solitude rifton windhelm and then falkreath win a whole dawn star kind on the same thing and then morthal are we happy with the top five i think we're going to have to settle there as much as i said i kind of i kind of think so okay i think so let's talk minor minor cities again the most controversial takes of all i guess now that we've sort of talked about the other ones a bit more we can get a bit more clarity of what we think in but in terms of like i'm pretty happy with more thought at the bottom like in terms of relevance to the to the rest of the world like there's a cool like you know there's some cool things there it's really really small basically no political relevance like you could skip over morthal and you never it doesn't matter yeah no no real historical significance either yeah um and then there's like you know i like it but yeah not not really for example and i wonder how much this factors in maybe we can try and throw on some extra things but like i said with dawnstar it feels like it is even if it's just that interaction interaction at start when you walk in it sort of establishes itself as part of the larger skyrim like oh there's a civil war going on we have this kind of um sort of thing going on whereas mautha really feels like you could just bundle it up and throw it in another province theoretically and nothing really changes that much yeah same as full crease well yeah i guess you could bundle up throwing cereal but it's just beautiful bro yeah it's just i'm i'm a big fan of um of the beauty of fall crease i think the real argument to be had at this point is if you if you prioritize how a city feels in the game when you play it like physically there's more to do or the one that kind of has a more interesting vibe and a sense of what should be there but history or the law has caused to change so i'd say winterhold is winterhold is a concept of a city is much more interesting than dawnstar but but you're not but you're not playing the concept you're living you're when you play the game you're in the execution of it but the but the vibe i think is attached to that look i will agree like college winterhold if we were to win if we would i think if we were using testing if we were using college of winterhold you could argue um in its favor that it does have a little more x factor in grandeur like the college of winterhold makes it look cool and it and you know it's interesting enough that there was a collapse and so on but in terms of being in a city like i'm a character i want to go to this city yeah i'm excited to win to hold what's to do here like especially if you're not a mage and you're not going to the college of winterhold why would you be in winter there's nothing there to do there's like and it doesn't feel like there's a lot going on you don't get any idea of like districts and stuff the reason i put dawnstar over when to hold is that it actually at least it's more like it feels like a town but it feels like a society is going on here it feels like oh there's the dawn star museum there's there's the mines there's the docks and oh and then you know they make comments about how they take you know ship stuff everywhere whatever but then there's also um you know the night caller temple like there's the idea that oh there's nightmares going on there's some interesting quest threads there's the dark brotherhood sanctuary as well which is a cool idea that's underneath dawnstar i don't know i just like what what do you think about the black star and attaching anything azura to winterhold her statue being nearby and the quest being centered around winterhold look my main thing is you go and once you don't it demands how far you cast the net because i feel like if you cast the net to the entire hold you start getting like the reasons for example you'd say things like the docks or or something like solitude like technically it's not in the city but it's very like connected to it or even the mines or something outside of mark off or like you know in in whiterun you you could kind of like you know there's the watchtower and the farms around it they make it look like it feels like it's still connected i don't know if there's any implicit connection between that i don't think there is between azure statue and winterhold because i don't think there is no implied connection there either like for example riften if you were saying to the meaderies or the farms just outside of rift and there is that like societal implied connection that kind of attach it a little bit more i'm i'm slowly agreeing i'm slowly watching winterhold fall full we're already into this do you enjoy being in winterhold because i don't i think it's awful like i spent a lot of time at the college i'm just trying to yeah trying to really like make sure that the college isn't left out if you take the college away it's nothing for me at least even dawn star there's a few things like this is a complete meme one but remember there's that like glitch chest you can access and as well yeah but also paid off caravans the the khajiit caravans actually visit dawn star as well and that's one of the areas but it's just like it feels like there's things going on winterhold feels so isolated so empty to me and if you're like oh that's here's my pitch for city it's isolated empty there's no one in it the only thing here is this college of winterhold like what i'm saying is fine this is a weird example but i was going to say chernobyl is kind of empty as well but it's pretty interesting yeah but it's interesting because it's ruins the ruins if i said to you if i said to you one of the most interesting cities to like to be in to go in or whatever to see in the world would you put chernobyl at the top anyway i think a lot of people would i i'm not kidding look i'd rather go to there's probably see hundreds of cities that i would rather go to in the world that actually are cities and not ruins yeah i get like if we look if we weren't wearing ruins like where are we going to put bleak falls barrow like as ranking it in the top five cities you know like you know what i mean yeah i think a ruined city can still be considered a city but okay labyrinthian labyrinthian it literally was a city called broman jar an ancient city it's no longer populated what do we think if we included labyrinthian as one of the cities it would be up there for me no yeah as a city but you see it's not a city anymore but it's not a city it's got a lot to me but as you can imagine living there but a city is not just the physical part like it is obviously like what i'm saying city do you know the reason they go like a population they need like a population needs to be there i think people make the city because if there's no people in a city it quickly becomes a ruin hold on let me just look we'll agree to disagree i mean look even as people use population metrics to determine whether something's a like you know a settlement town or a city as well like yeah nah the college of winterhold is just too majestic i'd be genuinely curious to know how many people are in winterhold versus um full creek including the college look i am looking at a photo of winterhold and a photo of dawn star next to each other and a winner hold looks way cooler because of the college yeah but we're not like that's like i said i said that winterhold has granted going for it because of the look of the college outside of that i i honestly think between dawnstar and winterhold we probably need to get the perspective of the viewers i think they should decide that one i'm gonna there's no way we could i won't agree on it i'll just accept it if it's 2v1 basically i think winterhold is more interesting personally i'm going to send you two three pictures and it will prove to you put them up on the screen yeah these three specific pictures which make women winter hold look way cooler um there you go okay you you three looking at them one two three i can't believe you shield me for creed the winterhold gets a bit uh like even though i'm on winterhold side here the uh the northern lights help a bit and the perspective but i think winterhold is the coolest looking of those yeah just because architecture it's just it's just how much waiting i've convinced him full create falling down the ranks you're no way you're going to put falcreath below college winner holders term of a city dude outside of the college there's like how many npcs and finding it up there how many mpgs four five six seven eight oh in the city the thing is on nine ten eleven because it counts um it counts realizing that there's no it counts it counts the college of winterhold so if you count the college of winterhold there's a lot more but like the college of winterhold has a higher population than the actual one look i'm happy to do this four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fourteen we can't see sanctuary in dawnstar true yeah true because they're full grief 14 versus one two three [Music] four five i think there are more people in winterhold nine no way ten no not by a long shot but anyway not by a long shot it's close wind peak in just chucks a whole bunch into dawn star yeah anyway like i said there's alex there's more like it's hard to distinguish it really doesn't mean how much you like weight in the college of winterhold itself but if you if you if you isolate the factions like take out the dark brotherhood sanctuary like and you take out the college of winterhold for example like even just the question the quest component the quest components of it the quest content winterhold has basically no content and you go like yeah it's just two day requests or whatever but dude even the dawnstar museum is a unique piece you go in a massive callback to oblivion the whole nightmare principle as much as it is the first time you go and do that it's pretty cool like the whole idea that the city is plagued by nightmares it's a cool premise when i talk about those three pictures i want those three pictures on screen yeah the audience must see the jury must see what they're like but i agree beats winterhold you've lost true no we we're not deciding that yeah yeah so all right so morthal winterhold dawnstar to be decided windhelm riften yes solitude white run mark ordered from best to worst no but i think that's a pretty good list i i think that's a pretty solid respectable list like even if you even if people like oh like a placement or something i don't think anyone's gonna necessarily be like being able to strongly argue for example windhelm's number one i feel like we're pretty firmly it's not number one i feel like people could do that for white run over marcotte i got some fun memories of jumping off the winterhold bridge using become ethereal or trying to land in the water and if it was just not shallow enough i'd survive i'm going to buy this i'm going to shield the ideal skyrim here i'm going to shill your own videos on the channel but um i made the ideal skyrim and redesigned everything and so on but conceptually have a look at that for the holds of the smaller towns and so on like there's ways to execute more full better and when to hold and so on like even i i even ran with like running with the winterhold idea like the idea was instead that you have it actually being reconstructed and so on and that people are actually like going and looking for salvage of the city and like it could even be a cool quest where there's like basically the winterhold like bank or whatever is falling in they're trying to find a vault kind of thing or something that's fallen into the sea like like there could have been so many cool things to work with winterhold fall creek you know um same sort of deals but you can kind of improve them and the great uh it's great towns and cities uh mods um do a really good job of fixing up folk wreath and even even when to hold to a degree it expands it makes it look like there used to be a grand city there before that's another thing i really don't like about winterhold is it outside of the college itself it doesn't really look like there used to be this big grand city there whereas because if there was like you'd kind of want ruins crumbling into the like the modern like the mod yeah which is the intent but not the the execution in the game i mean that great towns and cities mod that really makes solitude stand out as a capital city because they end up lining the cliffs with you know um other districts and it just makes it really come to life and and with that mod it actually feels like a huge city yeah so sometimes i'm not sure if that's another mod that might be jk skyrim or something the greater towns and cities i think is just the small poorly done cities but another mod i guess at the end of the day or something sometimes the concept and the law is much cooler than the reality of what you get such as with folk wreath um and yeah does does anyone have anything else to say on our rankings um let us know in the comments why raven rock actually is the secret winner of this conference i just want to know i genuinely want to know which people would choose between dawn star and winterhold even if i'm even if i'm in the minority i'd be very interested to know i i have a feeling dawn star will win because scott because it's an actual so long shilling because it's an actual place with actual people and interactions but but but like to be fair they're all kind of not great like i'm not like as much as i'm like shilling dawn start over win to hold it's dawn star's a piss-poor city like it's a it's not like whoa much bigger yeah yeah but even just i mean honestly just even unique architecture would have changed things up a lot like but yeah it doesn't it'd be interesting to do uh i mean people can see if they want it but um like cyrodiil's best cities like oblivion from the time of oblivion because i wonder there would be some interesting stuff there but then once again though i kind of feel like well not once again but i feel like imperial cities are pretty clear top there don't you reckon no yeah i'd say just because there's lots but there would be lots of the other ones to talk about and stuff but yeah all right yeah all right well thank you very much for listening ladies and gentlemen uh no you're keen you're keen to wrap up aren't you no i was waiting for you and you didn't say it for this podcast i i copped it for being the one to wrap up but it's because these no it's called wrapper it's yeah apparently i'll sit here and talk for three hours straight i take the bullet and look look at them wrapping up all right you know what no i'm going to reverse this on you now we're ranking oblivion cities right here right now all right let me pull them all let's rank eso cities i ironically will but i reckon one of you two will chicken out first well who's going to wrap up because i'm going and opening the oblivion cities right now i'm not wrapping up we're going straight to cities let's go [Laughter] i mean this one won't have a clear bot like bottom group and top group i think all of them have much more interesting oh absolutely things about them um one thing we can kind of i'm just going to say because we're actually going with the gameplay right we'll put kovach at the bottom because it's ruined it's completely ruined like theoretically it could be a cool city um i would put i still kind of think as much as there's some i have preferences over i think imperial city is still like it's just the biggest has the most attention the most imperial city wins by far yeah like the the waterfront district just alone is such a cool place so i think of all the districts in the imperial city all the surrounding area and little settlements the jail you've got the arcane university no questions the arena is there so many quests imperial city wins easily um kovach is at the bottom i would probably based on feel i'm really tempted to put leon down as the bottom just because of my personal subjective feel of being there um they kind of did fail to to nail the nibbanese culture feel of those cities in the um east a bit more than the colovian cities but the fact that each one has its count um and you know its own i mean they're obviously scary can i just say i love all the cities man i love them and i it pains me to put anything last i would kind of i kind of like laying on a little more like it's not nowhere near high high high but i i do i do like it like even the argonian khajiit sort of conflict in terms of feeling oh by the way this is the other thing all of the cities feel more like cities not necessarily because of just the size of something but the feeling like oh there's the walls they separate districts wells there's plenty of shops they also oh here's your local guild of each respective place it makes every place feel a little bit more full and lively every place that's a chapel it every all the oblivion cities just they feel like they have all of the components of what makes a little society run there whereas compared to skyrim you can look at a lot of them and they're just not um they're not okay well then what's what's the worst try and try and pitch me the worst city in oblivion not including kovach and i will strongly disagree but some of them are in retrospect too i can say as well but like as i'm see as a kid i really liked bruma cause i was like a nord character i'm like yeah yeah like a you know nord and it's cool that you can get your like statue there and so on but if i'm actually looking at like a lot of the ones that i find the most interesting i'd probably put burma pretty low i have to i have to disagree on what in one way and that's after playing skyrim bruma feels like the most boring city by far no questions asked but that's because you got so much gnawed culture or nords in your face before we'd been to skyrim broomer was so interesting because it was a slice of of nordic vibe and it and that's what made it interesting to me it was very different all the like you know different characters you could meet there um it just i just i think it's boring because of skyrim beyond was also pretty cool to go back there i think coral is the most boring coral is i have a lot of good memories in all these cities because i agree that coral is the most standard kind of city like there's the hacker it's the fall creeper it's the fall grief of cereal down the bottom i will say in it um the one thing about that adds to coral for most people i think would imagine is that it's very quest related you go to wayne and prior you turn the emulator kings naturally you go to the city next door so a lot of people have a lot of memories in coral i know i do yeah and there's also hector nearby yeah that's what i said yeah but i think in terms of it's funny when you actually go back and look at coral there's actually a funny amount of like empty kind of space inside the walls and then i would consider uh i would rumor i would consider bruma then if if you really want can i just say that anvil is one of the coolest cities yeah yeah agreed i know that's a lot of that's like law and the is it which team's working on the the coolest and set up beyond um sky oblivion well they're kind of both doing skyrim i've seen really cool stuff out of both probably and then mixed it all together but anvil is really cool anvil is a really nostalgic one chaden hall is also quite cool it feels typical now looking back but at the time it felt like such a unique city compared to all the other ones i think just real quick i think with these lists the hardest part is getting the middle so i think it's easier to close it in from both sides so i would kind of put like if we were going from the bottom if we kind of go like uh okay kind of and and leia win oh see i can't what do you oh you want to put breville down i kind of don't like breville in retrospect i kind of liked it because you could jump to jump on the roofs that was about as a kid like the really thing but in terms of actually going back to it's a really and it's got a bit of a shanty vibe to which is kind of cool but it's really ugly i don't know like i would rather i find leon quite ugly too obviously yeah i mean it's different though because uh breville is you know poor but to me i feel like you see that in bravil more there's the schoomer dealer there's the um the guy um who's in debt and you go and do the curtain quest to get this supposed drugs axe and there's um the skooma house with all the people in it there's cool shops and stuff there as well like the archery shop leyland i guess was just i do like it's actually likes for a change a bit of a flat flatter layout but i do like remember the whole mizoga the orc stuff you go and you've got the countess who tortures argonia and stuff behind the scenes oh i forgot about it um but then you've also i just like the actual layout of leyland i mean you should check out the skype oblivion trailer like the way that they've redone it enhanced it even more looks really cool but i actually prefer the layout of leyland rather than the cluttered shanty feel but that's i guess that's just a vibe we can put leon and bravil kind of down there yeah um like if if i do the same thing as we did with winterhold i could put them kind of on the same for now and then put the other ones but wait so you think both leon and bravil are better than brewmaster the reason i would say coral and bruma are the most plain they're the most generic possibly generic kind of one again and i can agree with you but i feel like bruma feels plain and generic because of skyrim yeah before it was the unique snow biome i guess like but what's the factor incredibly unique compared to like other biomes like you go to i know skin grad will rank high but like skin grad coral they've got that same feel they're just you know they're looking the city and the rumor was snowing and just different the cities i liked being in most were things like anvil and skin grad and when i did have a naught obsessed character i did go into broom because i had this like nord obsessed character but it was a very role-playing angle there is also there is also actually broom is going to step up here a bit because we talk about surrounding and related locations and quests cloud ruler temple right near buruma but remember for the same reason it's not necessarily discounting azure statue it's not an implicit sort of like connection too it's not like oh here's your white runner they do come well martin and all that are related the the broomer basically battle yeah they just come from there it's not an extension of speech it's not an extension of the countess's domain yeah but anyway battle of burma that happened rumor broomer also i think in layout isn't as nice as city i think because that's another thing bravil i think bruma beats breville how about that i mean to be honest you couldn't i don't really i don't really care about breville that much i actually don't like being in bravo as much yeah like you could jump around as a kid like yeah i'm jumping from roof to roof but really that's not a it's not a pretty and you could you could really uh let's talk about what's left then would be chain hall skin grad in anvil skingrad is the cities city um and i think that discounting imperial yeah yeah yeah like i almost think imperial city just not even considered although i do kind of like i think anvil still pre i i would probably put anvil then skin grad because just purely based on the aesthetic and also by the doc there's lots of like early fighters guild memories for me and and the mages good quest there but um also the knights the nine chapel thing and also the banneris manor and and also like you know you go out to the ship and there's that ship with the ghosts on it like i don't know anvil for me and the golden grasses around it i really like the gold coast it's the city you'd want to live in if you lived in he just wants to get picked up by that gang of women and taken to her oh that's right i also remember the uh oh and also you know it has a lighthouse like so it has a bit of a harbor going on and i like i don't know why it stuck with me but the armorer there the blacksmith he just had a really good setup he looked like wealthy units are out there i don't know he just it just i remember like i stole so much from him to get the the fenced gold up yeah but anvil feels a little more affluent as well and i just which makes it do you have things more better than skin though yeah i think so just i feel like the remakes of anvil have skewed it heaps for me i really like anfield because of that kind of stuff too anvil has like the little pond area with the mermaid statue as well and it has that little garden area in the garden yeah that it too and the garden area across like it's actually anfield's actually built quite like a city in the way that the castles on the island away on a bridge away from the city there too and then which the whole story with the countess is nice i really like skingrad too or so on but i think the palace at the top of the hill with the vampire count stuff really does weigh it for me and also like you know around it there's like glasses and stuff yeah glassy but if you play at home if you actually look at the the layout of it when you go from the middle it's really it's really plain as this big thing running through the middle i understand why it's there but skin grad in parts looks more city-like but then in other parts it kind of a little more but you'd rank it above jaden hall with the unique architecture bridges across the water dark brothers yeah hideout i think i would just because i really enjoyed being in there and there's all the rich shops and stuff and there's the kind of like some of the bars even when you kind of like go up the stairs and then you go in the door you go down like skingrad's got a nice layout still like don't get me wrong it's still a top tier the party quests there as well for the dark brotherhood yeah i can say would who done it be potentially the best one of the best quests if not the best quest in the game one of the best in skin grad one of the best i'm pretty what do you guys think i generally the way i think is imperial city and feels skin grad and then i would even go then leon breville bruma coral kovach i do also like the statue in skingrad of rislav the right just being kind of like the former king of skingrad who has a really cool story as well it's very fitting for the place but i i agree i would put anvil above it just because i prefer it okay so the top four we do we all agree that we've got imperial city and phil skingrad and chaden hall i think so because champion is very beautiful too like going over everything dark sanctuary bottom five and i don't fully agree but i guess this will be another moment it's only because of bruma and i tell me if you agree uh in the comments but i feel like bruma was so if you've played oblivion before you played skyrim which actually isn't that many people surprisingly we're getting old but uh tell me if you think bruma was much cooler before you got a huge overdose of nordic influence in your life so the bottom five as we have it written here is leon breville bruma coral and kovach i definitely agree with the bottom two it's those bottom to middle three that get can i i'll put my case forward weirdly enough i'm putting a case forward for a lay one like none of these are really particularly my favorite i like them all but the reason i like leyland too it if in weird way it makes it if maybe we could argue this maybe i haven't thought through enough but it feels the most um like kind of lived in or city like there's here's the little shanty area with the argonians and khajiit and so on and here's like a like chapel area with the guild and stuff and then there here's the palace and then the palace was pretty big for memory and like i kind of like its situation too it's like kind of an important area at the bottom of the river and the swamp area around it's kind of cool because i like it's just oh it's this it's this big city in the middle of the swamp whereas bravil looks really like a raggedy rag it's just not that good but that's why it's cool in the same way rifton is cool because it's but it's run down and there's crime there but rifton's beautiful reveals ugly and i know that's the intention kind of but i don't enjoy being in reveal as much as i would even leiwan but i could be minded by the way on the other things to me coral feels really rural of a city in the way that there's lots of flat space out there's the one ring where the guilds are but then there's like you i've nev i never really spent much time i never went to the had much reason to go to the palace and coral and then there's that random like shack where the the guy where you get the quest to kill the goblins at the farm with to get chill around like it's this random shack sort of there and then there's that other place up towards the chapel but you know how you go back towards where owen um sarah modrin isn't it the fighter's guild dark elf guy is in his house yeah there like that area just more sort of shacky kind of parts which i don't mind i get it's a porous sort of area but there's these huge fields of grass behind it and stuff it just feels a little less like i don't know coral feels less likely you don't need to justify it we've all put coral above kavatch broomer i would say doesn't feel um necessarily as a hyper lively either it feels like a northern frontier sort of city kind of thing and it's dense like i don't know i just i prefer the layout of leyland to bruma like the actual like physically walking here's my hot take and we're never gonna you're never gonna be convinced i would put leon above coral that is my subjective preference definitely yeah i mean i mean i mean directly above it i i i subjectively like braville and bruma and the things i did there more i think i agree even though lewin does have the local politics you like that i don't know i just think i i would it's fine i i completely understand i have so many good memories in bravil the night mother statue's there there's the nightmare quest with um hennetie i think his name is um there's and the cur the dragon's axe quest with curtin um is one of my favorite with fort grief yeah i don't know but i remember assassinating almost filler um philia and stuff the only thing i remember about that i enjoyed all the i don't know and the arguments yeah i i found her to be a bit like a bit prejudiced well a bit bit annoying you know the same yeah yeah i love them yeah drew loves orcs too no i just found it to be a little bit a bit annoying although i like that our armor changed it was cool to see her in like daedric when you walk in at a high level and you're like oh now you you actually look like how you at also the everscamp kind of thing in there like the stuff yeah didn't like chat too okay well then i think this might just be a bit of a subjective thing too yeah if you don't like those quests but like even the majors guild layouts and stuff like a lot of the layouts of the houses themselves in leia one are quite cool and nice like um yeah i don't know i just kind of i kind of liked um i i wouldn't put leon above below this is what we need people to rank in the comments these three cities one two three bravil broomer and leon rank those those three put them in the order that they if you wanted to like i just want to see i just want to see with that with those three which one people think is the coolest and least coolest i'm happy to be wrong i mean who really cares it's just it's just interesting i think our list is pretty good there now the question is aldrun saddrif and vivec city how do we rank those and do we include mournhold um the reason i wouldn't include mournhold for doing morrowind is only because when you do go in the tribunal dlc you're only going into a small sort of section of like the small tiniest bit like it's not mm-hmm look if it's in the list it would be the bottom i think because there's not much going on there obviously if you have tamriel rebuilt and you see it then we've used it a lot in videos but it's it's the the most beautiful city in the elder scrolls but obviously that's not fair but like i would my my instinctually i i really like vivec city and i think it's the biggest thing that feels like a city it's the most city feeling and when you actually play like morrowind back in the day and like you've got to account for like yeah okay in terms of like gameplay like there's not as many chattering characters as stuff in like future cities and future bethesda games and stuff or they don't move around necessarily as much but walking through and there's all the canals and the ordinators and the boat you look you literally have ferrymen that will take you from spot to spot going up to the temple of evec it's got a meteor hanging above it it's all floating in the water diversity win i i would i would argue even though i really like balmora balmore is the least interesting of morrowind it's just iconic yeah yeah and because you know once it's kind of like like you go yeah and i agree i agree that vivek is the the clear winner by far sadr maura is obviously incredibly cool because of the architecture it will kind of come down between those two out of which you prefer the kind of red around style um architecture versus telvanni and i really think both are incredible in completely different ways i've got my take personally i don't know if you what do you think i'm thinking well i i think aldrun is more interesting what do you what do you think i'm thinking i think you might agree because of scar yeah i agree i agree i actually like aldrin more because another one of those things but aldrun feels more like a like a city city if you actually look at the layout of sarath mora there's the big talvani tower in the middle and there's the talvanian air right there is a little bit of the port but then there's there's the market with the like the slaves and stuff in there but there's not as much outside of that it's like this very sort of hilly rurally kind of feel and so on and as you go around it doesn't feel like it doesn't have the same like clustered i guess environment that i like in cities but when you have alderaan you've got the walls and the silt straw at this front but then you've got like all of the different houses all around just sort of layering up and then there's temple over there and then you get up to the to scar itself and scar is like deep when you go inside and there's lots going on so so what's your what's your what's your ranking then i would go for vac city aldrun saddam or balmora at the bottom agreed yeah okay any differences michael would you agree with that do you prefer cedric i would yeah well again it just gets back into like are we talking about raiding it on a city or and i suppose we are i think that's important i just i just love i just have a big love for sudden with more because if you were going like i would probably put it above it yeah yeah i just i i mean look i understand i love reasoning um the classic rhetoric and architecture too is really cool that's dude at the end of the day i think i think morrowind has the best cities of them all in terms of um concept the closest that we've come since i think is mark harth because it's like oh dwemer ruined something interesting but but beyond that like aldron has a giant 80 architecture is already interesting but then there's this giant crab there are the council chambers and stuff you go into instant like what the hell is that you've got vivec city there's pontoon cities with a living god there and a floating meteor that is also doubles as a jail for heretics like and then you've got um uh you know giant mushroom towers and saturdays more and so on balmoral you could argue is a bit more of a standard sort of city but it's already got interesting that like packed tightly packed tatooine kind of vibe building yes and like it's cool like man morrowind in atmosphere the best well i suppose it's time for daggerfall oh it's just [Music] i have got all the daggerful cities up right now is it sentinel city is it sentake city city which you can't even do them i just they just don't look like that anymore i think you could do them but they look so similar i think we could do them because what i mean whatever they say they've the thing is we've got so much experience of playing the elder scrolls too daggerfall but we should have some strong opinions yeah and take away well if you don't want to uh if you don't want to do daggerfall would you like to wrap up scott oh pass it off to drew for a change drew it's your turn well actually i wanted to talk about creation club and let's rank all the creations or is that for another week that's for another another time oh you guys you wanted to end at michael another time then yeah let's do a never-ending podcast i'm down oh my god 10 hour livestream question all right well michael really wanted to end it up and so on he said no creation club ranking this episode stop texting me you got to go well this turned into a longer podcast and we included i'm still going to call it ranking skyrim city yes for views and then we just got to do the bonus ones but yeah all right ladies and gentlemen that's all subscribe for more like the video if you enjoyed and we will see you next time

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 86,915

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Id: -jVL-navkLQ

Length: 83min 27sec (5007 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021