I'm not holding my breath, I'm just really really really tired of them exploiting those stupid ruins.
And the only mistake SG1 made was removing MacGyver from the team ;)

Well they're all small, that's the limitations of the engine. None of them feel as small to me as The Imperial City did in Oblivion though. That one was a travesty really.

You mean, it's not supposed to have only five streets and a non-functional sewer system?

However, Oblivion's Imperial City was in fact larger than several of Skyrim's cities combined. But I can see what you mean. Perception beats objective house-counting when it comes to immersion, and due to the regularity of the streets the Imperial City did a particularly bad job at that. Also, expectations play probably a role as well, as (according to the lore) the Imperial City was supposed to be the most magnificent city on the whole continent, whereas lore-based expectations weren't even half as high for Skyrim's settlements.

Personally I always like bigger cities, but only if ot doesn't come at the cost of less detail. Daggerfall had huge, sprawling cities, but they were procedurally generated, lacked detail, and so I got that "been there, done that" feeling pretty quickly. I enjoy the smaller, but more intricately designed cities of TES3 to TES5 more. Nevertheless I hope for mods that expand them.

I think the key is to set your game in a location that will work with your engine. Final Fantasy games on the Playstation could have these massive metropolises because it was all a background render anyway. Morrowind's small cities made sense because of the backwoods native island you were on. Fallout's small cities, with maybe the exception of New Vegas itself, make sense for post-apocalyptic wasteland settlements. Risen took place on a small island, but did it at 100% scale and perfect representation.

Oblivion and Skyrim both suffer from trying to portray more than their technology really allows. They want to do entire provinces for the diversity I guess, but it makes the worlds feel too scaled down and small. I personally would have preferred they stuck to one area of the province, like say Chorrol for Oblivion and Windhelm for Skyrim, and then did it on a much larger and more realistic scale. Then only one city would be smaller than it probably should be and the rest would be adequate. Pretty much like Vivec and Morrowind.

Even Vegas made perfect sense. House said he could only save the strip itself and that it was just a fragment of its former glory. All the ruins around what's called Outer Vegas are the remains of the real Las Vegas. If House had recieved the Platinum Chip in time he might have saved it all.

Yeah, they did try and explain it, but Vegas itself still felt a bit too empty for me.

I think they explained it well enough. House was dormant for centuries thanks to damage to his life support system. The area of Vegas was ruled in effect by tribals just like anywhere in the wasteland. House elevating the Charimen, White Gloves and Omerta's to casino bosses was quite recent as are the appearance of his Securitrons. New Vegas will eventually become the metropolis you expect but only if you help House.

I found that Vegas didn't work as a world - the whole area felt badly spread out. While the original Fallout 3 had a more realistic setting where you were at the edge of Washington DC, New Vegas couldn't quite figure out what it wanted to be. Washington DC was a stroke of genius since it allowed for so many unique locations. Vegas, on the other hand, didn't gel well at all and every location felt as if it was too random. Nice try Obsidian, but you failed really badly there.

Plain and simple...Skyrim has taken over my life. It leaves very little to no time for gogs. I bought the box edition, hoping I could get away from going through Steam. But in this day and age, just about every new game has to go through Steam.

That's because people accept it instead of fighting.

It's not fighting, it's called doing without. If you are happy to do without any new games then you never have to bother with Steam.

Abstinence...is a little tough. There are not many good new games coming out, Skyrim being the exception. And no new games have the same charm that most GOG's have.

That's because 95% of people don't give a shit. Hard to start a revolution when everyone is happy with the way things are.

About the cities:

I like Riften. The architecture is distinct, and despite its initial problems, it's got a river town charm that pleases me. Mud and blood, baby. And yes, I liked Bravil in Oblivion. ;-)

Also, Honeyside has two doors!!! One opens into the city proper, and one opens onto the docks. Fantastic for roleplaying a rogue with escape always in mind. I do wish there was more storage downstairs, tho, instead of shelves.

Shelves, tables, dressers, etc in all homes have too much useless clutter atop them. I cleared away the junk, but the physics engine seems buggy and results in anything I place on them (such as the nude Dibella statue I "acquired" and fenced to clear its stolen status... hehe) falling to the floor the next time that I enter the house.

A warning: If you buy Breezehome or Honeyside (possibly the other homes, too) and their upgrades, check each display plaque, weapon rack, mannequin, etc before saving and continuing. Something is buggy there and results in non-functional displays. I had to reload 5 or 6 times to get all of the Honeyside stuff working, and my display plaque in Breezehome doesn't work because I didn't notice the bug at the time and have progressed too far to reload. Also, ask to be named Thane of the Rift (the dialogue option with the Jarl that completes that bit) before visiting Honeyside or you might lose the option (I had to reload, and I also didn't receive the Blade of the Rift even after reloading multiple times).

Whiterun, Winterhold, and Solitude are decent tho a bit small. Windhelm is annoying to navigate and kind of bland. Markarth is neat but seems very small. Morthal doesn't seem to have a blacksmith... ? Falkreath and Dawnstar just seem kind of... pointless.

I wish there was a home in each city. Would have been nice if I could have purchased a home in Morthal after killing its owner during the Thane quests there.

---

Fought a Frost Dragon at Mount Athor that was a bit more of a challenge than usual. Knowing the dragon's location because it was marked on the map, I left my horse a loooooong way behind. There were no other creatures in the area, so it was a one-on-one battle (if you didn't know, dragons are easily distracted from the player by just about anything that moves in Skyrim). Actually killed me twice before I realized that I needed to pay atention to the fight this time and started using the terrain to my advantage. Went down without too much hassle but actually put up a better fight than most I've encountered so far.

The best part, however, was the "Burnt Corpses" scattered around the area. Damn funny considering it was a Frost Dragon and used cold/ice/etc attacks exclusively. ;-)