The Imperial City of Skyblivion and its perception as the capital of the Empire
The last screenshot of Talos Plaza inspired me to revisit an old thought: the Imperial City in the original Oblivion, while vast, still feels more like a fortress with districts than a fully-fledged Imperial capital.
Over the years, numerous mods have been made for the original Oblivion, attempting to change the perception of the city by adding new floors to existing buildings or placing an additional district in the northwest, and so on.
In my opinion, one of the most well-suited of these mods was "Imperial City Suburbs," which added a new district right by the water near the large bridge. This full-fledged urbanization, starting right at the water's edge, demonstrated how densely populated the city was and how important every available space was.
But between this water's edge and the city walls, there's a nearly vertical ground level, which is difficult to transform into a fully-fledged urban environment without using an excessive number of stairs and terraces. So I thought about some ideas from other games where not all the places you see with your own eyes are explorable.
The idea is to add an additional outer circular wall to the Imperial City, about half the width of a normal district (see the attached image; sorry for the poor quality, but it's perfectly acceptable as an early concept). Fill the interior of this wall with buildings, but make this district inaccessible for exploration, essentially acting as a backdrop. This district would fill the space between the main city and the three separate districts, and would also make the Imperial City look more majestic.
I understand that the Skyblivion team has completely different priorities right now and has already made some expansions to the Imperial City that we haven't seen yet. Therefore, this isn't a proposal to the team itself, but rather a discussion and debate to gauge player opinion on whether such an expansion would be popular and whether it's a good idea at all.
Perhaps someone (perhaps me personally) will want to take this idea and make a similar mod after Skyblivion's release, since placing several (or many) decorations won't be a big deal and doesn't require much skill.
In any case, thank you for reading this far! I'm really looking forward to Skyblivion, as are you all, and I wish the team every success in completing all their work!
I think a little discussion and debate might be helpful while we wait.