Skyrim’s graphics don’t rip anyone off their feet anymore.
Are you often in the cloud district? Skyrim fans have had to listen to NPC Nazeem’s quip all too often when visiting the city of Whiterun in-game. But what if the city were so big that you didn’t have to run into the arrogant nuisance?
How impressive one of Skyrim’s largest locations looks when recreated in Unreal Engine 5 and given the size of a right
medieval settlement is now showing a tech demo.
Whiterun in his true size
The video was uploaded by 3D artist Leo Torres, who has been working with the Unreal Engine for a long time. Previously, he already had the settlement Dawnstar from Skyrim
link to YouTube content
Anyone who has ever played Skyrim will recognize at first glance that this reinterpretation of Whiterun is many times larger than the original. The city should not only look more realistic, its size with about 10,000 inhabitants according to Torres also corresponds approximately to the official lore of the game. He also describes in more detail under the video how he approximately determined the actual size of the city.
While you can only find a few hundred people in total in Skyrim, the world is of course larger during development thought
since Skyrim is an entire country.
Whiterun already knew how to impress in the original, but was significantly smaller.
Of course, such a scale could not be technically implemented, for example when every building can be entered in the manner of Elder Scrolls and every character should have their own daily routine. In the game, therefore, we have to be content with a small version of Whiterun and other cities compared to realistic cities.
Torres writes on Redditthat he worked on the city for about a month, but he also devoted himself to other projects during this time. A mixture of ready-made and self-created assets was used. Lumen and Nanite technologies were used to illuminate the scenes.
How do you like the giant version of Whiterun in Unreal Engine 5? Does the city remind you a bit of Edoras, the capital of Rohan from Lord of the Rings? And would you like to explore such a big city in a game, or do you prefer to travel through more compact worlds? Write us in the comments!
