Skyrim is a massive game. With 40 hours invested so far, I've only touched a fraction of the content and I'm so excited to see what else there is. However, the idea of expansions, while awesome, is quite frightening. In regards to possible expansions, it seems a particularly adventurous Tumblr user has made quite the discovery.
It seems Bethesda has painstakingly crafted a good deal more landmass than was necessary for their latest time sink. The poster traveled to the Southern-easternmost edge of Skyrim, Stendarr's Beacon, then made his way to a path that ends in an invisible wall at a stone archway to what would logically be Morrowind.
Like any good PC player, he jumped into no-clip mode and kept on walking only to find that he was, as suspected, traveling through Morrowind, albeit a decreasingly textured, scaled down version of it. He made is way to Solstheim, an island to the north, as well as Vvardfell. From Morrowind he was able to reach Cyrodiil where he eventually found the Imperial City.
It's all pretty cool, but does it mean anything? The obvious guess would be that they've got plans for expansions. The adventurer suggests that maybe Bethesda built these sections to give modders more to work with. It's also possible that they built it all to give themselves a frame of reference for their work on the province of Skyrim. Regardless, it's a really cool find.
What do you guys think?
Entire Tamriel Landmass built into Skyrim [Tumblr -- Thanks Pendertuga!]
Contest:
5:00 AM on 11.22.2011 | 
Just felt soo empty.
What have I missed?
Either way this is an awesome find! I love the constant references to Morrowind as a Dunmer!
Even if Bethesda doesn't get into it, just having the layout there opens up so many possibilities for the modders once they release the creation kit.
1st. Excuse my poor phone grammar.
2nd. In modders, I trust, but I still am not 100% sure that the modding community would create a 1:1 version of Morrowind, with questlines, like Bethesda could, given the resources. It's taken them this long to perfect an upscaled version of the old Morrowind! But I can dream!
Many people over on the forums have speculated why it's here, and many say it's just for character and modders to toy with as they please. There's tiny slices of the other provinces as well, like half of Red Mountain and half of the mainland from Morrowind but no Solstiem.
It doesn't indicate their plans at all.
Todd Howard knows what he is doing.
Even if they can't they'll sure try! I bet they could do amazing things if they get the people still working on making Morrowind look current gen and the people still trying to recreate Morrowind in/with Oblivion working together.
As for this. The cynic in me says it's more than likely used as a reference for building Skyrim. The optimist notes the pathway to the gate that leads to Morrowind and says potential DLC.
Considering their recent ventures with DLC and Fallout, it's not a stretch to imagine some DLC content taking place in familiar areas, or even new areas. Seeing a Silt Strider in the Skyrim engine would make me weak at the knees.
It would be awesome though. Hey why not add all the other continents aswell while your at it. Could have a complete tamriel given a few years :P
@ Chongomaster
But if they did that we'd have a game full of High Elves. I don't know anybody that doesn't hate those snooty assholes.
That said, doing all the topography sounds like too much work if they just needed a reference; they could have just thrown down a 2D map. Then again, that work was already done in Morrowind and Oblivion, so it might not have been too difficult. Although, Morrowind was constrained to the main island of Vvardenfell; there's more to the province than that.
I also don't entirely buy that this is solely for the modders, again given that the console market is their new focus. You don't fuck over the PC community with a shitty console port UI and then give them something overly nice. That's something Sheogorath would do. Hey, Sheogorath! Maybe we could get more of him. Please.
How is it a "shitty console port"? It looks/performs way better on the PC.
It might not be shitty, but it is a console aimed. Look at the menus and how lockpicking works, Xbox360 controller input is on by default (causing problems to some people till turned off) not forgetting the most obvious things, that it's a DirectX9 game, that you need a "large address" patch for it to use more ram and that the textures are pretty low res by today's standards (in less than two weeks the modders already made a huge difference on how it looks). The end result is not bad, but it's not close to what it could look like if they had aimed at PCs, still I'm sure the modders will fix that as long as they don't keep getting patched out.
I hope to see the Imperial City under the rule of its corrupt as hell leadership, honestly.