The True Size of Windhelm: Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
- And so we get to the City of Kings: Windhelm - the oldest city in Skyrim! Also it’s been about two years since I first started this project - and I just want to thank everyone who’s watched these videos, upvoted, commented and subscribed - it means a lot to me!
Part of an ongoing project to visualise a more realistic and lore-accurate scale to Tamriel’s cities - so here’s Windhelm - now with sixteen times the detail! The purpose of this project was to get a large-scale concept of what a city of this size would really be like in real life, removed from gameplay, story and technical limitations.
If you enjoy my content and want to help support the channel, you can buy me a coffee! ko-fi.com/lion...
Rendered out in Unreal Engine 5.4 on a 3090. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled in Blender, textured in Mixer. Nanite was used for all models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections.
Please NOTE: This is a FANMADE cinematic lore visualisation for the Elder Scrolls. It is NOT a mod!
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.
Soundtrack: ‘Oh the Sky’ - Helmut Schenker.
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![The Lore-Accurate Scale of the Imperial City | A Portrait of Tamriel in UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/BeEBd4QNayk/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Lore-Accurate Scale of the Imperial City | A Portrait of Tamriel in UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]](/img/tr.png)
![The True Scale of Riften: Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8ThVbQ34u18/mqdefault.jpg)
Also it’s been about two years since I first started this project - and I just want to thank everyone who’s watched these videos, upvoted, commented and subscribed - it means a lot to me! (Also thank you for 50,000!!! subs!)
ArtStation: www.artstation.com/artwork/ZlPYZ8
Honestly, if you made a walking simulator with your environments, I would totally buy it. I have yet to get into VR, but something like this would be spectacular to see in VR in the future.
No, thank you. You have done the Skyrim community a great service, creating these masterpieces. I myself had just recently found your work and it has made me love the game even more.
So, thank you! And happy anniversary Skyrim! 🎉🥳
@igrn-7 right, it’s really good we need a first person walkthrough.
This is beautiful!!! I always liked Windhelm, old and cozy. Truly now your work is complete, All cities have been created!!!! Do you plan to do some towns like Riverwood or does the trip end here? ✨️❄️🌨
@@theobiwanjacobi1 Indeed. For me it's pointless without VR. Seeing something like this only on flatscreen does not do justice to it.
Seeing a new 'True size of Skyrim' pop up genuinely makes my entire day better
You're an add
TUREEEE
Me too 🫶
Me agreeing 2 months later. Soon there will be others years later saying the same thing
Can you imagine all the "fun" we will have in a Windhelm of that scale... to find the Butcher?
2011 Skyrim's cities are half as large as I would've expected tho
@@brandonofthewastes By the ingame books and dialogues, travelling from Riverwood to Whiterun would tike 1.5 day *on horse*. And we do it in 2-3 minutes running. Now imagine how terrible full scale Skyrim would be. Even more terrible with those "Fast travel should be removed" type people.
I don’t even want to think about that 😫
@@calluxdoaron1903fast travel should NEVER be removed. I like exploring around to, especially on horseback cause I love horses and the game’s beautiful scenery, but fast travel really comes in handy when your game time is very limited due to your job, housework, etc. The only time I really “travel around” is to unlock locations on my map. I’m not one of those people who uses a mod that unlocks every location automatically. I do however have a mod that allows every location to be already marked, but not unlocked
@@calluxdoaron1903 Agreed. This is awe-inspiring work, but it would not translate into fun gameplay. It's simply too big, even the most basic of quests would be absolute boring chores when it takes an hour of walking to go from one side of the city to the other.
At first I was like "Why did you make the wall fortification so rectangular looking?" Then I looked at a game map and realized that's what Windhelm's walls look like lol
I guess this is what Skyrim felt like back in 2011 to everyone who played it the first time
I hear you!!!!
No not to everyone, i wanted the scale of this video back then as well 😂. Whitetun, riverwood, riften and other always felt smaller in scale to me and the distance among them as well.
To me most rpgs felt smaller in scale. Witcher 3 was the 1st game that i really felt that had a good scale of cities and towns like GTA has.
No it didn't.
I thought it was a ugly looking game, with godawful level design. Somehow worse than Oblivion (even that game had more charm).
@@desmasic exactly.
Honestly, the nature was more impressive than the cities. I still spend most of my time just staring at it, though with mods these days.
But my friends all talked about the moon and how could a video game look this good.
Now we gotta see the Labrynthian
Heck yeah
upppp
Oh my god you’re absolutely right
hope he does each city and all the big ruins like labrynthian. can you imagine if he ends up remaking the entire map. adding the distance between each city as well. hell even recreating the dungeons as well. the tombs can stay about the same since its just a tomb. but dwemer ruins should be much larger. kind of small for the most advanced race in all of skyrim. all of them at minimum should be 10 times larger and much more complex.
@ He already did all the cities
This is awesome! And it's Skyrims 13th birthday!
buy
I always picture in my mind character dialogue leading to your establishing shots of the cities! Your project stirs up my imagination! That's how good it is for me!
Cheers!
@@lion_towers3d Overlaying some dialogue of famous NPC’s from each city would be a great touch, regardless amazing work
I love how lore wise having the city this massive helps exlplain how there hold held out against other Jarls having one of if not the smallest jarldom in Skyrim
Eastmarch is such a weird hold, the only parts of Skyrim they actually own are the bits surrounding the weird volcanic area, should have given them parts of Dawnstars land to the west
This makes thieving more lucrative than raiding a dungeons in this game.
Hear me out..... full scale dungeons!
The dungeons should be much larger too. For example, Saarthal was made the Altmoran capital of Skyrim when Ysgramor lead the 500 companions to Tamriel. One would expect the capital city to be much larger than we experience in game. Maybe the dungeons should each be comparable to black reach and black reach comparable to an entire hold.
"His company was moving eastward, hoping to reach the sea, when they came upon the mound of Ingol , son of the mighty Ysgramor, who had perished not through the treachery of the Elves, but by the caprice of Kin . Our lord had not expected to see a reminder of his son so soon, and grief overwhelmed him anew, as if blood had gushed forth with renewed vigor from a healed wound. He turned his eyes southward, where the river flowed into the sea, and made a vow that the crew of the Ilgermet, led by himself, would build a great city there, and that it would stand as an incarnate glory of the human race, while Ysgramor himself would always be able to see the grave of his son from his palace and take comfort in the fact that in this new land Ysgramor's line had found a peace that they had not known on Atmora."
"SONGS OF RETURN, VOL.19"
The lore in TES is unbeatable even today.
I love that Ysgramor built Windhelm within view of Yngol Barrow, so that he could keep vigil over his fallen son😔💐
One day… gaming will be like this… probably after I’m gone but I’m happy knowing that it will be a reality at some point.
@@CorvoFG On the other hand, you could make an entire game just in a Windhelm this big
@@CorvoFG my response to those low attention span casuals if they thought it was too far of a walk would be to go outside and do some walking themselves.
This is gorgeous and certainly the correct scale for TV or movies or novels. But lets remember that what makes good or realistic cities for visuals doesn't always make for good gameplay. Games are absolutely a case of "don't do it just because you can" and bigger isn't always better.
@@GeorgeThoughts well we won’t know until this becomes a reality. So making claims like this mean nothing until we get it first. How about we remember to not judge a book by its cover?
There are mods that make skyirim towns really big, like the capital serie for windhelm and whiterun, which you can combine with other mods and make those cities really huge. I've been playing those in vr, its really cool and u really get the feeling of a big town. You still need a medium high end pc of course...
At last the best! This gives Skyrim a lot different perspective. The majestic palace, the Grey Quarter so distinctive from the rest of the city, docks with houses for Argonians, the Candlehearth hall so small now. These vids are amazing and i love them!
Every frame a painting! These just keep getting better and better - I'm just in love with your lore-accurate interpretations and the megalomaniac style of your cities. Do you plan to make the small villages someday? Would love to see Riverwood - or Anvil, Vivec & Caldera one day :)
Thank you so much! And yeah - might get around to it at some point!
Absolutely fantastic! Mind-blowing to see the capital of the true High King as it should be! This project has been absolutely incredible, and it really brings my favorite game to life, so thank you!
Thank you so much!
A True son of Skyrim I see!
@@NotDocshell yeah true warriors show those milk drinking imperials whos boss
@@Tinywarriorhippo Skyrim belongs to the Nords!
One day, gaming will evolve to a point where "True to Size" or "Lore Accurate" versions of old games will look, sound, feel, and play like this. And I am so excited for when we get there.
I know I’ve said this before on your imperial city video but this series is not only amazing but it really hits something for me. Settlement sizes in games are extremely hampered by hardware/software limitations so it’s understandable but to see the lore be matched by video is beautiful
Thank you!
I have been following this series since the beginning, Its incredible to see how far its come, you are incredibly talented, I can only wish I could do something like this. Keep up the amazing work
Thank you so much for following along all this time!
Buddy, thanks for bringing 10-year-old me's dreams to reality. Skyrim was literally my childhood for a good three years, and it's honestly a hit directly to the Nolstalgia to see your videos. This is exactly how I imagined Windhelm looking.
the absolute scale and beauty of your cities brings a tear into my eyes!
This song along with the scenery of windhelm actually made me tear up! A lot of very close people who i shared love for this game with are no longer here but everytime i see a vid like this the memories i spent with those people come flooding in! Thankyou mate really appreciate it.
Thank you so much!
Can you imagine living in a place like this? No wonder the Nords are so zealously proud of their homeland.
Honstly, I think it should be smaller. It's very old, any built by people who where so overpowered they took over Skyrim with like 500 people, so I'd think the walled-in area would not be that big. Urban sprawl on the other side of the river makes sense though, as a consequence of a population growing beyond what was initially planned for.
It actually looks like a proper walled city now. Nice work
Thanks!
Your renditions of these cities takes me back to my 12 year old self playing the game for the first time. Thank you for making these videos and showing off your works.
really wish we could get cities like this in games. Even if the playable space was only the original size, but it was surrounded by a city, it'd be 1000% better.
Gorgeous! Another lovely rendition. Gave me chill bumps to watch.
Well done, Leo.
Thank you so much!
The composition of each shot and the lightning is stunning! This clip is so much better than real life tourist advertisements! Makes me miss a place Ive never been to.
Thank you so much!
Those shots at sunset are mesmerizing. Almost feels like you're really there.
Thanks Leo. This series has been wonderful to see. I saved them all into a playlist so I can revisit them. Dawnstar was my favorite, but they're all wondrous.
Please don't stop creating art.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
I would seriously love the next game to focus on 2 or 3 cities of this size than loads of smaller ones.
The way it's laid out reminds me of old Japanese cities, where there were no skyscrapers, but instead a main caste and then a central business area, then outside that hoards of houses, and often a kind of wall around the perimeter, and covering a large amount of surface area.
Truth is, if a game made a true sized scaled city, you would need to have fast travel inside the city itself, lol.
Just a mere city in real life is larger than the entire Skyrim map for example.
For example Skyrim's entire map is just 37 square km's, yet the size of just Tokyo city in real life is 2190 square km's. As you can see, video games are generally like little toy worlds.
In the UK medieval towns and cities were not massive, though their population boomed on market days. The biggest city in the entire Northern half of the isles (York) had only ~1600 buildings spread across the 3.5km2 within the old Roman walls in 1066.
The largest Viking age cities in Scandinavia only had a couple of thousand permanent residents
I've been blessed today, seeing my favourite city in skyrim pop up as a notification from your channel
These videos bring me such a sense of... otherworldly peace. That old nostalgic vibe of fantastical wonder that just soothes the soul, like the first time playing Skyrim. From the beauty of the mountains to the mystery hidden in the vastness of the sprawling cities, these videos just scratch that "some where other than here" itch I don't realize I have until another one of these appears in my notifications. Thank you for these.
Beautiful work Leo! I stop whatever I'm doing whenever I see that you've uploaded a new video. You always take me right back to when I first explored Skyrim. Keep up the amazing work mate!
Thank you!
Hey Lion I just wanted to say how much this meant to me as someone who grew up with Skyrim seeing it in a way the lore described the size of the cities. I really appreciate everything you did to make these that was able to make me feel like the kid who first played Skyrim again. I was wondering though if you were ever going to do raven rock or other elder scrolls cities?
Imagine this size of Skyrim as an open world MMO without handholding features.
Finally, a project that does Windhelm justice!
01:53 True Beauty of this city comes when you have snow floor mod and cloudless sky and lights from the houses decorating city. Fantastic job!
This is wild! I appreciate your effort, man!!!
Thanks!
Love the ambience! Never thought I'd say that Windhelm genuinely looks like a peaceful, fun place to live.
Thanks!
Man, PLEASE do some cities from Morrowind next! I'd LOVE to see a Balmora scaled to house something like 60k people, or a Vivec scaled to house like 100k with canton after canton out across the lagoon, with floating markets, boat traffic, slum sprawl along the shoreline, warfs, and above it the otherworldly threat of Baar Dau. Or Ald'ruhn, rising across ashen terraces up along the side of the volcanic ridges, semi-circles of organically-shaped adobe houses clinging grouping together after allegiances and clannish identity, and the gigantic shell of Skar looming over the upper terraces.
The only channel where I watch the video right when it comes out. So sick.
Every time I see one of these videos, for the moment, it makes me a little happier. I smile, sit back and enjoy.
I don’t usually comment, but I gotta say, these videos are truly amazing. The energy and atmosphere you bring to each city is incredible. You're not just building a big city in Unreal Engine, you're capturing the spirit of living there, and you nail it every time. Your Solitude video was incredible too. This is the Skyrim we all dreamed of. Keep it up mate, you got some real talent.
Thank you so much!
This is my favourite one yet, hands down.
Cheers!
Love these! Wish we can get the Forgotten Vale, Ancestor Glade, and parts of Solstheim!! I would ESPECIALLY love Solstheim!!!
Dude! How did I miss this? I'm two days late. I just got a 4K OLED TV and this video looks AMAZING on it! Somehow your videos just got better for me! Haha! I didn't think that would be possible.
Noone can make windhelm beautifull...
Leo Torres: Hold my MEAD
Friend, this is an extraordinary work, I don't know how you did it but your talent is wonderful
Thank you so much!
This is amazing. I always thought that if Skyrim or TES games overall were brought in real life, then they would be 5 times or 50 times bigger in almost every scale possible. Hell Atmora is believed to be the size of all of main continent.
Now imagine Solitude, the city on a giant rock arch
The Skyrim Tourism Board has been putting out some incredible ads recently. Gotta check the ticket prices.
Babe wake up, new True Size of Skyrim just dropped.
Seriously tho this is goated af, never thought of Windhelm like this but it makes so much more sense the more I think about it.
You seriously are doing what I've always wanted to do! Awesome work!
Cheers!
Love it! I was expecting to see Azuras's statue far way mas you will probably take care of this in the future. Thank you!
I’m in tears, this is beautiful. Thank you.
Thank you!
crazy how much just doubling the amount of bits per address enabled us to do
Something about these videos just transports me to a place I want to be. Thank you.
Amazing work as per usual. Thank you very much for doing with this project.
Thanks!
This is exactly what I see in my head when I play Skyrim. Well done!!!
Amazing work!
Thank you!
this is what legendary fishing rod edition skyrim shouldve tried to look like
The music makes it feel like a pleasant seaside retreat and not a cold ancient Nordic kingdom at war lmao, but beautiful animation!
See I think it's like a warm hug, amongst the frigid climate and dark timbers, it's giving me a feeling of huddling round a single heat source in candlehearth hall.
Man... those videos are awesome (like in my mind when i was younger). Ty for it
Cheers!
Please in the future, make a True Size of Karnaca and Duwnall, two fantastic cities of Dishonored
Dishonored art and level design was peak of the gaming as art
Really thought I'd see a dragon burning it at the end heheh! Epic, well done!
Windhelm - The Best City in Skyrim ❤
I LOVE watching these and dream of a playable version of Skyrim on this scale. But let's be real, even top of the line PC would catch fire trying to render that (right?). Still, absolutely amazing work and seeing these legit make my day each time.
Beautiful work, as always.
Thank you so much!
I would give anything for skyrim on such a grand scale. Every city and town an actual city or town. A girl can dream.
This is one of the best art projects I have ever had the pleasure of seeing and I'm sad it's reached its end.
Hope you keep doing this amazing job on other cities from Tamriel, especially from Morrowind. Imagine Vicec City or Sadrith Mora in the UE, with all those alien landscape, the Red Mountain, giant fungi, ziggurat like cantons built above the sea... Damn, even Balmora, the "stone forest", would be amazing!
As a final entry into this portfolio you should do a true scale of "the throat of the world".
When we were little, our imagination was big. Now, it's the other way around :)
Thank you for the opportunity to be little again
Well deserved of a like 👍
Imagine trying to play skyrim had the map been this massive and fully accessible. Insane.
This was amazing, well done!
Thank you! Cheers!
that's amazing work! my only gripe with most of these videos is the light lack of variation in height and elevation of the buildings and terrain. Here, most of the city is also segmented in very straight and perpendicular walls, which, while close enough to the actual windhelm's layout, doesn't do justice to how gritty the city looks: beautiful, but made of rough stones blocks, and with an elevated rich district and a poor district sloping towards the docks. Here, it all looks kinda uniform and level.
A bit of sculpting of the terrain and a more buildings at off angles could do a wonder in making it all look not only pretty and stunning in scale, but also more organic in layout.
Could you imagine them actually pulling off each city like this? How many quests and characters there would be.
Wow man. Stunning. Absolutely stunning and beautiful. Thank you for that. I wonder in 20 years if we'll be able to actually play in something like that. If so, they should use what you made here to be the template. :)
Really awesome work, truly! The only thing missing is the countless columns of smoke coming from cozy hearthfires :)
This is what Skyrim will look like in 2041 when they re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-release it again.
Probabily they will release the same crap with 7 people cities but now with 12k graphics
Even the music in the background feels like a warm hug in candle hearth hall
Now, imagine having to travel back & forth from The Reach, Solitude, Harkim's castle, Windhelm, all the way back to Riften just to talk to Delvin & Vex. It'd take weeks, traversing mountain ranges & lakes, but that's exactly what I had to do doing "small" jobs for the Thieve's guild. Our Dragonborn had to traverse the whole country full of bandits, necromancers, trolls, wolves, etc etc, just to steal a candlestick from some old farmer, oof. Seeing the actual size of some of these locations is pretty wild. 😂
This was beautiful and made me feel so relaxed!
I love seeing the Landmarks from the game in the new massive scale!
Ever been to Windhelm? Oldest city in Skyrim by some accounts. They say the big ole' palace there was built by Ysgramor himself!
i wanna see how big riverwood, the small small village would be...
Now, this is what I call... THE CITY OF KINGS!
I’m just thinking of how cool it’d be to battle a dragon here with destructible terrain like something in Battlefield. That’d look like something out of a movie!
Bro are you making all these cities in same project/world. It would be amazing if you are adding all these cities in the same project/world. I would love see a video about the whole skyrim like that. It will be mind boggling.
1:44 is incredible, good work man.
Cheers!
That game is 13 years old, offline single rpg, and ppl cant stop talk about it. THIS is what makes a game great. Not the releasehype
Incredible work and music.
Soo good and nostalgic omg! Hope you will do Solstheim next 😍❤️
Thank you!
Can’t wait for Elder Scrolls when Bethesda represents an entire city by having an NPC stand on a bucket.
We got Skyrim Unreal Engine 5 before Elder Scrolls 6. Incredible
this is the city I've been waiting for. all hail King Ulfric
Imagine having to look for the killer in this massive city for the Blood on the Ice quest. 😱
The day they offer skyrim in a true scale sizing is the day i will once again buy the game.
This is ... i have no words ... Just feeling 🥺