The Architecture of Cyrodiil

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025) has been my guilty pleasure of late. Enhanced graphics and quality-of-life improvements have been the perfect excuse to travel back in time to 2006, when this ambitious — yet goofy, and since then extensively memeified — video game first saw the light of day.

Oblivion was developed during the height of the Lord of the Rings craze, which is somewhat apparent from its rather cookie-cutter high fantasy aesthetic. Surly Elder Scrolls loremasters lamented this shift in tone, especially after the terrestrial-but-extra shenanigans of the series' preceding title Morrowind (2002). Cyrodiil, the capital of the Tamrielic Empire and the setting of Oblivion, was originally conceived as a Greco-Roman inspired jungle realm with Orientalist leanings instead of the faux-medieval England that we sort of got.

Architecture is a very important part of Elder Scrolls games as lived-in (virtual) spaces and places in which to be immersed. There is a spatiality and tangibility involved in the player experience, in crafting a believable, inhabitable world and yet allowing for a certain suspension of disbelief; there is a constant tension between reaching that threshold of believability and being, at the same time, fantastical enough to warrant a leap of faith.

The more grounded interpretation that the developers ended up with in their depiction of Cyrodiil is reflected in its architectural attributes. This is also where I feel that the game's art and world design falls a tad short. Whereas Morrowind displayed, among other things, organically grown mushroom towers and buildings hollowed out of giant arthropod shells with some ancient Persian townhouses thrown into the mix, the spectrum is much narrower in Oblivion and the end result consequently more pedestrian. I shall elaborate on this further on.

As is fit for a medieval-inspired world, a lot of Oblivion's architecture closely resembles the Gothic style: vaulted ceilings, flying buttresses, pointed arches, rose and lancet windows with all-stained glass — all amply represented. There is some variety as to which regional and period-specific characteristics of real-life Gothic or otherwise medieval architecture are referenced: the chapels, for instance, are relatively stripped of exterior ornamentation, alluding to early Gothic architecture, whereas many of the townhouses, especially in the cities of Chorrol and Cheydinhal, exhibit Late Medieval and Renaissance features with their oriel windows and Tudor arches.

There is also some regional and periodical variation within Cyrodiil itself as well, which is a welcome addition: the coastal and humid Anvil and the tropical Leyawiin take some cues from Mediterranean architecture; the northern city of Bruma exudes a very Nordic aura; the numerous ruined castles throughout the Cyrodilic wilderness are more Romanesque in character and resemble something of the High Medieval period. All of this brings some continuity and cohesion (i.e. believability!) into the game's setting.

The problem, however, with the application of real-life architectural styles in Oblivion is that it doesn't fully commit to either realism or fantasy, instead occupying an awkward space in-between — a type of uncanny valley, if you will. Some of the architectural design elements are implemented in strange ways (the flying buttresses in a few of the chapel towers come to mind), or the buildings blend different time periods in ahistorical ways. Yet they are so clearly aesthetically rooted in eurocentric realism that they don't really feel like they're doing anything imaginative or innovative, either, instead coming off as eclectic McMansions. Add to that the very Romanticist, Neuschwanstein-esque additions, — such as the oddly proportioned pointy roofs in some of the castles and ramparts — and the milieu tends to feel more Disneyland than either medieval Europe or third era Tamriel.

Even more immersion-breaking than the slightly funky stylistic choices are the cityscapes themselves. An archetypal medieval city is defined by its walls; they were the standard feature of almost any city-scale settlement in the Middle Ages. All of the cities in Oblivion have walls, sure, but what is strange about them is that which is within — or rather that which isn't.

Medieval cities were absolutely filled to the brim; burgeoning population centers very quickly outgrew their limits, and denizens had to resort to much ingenuity to make do with the space given. Townhouses were built high up, several storeys tall, even on top of each other; houses were built against the city walls; some of them crept over the streets in a staggered form, every storey inching closer to the other side of the street.

This type of high-density building is present in Oblivion, but not in high-density environments. Instead of labyrinths of narrow winding streets, the cities have vast tracts of empty land within the walls, wide-open thoroughfares and huge green spaces. It wouldn't make sense to have those kind of buildings in that kind of a context — they were borne out of necessity to sustain living in cramped, walled cities. The environmental designers working on Oblivion didn't quite grasp the historical circumstances from which they took their inspiration. Looking at Leyawiin, for example, reminds me more of the 20th century concept of "towers in the park" rather than any medieval or early modern city.

Look: I still love the game to bits. But it's goofy. And some of that goofiness seems to have rubbed off on the world design, as well — you just don't always see it from all the potato faces, the stilted dialogue, or the random bouts of friendly NPCs inexplicably whacking each other to death.