User blog comment:Redexx/Skyrim's many faults and upsides. **My take**/@comment-1692583-20121228042647/@comment-1840877-20121228161655

Space compression. The cities and population have to cut down for tecxhnical reasons. Skyrim isn't the only TES game to do that. To take your Morrowind and Oblivion examples: all the major cities in Morrowind were only about a hundred metres away from each other, and the Imperial City in Oblivion was about the size of a large car park.