Skyrim Cities Are a Nightmare for Pedestrians — Scientist Mathematically Proved the Problem in the Construction of Bethesda's Game World
Walking is possible, but the layout of the cities is not very convenient.
Recently, Henry decided to consider The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from a mathematical point of view.
The graduate student presented an analysis of "pedestrian accessibility" in Skyrim — it turned out that for pedestrians, the local cities are a real nightmare.
He conducted a number of calculations, for example, calculated the "Beta Index", which measures the level of connectivity in a graph (road network). An index of 1.4 is usually considered the minimum requirement for a walkable city.
The table shows the data (Nodes / Edges of the graph, Beta index and average values of the path detour coefficient) for the cities: Solitude, Windhelm, Riften, Whiterun, Markarth.
In the real world, pedestrian-oriented cities usually have average path detour coefficient (avg. circuity) values of 1.2 and below — in TES V Skyrim, many cities have a significantly higher indicator:
In Skyrim, the city closest to the [1.2] indicator is Solitude with an average of 1.283. This makes sense, given that most of Solitude is connected by two straight paths intersecting in the center of the city. The remaining cities have values of 1.4 or higher, which makes them worse than some suburbs in Texas that are oriented towards motorists.
Henry concluded that, in general, most of the cities in Skyrim are "walkable", however:
[...] they do not provide direct and efficient routes between residential areas and infrastructure facilities. I believe that the clear winner is Solitude, as it has a good average Beta index and a much lower path detour coefficient value. It seems that the Imperial Legion knows how to plan cities better than the Stormcloaks (or at least chooses the best location for their headquarters).
