This reminds me of when people found out that you can actually find White Gold Tower in skyrim by using console commands to get outside of the map. Everyone then said that "ermg, there's gonna be a cyrodiil dlc!!!". Nope, it's just background art or something lol

Stovahkiin wrote: »

This reminds me of when people found out that you can actually find White Gold Tower in skyrim by using console commands to get outside of the map. Everyone then said that "ermg, there's gonna be a cyrodiil dlc!!!". Nope, it's just background art or something lol

Wait what whitegold in skyrim?!

This is one of those things where it's important to remember that video games aren't like real life.

Every map actually exists inside a 3D box (called a skybox) and when you can see places which aren't part of that map what you're actually seeing is a picture drawn onto the inside edge of the box. (Think of it like a theater stage - they can hang a curtain behind with a scene of a city or a castle or mountains or whatever but it doesn't mean you could actually walk across the stage and get there.)

If the developers have done a really good job with it you won't be able to see where the real map ends and the picture begins, as you move around the image will shift to create a sense of perspective. But if you were able to get right to the edge of the box you'd just hit an invisible wall and be unable to get past it.

You often get all kinds of weird effects if you try, like the running animation will go all jagged and sometimes the image will blur, and because of the perspective trick you can't always tell that your character is just running/swimming in place, it will look like they're moving forward until you turn around to go back and realise you haven't moved. I think it's quite cool actually and I enjoy finding the edge of the map in games. But developers don't like you seeing that so they'll put things like a 2nd invisible wall (that doesn't cause the same problems) or a visible wall/mountain or slaughterfish just inside it to stop you getting to that point.

What gets really interesting is when the skybox is bigger than the map. Then it can be possible to get outside of the map and walk around, and things start to look really trippy. Here's an example (not mine):



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQBEF8_I1RE

If there's water in the map quite often you'll end up swimming around outside or under the bits you're supposed to access (including under the ground), if not you'll often be walking on a blank surface like in the image above.

Unfortunately all of this means that just because you can see a location in the game doesn't mean you can actually get there. Even if they had made a new map it would be very easy for them to stop us having access to it because they have to manually create access from one map to another. Even maps which sit next to each other are in their own, entirely separate skyboxes and the game has to be told that when you reach a certain point next the edge you need to be moved to a different map.