Did you wonder what actual Cantori Diamond casino looks downstairs, bellow the Crow's base? Took flycam down there and it's completely pitch black, you cant see anything, but than I added spot lights and saw it's actually HUGE nice space with tables, big hallway and tones of npc's hanging out down there in the dark lmao 👀 why did they put all those npc's and space down there only for it never to be seen?!?!? they must've had plans to show it as some point! 😁
This is directly bellow that little bridge at the entrance of Crow's hideout as you're walking towards Teia and Viago.
i am so in love with the city they designed but dont actually let us see.
so the city is essentially a bowl, built up both sides of the valley around river drakon. as in it's not just the fort and the palace that are higher than the rest of the city but it curves back up again across the river. all of ferelden's coast really is mountain, no wonder its so hard for orlais to invade.
here's the market district. its just the market itself and the distant ring of the city's edges at the highest points.
i understand Why they made the walls so tall, to save on rendering, but i wish we could see ANY of this its SO cool. I love how dense and alive this city looks. every other place we see is so sparse and empty
here is a close up on some of the prop filler buildings. while every human building we see up close in game is covered in crumbling debris that would make living in them almost impossible (why bioware. ancient ruins weren't ancient AT THE TIME) these look like functional medieval towers AND what i want to call tudor-ish town homes, mansions and apartments. love the mix side by side, shows a functioning but ancient city
here's fort drakon and its tiered approach. MUCH more realistic than the concept art's thousand meter mesa or whatever the hell they drew.
i'll be kind and put all the panoramas under a read more
as you play through the battle of denerim and move closer and closer to drakon sometimes they delete the mountain, so you can see the tower silhouette better. if you get flycam i suggest exploring from the alienage map because every denerim map has just the location and that distant outer ring of stuff. but because the alienage has an open side for the bridge its got a lot more filler in between.
the view out and around the alienage bridge
now i'll attempt to convey the full panorama, again from the alienage. this city is SO much bigger than the map they gave us im gnawing at the bars of my cage. look at it!
hopefully those are in order lol. i'm running out of pictures so i will save analysis of the river for a second post, and instead leave you with ferelden's ridiculously tiny palace and the palace district up to fort drakon
top: the palace (?) itself on its tiers (its so small??). bottom left: the view over the front side wall. bottom right: the view over the back gate up to drakon. there's so much city between the palace and fort, wow
