Well that's very disappointing. You'd think after 5 years and a new engine we would have a bigger game world!

Whatever, I'll still buy it. But this definitely makes my heart sink a little bit, I was really hoping the world would be substantially bigger than Oblivion.

Where did you get this info?

I don't care if the game world isn't bigger. As long as it's vibrant and interesting I'll be happy.

there are a few places where this info can be found. (I found one, but cant remember the URL)
I'm practically okay with it, because Bethesda is gonna pack all of the province until it's like a sardine can.

Know how you feel, :sadvaultboy: , I guess there are just basic memory limitations on the consoles that define the world size. However, if they slow down the walking speed and take out fast travel and put in a Morrowind style travel network then it will feel much larger and more immersive you won't even notice... eh? What did they do? .... oh... ok, scratch that. :sadvaultboy:

Since Skyrim will have a very heavy mountain region like Morrowind, the game world will feel much bigger, and with big mountains comes big caverns and underground paths beneath the mountain and so on. And Bethesda still have 10 months left of development, so much can still be added into the game world.

Which isn't good. I'd like to walk for a few mins without coming across 2 ruins and a cave

With Skyrim I was hoping there would be a lot of huge white snowy planes with basically nothing on them, just snow as far as the eye can stretch and the occasional tree or boulder, and mountains so high that they dwarf the Oblivion "mountains", but we can′t all have what we want, Bethesda needs to make sells and to do that they need to target a more mainstream audience, not easy to offer quality to the fan-base when there is a credit crunch and the fan-base is smaller than the mainstream audience, hard enough on the company as it is.

Why can't they make it like we all want: Daggerfall with Crysis graphics and physics

Remember that they are limited to the size of one DVD disk... They already stated that they have no interest in multiple disks. So until the next gen systems come out with Blu-ray support or something better, I think they are rather limited on the size of their games.

I'm fine with an oblivion sized world, so long as the detail is greater. One good thing is that there are supposed to be considerably fewer dungeons (130-150 is what I keep hearing) than in oblivion (more than 200), so the density will go down, which will hopefully allow the detail level to rise.

The world may be as large as Oblivion's on paper, but I can bet it will feel larger because of the environment. Tall mountains mean a lot of bridges, stairs, passageways, maybe the snow and rocky slopes will slow the character's moving a bit... and then there is the vertical development dimension, pretty obvious in the released screenshot.
Anyways, I think reducing the character running speed would fit well the harsher climate and environment. In Oblivion running is too fast imo. Maybe that's what the new sprint feature is about, to compensate speed reduction and determine you to use wisely this important resource.

Has anyone got a link to the original source? I need to see it for myself before feeding myself to the cliff racers :violin:

Morrowind, a smaller world, yet felt gigantic.

Fallout 3, a little bit smaller than Oblivion's, yet it was full of stuff and felt very big.

Skyrim should give the same feeling. The problem with Oblivion's world is that it was uninteresting and too bland.

There was a lot of dead space in Oblivion where you could walk for a few minutes and not notice a difference in scenery or see anything unique/ exceptional. Hopefully Skyrim will be different.

For all the complaining about this I don't see any problem. I like oblivions size it still gives the player plenty to do. Also if you want to increase the size play a mod on PC. As far as people being disappointed that they put fast travel in the game. Just play without it if you really hate that. Don't force other people to walk everywhere and get lost trying to find the quests. Honestly people complain just to complain when they haven't even seen the game and all the info about the game has been really good so far.

20 hour main quest is the only thing I am worried about but I usually play the side quests more anyway... So I am more wondering how long those are.

I forgot where it said that but I think it said on http://www.gameinformer.com/p/esv.aspx. And on http://images.uesp.net//c/c3/TamrielMap.jpg Skyrim is alot smaller than Cyrodil, so I'm fine with it.

We're not... We just want to be able to toggle fast travel and have Morrowind style travel services(Which should be there regardless of travel, I mean what country doesn't have any form of travel services available?)

I really don't get all the complaining. No one loses anything! You get a more immersive world, we get a more immersive world and an alternative for fast travel.
You. Will. Still. Be. Able. To. Fast. Travel.
That is all.

Info came from the a Dutch Magazine no? and I'd love to know about all these things you could do in Oblivion besides Quests

I feel like this too - the idea of having a massive expanse of bland landmass just for the sake of being able to say "bigger than Oblivion!" doesn't appeal to me. I'd rather it be small but perfectly formed, so to speak.

While I would love a game world as big as Daggerfall, I'm realistic.

Really, the size of the Oblivion game world was fine and as long as it's close to that size I'm OK with it. It has to do more with populating the game world than being able to make the game world bigger. I'm sure the dev team could make a world the size of Daggerfall, but it would take forever to create and populate it with enough uniqeness to make it look good.

heard of red dead redemption or just cause 2 ? they are on 360, too. and much much bigger game worlds than oblivion. if skyrim is confirmed to be as big as oblivion, it's a real shame and very disrespectull to bethesda customers.

I thought Oblivion was too big for it's content...

Oblivion map was bigger than Morrowind one.
The problem it has was the immense lack of relief. Everything was so damn flat it was boring and you could almost see the end of the world from the farthest side.
As I can see from the screen shots, Skyrim map is going to be one hell of a tortured one, with a lot of hills, mountains, cliffs, valleys, cracks and more.
That's exactly what I want.

Oblivions felt bland because the enviroment was boring and pretty much hills with loose forest covering the majority of the land. I think it waas way way way too dense, I mean often you could stand at one ruin and see the next one really clearly, which shouldn't happen