Everything is hand-placed in Skyrim as opposed to Oblivion where most of the land was generated.

Inflated world (in between TES4 and TES2): With current technology.

Small planet (TES2*10 size):

If they can develop a passable fractal landscape generator that would fill it with intelligent detail, that would seem natural, for the type of environment.

If they can add semi-random wild life to the areas, and add semi-random events that would fit in it, which could lead to semi-random quests that could lead to even more detailed semi-hand designed and more significant quests.

If they can create intelligent engine to create semi-random dungeons, filled with intelligently chosen content, and events, and quests.

And on the top of that the game developers could tweak and change any area that would need the changes and manually change any detail, in the landscape, dungeons, population, events, and quests, and over that, add cities and settlings in the proper places, and could develop long and detailed quest-lines in the game over that foundation.

Yes, I would like that.

I still don't get why Fast Travel beyond Morrowind-Type Transportation (Skyrim's Carriage Transport from every city) is being included. This game world just isn't big enough to warrant it, especially since horses are available.

A 4 x 4 mile game world is not what I would consider to be "huge." Skyrim is going to be pretty much the exact size of Oblivion. Despite the hype that the mountains are going to make it feel larger than Oblivion, I'm concerned that it is going to feel small by today's standards.

One problem is that Skyrim has 8 different regions . . . so each region is going to average only 2 square miles . . . 2 square miles of tundra is hardly a "huge area." So, on the average, each region will only be 1.4 miles North to South and 1.4 miles East to West. It isn't going take more than a few minutes to run across each region . . . and even less on horseback (assuming that horses will run faster than my character this time).

this:" I checked in with Bethesda to do a little math. Here's how it breaks down, but keep in mind these numbers are approximations, not exact calculations:
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion -- 16 square miles
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind -- 6 square miles
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall -- 62 square miles"


from here: http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/697303/elder-scrolls-ii-daggerfalls-map-is-massive-hows-it-compare-to-oblivion/#ixzz1SG5C8FJk

That too is wrong. Daggerfall currently holds the record as the largest game world ever made and it IS over 60k sq miles. Why don't you try walking from one end to the other? It'll only take you a few weeks.

http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/large-video-game-worlds2.jpg

If Tes2 is twice the surface area of Great Britain, that *1000 would not be bigger than the Earth.

I think (though it's really hard to say without experiencing it before) that a 100sqm world would probably be my ideal game, though to make this in the same detail they currently do with 16sqm worlds, they would probably need to at least double their team (I say double and nor quadruple or higher because a large part of building the game is the mechanics, making the world twice as big would not require twice the effort).

It's not twice the size though. It's only 3/4 the size of GB. The total surface area of the Earth is approx 198 million sq miles. 1000* the size of TES 2 = >63 million sq miles. So yes, you are correct.

For a test, I just took one of my characters and timed a run from the front gate of Chorrol to the front gate of the Imperial City. The trip took 4.5 minutes. During the trip, nothing happened. All I did was wait for my character to arrive at the Imperial City; I just sat there pressing Shift-W and nudging my mouse and waiting. It was exactly like sitting through a 4.5-minute loading screen, except even more tedious, for the only way past the screen was to continually hold down keys and move the mouse. How long should a loading screen last before the size of the world warrants Bethesda giving us a way to bypass the loading screen? As I see it, if Bethesda has a way to let me skip a loading screen, particularly a gratuitous loading screen or, even worse, one that requires prolonged input from the player to extinguish it, then I want it. I want to be doing things that interest me, not waiting to do things that interest me.

If you made that same trip with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul mod loaded (assuming that you are playing on a PC), your journey would have been a LOT more interesting. And I'm guessing that this was not in a brand new game, but after you had spend some time killing off the creatures (this is why these games need to also have respawning).

Any map size needs to have enough locations of interest and encounters to keep the journey through the game world interesting. So a larger game world needs to have these things scaled up to it's increased map size. That's a given.

But you don't need to be attacked around every bend in the road either. Sometimes I just want to enjoy the scenery.

I think a lot of TES fans don't actually like open world games... they hate walking around and just want to get straight to where the action is. If Bethesda restricted fast-travelling to major cities, and made the game-world bigger (which would result in a better open world game) these people would probably storm off in a huff. You have to remember they're catering to casual audiences more and more. Hence the excessive fast-travelling, quest markers, high-detail map, and various other forms of hand-holding.


The funny thing is, people keep asking for the ability to fly on dragons, which would make the gameworld feel even smaller. Imagine how quickly you could get from one end of the map to the other on the back of a dragon.

Why have all that space if it is just bland randomly generated land that you are going to fast travel over? What purpose does that serve?

How exactly a Tundra needs to be handcrafted? Such a place could have been easily random-generated, with some details added (a river, for example). I really like the equivalent size of an island from World of Warcraft, and most regions are NOT bland. TES should aim to have that kind of experience WoW gave: Oh, how big!

Lots of "empty" wilderness would also give modders and the devs DLC lots of locations to chose from, rather than making entirely new islands or a portal to another plane. ^^

i think oblivion had the map size about right a little bigger couldnt hurt though.

Yeah, you're probably right. But I can still dream of what Skyrim might have been.


I thought about the speed that the dragons fly too (but didn't consider the riding part). In Oblivion I could pretty much view the entire game world from a mountain top, and Skyrim's map is the same size. Skyrim only has 16 square miles, and is based on the TES lore map, where it measures roughly 250 * 600 miles (150,000 square miles). The size ratio of lore map to game world map ends up around 1000:1; so, the game world is going to be approximately 2.5 miles wide (North to South) and 6 miles long (East to West). It won't take long at all for a flying dragon to cross 6 miles.

well even the earth itself was kind of random generated and look what we got
the question is just how its done

I voted Pocket, but only because i think if they made the work larger they would have to sacrifice other aspects of the game, and i would rather have a smaller more detialed world filled with more things to do ----- HOWEVER---- when the next game comes out which i expect will be another 5 years or so , we should be on the next gen of consoles, i expect a much bigger world, nothing like Daggerfall but i think it should be at least 3 x the area of Oblivion

I'm not too fussed on the size of the world, just as long as it feels right. Ok, it is cool to have a huge world, but what is the point in having a huge world if there are just huge gaps of empty space? I would rather it be just the right size, with everything around every corner so detail and never-ending exploring can occur during game play. Quantity is important but with TES, quality makes the game too.

Actually, I'm pretty sure most fans of TES like open world games, given that they're fans of some of the only ones left. And it's not that they are catering to "casual audiences." It's that they're catering to any sort of audience beyond their core base. A lot of people who picked up Morrowind would probably get frustrated when they could run slowly for about a minute before getting tired, or when you could swing a sword at a rat 10 times and not hit it. They're making the game more accessible, but that's far from the same thing as "casual" or "simplified." Accessible has nothing to do with depth, just with it being presented in a package that's easier for people to get their heads around.

Also, there's nothing casual about not wanting to walk for 2+ hours to a dungeon and 2+ hours back for a quest.

Maybe a larger game world without bandits and hostile wildlife around every corner would actually make having a horse something more than just an annoyance...


Also, how big was Nehrim's world? I distinctly recall it being a bit larger than Oblivion...and I only ever saw about half of it, IIRC.

Those kinds of people should not play TES games at all in my opinion. They clearly don't understand what an open-world RPG should be about and just want a casual sandbox action-adventure experience. The whole point of an RPG is that stats determine your character's ability, not the player's own skill. Your character starts off fairly weak, and improves. The player is free to decide whether they want to focus on improving certain aspects like running speed or the chances of hitting a target.

Morrowind was not a difficult game for people to get their heads around. A lot of current TES fans played it when they were 12-14, and they had no problems understanding it. As long as the player has some capacity to enjoy open-world RPGs, it really isn't difficult to get into. Oblivion was even easier to get into and is arguably one of the most mainstream RPGs of all time, so the whole accessibility thing is a load of crap. Either someone at Bethesda is completely delusional about how complex their games are and how difficult they are to get into, or they're obviously trying to appeal to a far bigger and much more casual audience outside of the RPG or open-world RPG subgenre.


...how did we get from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours? That's a pretty big leap. I was thinking of something more along the lines of 20 minutes instead of 2 minutes...

I dont know if any of you tried the MERP mod, the land is 8 times bigger then oblivion, parts of it feels bland wile other parts are stunning when you get to a stunning area you feel a jaw dropping experience, this land doesn't have any wiled life or enemies just plain scenery. if all you see is a jaw dropping areas their beauty will diminish after a while.
In my opinion if you want to enhance the beauty of an area you need something to compare it to something that is a bit less interesting or special, this is how nature look like.
If beth will be able to create semi generated areas that will inflate the world in a factor of 2, players will not need to run for hours from one point to another it will just double the time (8 min instead of 4), horses will be a bit more viable.
I never use a horse in oblivion, it made the world feel too small. i tried to do everything that i can to let the world feel bigger used a mod that removed athletics bonus and my speed was only 63.

I would want a 'small planet', but I know that's not gonna happen without a massive loss of detail.

Bigger than Arena.

/thread