He's probably referring to this: http://newfallout.com/fallout-4-map-reveal/

It's all supposition, as far as I can tell.

True, he might be.

How can something be twice as large as Skyrim, but still be the same size as Skyrim? I'm not understand the scale thing.

Huh, Skyrim felt a lot bigger than New Vegas or the Capital Wasteland...just goes to show that Bethesda's getting better at designing worlds that feel large. Either way, I trust them with Fallout 4.

Sure.

Sixteen square miles is a 4 by 4 mile grid but using 1/3 scale you could fit a 12 by 12 mile grid map of the real world on to it by moving every thing closer together.

So they would take 12 times 12 or 144 square miles of the Greater Boston area and they shrink it to 1/3 size and fit it on Fallout 4's 16 square mile map.

If Fenway Park is 4 miles away from MIT then on the Fallout map it would be 1/3 of 4 miles or only 1.33 miles away in game.

This lets them include a lot of the more interesting landmarks in the Greater Boston area.

If you checked the area between them, you might find some building missing and size of the building, parks and parking lots would be reduced in size so that it looks right.

So Fenway Park might only be half as large as in real life.

For the MIT campus, they could reduce the size of some of the building and grounds and or leave a few of the lesser buildings out to reduce the overall size of the campus.

A subdivision might only have 18 houses instead of 40.

I see. Thank you for the reply. So scale determines the real life location to the game's location. In this case, if it were true, it'd be more dense and packed than any other Fallout game.

You are welcomed.

Don't forget that with the Vertibird and jumppack, there will be even more areas to explore.

Areas that we could have never reached in F3 or FONV.

I'm not understanding why this is remarkable. We had smaller scales in Fallout 3 and New Vegas too. The distance between the Pentagon and the Washington Memorial is much larger than the distance between the Citadel and the Washington Memorial in Fallout 3. The distance between Primm and Las Vegas is much larger than the distance between Primm and New Vegas. How does "smaller scale" by itself mean that Fallout 4's playable area will be larger than the playable areas in Fallout 3 or New Vegas?

Say you have a room that is 10 feet by 10 feet, and everything in it has a scale of 1. This would mean that you could fit 10 feet by 10 feet worth of stuff in said room.

Now, lower the scale from 1 to .5. The room is still 10 X 10, but since the scale is half of the first example, you can fit 20 feet by 20 feet worth of scaled items in the room.

Basically, treat Fo3 and NV has being the first example, and Fo4 as the second. You can have the same map size, but scale everything smaller, and thus fit more in the actual map size. Since everything, including you, is scaled, it doesn't appear smaller, it actually ends up being twice as large despite being the same size.

So in the end, what does scale have to do with anything if it's all virtual? It's not a real life situation of Honey I Shrunk The Kids. Game worldspace is irrelevant in this regard. If the scale is half of what is in Skyrim, wouldn't it just be twice as large as Skyrim? I can only see scale mattering if it affects development and what you can do with generating the terrain. If everything looks natural and things don't look out of place, what makes a difference?

Scale matters in how dense the landscape is.

It also allows more of Boston to be in Fallout 4.

Instead of only putting in 16 square miles of Boston, you can put in any where from 64 miles to 144 miles of Boston depending on if you are using half scale or one third scale.

You get to make things denser and include more landmarks.

By scaling down you reduced the distant between things.

So at half scale the Lone Survivor will cover distance twice as fast.

Something that is 4 miles away in the real world would be only 2 miles away on the Fallout map if the Lone Survivor walked the distance.

The people and creatures don't scale.

The building and the like are made smaller or reduced in number to fit in to the landscape but they are still scaled to normal human.

A subdivision might have 16 houses instead of 40.

The houses might be a little smaller than normal but the doors, windows, ceiling heights are all scaled to a normal human size.

The world is more crowded, but geographically the walking distance from corner to corner would be the same. Yes?

Size is unimportant, it's the composition that matters. And that's clearly a very subjective thing since some people like the very compressed type of map where points of interest are few steps apart, as seen in F3, while some people prefer a more...vast landscapes, as seen in Just Cause.

Don't mean to change the subject, but is anyone else eagerly waiting another in-depth map anolysis by the Pre-War Hub or some other Fallout fan group?

The work they did for the reveal trailer was awesome (albeit very wrong), and now that we have lots of information (e.g. Concord, wide shot of Boston showing Fenway Park in relation to what looks like MIT, highway shots, and a dozen other locations), I can't wait to see what people come up with.

I'm not quite understanding the effect of scale on world Size, from a gameplay standpoint. Scale factors into the size of the world. It's not abstract, it has a tangible effect. So if the world is the same size as skyrim, scale doesn't change anything. The scale could be 1:1, if the world is the same size then it's reflected in the scale.

Let's say skyrim is 16 square miles. If you changed the scale of skyrim down to 0.9, then you'd have a bigger world. But if you start at a scale of 0.9 your 16 square mile world would still be the same relative size, but compared to skyrim, about 15.8 square miles.

It's called relativity. Scale means nothing in terms of actual playable area.

as i understood it the map size id about the same size as skyrim but without all the mountains and steep peaks , and since they took up something like a 1/3 of the map we are going to endf up with a larger playing area , so i take it it will take you something like 20 to 30 minutes to run from one corner of the map to the opposite corner

Sure I posted that myself the other day. With mountains gone and more buildings to go in (confirmed) we will have more places to go.

But if we take Todd literally when he said the map is the same size as skyrim, scale doesn't change that. It's all relative.

Now if he said the map is the same size but we've scaled everything down, then yes the world is bigger, but he never said that.

Edit

And to be clear I'm fine with the map being the same size. It was plenty big enough, and Fallout will have lots more content so will feel more full, despite the wasteland.

ok im trying to find back that comparison map someone did of Fallout 3 DC

ok found it! WEEEEEEEE~!~

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?t=h&ll=38.931639,-77.121277&ie=UTF8&msa=0&spn=0.147689,0.265045&z=12&hl=en&mid=zrqFMFE4B32A.kKyVFFvA74gU

Note that some locations are aproximate, for example MEGATON is a best guesstimate but do notice the location of a Watertower near by ...

That map is hilariously wrong

This map is far more accurate.

http://i.imgur.com/SFPzfPs.png

In all reality, map size doesn't make a lot of difference. It's what you put in the map and how you landscape it that makes it feel big or small. Witcher 3 bragged a big map.. but it was all very samey landscapes which didn't make it feel that big. I only remember sensing how big the map was during extremely boring boat excursions to collect all that crud in the water. (that's called.. too much nothing.) However, you take something like Morrowind or Gothic that had fairly small maps by todays standards..The way the landscape is set up and the way the game leads you around those landscapes makes those maps feel amazingly huge.

I bet it will be bigger in volume and density ..skyrim really expounded on oblivion I'd expect fo4 to continue the trend...nomsayin

Just as a point of reference for everyone who is talking about scale: the linear distance between the two confirmed towns we have so far (Boston and Concord) in real life is a little over 16 miles. Assuming the game zone is sixteen square miles, the developers must be working on a minimum of a 1:4 scale, and honestly that number is probably considerably higher (as there is little chance Concord and the State House are on opposite sides of the map).

Excellent information. Hopefully were a little closer now to figuring out the overall map area. I wonder if there is anything else in the footage that we can tie up to real world locations, maybe stuff that's been overlooked.

Remember that the scale don't is the same on the whole map... It wasn't in FO4 either. Washington DC was less scalled then the wasteland around it etc.

It does mean a little in far as major land marks being included. As pointed out above, it would be hard to included both Concord and the Capital Building if a 1 to 1 scale was used.

So a smaller scale mean more interesting sites can be included.

It also means that they can cut out a lot of the boring stuff.

Does it really matter if a subdivision has 15 houses in Fallout 4 instead of 45 houses in the real world?

Or if a farm has just 40 acres of fields instead of 200 in the real world?

Or if a factory has parking for 30 cars instead of 120 in the real world?

Or the factory is half the size in Fallout 4 than in the real world?

When you are in the game, the subdivision will still be a subdivision even with only 15 houses.

So they can make things more dense by reducing their size a little and moving things closer together.

And since Boston is not a desert or a vast wilderness, I bet they put in lots of things for the Lone Survivor to find.

Scaling -- Cut Out The Middle Man?