its prob a bigger area than skyrim, and much more densley packed, with a lot of city area, there is no doubt in my mind its a huge area, bigger area than any game they ever did, its gonna take longer to walk from corner to corner than in fallout 3 or skyrim, i think twice the size and todd howard doesn't want to really say the size because it would be a spoiler, the mountains in skyrim were very tall, if you flaten all of them out it would spread the skyrim area to double the size easily.

I hope their city is finally a city for a change, and not a dozen or so houses with 20 people. Imagine a bustling environment with a handful of skyscraqers (all floors roamable) and 30+ small buildings/houses. No less than 100 NPC's in this one city.

Might this be the reason the gfx are sub-par? I certainly wouldn't mind.

As far as population density inside urban areas, I think the technology has been demonstrated in Hitman to successfully generate and maintain crowded areas.

Here, for instance, is a Hitman video of a crowded night club.

https://youtu.be/1Fi2uD1SSck

Now, getting something like that to translate into NPCs that can be interacted with on a satisfactory level is another question, and might not be something the engine being used for FO4 is capable of handling properly.

It would, however, be nice to have several times more the population densities, at least in areas where one would expect a plausible grouping of people to crowd. Further, it'd be quite pleasant if the NPCs had a little bit more complex "life routine" and sandbox environment interaction with a scaled level of random built in. Certain characters would necessarily need be fairly static in their routines, but, some greater play in NPC transience could make for some fun.

Bounty hunting, for instance, if it's in the game, would be challenging if some of the target NPCs are actually on the run, laying low, and randomly pin-balling from wasteland camp sight, abandoned building, settlement, cave, and other places. In some ways, a bounty target could then do themselves in if they run into a nest of rad scorpions while trying to hide, or, even seek protection with a group of raiders, or some other faction.

That would be really nice, but, I doubt the engine is up to that level of sophistication.

Still, a peep can dream.

Because consoles have far more memory they can increase the cells a lot, we probably still get loading on vaults and similar large closed structures.

This is also practical if you enter manholes and similar.

They might also preload the content in the beginning of the cell like they do overland.

That would be pretty pointless for a post-apocalyptic RPG world space. It should feel like a wasteland, not a metropolis or other urban site. I can't think of any RPG, not even character- and story-driven Japanese games, that have 100 NPCs in a single area, perhaps not even in the entire game (except for BGS games having around 1000 NPCs total in the entire world even if most of them only serve for atmosphere).

Long running MMOs tend to have a large NPC population but that tends to be spread out over a large World space. AO tried to have fairly high NPC populations in there cities but ended up taking it out because most PCs trying to play the game could not handel all of that plus players.

I understand the position and feeling about a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but, rationally, in the Fallout universe, 200 years have passed since the bombs fell.

Lots of babies could plausibly have been born, grown to advlthood, had their own children, and those children as well, for about 10 generations.

On top of that, there's the non-feral ghoul population that just doesn't die.

As far as games and people density; please review the video I posted in my previous post that shows a very crowded nightclub scene in the game Hitman with perhaps 200 people in a relatively small area.

I really liked how varied Skyrim was, but some towns were a joke. The mountains were also a gimmick that made it seem like a huge place, but they just also take up precious sq mi. When it was all said and done, Skyrim was still pretty small, despite it being the best world they've created (imo).

I'm glad they've focused on verticality since then, but when it comes to these tall buildings, I want to explore many floors, many rooms, and reach the rooftops, too. In fact, make part of exploring the wasteland include higher elevated lands in Boston. You can offer a lot outside of towns.

Nobody else picked up on a lot of the buildings being open? In fallout 3 many of the buildings in the city were just statics. This time we can actually go in a lot of them.

It isn't necessarily the size of the worldspace that's important, but how much of it we can actually walk around on.

Remember that Skyrim had strict limits on number of npc in an area because of the lack of memory on PS3/360.

This is also why FO:NV strip was segmented.

They did this with Bloodmoon. We could swim to Solstheim if we wanted - which I often did. I loved knowing that Solstheim was a part of the game world up there. I hope all of their DLC-added landmassess are contiguous. That is the way it should be done in an open-world game, in my opinion.

God I loved that as well lol. Used to roleplay characters that would stare in that direction from Khuul, thinking one day we'll go there.

Yeah that's understandable. We always want more than what's given in video games. With each new generation, new hopes arise. The one's we wished for last generation will be granted, but we as gamers always take it a step further and want more. Some of us expect it, however.

I'm actually getting the vibe that it's slightly smaller than Skyrim cuz Skyrim had a lot of impassable mountains taking up space but this doesn't so the total map might be smaller but the total explorable area is more or less the same.

Scale isn't the same on every place. Look at FO3. DC has a higher scall than the wastel?and around it. There is not 'one' scale. Wasteland territory will made smaller, Boston itself will be larger etc etc

Map size is something that I have never had a problem with, other than dlc like Pitt and OA really being too small to justify a purchase when compared to SI.

But on the main game I have loved all the work by Beth and will be happy with roughly Skyrim size. Last thing I want is a really, really massive map with very little between settlements. I see myself as mostly walking everywhere so too big is no good.

Thanks OP for the article.

What looks to be a huge leap forward here is the implied seamlessness of the game world. Imagine seeing Diamond City on the horizon after a long trek through the wastelands, and then as you approach you hear audio clues as to what may be going on inside. The main door to the city opens up before you, and you walk straight in without so much of a hint of a load screen. Once inside, there would be a great deal more going on than in, say, Megaton. Lots more people, more individual animations, and a lot more places to explore. I literally can't wait to be able to do that!

in one interview he said Chunks of downtown boston will have to be loaded but once thats done you can traverse hi rise buildings without load screen at every door like skyrim /fo3/nv ie your not gonna need a load screen everytime you want enter cave or building, too me thats huge news. and its more dense map than other titles then yeah doesn't need to be bigger at all i still haven't bin everywhere in skyrim.

Still sounds very promising, do you have a link for the interview?

EDIT: it is possible that he could be referring to 'chunk loading' similar to what we see in minecraft, although I would imagine this would be much more behind-the-scenes so as not to break immersion.

I was hoping for a larger map than Skyrim. Even having to go around the mountains, Skyrim felt so small. I'd like it to take more than a few minutes to walk corner to corner; to have a world we can get lost in. In Skyrim it felt to me like if the land were flat i would be able to see Windhelm from Riften.

heres the link its about word for word what you linked in OP i find that kinda werid ....

edit i found reason why the copyed it from digitalspy lol

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/interviews/a654353/fallout-4-interview-todd-howard-talks-mods-in-game-building-and-map-size.html#~pgNLnMwydTwB5S

My Bobble Is Ready.?

Cool, will check this out

All of this actually is a bit of a disappointment considering it is said that the new consoles open so much possiblities.I was especially hoping that the majority of the buildings could be entered and not just 'a lot'. Also, Hearing that the game size is just about the size of Skyrim isn't exactly getting me excited either. Can someone pls relate F3's to Skyrim's world for me?

They're exactly the same size: 16 square "miles". The distance from Solitude to Riverwood is nearly the same as the run from Vault 101 to Fort Constantine, or would be without the obstacles. Takes about 30 minutes to cross end-to-end at a hard run.