This is so laughable.

Just talking main world space here.

Skyrim's Tamriel world space has 4326 playable cells

Fallout 3's Wasteland world space has 2500 playable cells

Skyrim and FO3 have the exact same cell size but Skyrim has nearly 2x the playable cells in that main world space as FO3 does.

How can they possibly be the exact same size?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2251/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/1563/?

Blackreach, for one thing.

I imagine you will still need to load it for caves and large "dungeon" type buildings, since the former will technically have to be in the ground, which is such a pain in the neck to do, and is much easier if it has its own cell.

Same with the dungeon buildings, you don't want to trigger a quest just because you walked past the outer wall where there was an endgame boss on the other side.

I assume that the "no load doors" will primarily be for residential houses in towns and some of the simpler ruins. It would just be such a problem for performance if every dungeon was open-world. And to be honest, the four second loading screens aren't that bad. I've seen Morrowind and Oblivion on the Xbox with load times measured in minutes.

i say it also depends if BGS is useing the middleware UMBRA if they are it would improve the real-time rendering.

witcher 3 wild hunt would come apart without that tech imho and cd project red use custom in house engine like BGS.

im not game dev i just seen things like umbra ,speedtree and autodesk scaleform etc etc real help out game devs and make there games that much better.

Skyrim really isn't all that big, nor was Fallout 3 nor New Vegas nor Oblivion nor Morrowind.

The only reason those worlds "feel big" is because they're so densely packed with distractions, something which I don't like as it makes the gameworld feel like a cartoonish themepark.

So Fallout 4 is the same size as Skyrim? Yuck...

That means scaled down settlements and that you can't walk 100 meters without stumbling into yet another dungeon. Yay...

I really hoped they'd figure it out by this time that the gameworlds need to be spaced out more. It should be twice if not thrice the size of Skyrim, dungeons should have a minimum distance of 300 meters from one another and settlements should 'feel big', like there are actually a ton of people making a living there rather than 2 dozen people as we've seen before.

I'm disappointed, yet again, by Fallout 4.

so basically you more empty space? true what they say can't please everyone.

also i wouldn't mind what your suggesting, but yeah people that don't game as much as i do, this idea would huge turn off just saying.

I'm hoping they decided to divide the wasteland up into more distinct regions. Their Elder Scrolls game worlds have always been broken up into their own areas (think of the 9 Holds in Skyrim), and it worked great, but Fallout 3 really only had the wasteland and downtown DC.

I'm fairly certain that most mid-to-large interiors like vaults and caves will still be loaded in their own cells, though, but it's promising that the urban area won't be broken up like downtown DC. Maybe the major settlements will be open, then, too, which hasn't happened since Morrowind. I wouldn't count on DLC locations being part of the contiguous world map, though.

And as for NPC populations, we've got to remember that Bethesda's NPCs are far more complex than the army of generic mooks other games use to create crowds; each NPC has their own stats, inventory, and complex AI. Hopefully they'll do like Skyrim and give each towns-person their own identity and character; Nazeem may seem like a worthless and static character, but he's still got more going on than generic Megaton Settlers or Gamblers.

Skyrim was just as big an area underground in the cave systems as it was above ground so if he says it's about the size of skyrim then it will be a huge map to explore.

To be honest I'd like to have more empty space, or at least space with randomised things in them. Keep the settlements and Boston the same scale they are now, and keep the points of interest that they handcraft, and just add lots of random wastes with leveled enemies and ruined villages in the space.

It would give the world more scale for when you do want to walk, and allows for a lots of sites for modders to use in what would be a cramped world (as well as for ingame settlement building).

Of course, that sort of world would need fast travel or vehicles to prevent people having to walk for three hours to reach the quest locations, but I think it's a system that would be worth trying out.

I'm on board with the more empty space position.

Here's why -

Why is a wasteland a wasteland? It should have empty spaces, and lots of them, right?

Additionally, there's the questions of environmental atmosphere. Some atmospheric moods can be fudged a bit with visuals and mood music in the background along with some ambient noises, but, trekking through a large "empty" area could build on that atmosphere, and the environment itself could pose hazards without the need for random enemy encounters. Getting caught out in the open with an approaching radioactive dust storm with no shelter in sight, could present a real danger. Same for radioactive acid rain. What if walking through a swampy area presented sink holes, quick sand, deadly choking clouds of CO2 in low lying areas?

Empty spaces could be enemies in and of themselves; enemies that can only be defeated by surviving them, and only surviving them by planning ahead and having the proper gear. You don't cross a desert without water, right?

I think big empty spaces could be quite excellent, and inexpensive on the computations needed to supply them because it's the land itself trying to kill the character passively, and through the player character's own incaution and poor planning. They be true wastelands in the respect that nothing lives there, but, PCs would have incentive to cross them for what lies beyond, and, possibly finding some loot on the bodies of other incautious travellers killed by the wasteland itself.

No, a wasteland, by definition, only needs to be uninhabitable land, not empty land.

Not necessarily "empty space", just, yknow, more space inbetween things. A bit of a forest can be just that, a bit of a forest, you might find some crafting ingredients for cooking recipes by the campfire but that's about it. It's not "empty" but at the same time it is. Besides, with a bigger gameworld we could finally have vehicles or mounts. And hell, I want less dungeons too, but I want the dungeons to be really interesting and unique, whereas in Fallout 3 and especially Skyrim a lot of dungeons felt like they just copy pasted stuff.

Bethesda's been stagnating for a long time now, doing the same thing over and over again.

Ironically, now that they are trying something new (voiced protagonist, dialogue wheel) I loathe it more than the stagnation.

Still, just because some change is for the worse (at least IMO) it doesn't mean all change is.

And Bethesda needs to step up their game when it comes to world design.

I think you may misconcstrue the meaning of "empty".

Did you read the whole post, or just pick that sentence?

I'm defining "empty" in conjunction with the term "wasteland", to mean nothing lives there. It's uninhabitable. No roaches. No scorpions. No deathclaws. It's uninhabitable. The land itself is deadly, and, this could present a whole range of different environmental geographies from desert, swamp, a Tunguska style maze of blasted and toppled forest, river and delta terrain as well as bayous, valleys, hazardous climbing with rockfall and avalanche dangers, and many more ... all plausibly uninhabitable with zero enemies, because wasteland, but the land itself is deadly.

The computations for these environments without active NPC enemies, because nothing can live there, would be cheap, and so, such environments could potentially be more expansive, and present a different deadly danger than the standard "what is it? I dunno, let's shoot it!" game play.

Ehh, it's a difference in design philosophy, not in validity. A vaster, emptier wasteland would feel more "realistic", but I like the way Bethesda's worlds feel. Where I can find something neat in every nook and cranny, and it isn't a pain in the ass to walk everywhere instead of fast-travel or use a horse/vehicle. Why does "theme park" have to be a pejorative?

Same here. I was hoping we would get a significantly larger map this time.

Hummm... Was hoping for a bigger map myself. At least it's not smaller than Skyrim anyway.

Good news about the loading.

I am aware, I was pointing out there is no real reason for that.

Why not make the land deadly and put enemies in it? There is no reason not to.

Even Lonesome Road put enemies right in the middle of a newly made nuclear blast zone.

It sounds like the idea is to have more variation in terms of enemy/creature density in order to give the world more contrast. The merits of having no enemies (or creatures) is more about gameplay preference than right/wrong for Fallout. Some think that an empty area gives an opportunity to emphasize atmosphere and tension and give the player time to contemplate the story and world; others think it is boring and a waste of time and space. I think it depends on which approach the dev is able to execute well.

It would make sense in a post-apocalyptic wasteland setting for the only viable City in a huge blasted area to be heavily populated, while the rest of the surrounding area would be more desolate.

Remember Barter Town or The Citadel from Mad Max? It would be cool for Bethesda to finally try this. I'm really hoping this is why the game looks subpar, or some other kind of epic/new feature.

I have to agree with this, in that much of the populous would end up in the same place. Or a least a few select places. Apart from Diamond City, there appears to be at least one other major city that we have been shown, and it looks huge (it's in the concept art as shown https://youtu.be/D5esyZPt5Jo?t=4m33s)

One other point. So far, we know that there is likely to be a good sized area of land to explore, and we've already seen gameplay involving vertibirds, so taking to the air in one capacity or other is pretty much a given. But what about the sea? In the concept art, we can see at least one submersible, and there is also an indication of possible water based enemies, including a giant squid. Perhaps the depths of Boston Harbor will be the new 'mountains'.

ah is see i understand your thoughts much more clear now as i said i basically agree with most of your points things need more spacing but for those folks that loathe walking(myself included) they should come with way to limit TITTMTNT(Time It Takes To Murder The Next Thing) too a minimal amount.

Looking at the whole scale and density of the map and how it may differ from previous games, one thing we have to consider is the focus on current gen consoles as opposed to previous gen. One good example of this would be Minecraft. The current gen maps on Minecraft are as much as 36 times bigger than previous gen. Now I know that Fallout 4 is not procedurally generated, but I do think that this concept still makes a difference. With the massive increase in ram in the consoles, as well as the fact that most people using a gaming PC will also more than likely have at least 8gb of ram, we have a huge increase in terms of what can be achieved within the game engine. And so I would expect to see a total area, taking into account scaling, of at least double that of previous games. The biggest difference here is that Bethesda had the sense to drop the old consoles and move on.

If this particular piece of Concept art is accurate, and hasn't been changed since it seems like the location of the Blast site Will be Somersville. Which would make sense as to why Todd said "In the Massive Ruins of DOWNTOWN Boston." The northern part will still probably be playable, just a lot harsher, and a lot less city like. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/3bc1sj/fallout_4_the_glowing_sea_details_from_the/

I am also more interested in seeing how much of the surrounding areas they include, as I like living out in the country, and making my trips into the city only when I need to.

Beth definitely needs to step up there world building game, Witcher 3's open world is excellent and I hope Fallout 4 will be too. Hearing that Boston won't be like Washington and it's mainly 1 screen and not separate zones with some exceptions is good news.

I don't think it's that, but maybe they used the memory so that more stuff can be loaded in our view at once (like what a fatter uGridsToLoad setting does for the prior games) and more things in general can be happening. Like, settlements like Megaton or Whiterun had to be loaded in a separate worldspace because of memory constraints. The amount of equipment slots was pared down from Morrowind for similar reasons. From a workflow perspective it makes more sense that they'd take advantage of the memory this way, since most people were pretty happy with Skyrim's map size.

And I can understand Howard's evasiveness on giving us a solid number for map size. It's hard to quantify, especially in terms of content. Morrowind's technically got the smallest map of any TES game, and the world there is damn great. And Oblivion's world isn't nearly as detailed as Skyrim's or Morrowind's, but it's technically the biggest.