According to http://www.blahtrends.com/fallout-4-interview-todd-howard-talks-mods-in-game-building-and-map-size article, the map size should be around the same size as Skyrim's map.

Of particular interest:

• High building density in city areas
• Verticality and openness of individual buildings
• No load times between areas
• No mountains in the way

Add to this what Todd said, that even he hasn't seen everything in the game.

Big enough for me...especially since it doesn't have various mountains hogging a good quarter of the map.

Mountains, a pain in the ass but not for the horses of Skyrim.

The lack of horses (or vehicles) will probably make it FEEL bigger than skyrim as well. Except maybe for the vertibird depending on how fast it flies

That honestly disappoints me.

I am more so interested in what that map size actually contains.
F3, for instance was a scaled representation of about a 25x25 mile chunk of land(could be off, but it's not too far, I don't think).

It was scaled down, though, because there was no way to add everything that would be there, if the slider went closer to actual scale.
So, how much land is this Skyrim sized map supposed to represent?

I am speculating Concord, and therefore the Minutemen National Historical Park is is game. So, we possibly have a minimum of 20x20 miles.
I suspect the represented area may not be much bigger than F3, but it will be less scaled and more detailed, making better use of the current gen hardware.

Dam, I was hoping Todd was gonna take us to the next level of map size. I'm just being greedy I guess, but only because I love my open world games & Bethesda do this so well. Having the mountains replaced with content should make this information easier to swallow

Haha, he said the mountains in the way made Skyrim smaller.

When they were hyping Skyrim they said the mountains made the world bigger, since a slope is technically more land than if it was just flat. But I guess they realise now that it doesn't work when you can't actually climb those mountains except by small paths, which is not the same as having all of a flat area to walk on.

Tamriel is roughly the size of Africa...... Skyrim would be several Texas' worth of land.

F3 was a pretty big map- Skyrim, even bigger..
But a lot of F3 had nothing in it. Which can be good, for the isolated depression mood the game as trying to convey.
But, I would be super happy with a F3 sized map that was seamless, and had a lot going on in it, structurally.
You take that same large field (which you can scan/explore by just spinning in a 360 degree circle, before moving on) and fill it with multi level buildings you can enter, alleyways, turns, bridges, dead ends. Suddenly, it isn't as easy to say you've checked the area out.
Same area, but I dare say more to explore.

Large maps without a mount can take longer.

I'm self-inflicting no fast travel in my current Fallout 3 replay - it takes patience.

This is the thinking that has me wondering, "at what scale?"
The entirety of New England is (about 80M Sq. miles) less than that of even one Texas.
If we son't factor in scale, saying the map would be the size of several Texases (since that's how big Skyrim is) would be like saying F4 is going to have a playable area roughly the same size of everything east of the Mississippi.

So what is the map for F4, which Todd is saying is about the same playable area size as Skyrim, representative of?

Skyrim is roughly 16 square miles in game, and Fo4 will be roughly 16 square miles in-game.

Scale is another question entirely.

Indeed.

Sorry, lol. I can't help but think of a map as a representation of an area, what with the scale on them and all. so when I see a thread asking about map size, that's where my head goes, because that's what a map is.
But people are rather speculating on in game playable area.

If we look at the concept art, there are a ton of different environment types that we haven't seen before, and some of the various structures look huge. Take the one that looks like a quarry with a city built into it. Or all of the skeletal remains of ships and other large-scale wreckage. And also things like the swamps and 'dead forest' areas. Then we have the 'regular' settlements like Diamond City, as well as another city that looks to be colossal in size. For all of that to fit in a way that's believable, it will not only have to have a descent amount of wasteland in between, but it will also need to be placed in a way that makes geographical sense. So we wouldn't see, for example, a built up area next to swampland.

Taking all of that into account, as well as looking at how big everything looks compared to locations in FO3 or NV, I think that they may have been a lot bolder with the scale this time round.

I've heard that it will be 1/2 or even 1/3 scale.

I bet you could put a lot more into a map of the ruins of the greater Boston area then in the wilds of Skyrim even before you get to talking about "Verticality and openness of individual buildings".

Just noticed in the same article it talks about base-building being story and quest related, which could be interesting. Also, I wonder how many sites we will actually get to build on and how far these would be spread out across the map.

Here's a link to the story:

http://www.gamepur.com/news/19355-bethesda-comments-fallout-4-vs-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-map-size-comparison.html

Here's the quote from Todd Howard about map size -

I′m ok with the same size of Skyrim.

Playable area size, please.

I keep getting my hopes up I am going to get actual map info. Which would tell us the scale the playable area represents.

Say the Map goes from concord, out to just off the coast of Boston. Lets say a 30x30 mile grid, just for conversations sake. A map the size of a 30x30 square.
If we knew this, we could use it in conjunction with playable area size (roughly that of Skyrim) in order to arrive at a decent scale

From there, we could even possibly extrapolate, roughly, which real life buildings would be in game and their density, where it might make sense to base factions and so on.

No load in the city? Nice!

For areas of the city. In other words, yes, parts of it will have loads. But parts of it will not.

Well, Todd Howard, per the quote, is saying that they're saying it's about the same size (as Skyrim).

It's hinted that also includes the mountain areas on the map that could not be traveled.

Further, there's the more ambiguous, more abstract dimensions of over-lapping areas, such as several levels of underground structures on top of each other, cave systems that bend and wind back and forth, over and under, as well as however many degrees of overlapping vertical structure there is skyward.

If it's Skyrim size you want, then, it's Skyrim size that's been implied, but, a map and scale of the same size of Skyrim, due the no-loading thing, would, in actuality have a huge potential for substantially more coverage.

Add in areas that do require loading, and another world space just as large as the map could be TARDIS'd into the mix, so, that abstract element of hidden space that does require loading can contribute to substantial effect as well.

In my opinion, I think we can safely bet on a map at least a virtual mile or two North of Concord, as well as a mile or two virtual West of Concord, Follow that East to the water, and then sqare off a similar distance South, and back West again.

No what I think he is trying to say is that its about the same playable area size wise. but that's just me being eternally optimistic!

I suspect that what you will see will be there will be a loading screen for Super big inside areas (for example if there was more "complete" Vault that what we have seen to date) Or when they have to because the inside is so different than the outside(example being a underground Test sight for the "Genesis" model Geck and the the resultant micro environment was actually a tropical rain forest for example.

That's about what I was thinking, as far as map size.
It would be cool if they dropped some definitive info on the map size, or better yet the map itself, on the bethblog. I know they did that for some of the DLC for F3.