Did Bethesda tried to put too much in Oblivion, hence the Mines and Underground Ruins being Repetitive at times.

Sometimes it felt also Boring and spaced out crossing the Oblivion plane when i see Huge Open Grass Space that could've been used for more Buildings or Ruins.

Will Skyrim be Closer together, even though its Smaller then Cyrodill.

Sometimes it also felt that Everything was Closer to eachother, with Large Empty Wasted Space.

If i put Skyrim over Cyrodill, it would cover Half of what you will do and the other half is Open Grass and Forests.

Ofcourse i Wish for Skyrm to be Big as Cyrodill, but atleast Cover More Ground.

I wish Skyrim is bigger, not only in physical space, but also in things you can do, more cities/Viles, more quests, more dungeons, more ruins etc.

I never got why people thought Oblivions landscape was boring. I thought it was awesome. Skyrim is said to be "about as big" so I think that means the room you can actually move around in (not counting mountains that are too steep etc.). If you want more dungeons in that space I think it might be crowded as I actually thought there wasn't really very far between stuff in Oblivion, but I think there are some numbers on the dungeons going to be in Skyrim and how many in Oblivion, can't remember them though. Maybe someone can? Should give a feel of what to expect.

Its not the Landscape itself that is boring, its the Wasted Space of open field where a Small Town could easily be build.

Towns and cities could have done with being bigger, but the land of Cyrodiil was actually freakishly packed. There was almost always a marker on your compass. The problem was that these were so repetitive. Will be nice to see more unique places. Also, Skyrim will only be slightly smaller than Cyrodiil and have less dungeons.

Why is that space wasted? I have to agree to some extent though, I also missed a couple more towns, especially as I felt there were a lot more in Morrowind. But I just don't see what is wrong with forests, fields, and other landscapes that are just that. I mean if there were towns everywhere it would be kind of ridiculous too. Then you might as well just have a game that was more or less one big city with a lot of roads out of it leading to dungeons.

Here's a picture of the locations in that painfully empty land of Cyrodiil. http://s2.n4g.com/media/11/newssi/15000/18861_0_org.jpg

I have to agree, I understand completely that people felt let down after Morrowind, but personally I love Cyrodiil, wandering across the Jeralls looking down at the towns, constantly watching for trolls in the woods at night. I have a feeling I might feel the same sense of being out in the wilderness in the Mountains of Skyrim, and for me personally, fewer dungeons or whatever will give a welcome sense of isolation.

I'm guessing that most players never even saw more than 50% of Cyrodiil. The forests are beautiful (especially close to Black Marsh, in my opinion), but there's no point in going there. Yeah yeah, "exploration" of course, but while that's a point many people make, they actually don't mean "purposely wandering around and staring at trees", they mean "going somewhere in the world, and finding something that made it worthwhile". There was nothing like that in many parts of Cyrodiil, like the Imperial Reserve, or the whole strip of land on the Eastern side of the Niben.
Villages or farms would have helped, but also more roads, maybe some leading to the guarded borders of Cyrodiil.

I think for Skyrim, they have already corrected this, and laid out everything in a more interesting fashion. For example, there are less dungeons than in Oblivion, and I guess they put them in notable places, not just scattered them all over the place. So that when you walk up a narrow mountain path that isn't marked on your map, you'll be rewarded with a dungeon at the end, which will make this dungeon seem more interesting than the five dungeons you would have walked by in Oblivion, which were somewhere off the road, while the road itself lead nowhere.

I don't know why nobody likes the Imperial reserve. On top of the expected dungeons, there was Gottlesfont Priory, Weatherleah, Molag Bals shrine and Hackdirt, easily one of the best villages in the game. Now the Colovian Highlands, that region is truly boring.

As far as I know Bethesda has never said it'll be smaller, but rather it'll be "comparable in size to Oblivion." That said, Skyrim will be much more mountainous, so it'll feel bigger because, like Morrowind, you can't just walk straight across the map without running into a hill or a mountain. Cyrodiil was bowl-shaped and as a result felt much smaller than it really was.

I think a big problem in Oblivion was that the open spaces felt a little dead. I think you need big space to make the world believable (I don't want to exit a town a walk a few steps and end up in another one!), but because of the lack of neutral wildlife it made them less alive and real. I know skyrim is changing that so I 'm really looking forward to it!

Everything you mentioned is not in the Imperial Reserve. The Imperial Reserve are the grasslands (with the yellow grass type) west of the Great Forest, your locations are all in the Great Forest.
But yeah, the Colovian Highlands are boring too, just like County Kvatch. I'm not quite sure which of these count as Imperial Reserve and which don't, but for me it's exactly the same deal - boring, empty, yellow landscapes.

Oh, I thought I read that the Imperial reserve was the area between Skingrad and Chorrol, which is almost completely the great forest with a patch of Colovian Highlands and the West Weald down the bottom.

EDIT: Just checked and you're right, though it does say Hackdirt and Weatherleigh are in it, which i suppose is wrong.

If it was even a tiny bit bigger, they'd probably say it was bigger than Oblivion. "About the same size" is almost a guaranteed smaller. Also, someone did an estimate of the number of squares (cells) in the grid of the map we saw, and concluded that it was roughly 4400 compared to Oblivions 4600.

It could also mean "about the same size". A little bit less or a little bit more, depending on how you look at it. Them saying exactly what they mean.. what a crazy idea.


You also have to estimate how much more "land space" there is due to mountains and vertical stacking (a cell at a 45-degree incline will have more room on it than one that's mostly flat, for example), as well as taking the shape of the province into account... Skyrim is more rectangular than Cyrodiil, something that caused Oblivion to have many "unused" cells (eg, you could likely have fit a great portion of Elsweyr and Valenwood in Oblivion's map; maybe all of them). You also have to ask if Skyrim's cells are the same size as Oblivion's cells.

People like the idea of a bigger map, even if it's not really better. If it was bigger, they'd say "It's a little bigger than Oblivion".


It's not definite, but since it fits expectations of slightly smaller (still "roughly the size of Oblivion") and the past 3 games have used the same cell size, I'd say it's rather likely.

The problem is that you're still telling people information that is, as far as we know, false. Your assumption is just that, an assumption. If you are too cynical to tell people the actual answer, at least let them know you're just making an assumption. Otherwise you're just spreading false info, no matter how true you think it is.

You are right, I should have stated in my original post that it was my assumption and expectation. That was my mistake. I was just now explaining why I thought it was highly likely tobe accurate.

And again, it could depend on how you look at it. What someone could see as "bigger", someone else could see as "smaller". It could also be that they don't honestly know whether there is more space or not, so they can't say "there is definitely more space" or "there is definitely less space"... or do you expect them to go and count every single traversable world map unit in Skyrim and Oblivion to say definitely which has more? And too, the game is not yet finished. What can be true today may not be tomorrow.

It's not really fair to take "about the same size" as meaning anything other than "about the same size" at this point.

Uh, well that point doesn't make sense, because Bethesda are confining the map precisely to the shape of Skyrim, as seen in the maps they've given, which makes sense seeming as it's set in Skyrim. If they expanded the borders one place they'd need an excuse for not expanding it in other places. Also, they are in very late stages of development now, I doubt they would be adding entire new land areas. They're not going to resize it either, given that they've stated that every piece of scenery was handplaced. And how is bigger to some people smaller? Map size is an objective measurement. People before have calculated the exact amount of space a map takes up in Oblivion. It's probably possible to do from the editor. I'm sure Bethesda knows how big the map they design is, and I don't think it would be hard to figure out. At least the cell size could be estimated to an almost exact figure quite easily, either by counting or by mathematical equation (I did a basic form of this in my year 12 math class).

I know you can't be 100% sure on these things, but I am so confident in the size, I'd say about 98% sure, I have next to no doubt. I don't know why you're so insistent to say there is so much uncertainty when the evidence points this way. People may draw their own conclusions, but there is my anolysis of the situation, I'm not sure why you care so much about arguing against it with these strenuous possibilities.

What we know is this:

• Despite the large number of dungeons in Oblivion, there was only one(!) person working on all of them. Hence the repetetiveness. This time it's 8 people and they claim they've put in a great deal of effort to ensure that no two dungeons are alike.
  
• Oblivion's outdoor landscape was 99.9% generated, which made it feel like wasted space. Skyrim's landscapes are all hand-crafted, which should ensure that travelling will be much more enjoyable.

I would bet money that Skyrim will be about the same size as Fallout 3.

I think one of the best things about Oblivion was that there was actually empty spaces, not every little peace of land had to be covered in ruins or settlements, it creates a more believable wilderness if you actually get areas free from stuff.

It has already been confirmed (as near as I can tell) that Skyrim will be smaller (by how much, we don't know) than Oblivion. This makes sense, since Skyrim is actually significantly smaller on the map than Cyrodiil. However, Todd also mentioned that they are increasing the scale of the landmass, so that it is approximately the same size as Oblivion's landmass.

Assuming that is true, it should be plenty big enough, and have plenty of open spaces - since they are taking a smaller area, and scaling it up. Areas that might have once been, say, a mile apart are perhaps now a mile and a half apart. (assuming the rough scale of 1.5:1) Frankly, in some ways Morrowind felt larger - due to game mechanics, and the Red Mountain, so I'd say we probably don't have much to worry about in the extremely mountainous region of Skyrim. It will probably "feel" twice as big as Oblivion due to that alone.

Lastly, I agree that it is pretty much a given that in terms of absolute map space, it will be smaller - otherwise, it would be touted as a selling point.