If you look at an up-to-date map of Tamriel, Cyrodiil is approximately five times larger than Vvardenfell. According to a google search, the actual in-game sizes place Cyrodiil as twice as large as Vvardenfell, so this is the first discrepancy.

My first question is, because I've never played Arena, Daggerfall, or any other of the TES games, are there similar discrepancies?

Second question, is there anything to explain these aside from game design? Nothing significant happened in those three years, did it? If these can't be explained away by "oh, well, we just didn't make Cyrodiil that big", what does that mean for future TES games?

Third question, am I overthinking this?

If I remember correctly, that includes the empty land beyond the "you cannot pass" barriers in Oblivion, so less than twice in applicable gameplay area. I haven't played Arena, but Daggerfall is well known for its much more accurate representation of land mass; it has thousands of square miles (mostly flat, randomly generated wilderness) and occupies an area on the map that's still smaller than Vvardenfell.

Nothing is really done to explain it beyond technology limitations. It's a complaint I've had about the presentation of the more recent games. We could get the same game area size with it supposedly representing a much smaller area, but instead they try and smash an entire country into these few square miles and we end up with ridiculous things like being able to see the opposite borders from atop a mountain or crossing the country on foot in two days.

I noticed this too, though I am not enough of a lore buff to give any difinitive answer about actual comparative sizes. When playing the game, Cyrodiil feels about as big as Vvardenfell. I would even go as far as to say that it actually feels smaller, though that could just be because it has fewer obstacles to deal with. Daggerfall, on the other hand, was immense. I imagine it would take several days in real time to go from one end of High Rock to the other. So, I guess there does seem to be a trend in scaling-down the map from one game to the next. I hope this trend is reversed in the next title.

The smoother terrain of Cyrodiil, the implementation of Fast Travel, as well as the repeditiveness of dungeons, all contribute to the "small" feeling that Cyrodiil produces.

But I agree, I definitely hope they reverse this trend, even if it's at the expense of quality.

I wouldn't want them to compromise quality in lieu of making a bigger gameworld, either. I think that's why Morrowind felt 'just right'. It was large enough to represent an island, but there was enough attention to detail that it didn't feel like they sacrificed quality for quantity. Oblivion was pretty good as far as visuals were concerned, but it was lacking in depth, IMO. If they made it so that the landmass that was represented in the game was equal to roughly half of the entire map of Cyrodiil, then I might say that the reduction in the size of the gameworld was worth the tradeoff for graphics, etc. But, then again, maybe not

There's no real in-game explanation for it. It's purest game mechanics, a halllmark of wanting to fit a whole province into your game, but only being able to generate and detail so many square miles of land.

Daggerfall, for example, supposedly took 2 real-time weeks to walk from opposite corners of the map. It's reputed to be about the size of Great Britain.

Vvardenfell on the maps is a significant chunk of land as compared to the Iliac Bay, but Vvardenfell's no Great Britain. Not even close.

Cyrodiil is indeed supposed to be 4 or 5 times the size of Vvardenfell, yet Cyrodiil as depicted in Oblivion is barely doubling the size of Vvardenfell as depicted in Morrowind. Several users on here have commented that it would have almost been better to have only Rumare Island as the playable area, but stretching that over 16 miles, being able to do the Imperial City justice, and being able to make that scant island chock full of interest.


The world scale is subjective with each title.

Sorry, when I said quality I meant graphical quality and in terms of just the hardware demands.

Yes, I do believe that would have been better. It could even stretch out the series longer, as Beth would be able to do multiple titles within a single province.

But then they would have to change our beloved MQ, silly goose.

You bet your butt there is
TES1 was actually infinite, but I havent played enough to say if it was good or bad.
TES2 made sense. You could walk/ride/fly between any two locations, but mostly you used a fast travel option. It took a week by boat to travel through Iliac Bay. The Cyrodiil Province, though, was supposed to be 3-4 times bigger, but you could run through it in matter of hours.
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/8716/tamrielmapnr9.jpg picture shows it, though it's kinda small. The shorter black line is Iliac Bay, while the longer is the width of Imperial Province.
TES3 didn't make that much sense. There were caves and tombs too closely packed together, but the hard-to-scale landscape gave you a nice illusion of a bigger area. I left Seyda Neen by foot, expecting a long journey to Balmora, and there it was just behind those hills. I was pretty disappointed.
TES4 went further with this: even more locations, ruins, forts, caves, even more tightly packed together. And the worst idea was the GPS that always knew where they were. There are only few places you can stand without seeing several POIs on your GPS screen. And you could shoot an arrow from one 'city' to another. Of course, after TES3 this didn't surprise me that much anymore.

It's all for technological and gameplay reasons. It would be quite difficult to include province the size that Cyrodiil is in lore in one game, and it would probably be impossible to do it without the level of detail in terrain suffering. So Bethesda gave us a scaled down version of the province, while trying to put as much content into that area as possible. Thus, we get Morrowind and Oblivion. Of course, on the opposite side of this there is Daggerfall, and while the world was big, it was also excessively boring, there were massive stretches without anything to see, while you could of course fast travel over all that, a mechanic such as fast travel should exist as a means to allow players to skip over things they've already seen before, not as a way to cover-up boring game design. If the game is like that, Bethesda might as well make the map like it was in Fallout 1 and 2 instead of a completely open world like the Elder Scrolls. Plus, it was also unrealistic, as those wide stretches of land didn't just lack any dungeons or anything, they even lacked the details you'd expect an actual landscape to have. And while this could partially be blamed on technological limitations at the time, I doubt Bethesda could have pulled off anything approaching a decent level of detail with such a large map even now. So some map size scaling is definately needed, Bethesda just needs to find a good balance that allows for a decent level of detail while still generating an illusion that the size of the map is at least somewhat believable.

I say what they have to do for better details is take a look at the "Unique landscapes" mod and form landscaping teams, each responcible for just a relatively small area of the total game world so they can focus on the details a lot more. They can create a rought overall world first so they have a set base to work with, when they're done they simply put the single pieces together and "blend the lines" a bit to work it all into one big world again. It did work with Unique landscapes that way.

I'll wait to see how big Borderlands is, and then expect TES5 to be at least the same size. Not to mention that I've read that part of it's going to be randomized every playthrough. Just as I've always said TES5 should be.

How randomized? I don't want random dungeons. That would make it even more repetitive.

Best game in the series, in terms of quality (not sheer content or longevity) was imho Redguard; an area somewhat smaller than both Morrowind and Oblivion (and obviously Daggerfall) but on a believable scale that was perhaps one third of what Stros M'Kai should be. Avoided both the giant-but-sparse feeling of Daggerfall as well as the dense-but-compressed feeling of both Morrowind and Oblivion. Seyda Neen to Balmora was supposed to be 2 days of travel, but ingame it takes little over 5-10 minutes - but at least almost every enemy and thing in Morrowind was hand-placed. Oblivion got a bigger world, but unfortunately it used a lot more randomisation in dungeons leading to a lot of complaints about sparseness compared to Morrowind.

In TES: Redguard there were plenty of points of interest to find but they werent 'in-your-face' so to speak and their puzzles went MUCH deeper than the superficial Morrowind and Oblivion. Also had the greatest variety and most challenging problems to solve, including the 'paces as the head faces' digging activities.

It was a good game, in my opinion the best of the series. I wish theyd use more of this style

It would be nice if they could find a middle road - have the important parts of the game be detailed and hand made, while have other stretches be randomly generated to allow for size. Make unique items unique - I shouldn't be able to find enough Daedric armour to outfit the imperial legions...

I don't want random dungeons. Both Oblivion and Morrowind made extensive use of unique features in every one of their dungeons, and in the wilderness. I don't see why we should have worlds that are entirely randomly-generated, or why Bethesda would consider doing that when the success of Oblivion and Morrowind has been immense.

I'd have preferred to have had to find Martin as a beggar in the outer rim of the mega-city and protect him from the patrolling Daedric minions that ruthlessly search throughout the city for him. My goodness that would have made for a great main quest... Oh well, the one they had made was good for filler. (I suppose you have to go through The Two Towers to get to The Return of the King)

That was also sarcasm on my part.

EDIT: Well, in any case, sardonicism, but who keeps a dictionary handy?

www.dictionary.com

We all have a dictionary handy.

If randomized in a smart way, it makes tha game less repetitive. Or, do you like going after the puzzle box and 'find' it in the same place each time? Or Fists of Randagulf? I remember I looked, by chance, behind that coffin a first time, was like wow what are those things, but after that it just came a chore, either to go get them along the other unique items, or pretend I don't know where they are, to avoid becoming overpowered with them. Espacially with Boots of Blinding Speed: knowing exactly where they are but telling myself that my character doesn't know. Like the game was designed for only one play through. I play each TES game through several times, and so far TES2 is the only one where each play through is actually different. In TES4 my only choice in the game is in which order to do stuff. The same stuff gets done either way. BS is the most linear of course, but that's another thing, it's a FPS with actual levels :I

I read an old perview of Borderlands, so dont know how it finally turns/turned up. There was going to be a huge desert, thousands of kilometers or something, where the places of interest were the same but not quite in the same place each time. So it took navigation or something to find them. Works in a repetitive surroundings, like an island that is shifting, or a fort ruins somewhere in a deep forest, or a desert. To make it work in other kinds of environment gets tricky.

I mean, how fun would the Civilization series be without randomization? The real world map and one imaginal to go through over and over again.

The biggest issue I had with Oblivion's landmass size was that it was "supposed" to be huge, but was barely larger than the small quarantined island of Vvardenfell where Morrowind was placed. On top of that, it was less "broken up" by obstructions (as was Morrowind, until you could levitate), so you could easily cross the entire country in a few hours of game time.

Morrowind was a little too static: after the first playthrough a lot of it was very predictable. Oblivion, on the other hand, was less predictable in what was found (within a list of things which were obviously exactly tailored to your level), but there was no sense to it: too random, with a lot of it that just "felt" computer generated and wrong.