Meh.

yes, given the presence of Raiders and what not Buildings will probably need a lot of Jail cells.

Look at GTA5... That place is HUGE yet there are no loading screen THAT YOU SEE.

According to Todd Howard there are no loading screens for the majority of places... but there will be some when entering certain places. At least it won't be like places like the NV strip that used to drive me NUTS. The big problem for the Xbox 360/PS3 was memory and that has improved somewhat.

I see your point. You've taught me so much...

Yes, but the world (especially interiors) is much less detailed and there is no physics for anything but vehicles and actors, not to mention it's a completely different engine.

As for Todd Howard...well, let's say he's not famous for trustworthiness.

an 16x increase is more than somewhat, its an serious increase making memory not an relevant issue. GPU and CPU is more an limit.

One issue might be AI calculations, this might be optimized, in previously games it was no need to optimize it for cpu use as you would run out of memory long before it became an problem.

As has been pointed out, the world in GTAV is a lot less detailed, npcs and cars are randomly generated (with a few static exceptions) a short distance around the player. Physics are limited to cars, NPCs and the player. You can't pick up almost every item in the game. There are no A.I scripts packages beyond very basic stuff.

Also, go down a street and see how many duplicates you get of the same NPC in one city block.

You can have a large game world, everything in one cell, and detail. Pick two.

But, yeah, sorry.... wasn't really trying to "teach" anything, just get across the point that "seamless gameplay" as a concept just doesn't cause me any excitement reaction. Loading screens generally don't bother me at all, so I just don't understand the enthusiasm. I might just be due to the fact I played on PC, so my loading screens weren't nearly as long as on PS3/X360.

...yes, I was also one of the people who, in ME2/3, missed the elevator rides from ME1. So many great companion conversations happened in that elevator.

Still the main constrain on the cell size have been memory, second is probably CPU based, AI and physic, Graphic is also an issue however this can be solved by reducing view distance by not having long main streets with lots of npc.

Say we get 8 times more, this would make it no problem to make an smaller city like Megaton without loading doors probably an open city too. I don't think you could do all this with something like IC in Oblivion

One tricks might be to divide the city subtle, say the interior of the castle in Whiterun would load then you walked up the stairs to it, So you would get an loading delay then opening the door if you sprinted up unless you had an SSD.

At the very least, I hope dungeons/castles/etc will able to be a single cell, instead of having to trasition between entrance floor, sanctum, boss floor etc.Or take the castles for example. Dragons Reach had the bedrooms as a separate area to the main hall.