Oblivion was big enough in my opinion. The thing Oblivion lacked was uniqueness. It was just mostly flat forests with nothing in it. Also, the fast travel system makes the world feel much smaller. A fast travel-system like in Morrowind would be a better choice in my opinion, and with a lot of detail and uniqueness(many small villages etc.) Skyrim would quickly feel much bigger then Oblivion.

The concept art of Riften looks very immersive. It really seems like a place I would like to spend a lot of time, and more unique than the ones in Oblivion.

Maybe the map is just as big as in Oblivion, but all the models etc. are a lot smaller?

That would just be dumb... no offense.
Because:

1) it would most likely be harder to make all models smaller (not 100% sure though since I don't know anything about modelling... so I'm just assuming)

2) Having all models smaller would get the exact same effect (in terms of work and time consumed) as if Skyrim's map (world size) would be bigger. Therefore they might as well have made the map (world size) bigger than Oblivion.

3) It would most likely be weird and look unrealistic? Not 100% sure though. Hard to imagine.

There is an article on another website which quotes Todd Howard and says that "Skyrim" will be "approximately" the size of "Oblivion. " The same article also says that there will be 130 dungeons which is less than "Oblivion" offered with caves/Ayleid Ruins/Forts/Oblivion Gates.

Judging from the screenshots, Skyrim is going to be a much more interesting land to explore than Cyrodiil, and therefore, I don't care about the size of the map.

As long as it's not ridiculously small obviously.

I have no problem with skyrim being the same size as oblivion.
I wouldn't mind it bigger,but i don't mind.
Half of oblivions problem to me was the layout,not just fast travel.
Play morrowind and see what i mean.
Morrowind was alot smaller,but to most felt bigger....why?
This why i think that is the case.
No fast travel played a part,but was no means the only reason.The main reason in my view was the layout of the land.
In oblivion you could virtually walk all the way across the map,without obstruction,to me morrowind was different.
It had more hill,mountains etc,you had to walk around more,swim etc.To me this made the land/world seem much bigger.
Yes no fast travel and no markers played a part,but for me ( like i said ) it was how they made the land that made most of the difference.
So if they do that with skyrim, ( which they no doubt will ) with the map the size of oblivion,it will feel very big indeed.
But thats just my take on it.

Better mapdesign is much much more important than sheer size. I take quality over quantity anytime.

, that's hilarious.

Also, it's not size of the map but the amount interior cells, variety in graphics, items, dialog and quests that make the game big.

You could have a map with easily twice the size of Cyrodiil with only half the content.

I'm not too concerned about the map size. I imagine it will be big enough. I'm more concerned about what the landscape looks like, and in the latest interview there was talk of the landscape being "epic." That sounds good to me. As other's have mentioned before, the landscape in Oblivion wasn't all that epic.



So... which did you argue had the greater area?

Who cares if it's bigger, nobody's going to notice. Cyrodill was big, Skyrim will be big.
Does anyone even explore every single nook and cranny anyway?

Why I care and why I think it can be noticed:

1) It risk making the world feel very cramped up, which is something really bad in my opinion. It would be too much (in my opinion) if you pass a dungeon every 30 seconds, like it was http://s2.n4g.com/media/11/newssi/15000/18861_0_org.jpg, for instance.

2) You'll never be able to have huge, majestic mountains and valleys. The scale of everything thing might result in be treated as a joke. You can most likely say good-bye to landscapes like... http://www.ozoneeleven.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Mountain_Valley_1600-x-1200.jpg, http://www.cpawsbc.org/files/athead_Valley_from_Global_TV_helicopter_ride.jpg, http://www.naturewalls.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/beautiful_nature_in_the_mountains_wallpaper.jpg, http://www.wallpaperpimper.com/wallpaper/Landscape/Landscape/Valley-Vista-1-RP6ONRV6I8-1600x1200.jpg and http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__mMx7lCefGY/SxEn5CGyUAI/AAAAAAAAAvU/6w8jUlJmrTY/s1600/North+Klondike+River+Valley.png.
If landscapes like that would be in Skyrim... it would never fit. Any of those landscapes in the pictures would pretty much take up half the map/world space or even more. If landscapes like that would be in Skyrim; they would have to be greatly reduced in scale, which I think would remove their whole "greatness" and "epicness".

3) With a promised much greater draw distance; the world could risk feeling even smaller than Oblivion, since you would practically see the whole map from anywhere. Even though I'm not 100% sure of this, it's a possibility.

4) You might be able to run from one end to another of the map/game world within 15 minutes, like you could in Oblivion... making it feel even less big.

i don't know about other people but i had a load of fun playing daggerfall, and if skyrim can capture that sense of scale it will be spectacular.

Yeah, the problem with the real world is the ridiculous draw-distance, and the sparseness of the content. :teehee:

The thing was that a lot of the time in Oblivion, you'd just navigate by compass, because everything was flat and everything had a marker, and the landscape wasn't all that mind-blowing anyhow.
In Morrowind, you had to follow directions and go our actively searching for those things you were looking for, which also compelled you to stop and actually enjoy the scenery every now and then ; Playing on 'automatic' just wasn't an option. Sometimes that was annoying as [redacted by editor] but it was also kind of awesome.

+ If you actually travel to some of the mountainous areas of Oblivion they are both beautiful and well-designed, with some epic views. You just don't have much reason to be running around there, when 95 % of quests are down in the lowlands.

I hope to high heavens they make the Quest Compass optional. hardcoe mode or whatever you wanna call it. Forces you to LOOK at the actual game.

This^

I don't think the Throat of the World's height/size necessarily means the game world will be larger. In lore, Red Mountain is larger and taller, but Morrowind was significantly smaller than Oblivion.

For me though, I still say that:

Greater verticality (which in simple terms, basically means this: http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c307/ColtoColto/Oblivion_vs_skyrim.png)
+ roughly 90 fewer dungeons than Oblivion
+ the mountain divides, rivers, and variable terrain indicated here: http://www.thedragonborn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/poss_loc.jpg
_____________________________________________

= sufficient size and spread of content and variety for my tastes.

But everyone has different standards.

Morrowind was small but it seemed large cuz of layout

You forget a town in skyrim is open.. that makes it full sized compared to the compression ob used on towns and cities... also unlike ob skyrim likely uses full scale buildings. Combine these two factors and even if riften were the same number of homea and buildingas as kvatch it would take up many times more space on the map.

I certainly try to!

I dont need the map to be bigger than Oblivion, just more interesting. Oblivion was fantastic at first, never knowing what you will stumble accross, its just after when you realise "oh.. i'm not going to stumble accross anything!"

Good points. I always played Oblivian with the Open Cities mod so I never really noticed the external/internal compression. :facepalm:

However if Skyrim is by default open and uses full scale buildings then surely that implies the 3x3 shaded area for Riften encompasses a bigger virtual space - and therefore all the rest of the map squares are bigger too? I'm of course basing my projection on the fact that the Skyrim Map seems to be the development map for cells (or at least settlement & feature scaling) since each settlement has a different number of squares shaded.

I am clutching at straws of course, so you could be completely correct. Yet I think it would be better if you said ' it would might take up many times more space on the map.' After we're all guessing at the moment.

yeah i was shocked when they told me oblivion was bigger than morrowind, after playing both i seriously disagreed. I could get everywhere in oblivion quickly but there are still places i haven't seen in morrowind. Oblivion was way smaller in content which actually made the landmass seem smaller

Oblivion was also very open compared to Morrowind. Morrowind had content that was only a few dozen feet away, but was very difficult to access without walking a long distance because of the topology. If you use levitate it becomes pretty apparent.

Well if you look at petes twitter you see how he answers a direct question on map size... Only time they ever gave an answer on map size the map completely changed afterward;/

Still I do admit I have no real clue how big skyrim is.. I do think it would be very tricky to cram all this into a map the size of ob specialy with open towns and such. But then again they could be being sneaky and talking about the enormous border zone around ob that was outside the game zone... most of the cells were in fact outside the game map.

Pete Hines confirmed the map size on his twitter earlier on.

http://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon

One thing most people seem to forget also is that the majority of Oblivions content/quests/cities were focused in the center part of the map, and away from the edges. Sure there were things to explore out there, and a couple of the cities were in fact on the edge of the map... but there were large chunks of the map I never really explored even after playing for 40-60 hours (large parts of the east, and north west for example). If Oblivions content was spread out and the developers took more advantage of the outer parts of the map, the game world would have felt a lot bigger. I have a feeling were going to see that more in Skyrim.

Of course, with point and click fast travel NO map will ever feel big. If they really want the map to play like its huge, go back to Morrowind style fast travel.