So the game is smaller and there is less to do there? Sorry but that's an even worse idea than a small game world. "Uniqueness" is largely overrated, why don't we make a game with one dungeon? This way it will be well and truly unique. I'd rather see some diversity without the uniqueness and a lot of things to do and places to see. And I think Bethesda team are not stupid people, they know that once you set the plank with the game there is no cutting the amount down, up is the only way to go for people not to start getting angry.

As long as they have a point there's only so many goblin caves that need cleansing with no reward other than generic loot, it be happy with a unique gem, custom statue, dwarven mechanisim, just so I have some thing to connect the experience with the world.

I'll second some unique loot, that where uniqueness is very much achievable and well placed - I recall how much more fun riding dungeons in Morrowind became with "Morrowind toy shop" installed - all it did was adding miniature figurines of different creatures, but they where rare and not encountered to often, and I hardly ever got more than one or two from the dungeon, but looting crates suddenly became much more entertaining. It would be awesome if we did not need the mod to get something interesting out of the regular cave diving.

I don't mind the "playable area" being no larger than previous games, but the mountains present a special challenge. If you make them large enough to be "mountains", and not just steep hills, then they're going to chew up an enormous amount of room, most of which will either be unplayable or "marginally accessible", depending on whether they include Levitation or Climbing. By making the mountains "off limits", or having very little there of interest, that allows for a greater concentration of effort in the valleys and other areas of the game, which hopefully won't be crammed together nearly side-by-side, like the assorted ruins and caves were in past releases. Still, the inclusion of large mountains almost requires a larger map to fit them.

If the game is any smaller, I'd be very disappointed.

Bigger is better as far as these types of games re concerned IMO. I just love traveling and exploring. Looking over massive distances and thinking, "I wonder what's over that mountain or in that forest?"

Of course it svcks if theres nothing to do.

On a side note, I was playing Just Cause 2 and I thought it would be neat if they made a game that big and wrapped the map around a globe so you could travel around the world. It was so big in that game it could work. How fun would TES be if you set out on an adventure that took you around the world? Eve sailing the high seas and fighting pirates, sea monsters and finding islands with treasure and danger.

It's one province of one empire that in one continents, and the game world actually has other continents... So pleas no wrapping the map around.

I didn't mean for Skyrim but maybe a future game. I can't believe no one thinks that's cool.

Why would I want them to wrap Skyrim around a globe by itself without the rest of the world???

This is exactly my point. If you have several different landscapes, and this is only an example, but let's say there's a foresty area, a jungle, open plains, mountains, a canyon, a marsh, an icy/snowy area, and 4 cities, and several villages. If you had a gameworld either smaller than Cyrodiil or similar in size to Cyrodiil, then any one of these different terrains is going to feel extremely small. You are correct in saying that to make the mountains feel really big will require Cyrodiil to be much larger.

I definitely think it's a cool idea. And yes, with Just Cause 2, it could definitely be done. But, tell me. How was Just Cause 2 in terms of things to do, you know, quality over quantity?

Although it sounds counter intuitive, my vote was for Skyrim to be smaller than Cyrodill. Here's my justification:

Having a larger world comes at the expense of detail. The developers can only add so much detail to the world in a given time window, and when the world is so large it becomes difficult to fill up that space in a meaningful way. When people say that the world could be filled up in an automatic process, it is still necessary for developers to check to make sure that there aren't any glitches; moreover, it takes a significant amount of time and or money to create a program that will create believable environments automatically.

Now, you might ask how it is possible to create a world that is simultaneously smaller than Cyrodill and with sufficiently diverse and detailed environments. Moreover, it may also seem to be challenging to maintain an illusion of realism; each environment requires a significant amount of space in the game world in order for it to be believable. The latent restriction of this perspective is that the game world needs to be internally connected; i.e. it should always be possible to walk from point a to point b. However, if the objective of the game is to be realistic, then this is an unrealistic objective. It is rarely the case that people can cover any significant stretch of terrain in less than an hour. Considering this with the terrain obstacles that Skyrim would have (mountains, fjords, cliffs and ice deserts are just a few possibilities of terrain features that would act as obstacles), the developers are perfectly justified in dividing the game world into disconnected zones with diverse habitats. It would even be possible for developers to create the disconnected zones on top of an undeveloped template for the Skyrim landmass that could later be filled in with mods or official content.

The irrelevance of this topic besides (a game mechanic as fundamental as the landmass structure is already determined), I would definitely prefer a disjoint landmass with a high level of environmental diversity and a realistic length scale to a connected "Disney land" version of Skyrim.

I voted that it must be bigger than Oblivion's Cyrodiil. However, I would like some variety in landscapes or something to do (maybe more places to visit? more NPC's to fight or see?), not just large lands that look the same and just waste hours of real life time just to get from Point A to Point B. I was playing through Shivering Isles, and yes, it is pretty, but I HATED walking/running through a really long, boring journey just to get to the Palace area. I don't have time to play games anymore (maybe a few hours a day), so I hated wasting time just walking through an uneventful path.

(My father was would sometimes glance at what I'm playing and he would comment on how long it took to get anywhere. He in his opinion, he felt that it was just stretching game time in an artificial way.)

Oh, if it IS bigger, than I want some kind of travel system, whether fast travel or on caravan or on silt riders, I don't care as long as it is some kind of faster transportation.

I'll say this:

- A lot bigger world. I think 2-3 times bigger than Oblivion at least.

- Keep all dungeons much more spread out. Oblivion felt so cramped up. Skyrim should NOT look like this: http://s2.n4g.com/media/11/newssi/15000/18861_0_org.jpg
Keeping dungeons and locations more spread out makes much easier and more logical to have a bigger world.

- Have a variety in the landscape. No randomized stuff, unless the algorithm is 100x smarter than Oblivion's
There should be a balance of variety in landscape and a big world.

I think the world will be smaller or close to the same size, but definitely not bigger. It's hard to get a sense of scale from the wall map Todd shows us in the GI video, but if the detail is similar to Oblivion's map, then the world should be about the same size (more oval-shaped than triangle-shaped like Oblivion's map was).

In the Dagerfall days the world was Huge, but the level of detail they had to put into that world was much MUCH lower than the clutter-standards and super detail of today's AAA games. It takes Alot more to build up a worldspace now than it once did, and I suspect we will get a world of the same size or smaller - but with a greater level of detail than before.

So rather than increase the size of the world, I think they would have improved the same size world spaces they were building with. We'll see, I fully expect to be blown away in any respect.

Miax

I hope it's larger but I wouldn't mind if it was the same size as Cryodill.

Bigger! around 4 times the size would be good for me thanks... (more if you can do it well)

and for whomever said they would love it if a game had a globe map (basically what they said) i think that would be awesome... i say with the money Beth will be racking in with Skyrim they should set some of that aside not just for Elder Scrolls VI which of course they will do (and call it Tamriel which should be the whole continent) they should start on Elder Scrolls 7 and build of of "Tamriel" and make the whole Planet and this game should not even be considered coming out until the next gen of consoles are up and running... now they are going to have to start writing some lore for that cuz as far as i know (which is very little) they dont talk much of whats out there besides Tamriel, just that some races came from outside the continent...

lol Skyrim isnt even out yet and im planing 2 ES games ahead... i need a life

The bigger the better

let me ask yall somethin that keep sayin it needs to be bigger... did yall explore every nook and cranny in oblivion? i couldnt jus cause it was so repetitive and everythin looked the same, now morrowind on the other hand i jus started and im tryin to go everywhere that i can cause theres so much detail in it.

i also believe the fast travel is also influencin this as well. cause lookin at morrowind, it seem huge jus cause it was harder to get around, but in oblivion the world seemed small cause it was so easy gettin around with the fast travel

How would I know? There was no map to track explored areas... Which is whole other issue. But I do know that it felt claustrophobic, so the landmass has to be either massively re designed, or plain ans simple - much bigger.

Or less repetitive dungeons all over the place...

I would like it to be bigger. It would spread out the dungeons more and leave plenty of room for modders to make their own extra villages and junk.

Also if we have a 'survival mode', I would make it challenging to not have fast travel and the cities of course would be stretched out so walking between cities/villages might take a bit of preparation.

Also adds to the need for a horse and other such things.

TESV needs to be much bigger.

I think TES V being physically larger will have a huge impact on the feel and scope of the game. It will be weird if the mountains aren't gigantic. I hope it takes hours to trek across them.

In Oblivion everything was so close together. You could ride your horse and be in Cheydinhal before you knew it.
Morrowind's locations were even closer together. The short draw distance and terrain did a fantastic job with creating the illusion of bigness.

Draw distances are improved too, so I think they'll have to make Skyrim bigger if they don't want it to feel crowded.

Ideally I'd like to see the province 2 X ax big, if not a little bigger.

Crowded? As of too many people stuck together in a place? MW and OB were all but that, both being laaargely unhabited.

I'd be fine with 1.5x bigger... this something I'm surprised we haven't gotten information on yet.

Heh, let me clarify. By crowded I mean locations. Towns and Cities primarily were far too close together. It was very strange being able to see 3 or 4 of the main cities from one point in the game.
If you discovered all the locations in oblivion and looked at your map it was incredibly cramped - everything was simply too close together.

I also agree we could use more NPC's in the streets, even if they're just there for the effect.