The topic says it all. Is there any official size of the two game worlds? NV feels bigger to me, even though a lot of the map is cut off. Just curious what others thought.

I think New Vegas is slightly smaller, though not by much.

If you don't count the metro and the underground areas of Fallout 3,they are both the same.

Fallout 3 is wider while New Vegas is longer. They're about the same.

last i checked (from alot of which is bigger posts) there are more cells in new vegas than fallout 3

F3 is way way bigger

Yeah, the Capitol Wasteland is definitely larger than the unrestricted area of the Mojave.

I think Fallout 3 has a larger area, especially with the Metros. At least it seems like it.

That's the way I see it. Heck, the Metros themselves seemed to offer more to explore than the NV wasteland. The maps might be similar in size (except for the unreachable areas in NV), but you'd wear out a pair of shoes or boots in the Capital Wasteland way before you'd wear out the same pair exploring the NV wasteland (including buildings, underground sites, etc).

I'm pretty sure JE Sawyer has stated that New Vegas is bigger, but only by a bit.

New Vegas is way way smaller than fallout 3 map. There too many block off locations that cut 35% of the map off while fallout 3 used the whole 100% or more if your including the metros.

The FO3 map was huge.
The NV map is big enough.

Having blocked off areas can be a boon to dlc content that opens up these. All FO3 dlcs, apart from parts of BS, had to distance themselves from the main quest areas which was their biggest flaw in my opinion.

New Vegas' map is really big, it's just that things are so far away from each other compared to FO3's location every 30 meters that it "seems" smaller.

fallout 3 is bigger and wider, the arrangement is also better than new vegas, once you stroll around the edges of new vegas, the center part of the map is The Strip, the edges are mainly tall and series of mountains that are inaccessible even if the player tries to jump around it, in fallout 3 the map area is better designed, the White house area (mall, lincoln memorial, museum etc) are only occupying at least 1/4 of the whole map, the good idea is they did not put the White House in the middle, and fo3 has less mountains, more planar and incline terrains, making it look wider in terms of exploration.

NV is bigger but as yet 25% of the map is inaccessable

The map in F:NV is bigger than the one in F3. But 35% of it is blocked off, so when speaking distances to walk, F3 wins.. Also, F3 had metros, which definitely would add much to the map size. And the reason why the F:NV map seems so much smaller than the F3 map, is that most of the map is nothing.

In the Capital Wasteland you stumbled across things all of the time, whether it's random encounters, abandoned buildings, or places to explore. While in the Mojave desert there isn't really anything when you're traveling at distances (which is pretty obvious because it's a desert). And the distances between locations is much smaller, because it's kind of squished in between the two huge blocked off borders surrendering the map.

I would have liked a Fallout game somewhere else than the desert, simply because there isn't really anything to put in between the cities, apart from random abandoned shacks and mountains.

I agree. Hopefully, one of the DLCs will provide a bit more of that Metro/D.C. Type experience of Fallout 3. I actually enjoyed Dead Money more than most of NV (except for the frustrating end game).

No matter which map is Really bigger, the game world of Fallout 3 was much larger than NV (particularly when you factor in all the accessible areas....including those emense metros). A finished NV with all future DLC might rival it eventually, but not yet.

I'm pretty sure they don't count the space that is only seen on the pip-boy world map.

Here's a quote:


The maps are approx the same size.

Fallout 3 map is a little bigger, and it is very dense with locations especially in the downtown dc area.