Skyrim won't be cramped. Keep in mind Oblivion almost had three times as many dungeons than what Skyrim will have. Not to mention they were all carbon copies of one another with absolutely no purpose to explore. Again, it is how one uses the space they have provided, not how much space they have.

Oblivion was huge. Unless BGS grows substantially as well, I don't want the game worlds getting much bigger.

All I have to say to the people that are saying Oblivion was small and cramped, Oblivion is in the top 10 largest game worlds. Then Daggerfall is the largest game world. Oblivion is like 6th.

Oblivion was very small in comparison to how much stuff was actually within that space.

What he said

You forgot to mention that daggerfall's world was....well....around 487,000 square kilometers. The game world featured over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player's character to explore.

Morrowind was smaller than Oblivion. The problem is that Oblivion felt small, due to the extreme amount of dungeons, the unrestricted fast travel, the fact it was pretty flat, the player was pretty fast compared to MW, and etc.

also Morrowind is like the 7th, bethesda has a good track record

3/4 of the ES are in there, and skyrim will be in there also

But don't forget that Skyrim's cities and towns are going to be much larger, too. So depending on how much more area they take up compared to the number of removed dungeons, it may still be cramped.

Morrowind is like somewhere between 20-30th biggest game world.
Oblivion is today somwhere around like the 17-20th biggest game world.

The game link I showed: http://www.actionradius.com/jdl/default.asp?id=1801&qty=1
This link is also outdated and not complete. It doesn't list Red Dead Redemption for instance.

I still don't understand how Oblivion was cramped up, in fact for me it felt it was the opposite. It was big and empty. Sure there were caves and dungeons everywhere (I would say just as frequently as in Morrowind, they just didn't showed up on the map), but after a while they just became part of the landscape because everything looked the same everywhere. Sure you could look around in the great forest, but you would hardly find anything.

Fallout 3's map was much better (even though it wasn't as small as I thought it was), the landscape was more varied and there were a lot of unique landmarks you could see from the distance. It was more compressed than Oblivion and exploration felt a lot more rewarding, because there were actual things to find.
Bigger worlds usually tend to be more empty.

I think Skyrim is fine with Oblivion's size if they can fill it out with unique landmarks. Seeing the trailer I doubt we'll be disappointed in that. The world would also probably feel bigger on foot, because I doubt there are going to be straight paths between cities thanks to the mountains.

Also consider that the five major cities are only within five holds out of the nine total in Skyrim. This game will definitely feel bigger than Skyrim just because of how BGS will distribute the content and dungeons, even if it's actually about the same size.

Oblivion was very big but it felt empty, and it felt small because of the bowl shape and the environment felt the same. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Cyrodiil larger than Morrowind? To me Morrowind felt larger due to the mountains and hidden nooks and crannies. Skyrim will certainly be mountainous and as stated about the same size as Oblivion so I'm expecting it to at least "feel" larger than Oblivion.

In a free-roaming game the landscape has to be as much as possible, as long as it doesn't get repetitive...

The five major cities will all be bigger than the Imperial City. There are also many more settlements, that could reach up to the size of Oblivion's cities (at least bigger than Oblivion's settlements).

Actually, I think Morrowind was bumped out of the top 10.

Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - Randomly generated landscapes

Lord of the Rings Online - MMORPG, you'll spend most of your time riding a horse with auto-run (NumLock) on, trust me

Guild Wars Nightfall - 15,000 square miles - MMORPG but without the MMO part in anything but cities. Can't even jump! :yucky:

Fuel - 5,560 square miles - Racing game, you go fast and there's not as much to see

Test Drive Unlimited - 618 square miles - See above

Asheron's Call - 500 square miles - MMORPG

Just Cause 2 - 400 square miles - Never played it, so thumbs up

True Crime Streets of L.A - 240 square miles - In the same style as GTA, so it's got stuff to see and a big world. Thumbs up

Star Wars Galaxies - 200 square miles - MMORPG

Burnout Paradise - 200 square miles - Racing game

Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising - 135 square miles - According to Wikipedia, "In real time, crossing the island would take 9 hours on foot, 4 hours in a jeep and 20 minutes in a helicopter. However, it is only possible to do this within the PC mission editor or with the Skira Island Tour mission." So is the game world even open to exploration?

World of Warcraft - 80 square miles (pre Burning Crusade) - MMORPG

Superman Returns -80 Square Miles - This is discredited simply because it's a superhero game based on a movie. And apparently the final boss is a tornado

Far Cry 2 - 31 square miles - Bland, but explorable

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel - 22 square miles - Okay, sounds fine

Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion -16 square miles - With 200+ dungeons, which is overkill

FallOut 3 - 15 square miles - Yep, it's big

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas - 13.9 square miles - This is big too

----------

Most of the games on that list are MMORPGs which are always huge (they have to be because of the MMO bit) but usually devoid of anything interesting. The other maps are big, but how much exactly can you do with them? You can't do much with racing games.

I'll be honest, I was a little disappointed.

That said, you know, Skyrim itself is actually a Smaller Province, so we'll have generally a better sense of scale. Also, the topography is a lot more varied, and more like Morrowind. While Oblivion's Cyrodiil was undeniably larger, Vvardenfell felt bigger.



You forgot Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies. Comes in at around 200,000Square Kilometers, that's including every, very distinct "Level", though the levels themselves are open to explore, in a sense.

But that's an Aircraft Simulator/arcade type game, when you're traveling 800KPH on average. But it's just a great example of how a game world should be measured in Volume, and not area.

That's pure speculation. They said that the Skyrim cities will be bigger than the OB cities, but that means that their bigger than EITHER city, not all. You also forget that the Skyrim cities aren't necessarily of the same size. One city could be as big or bigger than IC, while the others are smaller.

If you actually look at Markarth, you sort of get confirmed that it's no bigger than about 2-3 district in the IC.

The point isn't to compare the game world size with every other game. The point of bringing that up was to give some sort of reference of other game world sizes. RDR is kinda comparable in quite many aspects, but not all. Far Cry 2 is comparable in other aspects. Just Cause 2 in other aspects as well.

You can't pick out some specific features of a game and compare it completely with other games, because no games are alike. So you're kind of missing the point here... of this thread and of those comparisons.



I actually read in one of the new articles that all five major cities of Skyrim will indeed be bigger than Imperial City of Oblivion. So Huleed is right. I forgot which article exactly though, as I don't keep notes of stuff like that

Well the last article I saw cut out MMOs. Then there was another that had MMOs on it but was way out of date. That one is pretty up to date being Mar 2010.

You know it's going to be a lot more vertical, right? Only the flatland is comparable to Oblivion in size.

Not only that, but all of the games listed (besides the BGS games) do not compare in terms of detail and use. You can't go into most of the buildings in most of those games. Most of the environments are pointless and hold no actual gameplay purpose. In BGS titles, you can go anywhere and do anything. This is something that only BGS does well, and no one can compete (most MMOs don't have the quality of content and expanse that TES/Fallout offers).

I think Oblivion was large enough. If you have a larger world then it may less detailed, or the game might take longer to develop.

Of course all other things being equal I prefer a world 100+ times bigger than Oblivion. But all other things are of course no where near equal. And tradeoffs need to be made in the "real world".



Similar to the point above. You have to give something to get something. Time, size, detail are all dimensions that need to be balanced against each other, if you increase somewhere you need to decrease somewhere else.

Just because it's more vertical doesn't automatically mean it will be less cramped. And it will still be 100% ridiculously scaled.
I have hope though that at least movement speed will be slower, so it will still feel bigger.

For future BGS games, they should definitely aim for a bigger world though, mainly because of all reasons stated before.

The same size as Oblivion is just fine.