So, we'll all gotten to know that Skyrim's world size is about the same size as Oblivion. Oblivion was roughly 41 square kilometers (~16 square miles). Fallout 3 was roughly 38 square kilometers (~15 square miles). Morrowind was approximately 25 square kilometers (~10 square miles).
There have been other games far bigger than this. A lot of comparables can be seen here (http://i.imgur.com/uBWCz.jpg) and here (http://www.actionradius.com/jdl/default.asp?id=1801&qty=1).
Most notable is Far Cry 2 in my opinion, which is an FPS-game. Very big and quite impressive to be twice as big as Skyrim/Oblivion for being a game like that, in my opinion.
Red Dead Redemption (not on the links above) is also worth mentioning. Roughly 72 square kilometers as far as I know, making it almost twice as big as Skyrim/Oblivion, while still being an open-world RPG as well.
You can't forget to mention Just Cause 2 as well. 400 square kilometers. And it all looks amazing. Very impressive indeed.

1. We know Skyrim is "about the same size as Oblivion". We don't know if it's more, exactly the same or less. But if you were a developer today, would you say that your new game was smaller than your previous one? No, you wouldn't. You would most likely say that it's "about the same size" or something like that. If your new game was somewhat bigger than your old game, you would also as a developer naturally say that, as that's something good. This gives us the question if Skyrim is actually even a bit smaller than Oblivion.

2. The importances of a big game world are many. There are many things that an open-world game like TES would benefit from it. Let me count up a small list:

A) The world doesn't risk feeling cramped up. This is a very important thing imo. Oblivion did feel very cramped up in my opinion, like if someone had tried to stuff as much as possible in a compact world space. There were dungeons everywhere and you couldn't miss finding one every 30 seconds during your exploration. This hurts the immersion and hurts the feeling of exploration in my opinion. While Skyrim got less dungeons, the risk is still there. Mountains take up a lot of space, and cities are also (supposedly) much bigger now. There are also somewhat 20 towns/villages. If Skyrim feels cramped up, this is a very very bad thing.

B] You will never be able to experience great majestic mountains and valleys and other landscapes, without them getting ridiculously scaled. Oblivion's big Imperial valley looked very impressive at first, but when I finally got around running I noticed how small it actually was. Barely took any time at all to cross it. Skyim's landscapes does look impressive so far, but will they be ridiculously scaled? Yes. They have to be ridiculously scaled if they are to fit within 41 square kilometers, like in Oblivion.
You can say good-bye to landscapes like this:
http://www.wallpaperpimper.com/wallpaper/Landscape/Landscape/Valley-Vista-1-RP6ONRV6I8-1600x1200.jpg
http://hd-wallpapers-widescreen.thundafunda.com/plog-content/images/wallpapers/landscape-wallpapers-pictures/amazing-green-mountains-with-trees-lanscape-wallpaper.jpg
http://www.ashevilleguidebook.com/wnc/images/Fall%20in%20the%20mountains.jpg
http://www.wallpaperden.com/pics/majestic-spring-valley-3.jpg
http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/133/cache/colorado-mountains-earthscapes_13329_990x742.jpg

A good measurement is trees. Trees are always the same size, pretty much. And their size can't fool you. When you see far-looking image over a "huge" landscape, look on the tree size. How big are the trees in the distance?
We will definitely notice the world being ridiculously scaled when we play the game ourselves, or see some real footage (without interruptions). Running through a big-looking valley (at first sight) will most likely go by now time, like in Oblivion.

C) The world can be filled more realistically with different things. Things can be more realistically spread out. The world can be done faster, but still made unique. This has a lot to do with point A) where I stated how the world can risk feeling cramped up.If someone make a big world and spread out all the dungeons, towns, cities, locations of interest, etc... then it doesn't require as much work to accomplish this huge world, while the world also feel more realistic and less cramped up. You'll no longer find a dungeon every 30 seconds.
That leaves us with the problem of all this vegetation and such. All the trees, bushes and other foliage. That will take time to place, yes? Yes it will, as it would always. But the time can be shortened considerably by using something like Far Cry 2 used here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8qa-naczjg&feature=player_detailpage#t=63s
I prefer to call it "random handcrafting". You don't need to place every bush carefully, as long as you have a decently written tool like this. It would make world editing much faster and easier.

This is all a good start, but what about unique landscapes? Skyrim has a lot of those now. This is great and important. Landscapes are supposed to feel unique and not too bland. My idea is that you start with what I said above, but then of course handcraft the game world to be unique on a lot of places like Skyrim probably has already.

D) Huge landscapes have a value of itself. Huge landscapes have a feeling to them that can never be replaced by a smaller landscape. TES-games have always been these open and free worlds. I was a bit disappointed with the size of Oblivion after I finally played it through. It suddenly felt so small. I then discovered the mod MERP (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29214), which is a LOTR-mod that take place in Middle-earth, but where the world is over SEVEN times bigger than original Oblivion. When I played this mod (still unfinished) it felt so great to be in such an amazingly huge world. Valleys and mountains that looked big actually now also felt and were big. It was truly amazing.

3. After reading all of the above, do you feel disappointed with Skyrim's world size being "about the same as Oblivion's"?
I personally do. I have a fear of Skyrim feeling cramped up and of Skyrim feeling ridiculously scaled once you actually play it. I also fear I won't be able to feel that great feeling of huge landscapes that I felt in the LOTR-mod for Oblivion (MERP). But you have to value the amount of work it requires to accomplish this huge world. I personally think 70-80 square kilometers would be perfect for Skyrim, rather than ~41 square kilometers.

4. Do you hope for the next BGS game (Fallout 4 or TES 6) to be bigger?
This is the most relevant question. Skyrim is done and nothing can be done about the world size now.
I personally hope the next BGS game to be bigger, mainly for all the reasons stated above.

The bigger the game world, the less time they'll have to actually put stuff in it. I'd rather there be something to do around every mountain than the world be twice as big but mostly empty. Hey, a lot like Far Cry 2 in your first image!

Comparing it to MMORPGs already through several expansions and Daggerfall (which had mostly randomly generated environments) is a little unfair. And racing games, which are "big" but you sort of move a lot faster.

I voted "I'm not sure yet." I'll have to play Skyrim first. Verticality should add a lot even though the flatland we'll be about the same size.

It's fine as is for this generation, the vertical space will make up for it (I hope).

Not necessarily. Things can be more spread out. More unimportant things like foliage can be "randomly handcrafted" and go 100 times faster (watch the Far Cry 2 video). A game world like 70-80 squre kilometers instead of 41 square kilometers wouldn't necessarily be something bad.

Considering the importances of a big world, I think it's more than worth it. A cramped up and ridiculously scaled world is very very bad.

Oblivion was pretty big, I'd say it's enough, I'm not disappointed, of course bigger worlds are always nice.

I am not dissapointed at all. Oblivion had a plenty large enough World, it was just geographically designed RUBBISH. The idea is to create the illusion that the gameworld is larger, since a larger gameworld adds a lot to the game and playability.

However, Oblivion's map was shaped like a huge bowl, which effectively meant you could go directly to everything and you could see almost everything. It made the World feel very, very small.


Morrowind (I know I can here them now) was smaller, yet felt MUCH larger. Now, this is ofcourse due to render distance and movement speed, but it is also due to the cleverly placed natural boundries in the way, so you could not walk from one side of the map to the other in a straight line.



Skyrim will feel HUGE, trust me. And the boundries will feel natural since it's a mountainous region.

There's a limit to how big a world can get before it starts getting hugely redundant. As long as the world still takes 200-300 hours to fully explore, I'm more than happy about the size.

I'm fine with Skyrim being comparable in size to Oblivion. Half of Cyrodiil was nothing more than randomly generated wilderness that had absolutely no purpose and no content. Skyrim is completely hand-drawn (no randomly generated areas) with every environment being unique and having it's own history/culture. We also have to consider that there will be mountains, which will definitely raise the size in terms of vertical scale, as well as going into mountains as well. Then we have to consider that there will likely be a lot more content than Oblivion had, so overall I think this will be a perfect size for the game that many fans will be able to enjoy for hundreds of hours.

Would I like to see future BGS games be significantly larger in the future? Only if BGS expands as a studio maintaining quality, while increasing content. Otherwise, these worlds are big enough in my opinion.

Here is one lesson I learned in particular from SWG: While it's probably one of the largest MMOs (in terms of space) to ever exist, it's quite likely only a fraction of the community every explored every nook and cranny, and most areas were nothing but empty wastelands.

The key for a developer is to give the illusion of a "huge world," while filling it with enough satisfying content for the player that will allow it to last for many hours of play. We don't just want huge environments. We want believable worlds, and that's an important factor.

Also, people need to take into account more than just raw size. Sure, it's about the same size as Oblivion (which is huge) but then you have to put into account mountains in your way and also you have to take into account your movement speed. From what I saw of the trailer, our idle speed has been slowed down since Oblivion, making the world even larger. So technically Skyrim is the same size as Oblivion but it's size is most definitely much greater in feel.

Bigger does not always mean better, IMHO.

Size doesn't matter, its how you use it

I'd rather have more content then a bigger map.

Morrowind was at most 6 sq miles smaller than Oblivion, and that felt like a massive world because one could not just walk in a relatively straight path from point A to point B over 90 percent of the map.

It's not about the raw size, it's about the topography.

I think it will be fine. Even if they made the world three times larger it would still take the same time fast traveling from one place to another. As others have said, verticality should add some more sense of size to the world. I found Morrowind and Oblivion to be fine in size.

To be quite honest, I don't mind THAT much. I mean, yeah, I DO like big games, but to be honest, I'd rather have stuff in it, than for it to feel empty. I hate your comparison to RDR because in that game, the PURPOSE of the game was for it to seem like a vast, unexplored world, so it fits THAT GAME to have content so spread out (also, that game has a LOT less to take into account than TES has ever had. example: in Oblivion, I dropped a health potion somewhere on the road between the IC and Skingrad. 15 levels later, I walked this road again, AND IT WAS STILL THERE!). and anyways, If Skyrim is anything like said in the lore, it's probably the first place humans visited anyways... that means they'll have built A LOT of stuff there.

I'm not saying it would only be bad if it was bigger. I'm just saying that I don't think it's that big of a problem. And if the navigation feels anything like Morrowind, with the size of Oblivion, then it'll feel incredibly huge

Edit: also, i think the poll needs more options. all it has now is "I WANT BIGGER!!" "I ABSOLUTELY WANT THE SAME SIZE" and "I can't decide". How about adding "I don't think it's SO important" or "I don't really mind"?

(also, keep in mind that more height doesn't necessarily mean less width/lenght if the world is about the same size

I'd just like the time scale to be less than 30x, without being able to run across the whole province in a day.

Oblivion is one of the games with the largest landmasses, I am fine with that

I'll rehash my previous post. What Oblivion did wrong from the perspective of making a World seem large:

- Bowl shaped landmass. No obstacles, can see everything.
- Landscape diversity. There was none.
- Generated content. Remember specific bits of forests and stuff? I remember tons of unique looking foresty areas from Morrowind. They nearly all looked identical in Oblivion.

Skyrim has fixed all of these.

- Mountainous regions with naturally feeling obstacles.
- Lots of diversity, 'fall forest', 'volcanic' areas, mountains and tundras, there's going to be a lot of different places that will create the illusion of you having traveled a long way.
- Generated content (lack thereof).

Skyrim will feel HUGE

The same size as OB is enough, but it is depending on how big it feels. MW was tecnically smaller than OB, but felt bigger. It's all about the feel. + I think it will feel a bit bigger since it won't be a cramped up with caves.

I was hoping for a larger game world. Mountains are generally wastes of space if the player can't climb them and the game world will 'feel' larger because it's segregated but overall I thought Oblivion had too much content for being so small.

I think the problem with Oblivion was not the size of the world. It was pretty huge already. The problems in my opinion were:

1. The lack of landscape detail. Landscapes were randomly generated with the region editor for the most part, which resulted in boring landscapes were everything in one region looked the same. While I don't expect Skyrim to be handcrafted 100% I really do hope they noticed how popular the Unique Landscapes mods are and put some effort into making the landscapes much more diverse and interesting. There is no reason to stop or look around if everything looks the same.

2. The overabundance of dungeons. Like the OP already wrote, you couldn't walk for more than half a minute without finding the next (boring and generic) dungeon. No deep forests, no wide plains. There were caves, Alyeid ruins and forts everywhere. This made the world feel smaller than it really was and I'd rather have half as many (or even less - Oblivion had 214 dungeons in Cyrodiil alone!) dungeons that are interesting and unique. Which seems to be the case in Skyrim (hopefully).

3. The lack of interesting locations to find. In Oblivion there were a few tiny villages with some quest givers, but that's more or less all you could find in the wilderness despite dungeons. I think New Vegas and Fallout did a much better job in that regard. Some events (like the guy falling from the sky in Morrowind), some interesting locations, be it a destroyed caravan (like in NV for example), a really unique landscape feature or immersive 'production centers' like a windmill, a quarry etc are needed. If everything looks the same and nothing ever happens apart from enemies attacking you exploring the land will be boring and you just run from point A to point B as fast as you can without looking left and right.

4. The lack of interesting things to find. There were some chests with useless random loot in Oblivion, but nothing that made exploring Cyrodiil worthwhile. If I carefully explore an area I want to know that I may find some cool things from time to time.

5. The varying speed/athletics skills of your character. With a high speed and athletics you could run around like a Ferrari, again making the world much smaller than it really was. Since both these stats have been removed I hope they do it like in Fallout, were the regular running speed (not talking about the sprint button) is the same for every character and rather slow (maybe comparable to ~30 speed and athletics in Oblivion). If they make all the interesting things mentioned in points 1-4 I doubt it would be annoying if you were a bit slower than the average Oblivion character and much slower than a speed/athletics 100 character.

That's why I voted for 'Same size as Oblivion is enough'. Of course I wouldn't mind a bigger world, but first I'd like Bethesda to fill all the space they got with interesting things before they move on and make the games even bigger.

EDIT: And while I'm not against fast travel I would like the character to start with no fast travel markers at all when he enters the game world. In Oblivion you had all the major cities on your map already and thus you could quickly travel to each major region of the world by simply clicking a button on the map within the first few minutes of (non-tutorial) gameplay.

EDIT2: Forgot one point - the layout of the heightmap. Cyrodiil is basically a valley where you can look from one side to the other side without any obstacles. Nehrim for example, which is smaller than Cyrodiil, still feels larger because there are more mountains blocking your view. This will be the case in Skyrim as well.

Yes. It would be neat if the game was bigger, but you have to keep in mind all the nothing there was in Oblivion. Without mods, there were a lot of places with nothing to do, and they seemed like a waste of space. My bet is they have improved on this aspect, and we will be given the illusion of a bigger game world. I would be satisfied with that.

Indeed, but with too much stuff in a too confined space and you'll eventually realize how the ridiculous scaling and how everything is so cramped up.
I haven't played Skyrim. I don't know about this... although I hope it won't be like this. This was some weak spots in how the Oblivion world felt like for me. It's some quite important weak spots as well I think.

So size does matter in that regard. In other cases, size doesn't necessarily have to be good, just as it does necessarily have to be bad.

Verticality people, verticality.