i hope the world size is big enough to justify fast travel, at least 4 times as big as oblivions cyrodil.(we might gets some decent sized settlements/mountains then) estimate the amount of landmass in the game.



something moronically big is possible http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwQRMXTfVSM but it is doubtful. there are probably huge downsiders to something epicly big like that though


edit:

Is their current team bigger or smaller than in the development of Oblivion? A lot depend on that aswell.

According the bethesda, the team is bigger and better than ever

that probably doesnt matter, they have the tech to randomly generate most of the wilderness.

but i guess bigger, although i hope that a lot of them got fired (all of their games have horrible textures, the animations are poor,there are people that actualy MADE oblivions level scalling)

Yea the need a new animation team for sure. I've got less than2 years experience with computer graphics and I've been making better animations than some of the morrowind/oblivion ones

You should really give some numbers in the topic of how big some famous games are. Give examples of how big Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 3, Just Cause 2, Red Dead Redemption are.. etc
So we can get a real perspective of how big these square kilometers are. Otherwise I think it's pretty useless to have that many options and numbers.

Just to save you some time, I looked everything up for you:

Oblivion was about 41 square kilometers.
Morrowind was about 25 square kilometers.
Fallout 3 was about 38 square kilometers.
Just Cause 2 was very big, around 1050-1100 square kilometers (with great visuals in the game as well, despite this huge map)
Red Dead Redemption was about 72 square kilometers (with lots of quests, places, etc as in Oblivion)

I think Skyrim should be like 70 square kilometers as Red Dead Redemption. Pretty big for a world...
Even bigger is great though, as long as it doesn't severly make other parts of the game bad. It has to be a balance.
But you really have to remember that a new engine often means that things go a lot easier and faster. Therefore, worlds don't take that long to do anymore as they did before. They can do a lot more, in a lot less time with a good engine.

So... I guess the size 60-100 and I prefer that too personally.

I didn't know that Morrowind was smaller than Oblivion.

thanks


@gernac- morrowind seemed bigger because you walked slower and didnt have fast travel

There doesn't seem to be a precedent for Bethesda doing this.

Everything was pretty much "human generated" in Morrowind and Oblivion and Fallout 3, so why would do they do that in Skyrim.

From what I hear Daggerfall was randomly generated but they seem to have dropped that.

oblivion wasnt

Actually they still randomly generate a lot of things, I don't think there are many discussions in dev team about placing tree number 1231335487 in forest 4 or 5 meters from another one;), still they probably check in results and correct mistakes, which was not possible in daggerfall.

Maybe Daggerfall sized maps are not suitable for the hand tailored strategy Beth has adopted in its two last games, but an efficient use of procedural generation tools may allow devs to build a map where wilderness will really look so, and not like the neighbour town park. There should be a civilized-secured area around human settlments before being harrassed by monsters and bandits.
Exploration and travelling should really be a challenge by themself and reward players who will favor them rather than the usefull fast travel system.
a 50x50 km square would be big enough to really hide places while not prohibiting a player to cross the whole map, especially if horses allow to move much faster.

I don't care about size all that much. I'm more concerned with the level of depth and detail. So if we get something ridiculous like 300 square miles, I really doubt that there would be much depth, which is why I'm hoping it won't be outrageously large.

I also think that Morowind seemed bigger because of the view distance restriction (even though this now can be achieved through MGE).
But most of all, I think that it was because there were so many tiny hills everywhere. Some would call them mountains but I'd prefer to call them hills...

If Skyrim had some kind of... way of making your view distance obscure, it would seem a lot bigger. It could be done by making really high and dense forests, lots of valleys and mountains, etc.
In addition, speed could be reduced a bit, definitely making it feel bigger... but perhaps in a bad way

The overall dimensions of the province will probably be around the size of Cyrodiil or slightly larger - however, I'm expecting the terrain in Skyrim to have lots of natural barriers such as impassable mountain ranges and bottomless chasms, which will mean you can't always simply run from point A to point B in a straight line. This ought to make the province feel more expansive and mysterious.

I think that the world will be about twice the size of Cyrodiil, but with lots of mountains and ravines etc.

I really hope it would be really big like 100-150 but still the maps that have been posted on these forums look little dull :cookie:

Cyrodiil is the biggest province in Tamriel, so why guess? I'd say maybe 35 square kilometres is what they'll make of it, though nicer would be bigger (without loss of quality, of course).

The overworld could be a bit larger than Cyrodiil but not very much if they scale back the fast travel system. The travel in oblivion was quite suitable, a decent duration to get to most objectives (provided you hadn't been in the area previously) but not so long as to become boring. I don't want to spend an hour walking around a mountain to get some small time quest objective. Some impressive geography such as cliffs, ravines, river valleys and more would be appreciated. And a good vantage point of all this. Some high mountain from where you could see pretty much the entire map would be nice.
Personally I would like them to put more effort in making the dungeons more diverse, because in Oblivion all 70+ caves, 40+ forts and 40+ ruins seemed to be made of a dozen different elements each. By the way how big are these games when you count in the dungeons as well as the overworld map, because Cyrodiil is pretty much a Swiss cheese of dungeons that add a lot of area, that is not quite as easy to randomly generate. And seriously players spend most of their time in dungeons so it would be nice if you didn't have a constant sense of deja vu.

What I would really love to see is Daggerfall style world, encompassing the whole of Tamriel, with Morrowind style care for detail.

I know tech is prolly about 10 years from that.

But I dream of an elder scrolls where I have the whole of Tamriel and my race determines where I start the game. Altmer for Summerset, Argonians in Black Marsh etc. Maybe even a different approach to the main quest depending on race.

Truly massive. Daggerfall massive, but all filled in.

To be honest if its the same size as oblivon I wont be complaining nor would I if it was morrowinds size. I have no debate on either of them being too small etc, I would maybe like a bigger map but as long as it has a variety in environments etc

Don't worry, you're not the only one who didn't realize that, if these forums are anything to go by.



The size of the provinces in lore doesn't really have much to do with it, as the games don't necessarily need to all use the same scale. I think we can safely assume that Oblivion would have been much bigger if it had been on the same scale as Morrowind.

Anyway, I'm guessing the size of the map will either be comparable to Oblivion, or somewhat bigger, a size comparable to Red Dead Redemption might be within reason, but I doubt we'll see a world as large as Just Cause 2, after all, I can't think of any other recent game I've played with such a large world map.

As far as what I want, I wouldn't mind a map larger than Oblivion, as long as it does not come at the sacrifice of the quality, detail and variety of the landscape. I like having a large world to explore, but if it comes at the expense of making the world feel boring, then I'd rather it be smaller.

I would love to have a world that's 100 square kilometeres! I don't want quality sacrificed for quantity though. BGS's maps have been getting bigger, so if we could get a world that's 100 square kilometeres, while still having quests, good dungeons and environments, I'd say yes.

Part of me thinks it will be huge, part of me wants it to be huge, but i'd rather it was smaller and filled with amazing content.
I think, like the OP that the game will end up around 70km² though part of me hopes it will be bigger, I don't want it at the expense of content.

I want it to be big enough that it doesn't feel as crowded as Oblivion.