Fallout 4 is tiny. Haven is basically within an easy 2 minute walk of Concord, at the walking pace of snail.

The automatic defense. It's packed with stuff! With detail! It's like Disneyland!

But there's no mention of how much "content" there is here. This has nothing to do with that. It has to do with how spread out that content is. Disneyland is dense because there's realworld land restrictions in place, it has to fit into a designated space. It's dense because in the real world people walk slow and get tired of walking. It's dense because you can't ride a horse or a car around the middle of Disneyland.

But video games have no such restrictions. The average walking speed, heck make it jogging speed! Could be much faster than it is in Fallout 4, because it's a video game, it can be whatever. You can give the player a horse, you can give the player transportation, you can give the player fast travel.

And then the map can be bigger, can feel more like an actual world. For the cost of a few more minutes spent in procedural generation tools, for the cost of setting the atmospheric scattering to something other than "Beijing Smog" the world could be, could look, could feel more expansive and exploratory. Could move bandits farther away from a settlement than "camped down the block". Fallout 4 is roughly the same size map as was made back in 2006, almost a decade ago, for reasons that don't hold up.

Heck if travel is boring then make it fun! It seems to work for GTA V, which is 3+ times the size, or Just Cause 3, which is 30+ times the size. Fallout 4, and even Skyrim before it, feel like a weird set of movie sets packed too close together, and video games don't have to feel that way, even if they are packed with content.

I don't think GTA or Just Cause are fair comparisons as the worlds are build for exploring with exceptionally fast vehicles. Vehicles are a *core* mechanic of the game.


Beth could sink another 6 months into compelling vehicle mechanics an the only thing we'd hear is complaints about how few cars there are, or the fact you can't mid them, or how there's no vehicular combat, etc.


As it stands, I wouldn't mind a slightly larger scale, but what FO4 has is still imminently satisfying to me.

I can't tell you how many times I have taken the taxi and press skip in GTA5 because it was so boring to walk or drive around.

I am seriously hoping nobody ever mentions MGS5's open world as MGS5's has probably the worst open world I have ever seen in a modern game.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1574350-not-enough-content/

Another one of these threads

There's plenty of content. More than Skyrim? No. More than FO3/NV? Yes. Though that's always how it's been or at least it seems as though this is the direction Bethesda wants to go with this franchise.

I must have a different version because it is a big big deal for me to have to go to the castle from Sanctuary etc. Both the distance and the milage are fine with me.

Can't please everyone.

Also, there's more to a good freeroam sandbox than map size. Take "The Crew", by Ubisoft, for example. That game had the ENTIRE U.S.A. for a map (scaled down a bit of course). It took up to an hour to cross the map from NY to LA.

However, the subpar driving physics (GTA5 has better), lack of road-surface variety (only 3 types of road surface), few drivable cars (only a dozen or so pre-DLC), and lifeless cities (complete with cookie-cutter buildings) made it one of the most forgettable car games I've ever played.

To reiterate, a large map is good, but it isn't everything. Far more important that a game be FUN TO PLAY. FO4 is, even if the map isn't *quite* as big as Skyrim's (which is debatable).

Its more than large enough to be a blast to me.

I was hoping for a much larger scale of map for Fallout 4, Skyrim felt bigger for some reason & that had mountains taking up space. I've plowed through many hours in F4 & it's all becoming to familiar to quickly. On saying that I have enjoyed the detail put into this game, loving down town Boston.

If map size was all that mattered, Daggerfall would be Bethesda's best game.

I never got the "theme park" complaint about Bethesda's worlds. Theme parks are fun, and there's something interesting around every corner. The point of Bethesda's game worlds isn't to represent a realistic scale, it's to fill it to the brim with minute details and keep every location interesting. On the macro scale, you can look from Sanctuary and get a stunning view of the Boston city skyline in the distance. On the micro scale, you can interact with every little clutter item in every corner of the map, pick flowers, read terminals. That's how they've designed their worlds since Morrowind and that's what sets them apart.

Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause have "big" worlds, but how many NPCs have attributes and abilities as complex as the player? How many little clutter items can you interact with? How much of the map is just empty scenery for you to drive across?

Box Maaan hit the nail on the.

I have the same feeling since Oblivion, the maps are too small and cramped with points of interest. I would like a map 2x the size of Skyrim, with settlements and dungeons more spaced out, especially for a game with mounts like Skyrim it wouldn't hurt to get lost a bit in the wilderness.


In Fo4 extending the map was clearly not the focus, but it's somewhat masked by the urban density of buildings. Here's hope for TES 6, maybe with the help of added manpower (Bethesda Montreal) they can offer us a bigger world without lowering the content and interactivity.

Seriously, The game is Huge. Plenty of places, plenty of buildings to explore, multistored buildingd with surprises and details, plenty of quests. I must have now a dozen quests on my pipboy, and I KNOW That on my way to solve them, I will find Newton places, new characters, enemies.... Whoever says The map is small isnt exploring the places and buildings,isnt talking to The characters inthe game

I think they wanted it such that you could just explore by waking. If it's too spaced out you can't really walk. There are players who don't use fast travel.

Yes. It's tiny.

Not right to make excuses for Bethesda. If walking were a problem, put in vehicles. Ever played ARMA3?

Why not both?

Plus, can one really talk about the "details" when so many houses are boarded up and never breached (after 200 years)? When skyscraqers only have very few rooms and few levels to "explore"?

Like what I told the other guy, it's not right to make excuses for Bethesda.

This game isn't ARMA 3 and it doesn't try to be. They don't want to include vehicles because the worlds are meant to be walked through. Even using a horse in Skyrim can be a hassle if you're interested in harvesting ingredients for alchemy, or hunting and looting wildlife.

Because making a world that big and detailed would take even longer in development? I'm not making excuses, I'm just not going to fault Bethesda for designing worlds like they have been since Morrowind. Size isn't the point, and it never was. And with so much to do, I don't particularly care about the size.

Like I said, it is not right to make excuses for Bethesda. If one does not want to use fast travel, or use vehicles/mounts, walking is part of the game. And if you installed Frostfall and Realistic Needs and Diseases, you would be running from point to point in a cloak while looking for fire.

Walking is part of the game.

More excuses to excuse Bethesda on the shortcomings of the game. Since this topic comes up a lot, size is important. Just not to you.

I think it's possible the game is "tiny" for a reason... cut content. I'm sure they had other directions/area's they wanted to add or expand upon but couldn't because it took away from the core narrative too much. Look how the Glowing Sea expands beyond the main map. If you head to the southern most area's of the game it looks like there is more room to expand.

I think some of the best area's are fleshed out in the buildings and other area's that need exploring.

Do I wish the map was a bit larger? Yes, but there are still a lot of things for me to explore in the game as it is.

It's a pity that so many people don't get the OP's intention. When he complains about the tiny map you cannot counter this with "it's so full of content, much more than x had/has". That's not the point. The content, of which Fallout 4 has plenty, is packed in too dense a space. It is not helpful for immersion when so many foes live door to door. It is not helpful when you have seen all four corners of the map really soon that there is a lot to explore between. It feels cramped. I don't want more points of interest in Fallout, I want them more spread out, to have the feeling of getting lost in a huge world.

I don't understand how you can complain about size when there's still so much content in the game already, and when the size is consistent with every other RPG Bethesda's made since 2001. I don't think you can call it a "shortcoming" any more at this point, just a design philosophy you don't agree with. Enough about "excuses".

These threads are hilarious, anyone who has played this game properly will now the content is vast

Almost a hundred hours in, I'm just starting to explore interiors. I just spent 3 hours in one location. There are a lot of little unmarked quests.


They use that density to their advantage . There is plenty of open space, but, the greater Boston area makes sense densely populated with locations.

Keep in mind that many complained about F3 and NV (particularly) being too spread out.