This is true, although I believe trees were randomly generated maybe... or that may have just been the leaves. Also I would agree with your opinion.

Oblivion did feel a lot bigger. 9 major cities in Oblivion as well as numerous small towns and settlements. Skyrim had 5 major cities and 4 basically towns (technically minor cities), with a couple more small settlements. The land itself also felt a lot bigger and seemed to take longer to traverse. But I'm glad Skyrim seems smaller, as it is actually a smaller province, it wouldn't be true to the lore if they made it the same size as Cyrodiil.

Twice the size of skyrim would be amazing. It would take 6-7 years with a larger staff then Bethesda has to do it though.

It was created using a random generated world. The forest the plant life all added on a fish bowl plain. There was a few things placed by hand like rocks and the cities and the like. But its obvious the world was copy and pasted everywhere. It was blatantly obvious painfully so in fact. The world design was the worst of the past three ES games.

Calling the smaller cities towns in Skyrim is being polite, all they are tiny villages some even less than that, places like Winterhold and Ivarstead. Bigger cities would have been better look at Solitude the capital, I also wish we had more main cities.

I would have liked if Skyrim was bigger they did not stick to the lore with lush rain forest in Cyrodiil.

Yeah I know, Ivarstead isn't actually a minor city though, it's just a town. But Winterhold was a real disappointment, I suppose with the College being there it adds to it's size if you join it.
I'd have liked to see more major cities as well though. I did enjoy the fact that they were SO much more diverse than the cities in Oblivion. Markarth blew my mind when I first entered it.

I'm playing Oblivion at this very moment and can't notice it, despite it being so 'blantantly obvious'. As I've said previously, I find Cyrodiil to be a beautiful province - its green forests, autumn trees, snowy mountains, grassy plains and swamp areas make for some stunning scenery.

And also, they did stick to lore. I remember reading that Tiber Septim somehow changed Cyrodiil's climate from a rainforest to the forest we know and (at least in my case) love.

I loved Cyrodiil as well, breathtaking world. At least at the time it was anyway, having played Skyrim returning to Oblivion's graphics system might be a bit of a shock to the system, however when I first played it I was in love, still think about it fondly.

*sigh* look on a map of tamriel - look at the difference in size between cyrodiil and skyrim. The fact that skyrim has a smaller area than cyrodiil is more in keeping with the 'lore' OP decided to spout off about.

Anyhow, it's not hugely smaller, 'very small' isn't an accusation I'd ever level at this game.

Hey, you like big empty stretches between cities where nothing of importance can be found.
You hate fast travelling?

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Have fun....

I do wish Skyrim's landmass was somewhat bigger. Given how much of it has been hand-placed, even adding some empty areas would take a lot of work just because of things like trails, signs and stairs.

Using Daggerfall as an example of randomly-generated land is silly. Daggerfall's terrain wasn't even state of the art in 1996. It also gives long-time players the impression it was hastily modified into its current form because the more interesting terrain hinted at in the pre-release material was buggy.

I also really like the variation in foliage in Oblivion. It's more subtle, but after playing for 600 hours I can easily tell which region I'm in by looking at the plants around me. The denser trees were fun too, but Skyrim has a beauty all its own.

A few people have been talking about better forests (something that early screenshots of Oblivion were promising, if I recall).

I remember making a mod for Morrowind once, where I made this really thick, dense forest. Brilliant, I thought, why didn't the devs do this? Then when I loaded it up to play - bang! The game just crawled, as it couldn't process that many objects in one go.

I imagine they've come a long way since then, though...

I actually find the forests in Skyrim pretty fantastic, considering that. I mean, you are at leas aware that you're in a forest, rather than in Bloodmoon where the "forest" consisted of eight trees set about a mile apart from each other.

Oblivion's forests were even better. The Great Forest was pretty dense and quite large.

Skyrim is waaaaaayy too small a play area for a supposedly large sandbox game. shame really

The 16 square miles (not including the Shivering Isle expansion, planes of Oblivion, dungeons, etc) appears to be the square miles in the rectangular map.

If you actually count up the accessible area it is more like 9-10 square miles, or the equivalent of a 3x3 mile square. Which is still very large for a game.

Skyrim feels a bit smaller too me. Even though the mountains make it seem larger because there is often less of a straight path than in Oblivion (much like Morrowind). Still Skyrim is big enough for an amazing game.

And I don't know how the OP got those numbers, but Skyrim isn't even remotely 40-50 square kilometers.

Not really, when you take into account the underground areas, especially BLACKREACH !! When adding them it is actually roughly the same size as Oblivion (only slightly smaller). However the surface area itself had to be smaller as Skyrim itself is considerably smaller than Cyrodiil.

I honestly haven't noticed a difference. Probably because my horses keep dying on me, the foolish beasts.

Game seems smaller if you're fast traveling everywhere. Walking, or heck, even riding a horse, makes me appreciate the size much more. It takes me forever to walk around and it really is enjoyable. Although, yes, I don't do it all the time. (Off-topic, I've realized why there are no fat people in Skyrim. Problem solved.)

Yeah + These "randomly generated land" would not be so lore friendly and not exist for some players,So you cant say,hey! go to that place! its awesome!

so you think skyrim has a large playing surface?

I definitely know its too small

The world is limited to its size anyway, would you prefer a medium world or a huge laggy world full of glitches. i for one would prefer the one now as it is as it has a reasonable loading time ( even if it far exceeds any other know loading times for me ) but the amount of work and care gone into the map is something that should not be complained at.

Hi there ImperatorBellus55! How areyou?


Smallness is not my top concern regarding the gameworld. It's a bit too stale for me, and then suddenly it gets too hectic, as in the case of too much dangerous wild life roaming around freely two minutes awy from major cities. But me too I would like for a bigger gameworld, one which would accommodate bigger cities, bigger towns and bigger settlements.

It's not that the size is too small but like it has been mentionned by others, that places of interest are too close and unrealistic. It would make for more interesting exploration if finding a cave, a fort etc was less frequent.
IMHO the future of sandboxed games like Sjyrim is a mix of handcrafted + procedurally generated landmass to overcome the issue of finding a cave or dungeon every 100m.
I believe that with the advance of technology it will be possible to make interesting generated content.

Large compared to most games yes.

Oblivion was huge but lets forget it was extremely dull and unintereting and you can walk for minutes upon minutes in one direction and not see any other life. No sorry ill take skyrims world over oblivion any day.

I don't think Cyrodiil was dull and uninteresting at all.