I do, so much so that OOO and MMM were neccessities.

Hi there youp1one1!


Good point. Yup, running into a cave or ruin once every five steps ends up lessening the joy of exploration. Buy when you say procedural generation, do you mean real time generated landscape or one which is generated beforehand and then placed set and locked into the gameworld, so that designers are relieved from the time consuming obligation to handcraft every single inch of the terrain?

Morrowind seemed bigger to me (I don't know if it actually was)... but Oblvion definitely wasn't. It was pretty much contructed in two corridors in a T-shape. It only seemed larger to you probably because of that design. To walk from the Westernmost spot on the map to the Southernmost, you had to travel all the way East first, then travel due South. Skyrim is basically an open map shaped as a square with mountain ranges throughout (that are not impossible to traverse, but can be difficult). It could be that it is objectively smaller than Oblivion, but the design (square vs. cross) at least logically seems to contain more area.


Hmm... well, that's your opinion. It definitely wasn't dull. It was actually pretty cool hunting deer in the woods. Oblivion gates ruined the beautiful landscape though.

Oblivion notwithstanding, how many games have a larger play area?

Fable is too small.

Give your 'point' some substance or cease your trolling, rapscallion!

This.

Because it isn't dull and uninteresting. For those that approach Oblivion with an open mind.

It's amazing and hand crafted.

If anything I find it annoying that in Oblivion you can walk more than a few steps without tripping over some dungeon, shrine, easter egg, etc.

Actually Skyrim is, I think, more sparse. Pparticularly in the tundra area.

Hi there Savlian! Hope you're doing great.


Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head. The problem, I think, lies with the notion that in order for forests to be interesting there has to be some point of interest around the corner. Real life forests are fascinating by themselves. They don't need a ruin or a cave once every few steps. It is because Bethesda got self-conscious about how bland and stale their forests are that they felt compelled to catch up and stuff them up with loads of POI. I'm sure there are a lot of tech limitations that inhibit progress in thgis area but I'm confident next gen consoles will push the current limits of what you can do.

I agree, it does feel a bit smaller, and you can traverse it pretty quickly. I walked from the original Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary to the new one near Dawnstar in about 15 minutes, on the map it looks really far away. But I don't think the size matters all that much, as it's so rich with detail. I think they went for a more dense map, rather than a larger one.

Overall, I think the Skyrim map is pretty amazing.

Isn't a problem of size of the world, but of things like cave or fort, in skyrim are too similar each other making game boring after 4-5 forts.

Yeah, they kind of get repetitive, but I prefer them way more than Oblivion's caves.

The guy who started his forum is totally right oblivion and skyrim are sooooooo small take morrowind for example i played that game for years without finishing all the quests mostly because It took so long to get to other places. I've actually looked it up and oblivion was like .0001 the scale of morrowind and I know bethseda is so concerned about microdetail but they dfont understand that graphics aren't important whats important is making the game feel real and when I can run to Whiterun from riverwood in 2 min thats not realistic plus the cities have like 12 people not realistic and i think the dungeons and bandit camps are very much improved but when you find one every 10 ft its just lame When it takes months in game and weeks real time to travel across the province your in then i will be satisfied with area.

very true

Man, I know what you are talking about!

But the world isn't really smaller! maybe by a bit... It feels smaller because in Morrowind and Oblivion most of the world looked the same, in Oblivion it was all foresty so you would not recognize each area... And in Skyrim, every single spot has a unique look, which makes you remember it very well, and because you remember so many of the places, it looks like the game is smaller, plus Skyrim is much more open than Oblivion, so you can actually see most of the world.

Think about it...

It is a small world. But it's not that the world is geographically small.

It's that theres far too little in it. Only enough to get to level 40, in fact. If you play properly, just go at it, like you're meant to, you run out of stuff to do by level 40.
A world is'nt actually big because of it's size. It's what's in it, how interesting it is and how much of it there is.

The world is too big, with the same 6 things copy pasted repeadedly.
There is'nt vast tracts of unspoilt wilderness, even. You go for some wilderness wandering, and you end up seeing people again soon.
The forests, you expect big trees and vast forests. And there is'nt. It's just some trees dotted around.
There is'nt some places full of vicious enemies to tear you up to liven it up. Nope, because theres nothing like deathclaws or cazadores in skyrim.

50-60km? It's a hell of a lot smaller than that, but the game world is still massive. What are you comparing it to? Not many games have even a 10th of the size Skyrim does and I can think of only a handful that have somthing bigger.

Doubling the game world would ruin Skyrim.

It often takes me half an hour to travel (no fast runs) from a city to a dungeon, possible longer depending on the events I encounter on route. If you factor in the dungeon and a return journey could easily be 2-3hrs real time to finish one quest.

Doubling the game world would only mean longer journeys.

No thanks, think the developers sized this perfectly. If you want adventure turn off the compass makes traveling so much harder.

This

Also, with the addition of new Dawnguard caves, ruins, etc. to the Skyrim map, there will be even more exploring for us to do.

And yet it's still fun

Skyrim does feel small. The next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games really need to upscale the landmass.

Still, after playing lots of Minecraft, I have to say, I'll take Skyrim to randomly generated crap any day. Minecraft gets away with it because it's visuals lack detail, so the eye doesn't percieve repetition as much(Oversaturated already with it). But seeing 800M of featureless flat grass isn't exactly my idea of great content.

I'd love to see an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game the size of Just Cause 2. That's like 93SQMiles. Maybe as the tools evolve, we'll be able to get stuff like that while still keeping the human touch of the artists involved.

the mountains make up most of the game world. skyrim is small.

Oh yeah, baby. Just Cause 2 is one of my favorite open-world games... a massive beautiful world with no loading screens.

I'm not being mean, I'm genuinely curious, how did you manage to play 1000 hours and not explore those areas? Did you replay a bunch of quests with different characters or something. I've not played anyway near 1000 hours and I've explored pretty much everywhere.

Play Daggerfall. Also size isn't really the main issue. It is what you do with the size that matters. There are so many things to do!

Skyrim feels massive to me.