Yeah I agree that it's especially crazy when you compare it to older Zelda games. TP was pretty segmented aswell, so this will feel like and even bigger jump than it already is.

From what I can gather, Novegrad, the Skeliga isles, and Velen together are 136 km2 which would put those regions at about 2 1/4 times the size of BOTW. Don't know how big any other regions or add ons are though.

That's not really how you meassure the size of a world...You can glide in BOTW, but that doesn't mean the world is larger than it is.

He was saying that he eyeballed it and it looks like you can almost fit two Skyrims in the BOTW map. That's when I told him that going off of the numbers Skyrim is 60% the size of Zelda. Which makes BOTW 1 2/3 the size of Skyrim.

It all depends on how varied the locations are. Fallout 4 was probably a lot smaller than TW3, but it felt a lot less repetitive in the points of interests. Hopefully the map isn't littered with identical monster nests, useless treasure, modular cave systems and generic towns. The number of unique interesting locations is a better measure. Usually Zelda is very good in that department.

Is a shrine the same as a dungeon?  Or will there be other explorable places besides shrines?  I ask because 100 doesn't sound that good if the size of the map is that much bigger than Skyrim.  Skyrim had about 200 "dungeon" locations where you could earn the "cleared" tag, though they ranged from small caves to vast catacombs, not counting above ground locations.

I'm guessing there will be a lot more going on to keep the map from feeling empty.

I went back and played Fallout: New Vegas after Fallout 4 and it made me realize how fun Fallout 4 was in terms of continuous content.  New Vegas was so empty in comparison that a lot of stuff felt isolated.  Fallout 4, you could literally go from the frying pan into the fire with a few steps, which made exploring exciting.  Honestly, one of my most favorite things was dragging enemies into one another.  If I ever win the lottery and form a game studio, I think I'll make that the focus of my first project.

Ugh!!! Why you gotta make me get hyped more!!!

I'm really interested why Aonuma went with such a huge size. I don't doubt it will be filled with content (exclude some areas), but this has never been something Zelda was known for.

The original was pretty big in retrospect, but the square grids made it easy to put secrets in each space. ALttP seemed like just a natural progression from that, but not really that much bigger.

Then comes the 3D Zeldas, which if you ask me, their overworlds were pretty empty and forgettable outside of music (except the islands from WW, but even then the ocean was pretty light on content). Nothing super impressive in size, and most of the focus always went to the dungeons.

And to make things more interesting, it's on the Wii U! Aonuma probably had a really ambitious idea, which would explain the +2 years of delays... 

That was a lot of fun, especially when 3 factions ran into eachother. I'll just sit on a rooftop to admire the spectacle and even the odds with my sniper rifle when one side starts to get the upperhand :) It made running away a valid strategy, run into another faction and sneak off to the side.

I like vast open landscapes too, sotc's environment was great to explore as well. Exploration only becomes a chore when you keep finding the same stuff. Like the same buildings in NMS on every planet or the copy pasted caves in FC4. Every game has its strengths and weaknesses though. May the perfect game never be made, so I can keep on looking for it :) That's what exploration is all about.

You will fly in skyrim and should be in the switch version aswell. Just saying =p.

I don't get what he means by flying as verticality. Flying in a game is basically just a faster, no obsticles vehicle.  Makes a world smaller, imo.

But verticality in terms of scalling up a mountain cliff, or dungeons underground or floating islands, I woudl consider though. You know things that you can't judge on a map because they take the same space as something else on a 2d map. Same as in different dimensions like Metroid Prime 2. Same world, but dark/ancient/ect. So doubling map size in a way.

Afaik, in the overworld will be:

- Towns and small settlements (npc, sidequests)

- Roaming npc's (this needs confirmation because there's speculation based on TGA trailer and latest treehouse footage)

- Shrines (100+)

- Big dungeons (most likely 4)

- Bosses (roaming in the overworld)

- Small enemies camps (we already saw that)

All of that combined with a few survival elements and crafting. For example, during a thunderstorm, if you have anything made by metal, you may be strike by lighting.

If anyone knows anything else, please tell me.