Is Zelda U Almost 10x the Size of Skyrim?

DISCLAIMER: This is merely a post inferring the size of Zelda U.

Recently, Aonuma stated Zelda U's game world will be as big as the Wii U can handle, continuing a trend of comments that suggest the new entry in the series is going to be absolutely massive. A few months back, he stated that the game world would be roughly the size of Kyoto, which spans about 300 sq. miles.

At first, I shrugged, thinking 300 sq. miles wasn't all that large. But that was before I curiously looked into the size of Skyrim, a game most people will agree is pretty massive.

Skyrim's game world spans about 37 sq. miles, which is pedestrian in comparison to 300. So, the question begs to be asked: Is Zelda U *really* going to be almost 10x larger than one of the largest game worlds ever?

Of course, we have to take this with a grain of salt until something specific is stated. But with that being said (worries of a barren game world, aside), Zelda U's shaping up to be one of the most massive video games ever created. Thoughts?

No it's not going to be. It'll be fairly large from the map they shown though.

It's going to be huge, but 10x bigger than Skyrim? I doubt it.

Seeing as they haven't even proven an ability to make a small world feel organic and full of life, I sincerely hope it's not that big. That is, unless they have magically learned how to add stuff that isn't total crap filler.

Maybe in terms of physical size it could be that big... but do we want it to be that big? If that just means that it'll take my horse longer to ride from point A to point B and there's nothing meaningful in between, then I say "no thank you".

I want an open world and the feeling of freedom, but I hope it's full of meaningful stuff to do and that it feels alive.

I am optimistic that Nintendo will find a happy medium in there where the world is huge and there some fun stuff to do. They've been knocking the ball out of the park lately with their games.

I hope it's a lot smaller than Skyrim, really. Skyrim was too big.

The size isn't as important as its density

Skyward Sword is bigger than Windwaker but there was very little to do in SS when the vast, vast majority of islands had nothing but patch grasses and one chest. Batman Arkham Origins was twice as big as Arkham City but was not nearly as dense, felt empty at times. Borderlands 1 is terrible offender of this, that world was WAY too big for its own good, while Borderlands 2 did a much better job.

I don't care if Zelda U is 1/3 of the size as Windwaker, as long as it's kept up to scale of dynamic things available to do in the world: sidequests, dungeons and mini dungeons, mini games, collectables, etc.

Yeah, I think CD projekt red said witcher 3 is like, 30% bigger than skyrim or something, so 10x would be insane and not to mention detrimental.

This, 100 times this

No one at Nintendo knows how to make a world that feels alive, a whole world like that?

No way in Hell, everyone had better pray it's a small world

If it's really going to be 300 square miles, I bet you'll only be able to access a small percentage of that. Skyward Sword was HUGE! All that land under those clouds, but the problem is you couldn't access almost any of it. :P

It looked like 10x's less detailed and lifeless than Skyrim.

Pretty much. xD

You haven't played Majora's Mask have you?

who knows, skyrim is relatively small, great but small

just cause 2 was 10x bigger and that world didnt feel too vacant.

daggerfall is fucking like 1000x bigger so who knows

if they do it right who cares. i never played a bad zelda game (that was made by nintendo)

oh, and skyrim is 14 square miles not 30.

To be fair, Majora's Mask was a pretty small game world. I, too, question Nintendo's -- and I don't want to say ability, so I'll say -- commitment to making a game world even remotely that big with tons of stuff to do. Honestly, I think it's impossible to fill up even 40 sq. miles with captivating content, and I don't think they should. What I think they should do is not so much make a world that big feel alive in those sprawling masses (they definitely *should* make it more alive than past entries), but they should give the world character.

Every nook and cranny of that world should feel diverse and unimaginable in a way that makes gliding across it feel like a new, exciting experience. Even though we know almost nothing about the game, I want to point to No Man's Sky to compliment this. The game looks pretty empty and barren with not a lot of things to do, but it's the way the worlds are presented to us that make them intriguing. Zelda U can learn from that.

An addendum to this post -- I hope somebody at Nintendo knows there absolutely *has* to be fast travel in a game even remotely the size they're claiming Zelda U is. And this is a company who didn't know a third person shooter needed to have a reticle.

All I want is lots and lots of secrets and hidden gems spread across the world

It's the size of Japan or Kyoto? I forgot which. It is 10 times (or more) bigger then Skyrim.

Can't wait to see more of this game

Don't worry about that, of course there will be fast travel of some description. I just hope it isn't handled like Oblivion's, where you can just open your map and click where you want to go. Ocarina of Time had those wrap songs. Both Windwaker and Twilight Princess had a wrap system. Not sure about Majoras Mask. In Skyward Sword though fast travel would have been unnecessary. Any statue on the surface would have allowed you to enter the sky, and the sky itself was quite tiny.

Honestly, since the world is going to be much larger than previous Zelda games, I hope they use this as an opportunity to introduce a more natural system of fast travel like Morrowind had. Instead of clicking to a point on the map where you wanted to go as in Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, I would like to see a transportation system.

@simuseb2: I would second this. Morrowind did travel perfectly.

His actual words in the interview were "I'm using Kyoto as my base."

He didn't say "It's the size of Kyoto". I'm guessing it's maybe an expression that just means "it's damn huge" or something like that. 10x Skyrim just wouldn't work in my opinion. It needs to be an interesting world and an interesting narrative. 10x Skyrim would mean you end up just fast-travelling constantly. I don't like doing that.

I only played about hour in Morrowind. Can you explain the fast travel for us layman?

@garywood69: i can chime in here.

basically the player couldnt just travel from one end of the map to the other by clicking on an icon. there were a few different modes of transport: silt strider, boat and portal from a mages guild.

not every method led to everywhere so if the player wanted to get somewhere fast then they had to have a little head scratch about it.

e.g. i may have to get a stilt strider from town a to town b, then a boat from town b to town C then go on foot from town C to my destination.

i prefer this model myself as it does increase immersion in a game such as morrowind imho.

i stopped using fast travel completely in skyrim after a while (a mod called frostfall had a hand in that mind). skyrim was just such a pleasure to explore that i went everywhere on foot and only used the carts when needed.

the only thing it lacked (and its something nintendo will need to be aware of) is random stuff happening in the world. it was lovely to explore but it would have been nice if there was more variety in random stuff.

@garywood69: Oman pretty much summed it up Before I could haha. There were methods of public transport to get you from region to region, makes guild services, and hidden indexes to find that allowed you to transport between the remote ancient forts that gave you, greater access to the more isolated regions.

Was an awesome system and really lent to the immersion and sense of scale. Of course you could always just not use the fast travel in Skyrim so I don't mind it being included.

I hope not, because Twilight Princess was probably only 20% of Skyrim and still felt like it was shallow....

It also encourages the player to actually think about what they were doing. My first play through of oblivion was ruined by both fast travel and that red cursor which shows you exactly where to go. The game didn't require any thought. Just fast travel to the closest city to the dungeon you need to go, and then head straight in that direction and follow the arrow. It's brainless and, as you say, breaks both scale and immersion.

Anyway, as my final word in the discussion: the size of the world is irrelevant. Theoretically the world could be bigger than Skyrim, but that doesn't say anything about how much content it us the complexity of it's environment. In truth, Skyrim's world isn't really that big. It just feels big due to a combination of it's landscape (all those mountains :P) and sheer detail that goes into its world.

@IMAHAPYHIPPO:

I would be so upset if it was that big. Skyrim is impenetrably big enough as it is

I hope it's not that big because that would harm the game. I don't Nintendo confuse size with quality like US and EU studios tend to.

Last I saw, it was around the twice the size of GTA5 without the water travel spots. So if you consider GTA5 big, then you got twice that. But some people have been taking random estimates based on landmarks and pictures and travel length of time and distance and figured out how long it would take to travel Hyrule by horse and it was was very long.

Last time you saw? Source?

The picture was taken from the video. He points out how far he traveled and how long it took them to get from point A to point B. People extrapolated that number and distance and made that picture. Actual time and distance will vary because of terrain etc. Either way the game itself is massive. The time on foot would be much longer to travel across the map.

No way its going to be that big. Nintendo hasn't even tried a Skyrim size open world, let alone one thats 10x the size. Its just foolish to think that Nintendo would even think about doing something like that..