how big is the whole game compared to skyrim map size ?

[bullet in ur f. face]

i need an official developper answer before i decide to buy the game or not.

[Lieste]

Skyrim ~ <19km^2 in a roughly lozenge shape (like the Isle of White) - (but wildly fudged, with 'capital cities' being a dozen buildings, and a mountain being a fairly steep hill) - the oft quoted 37km^2 is the entire map including non playable areas.

KC:D ~ 16km^2 to map extent - most of which is playable. The world features are correctly scaled and spaced appropriately (there is some map surgery to bring three 'outlying' towns and villages into the map extent by being substituted for the positions of other settlements, and keeping the general alignment of the river above and below the seam). It feels bigger because the human settlements are small in contrast to the realistic Bohemian river valleys and forests. You can realistically get lost in the woods (if not hopelessly, then to be unable to find a hidden location, even with a sketch map to follow).

Witcher 3 Novigrad and Velen, ~ 11.5km^2 playable with the HoS expansion. All(ish) maps come to around 41km^2 in total (with almost half of that water) and again the oft quoted 130+ km^2 is not relevant to anything. Didn't include values for the Portals quest, the Isle of Mists, The Painted World, The Mirror World or Vizima Palace, but altogether I'd be surprised if these added more than another 1km^2 of playable area.

[Mentally Unstable]

IMO,at some point,the size would not matter if there is nothing much going on in all that space.And by much going on,I don't mean Far Cry's way of filling the map with repetitive busywork.

If not much is going on,most of the gameplay time will end up being a trekking/hiking simulator through terrain and even if the environment is beautiful,it will become boring for me.What does KCD have to fill the expanse?Random quests(like skyrim's radiant system?)?A world with dynamic routine that allows me to create opportunities of my own?For example,can I spend time observing the route that the tax/payroll collector takes and I set up my own ambush with handcrafted traps to rob them?Does KCD allow me to do that?

[Xioth]

Originally posted by Mentally Unstable:

IMO,at some point,the size would not matter if there is nothing much going on in all that space.And by much going on,I don't mean Far Cry's way of filling the map with repetitive busywork.

If not much is going on,most of the gameplay time will end up being a trekking/hiking simulator through terrain and even if the environment is beautiful,it will become boring for me.What does KCD have to fill the expanse?Random quests(like skyrim's radiant system?)?A world with dynamic routine that allows me to create opportunities of my own?For example,can I spend time observing the route that the tax/payroll collector takes and I set up my own ambush with handcrafted traps to rob them?Does KCD allow me to do that?

This is old but tons of things can happen on your way between towns, you can meet interesting people, get in duels, tons of things are really fun in the game.

[Eisenmonoxid]

Why is the Map Size important to you? I'd rather have a smaller Map that's filled with great quests than 100km wasteland. (Or half the Map is Water like in Witcher 3)

[The Faceless Man]

I'd mention also that despite the map not being as large, it takes considerably longer to get around to places.

[CloudSeeker]

Map size is kind of irrelevant. If it doesn't have the content that goes with it, it is just filled with nothing and you will most likely never care about any of it as all you do is fast traveling anyway. If you make a map size huge and fill it with content, there is a real risk you fill it with nothing but junk missions that serves no real purpose and have no point about them. Kind of like how Skyrim and especially Fallout 4 handle their size and missions. Just... so.... many.... throw away..... missions!!!!!

All "This map is so huge" is is buzzword that mean nothing but that it is wide as a ocean and deep as a puddle. All the hype about large maps is marketing (for in my opinion idiots).

[theo]

Having a big world in the game was a thing in 2000's... Yeah, now when we have better computor technologies, huge AAA companies and, well, a trend for movie-like games - it's not a big deal anymore, even for marketing