The Elder Scrolls Onlinewas the first game in the series to attempt to bring parts of all of Tamriel’s provinces to life since the very first game,The Elder Scrolls: Arena. However, the in-game areas created for each installment in the series only represent a fraction of those areas' sizes in the lore, leading to drastically different scales between the games in the franchise.
As a result some of the biggest areas ever rendered for the series have represented some of the smallest areas of Tamriel, while entire provinces have been summed up over deceptively small in-game maps. Here’s how the size of the entire world ofThe Elder Scrolls Onlinestands up to previousElder Scrollsgames.
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Scale In The Elder Scrolls
WhileThe Elder Scrolls Onlineincludes areas from all nine ofTamriel’s provinces, it does not create a large unbroken game world likeSkyrimlargely does.The Elder Scrolls Onlinealso does not claim to represent the entirety of Tamriel, instead allowing players access to smaller areas of each province divided by loading screens.
Indeed, whileElder Scrollsgames likeSkyrimuse tall mountains and unnecessarily winding roads to help create an illusion of greater scale, all of the areas represented in-game across the franchise are best understood as scaled-down metaphors of the areas from the lore. The scaling doesn’t quite line up either - if the map of Tamriel is to scale, then the Imperial city at the heart of Cyrodiil would be around the size of a small country. Tamriel has no canonically established size, however, leaving its real scale to the imagination of the players.
This leads to vastly different scales and in-game world sizes across the differentElder Scrollsgames. Riverwood, a tiny hamlet inThe Elder Scrolls 5, is at least big enough to warrant having its own ruler - Lord Asgens - inThe Elder Scrolls: Arena. It also means that some locations that exist in the lore simply aren’t present in the same areas when represented in-game. The town of Nimalten can be found in the Rift inThe Elder Scrolls Online, for example, but is nowhere to be seen inSkyrim.
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World Size Vs. World Design
While theElder Scrollsgames sinceMorrowindhave attempted to create unbroken worlds, the map ofThe Elder Scrolls Onlineis broken up into more than thirty separate areas. While new zones are constantly being added with new content like theGates of Oblivionexpansion, the total world size ofThe Elder ScrollsOnlineis roughly 400 kilometers squared, making it one of the biggestElder Scrollsgames to date.
In comparison,Skyrim’s map is only around 37 kilometers squared.Skyrimis slightly smaller thanThe Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion’s Cyrodiil, at 41 kilometers squared, with another 10 kilometers added with theShivering IslesDLC. However, these differences in size don’t necessarily reflect how big each of these worlds feel.Skyrimmade particular use of varying elevation and winding paths to make journeying through its world take longer, and to stop players from being able to see across the map easily. In contrast, the White-Gold Tower at the center ofOblivion’s map often left players aware of just how small the world was despite that world being larger thanSkyrim.
The same can be said forThe Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.Vvardenfellis around half the size of Skyrim, coming in at 16 kilometers squared. However, the third game in the main series didn’t half fast travel at all. With Cliff Racers and other dangerous beasts lurking around every corner, the world could feel far larger and more threatening than later games in the series.
Nonetheless,The Elder Scrolls Onlineis far, far larger thanMorrowind,Oblivion, andSkyrim. The first twoElder Scrollsgames, however, made far greater use of randomly generated landscapes.The Elder Scrolls:Arenawas said to be a ginormous 9 million kilometers squared. However, when players walked between towns they would often find that the terrain appeared to be infinitely looping, making this very difficult to prove.
Because of this, it isThe Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfallthat is generally accepted to be the largest game in the franchise, with a generated landscape that can grow up 161,600 kilometers squared, which is roughly the size of Tunisia. Other sources put its size at closer to 200,000 kilometers squared. ExcludingArena,Daggerfallis the onlyElder Scrollsgame to blowThe Elder Scrolls Online’s size out of the water. UnlikeSkyrim, players ofThe Elder Scrolls 2were not expected to get anywhere near to exploring all of the possible locations that could be found in the game.
The dungeons and quests in the secondElder Scrollsgame are all also randomly generated, leaving the world far less polished than the one found in the other main installments of the franchise orThe Elder Scrolls Online. Players can even run across generated dungeons and quests which are literally impossible to complete, showing that size really isn’t everything when it comes toRPG world design.
The Elder Scrolls Onlinemay not technically be the biggest world created for the series. However, it is the biggest world that doesn’t generate any of its landscape or content procedurally, and which uses the same general design principles that have been series staples sinceMorrowind.ArenaandDaggerfallhave the potential to be larger if the player’s exploration forces the games to generate more and more land, but the scale of those games' maps are in no way matched by the amount of unique, voice acted, and story-driven content than can be found inThe Elder Scrolls Online.
With Todd Howard claiming at Brighton Digital 2020 thatThe Elder Scrolls 6would have a larger world with more realistic towns and cities than previous games, it’s possible that the nextElder Scrollswill have a far more realistically sized world thanSkyrimorOblivion. Even still, it’s unlikely to match the impressive 400 kilometers squared that can be found inThe Elder Scrolls Online.
The Elder Scrolls Onlineis available on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
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