Fallout 4 World Map Compared With Fallout 3, Takes 11 Minutes To Traverse In Game

Khurram Imtiaz writes: "Fallout 4 has a huge world map that might take some time to travel. This world map is confirmed to be almost 2-3x the size of Fallout 3 and bigger than the world map featured in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."

[cfc78]

Awesome can't wait to explore.

[3-4-5]

A bigger world only feels bigger if it's packed with stuff.

So a slightly smaller world with a lot to do in it will always feel bigger than random open world where there is nothing to do but run.

[greenisthebest]

sadly im one who dont like HD maps example ? falkret and u leave villige take turn and u are in DB HQ .... i would prefer big "empty" world with jewels and some cars/horses then on foot stuff

[psman012]

Metal gear solid v comes to mind...

[psman012]

Metal gear solid v is a good example...the map was huge but so empty

[nowitzki2004]

Look at Arkham City, small open world, but theres so much jam packed in there that it doesnt even matter.

[Bansai]

the draw distance is just horrible in this game :/

http://gfycat.com/FrigidHas... - PS4 version

[aLucidMind]

Agreed. I can play GTA5 and the world feels tiny to me. I play Skyrim and the world feels huge. I play San Andreas and it's the same thing, the world feels bigger than GTA5's world.

[SolidStoner]

I fine with the scale, but next time include more lonesome abandoned roads with huge amount of deserts and forests, rivers and mountains! and I cant wait for a fallout game with a car... I remember Fallout 2 had a simple car.. I loved it just to travel faster between cities!

edit: only people who played all fallout games would want HUGE scale.. fallout is all about abandoned and lonesome.. destroyed things and survival.. would be good if you should find food, hunt animals, drink water.. drive cars.. but thats Fallout 5 or Fallout 6 level, lmao :D

[BeefCurtains]

Does it say anywhere what system this was running on? Or if it was PC, what the graphics were set at or any PC specs?

[Mariusmssj]

Sadly 42% of the map is water and from what has been said there is nothing to explore underwater. The video doesn't show much but from sprint he did across nothing much was happening around.

[burza1982]

That is the biggest worry for me. Guy just run across whole map and he encountered only a few enemies. Seriously? And secondly a very small variety of areas. All the same ,all the way.

[joab777]

There's probably a ton of content though. It took me forever to do everything in Fallout 3.

[ThunderPulse]

Yeah I didn't like that nothing cool happened along the way.

[frostypants]

Perhaps he had it set to the nerfiest difficulty possible.

[Dirtnapstor]

I'm sure doing certain things and accepting quests in game will trigger events and enemies, etc.
Not too worried, they've proven themselves with previous releases.

[Randostar]

If their is nothing to explore underwater why is there a perk that lets you breath underwater? And lets you stay undetectable while submerged? http://orcz.com/Fallout_4:_...

[iiorestesii]

That way you save time for more painfully awkward dialog.

[Martingw]

!!!!!!!!!spoiler!!!!!!!

What are you talking about?
Nothing to do under water!!! please show us where you got that info. stupid the game have a perk aimed at underwater swimming then.
it was at night hard to tell the variety.
the monster spawn depends on the difficulty, which the video say nothing about.

[frostypants]

I like the radiation storm (around the 3:07 mark, note rad spike after the lightning).

[just_looken]

Maybe its just me but i am seeing alot of popins The whole church at 9 minute mark just went blurry to detailed really?

Its 2015 and we have a smaller draw distance than gta 5.

[NeckBeardBSMTDweller]

Because he mentioned his PC Specs and the settings on the game....

[i8urCAKE]

how is this awesome

[PreAtaric]

I agree. The game itself may be incredible, but this information alone doesn't wow me. It seems kinda small, in fact.

[TacticAce]

I see it this way

CD Projekt= Tons of Content

Bethesda= Fun Gameplay

Bioware= Awesome Storys

I like the fact that these companys stay in their lanes because it gives us something to look forward to as gamers every year.

[kraenk12]

The Bioware with that awesome stories doesn't exist anymore.

[TacticAce]

You must have not played dragon age inquisition... No game had a better story last year.

[Rachel_Alucard]

@TacticAce

"No game had a better story then DA:I last year"

Haha good one! For a second you almost got me.

[TacticAce]

Lol I bet you are going to say assasins creed unity...

[Rachel_Alucard]

@TacticAce

Nothing good story wise came out of 2014. Wolfenstein is probably the only thing I can say passed a threshold. But that's just having low standards to begin with. DA:I is about as interesting as watching paint dry.

[NicSage]

I really think TW3 hits all the marks you just said.
Content, Game play and Story.

[alvgamin4lif]

The overall story in DAI was good. However I liked The Witcher 3 even more since the even the sidequests have an amazing story attached to them unlike the sidequests in DAI.

[Mizikiel]

Skyim gameplay is garbage compared to witcher 3 honestly. Bethesda is the best for exploring, but that's about all they are best at. Also in my opinion story of the witcher 3 was better than any bioware game.

[Rachel_Alucard]

@nikrel
@alvgamin

Oh I would've put Witcher 3 if we're talking about anything in 2015....

[TacticAce]

At the end of the video he discovered a new location the "toy" building. If you look at where he is and where the marker in his pipboy is, that distance takes about one minute.

This makes the map considerably smaller in retrospect. With no confirmation of subways, and water that waste a good chunk of the maps space, I think this might be one of the smallest games Bethesda has made.

[UKmilitia]

gimmie this size over MGS anyday of week,was so bland the world in that game.

arkham city felt bigger

[Bahamut]

I know I'm going to love this game, but still don't think it will beat Witcher 3 for GOTY. But I'm alright with that, just happy to have another Fallout game.

[pivotplease]

I think I'll have to agree with you. Although I do like how Bethesda games are a lot more open-ended as far as choosing who you are. In witcher 3 you're Geralt who can occasionally steal, can't really do anything to the guards, and can sometimes choose to kill or spare someone who is morally grey. In this game, you'll have karma to contend with, you'll be able to steal, pickpocket, and kill nearly everything and one quest could have 10 different solutions just like in Fallout 3. This huge change to the variety of morality alone will make me not even consider relating the two games.

[-Foxtrot]

11 Minutes...

I've never really just walked straight on in Fallout 3 or Skyrim while timing it. Is this a good thing or a bad?

I mean the guy did sprint it

[cfc78]

edited

[Neonridr]

looked real time to me..

11 minutes doesn't exactly seem huge to me, but then again I guess it doesn't need to be that big if the world is exciting enough as it is.

[Big_Game_Hunters]

@Neonrdir

Its not huge, W3 takes 15 mins and XCX take 32 mins.

[Mr Lahey]

what is XCX?

[R00bot]

@Mr Lahey
Xenoblade Chronicles X, Wii U exclusive.
Map is around 400 square km (155 sq. miles).

[Bansai]

Witcher takes about ~20 minutes on HORSEBACK, but only in Velen, there's also skellige, kaer mohren and white orchard - so yeah, not even comparable to that tiny map in F4.

[TheBurger29]

Not going to watch it, but was he sprinting or walking?

[JamesBroski]

It really intrigues me as well, I'm going to try it right now on Skyrim, with non-stop sprinting, and post the results.

[JamesBroski]

Took me 16 minutes, but I had to climb some mountains, skirt a few cities and got a random encounter. So remove like 2-3 minutes.

[TheBurger29]

I watched someone walk corner to corner in Fallout 3 and took 1:11 to do, so im sure if you walk it will be more than 11 min in 4.

[_-EDMIX-_]

"Is this a good thing or a bad?"

I don't think one can convey the quality of a open world based on such a thing. Bigger doesn't always mean better quality. At the end of the day, its about what your doing, not how large is the map.

What does size matter if the map is filled with nothingness?

[antikbaka]

@Bansai

And there is nothing to do in withcer in this huge map.

[pivotplease]

The water in Skellige is barren filler imo, but the rest of the game is riddled with cool caves and interestingly placed monsters and journals. I would get bored of running into monster nests and bandit camps but then suddenly I found a forest spirit that summoned a pack of level 22 wolves. The other day I found ruins that had a gargoyle and a troll or something protecting them. Had to get out of Dodge.

[JJShredder]

As long as the map is filled with interesting, dynamic content, it can take 3 minutes for all I care.....

Just give this game to me! Right meow!

[crazychris4124]

"This world map is confirmed to be almost 2-3x the size of Fallout 3 and bigger than the world map featured in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."

Sounds awesome plus its filled with plenty to do.

[BattleTorn]

"bigger than the world map featured in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim"

How is it bigger than Skyrim, when the gif clearly shows it within?

(found answers in source comments)

[Kamikaze135]

I'd take a small map with lots of content over big empty maps any day.

[Kalebninja]

How small was fallout 3 if this map is 2-3 times the size and only takes 11 minutes from one end to the other. There's a youtube video of walking and running across the gta v map and its an hour an fifteen minutes long. Now 11 minutes seems real small for a current gen open world game but theres probably a lot of content crammed in to justify the size

[TheBurger29]

Was the guy running or walking in this video? If he was sprinting then it would not take long.

[GUTZnPAPERCUTZ]

It takes 1 hour and 30min to walk/run across GTA V,
It takes 39min to walk/run across Far Cry 4
It takes 45min to walk/run across The Witcher 3's Novigrad map,
It takes 37min to walk/run across ARK's map,
It takes 5 hours to run/swim across Just Cause 2,
So 11 minutes is pretty small, But thank god Bethesda knows how to make you want to explore their maps! :)

[frostypants]

"It takes 39min to walk/run across Far Cry 4"

LOL no. Less than 10 minutes, easy.

[GUTZnPAPERCUTZ]

These are all with "Encounters" though. https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Perjoss]

GTA IV takes around 29 mins walking only, no sprint:

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[PhucSeeker]

The guy talked about GTA V, you responded with GTA IV. Nice.

GTA V's map is like 3 times larger than Gta IV's.

http://assets.vg247.com/cur...

[Perjoss]

@PhucSeeker

thanks for pointing that out, I do know how to read, I was simply adding to the list.

[SouljAx360]

It does not take 45 minutes to run across the Novigrad/Velen map.

[GrimDragon]

11minutes? That's it?? That's insanely small.

[frostypants]

Relative to what?

[BattleTorn]

um, a little known title, they last worked on... called SKYRIM

[frostypants]

@battletorn, but that's not "insanely small" compared to Skyrim. Not sure what you're going on about

[iiorestesii]

You can cross the panama canal in 13 and a half minutes on an S.S minnow.

[sullynathan]

There are some inaccuracies in the link.
For one, Fallout 4 isn't that much larger than Skyrim or Fallout 3. It's actually close to the same size as both those games.
Todd Howard said that Fallout 4 is about the same size as Skyrim.
Knowing this, Skyrim is a bit smaller than Fallout 3.

To put this into perspective, here is a list of recent open world map sizes and past TES & Fallout game sizes.

Witcher 3 - 47 sq. miles
Afghanistan in MGS V - 6.63 sq. miles
Skyrim - 14.2 sq. miles
Fallout 3 - 15 sq. miles
Just Cause 3 - 400 sq. miles
GTA V - 31 sq. miles
Far Cry 4 - 17.7 sq. miles
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - 1.28 sq. miles
Red Dead Redemption - 15.9 sq. miles
Oblivion - 16 sq. miles
Morrowind - 10 sq. miles
GTA: San Andrea - 13.9 sq. miles

[cfc78]

So Fallout 4 is about the same size as Skyrim and Skyrim is a bit smaller than Fallout 3 so that makes Fallout 3 bigger than Fallout 4 yet it's confirmed Fallout 4's map is 2-3 times bigger than Fallout 3.

Brain meltdown.

[sullynathan]

"Fallout 4's map is 2-3 times bigger than Fallout 3. "
This part isn't true.

[R00bot]

Xenoblade Chronicles X - 155 sq. miles

[cfc78]

So were talking a Skyrim size map minus the mountains etc.

[Dagexon]

But with what seems to be a lot of space taken up by water

[greenisthebest]

its what i expect after he dont want to say its bigger then skyrim... i prefer map structure of witcher 3 but if this is "way of bethesda" ill have to accept it... still story/settelments are features that will make players to stick to one place (its good imo).

[Summons75]

WItcher 3 wasn't completely open world though. That was a huge disappointment to be told that it was and then have the entire game in sections...

[Tylaris]

That's silly...are Ocarina, Gothic(s) or similar games failure for not being "open enough"?
It's a Story Driven open world game, not a sandbox and you were experiencing the world through Geralt's eyes in search of his daughter, from one stage to another. It would cripple the main story otherwise.

[Summons75]

Ocarina and as far as I know Gothic never marketed the game as a "Completely open world game where you can go from one corner of the map to the other". That's exactly what Witcher 3 was marketed as. I never once said it was a failure but I did feel disappointed and lied too when I decided to break away from the story and explore (as is the purpose of an open world!) only to hit an invisible wall telling me to turn around when I could clearly see more land across a river and the map saying a different territory was over there. They should have said if it was a semi-open world game, not lie. I have nothing against the story, just the lies...like Bioware promising every decision in all 3 Mass Effect games will affect the overall ending...and then we get told in game everything we did was pointless and our choices didn't matter. Kill the Rachni...no you didn't, Kill Wrex...wrong again. False advertising runs rampent in our industry. At least we know Fallout 4 will be completely open world if it takes 11 minutes to run across the map or 1 hour.

[Uglyday]

"Fallout 4 delayed to add a Walmart parking lot"

[bligmerk]

Everybody saying map, map, map. This is the area around Boston, Mass. just like Fallout 3 "map" was the area around Washington DC and Bethesda Maryland. Having been to those places, before playing Fallout 3, it was amazing how accurate the layout was with the locations of many recognizable monuments, the post apocalyptic versions. MIT and their Fringe lab is in Boston.

[Lucreto]

It will take longer to cross that 11 minutes as you will get distracted by all the different things to do.

If it's anything like Fallout 3 DC itself was a huge zone by itself outside the wasteland.

[Rivitur]

11 seems a bit small considering there aren't any vehicles.

[yuukiliu]

Playin through Witcher 3 right now. Love it! Preordered this, will start after Witcher 3 completion...but damn it's taking so long to do everything in this game! So many things to explore, I hope F4 can match its epicness of adventure and fun.

[SonyMontana]

I couldn't help myself and watched the video, I'm extremely let down to be honest. The world seemed empty and nothing happened as he cut right thru the center of the map. Hype level decreased tbh...

[Avernus]

Meh... he could have put the difficulty at its easiest (less enemies), he literally didn't stop to explore ANYTHING...no tunnels, sewers, vaults...nothing.

If your hype level dropped because of this, you're not a Fallout fan, sorry.

[SonyMontana]

I am a fan, just seemed boring. I'm lmao that you think you can judge a person by one random comment on the internet tho. Lol

[Avernus]

You're a "fan" and you say it seemed "boring"... LOL... ok

Edit: Just curious as to what you expected to happen? The whole story plot unlfolding in fast forward as he sprints across the middle of the map? Hate to break the bad news, but you're not a fan ;)

[64commando]

How is this bigger than Skyrim when Skyrim took 30 minutes on a straight trail? This does not seem big at all. The first time I looked at the F4 map I thought it looked tiny. The river would have to be insanely wide for the rest of the map to be as big as people want it to be.

[Psychotica]

Seems small. If I remember right it takes longer than that to walk across the GTA 4 map.

[bligmerk]

WTH? Fallout 3 had lots of underground. Did Skyrim have dungeons? Or are those things not considered as being part of the "map"? Oddness prevails.

[Poroz]

I see a whole bunch of trees and hear a whole bunch of wind, but no trees are moving.

[alexrody]

it is prolly small due to every interior that i have seen has no load times which is cool but i would prefer fallout to have load times and a bigger map

[isa_scout]

Who cares really? Has Bethesdas past titles not done/had enough for fans? Don't they deserve the benefit of the doubt? We already know that it'll have hundreds of hours worth of content so why is it's map size an issue? My ONLY concern is bugs, not the wastleland mutant bugs either, but game breaking bugs. I put almost 200 hours into Skyrim on PS3 before I couldn't take the constant frame rate drops and stuttering. Hopefully this game is ironed out much better. I'd hate to be a quality assurance tester at Bethesda that's for sure. I don't care what anyone says Tuesday absolutely can't come soon enough.

[alexrody]

i mean no loading interiors is super awesome and is badass and i know ima love fallout 4 regardless of map size and stuff i have loved every bethesda game however im jus sayiing in every bethesda game there were loading interiors so i am used to it by now i just think instead of focusing on that they could of used that extra memory to add a bigger world map and more stuff to do but yea regardless it is going to be awesome hey maybe they will hear complaints and make a badass dlc like fallout 3 had

[SouljAx360]

Well, this game is supposed to be bigger than FO3, and it took me about 200+ hours to find my way around that entire area. To those of you that never played Fallout 3 or New Vegas, there is more to this game series than the "outside world". So much of it takes place indoors. So many building/houses/etc, sewers, metros, caves, and of course vaults.

[FrostXVenom]

that Bethesda's climb every polygon concept...

[Pathogenic]

Who cares let's just play Fallout 4 or get ready for Fallout 4!!! Can't wait to sit back and relax and play this Tuesday coming.

[Voids]

Im buying a PS4 probably tomorrow to get ready for that ole Black Ops 3 but in regards to Fallout, the only Fallout I played was the first one, not 3 or Vegas.

I feel like i'm in for a treat with this one, looks like the world is alive "or what's left of it"

[Sketchy_Galore]

That 11 minutes thing really worried me as I remembered some treks across Skyrim's map taking an entire evening. 11 minutes sounded ridiculously short so I booted up Skyrim, set the difficulty to novice and ran from one side of the map to the other as fast as I could on foot (sprinting whenever I had stamina but nothing else, no horses or shouts or anything).

It took me 19 minutes to get all the way across without stopping to fight any enemies but with a fair amount of having to work my way around cliff faces and along winding roads. I don't want to watch the video of the person crossing FO4's map because I don't want to ruin it for myself but if they were travelling pretty much in a straight line I'm no longer too bothered about the map size. I'm pretty sure I could've made my run across Skyrim's map in 11 minutes if I didn't get blocked by mountains and things.

Also I've played about 150 hours of Skyrim and on that one run across the map I discovered 3 new locations, so I'm not too bothered about how much there will be out there to discover. I still have a couple of worries about this game but map size is no longer one of them.

[64commando]

invisible walls? fuck that

[Many-hat5]

I really don't see how this matters.If it turns out to be a small map AND a poor game,people will still buy the next iteration anyway.Just look at COD.Why? Well, most gamers have the attention span of super athletes, but the memory span of a goldfish.So we'll shoot everything in site without blinking for hours on end, but by the time we traverse the 11 minutes of map we'll have forgotten how we got there!

[arbitor365]

considering he is moving at least twice as fast as you do in the other games, thanks to the sprinting mechanic, I would say the map is pretty big.

[Gatsu]

Many are forgetting that there will be lots of things to do and underground places to visit.

[AndreR]

10 minutes doesnt feel that big. I remember in kings field. It took longer to walk walk across the world.

[Taero]

Okay off the top of my head:

We're talking surface area here, if you add in vertical dimensions then who knows as we don't know the amount of time spend under/above ground level (+ is there any instancing? A loading screen could can hide a much larger explorable space, think about the VR vault in F3.)

What about speed of travel? In Skyrim I felt like I was running through mud it was so slow, same in DA:I. If I dropped a F-21 into those games I'd be across the map in seconds, would that make it a small map? What if I could only hop along on one foot, large map?

The raw size of a map is only one part of it, as has been mentioned if content is dynamic then it's constantly changing, increases time. If it has vertical space then that increases time, if it has instanced areas, then that increases time/adds surface area.

Almost everyone here has just ran across a map and said 'so this one is bigger'...just no. Obviously there is a correlation between relative game map size but on its own that's a pretty much meaningless statistic.

[ECHOBLAST]

11 mn, ok but on wich level, and how much ability points ? Type of armor ?

[DittoHefner]

Kind of a disappointing size being only somewhat larger than Skyrim after all this time and being a next-gen exclusive...

Well, we know DLC is definitely coming with this kind of weak map.

[peshkavusCA]

That is pretty underwhelming map... I hope they add more to this.. I will wait for the game of the year edition.