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Joined: May 2010
Location: Oxford
Duchess of Gorgombert
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Duchess of Gorgombert
Joined: May 2010
Location: Oxford
The matter of map scaling in video games is something that's always a bit confounding. I work on the principle that in terms of size, video game maps tend to be scaled down by at least a factor of 10 on each axis, so e.g. Oblivion's 5-6 miles either way is going to be at least 50-60 and more likely 500-600 or (much) more. That's just a game I plucked out of the air as I recall someone saying that Cyrodiil's total area in-game is something like 30 square miles, whereas realistically it would be many thousands. So we're seeing at most 1% of the terrain and probably very much less.

That's convenient for video games where they typically run at 20-30x real time but your character doesn't move at 20-30x the speed, and nobody wants to spend a week's worth of gaming trekking from one village to the next. And where there are settlements, they're also scaled down by orders of magnitude so even the busiest game city might have a coupe of hundred people where realistically you could add on several zeroes.

My inclination is to think that we're not just seeing the scaling down of populations and countryside but also of the number of notable places. Of course the only notable places in a video game are the ones you visit, but who's to say that there aren't a whole slew of other duchies, counties, principalities and so on in Rivellon? I don't even know the name of the country I'm in let alone what counties and towns it contains. I'm somewhat reminded of the opening part of Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky.

tl;dr: yes.


J'aime le fromage.
Joined: Jul 2012
Location: Ukraine
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Location: Ukraine
Why compare D:OS2 to Oblivion? It's like comparing apples and oranges. Total in-game territory of The Wicher 3, for example, is around of 136 km2 (without DLC's) and have more than 3000 characters (~526 has unique name). And this is only three regions which featured in the game : Novegrad, No Man's Land and part of Skellige Islands. Locations have small villages and huge populated towns. Overall the Witcher world is huge and much more bigger than regions of all the games combine.

Overall, I'm inclined to agreed. Also, I'm starting to believe that considering the tendency of all games in Divinity series, maybe D-world changing with each new game.

Joined: May 2010
Location: Oxford
Duchess of Gorgombert
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Duchess of Gorgombert
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Location: Oxford
Originally Posted by Soccer
Why compare D:OS2 to Oblivion?

Originally Posted by vometia
That's just a game I plucked out of the air as I recall someone saying that Cyrodiil's total area [...]

I'd hoped my point was that it's pretty representative of what we see. TW3's 136km² is, what, 2-3 times the size, not the orders of magnitude I was describing. They're all much of a muchness.


J'aime le fromage.
Joined: Nov 2016
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Bugfinder General
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Joined: Nov 2016
What I'd like to see (I think this is map related although not to the actual discussion) is more open terrain rather then being limited to following roads with pretty much everything impassable in between.

Joined: Oct 2020
stranger
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Me creé la cuenta para agradecerles por su increíble trabajo. Muchas gracias.


Joel
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