The map of Skyrim is huge, but the map in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is apparently set to be at least 3.5 times larger.
DualShockers reports that the developers of The Witcher 3, CD Projekt RED, and middleware developer Umbra Software held a presentation titled “Solving Visibility and Streaming in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt with Umbra 3” at the recent Game Developers Conference, which took place last month.
The slides in the presentation mention the size of two of the areas included in the game: the city of Novigrad (72.25 km²) , and Skellige (64 km²) to a total of 136.25 km². Pretty big place. In contrast, Skyrim is 38.4 km².
Last year, GameSpot reported that The Witcher 3 would be only 20% larger than Skyrim’s world, so it’s unclear as to whether the size of the map has grown or whether the new information is incorrect.
Raw size aside, it’s hard to say as to whether the game will be as densely packed as Skyrim is in terms of content. After all, bigger isn’t always better.