Skyrim is larger, more grandiose and contains a lot more points of interest for players to visit than any previous Elder Scrolls game, according to its developers at Bethesda.
Speaking on behalf of his studio, game director Todd Howard told Norwegian gaming website Gamer.no that the developer counts "120 real caves, and more than 100 common points of interest outside."
"The game is actually too big," he said.
Howard says that "every tree, rock, cup and such" was placed individually by a designer, and he describes the world as "hand-crafted." Towns and dungeons are no longer prefabricated templates, as was the case with the cloned dungeons in the recent Bioware title Dragon Age II.
Skyrim's caves and dungeons are said to be diverse, ranging from vegetation-choked mines to a fortress hidden deep within a glacier.
"In Oblivion we let the visual designers take care of the caves, and we also had a couple of dedicated level designers who went over them afterwards. There was nothing wrong with them, but they could have been better," said Howard.
"We still stock them in kit form—it's something we've done since Terminator: Future Shock. The difference is that we're better at it."
Howard says that the map in Skyrim is as big as its predecessor, but that the game is different because of all the mountains that form the terrain's routes. The game will "seem bigger" than its predecessors as a result of the game's variety.
More than just a snowbound landscape, Howard says that Skyrim will "also have grassy tundra, volcanic tundra, and a forest with an autumnal theme and a glacier. There are about six or seven distinct types of environments."
