Planetside 2 is Huge: Continents are 8 Square Kilometers

Planetside 2 is the follow-up to the loved but under-appreciated massively multiplayer FPS Planetside made by Sony Online Entertainment in 2003. The company is pinning its hopes on the new game, which will go head to head with the likes of Battlefield 3.

Speaking to PC Gamer, creative director Matt Higby said that the continents on Auraxis, the planet on which Planetside 2 takes place, span eight square kilometers in size.

"We have enormous, enormous gameplay space," he said. "One of our largest development efforts on this project has been hand crafting every single area of those eight-by-eight kilometer continents."

VG247 notes that the scale of each continent may be as large as the entirety of Far Cry 2, and is significantly larger than both Oblivion and GTA: San Andreas. With that said, the addition of flying aircraft and high speed land vehicles will significantly cut down on the amount of time it takes to travel from one side of the map to the other.

"You’re going to be fighting in battles sometimes when it’s 200 people fighting against 30 people because there’s only 30 people defending that base and then suddenly 200 people log in from the other group and go do it," Higby explained.

"If you use the right tactics and you do things the right way you can still have fun and enjoy yourself as a group of 20 people defending against an onslaught, but that’s something we have to take into account when we do our level design, so we’ve been spending a lot of time whiteboxing bases, figuring out what we want specific areas to look like."

Planetside 2 has not been dated, and no platforms have been announced at this time.