The Elder Scrolls series of games is known for its exciting open worlds where players can lose themselves. We will rank each game by map size!
The Elder Scrolls series is known for its exciting open worlds that players can get lost in. From battling dragons in Skyrim to exploring the alien landscape of Morrowind, every game in the series places an emphasis on immersion in a world that is unprecedented in the RPG genre. Part of what makes this franchise so beloved is the worlds each game takes place in.
Skyrim, Vvardenfell, Cyrodiil and many other locations are iconic in their topography and size. However, the sizes don't grow with every game. Some of the older Bethesda Elder Scrolls games are much larger than the most recent games. Here are the maps of all the games in the Elder Scrolls series, ranked by size. Linear Elder Scrolls spin-offs are excluded from this list.
7. The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (Unknown)
Between the release of Daggerfall and Morrowind, Bethesda released several spin-off games in the Elder Scrolls universe. One such game was The Elder Scrolls Aventures: Redguard.
The game takes place on the island of Stros M'Kai, located on the southern coast of Hammerfell. Unlike most mainstream games in the Elder Scrolls series, this game focuses on completing levels in a specific order rather than exploring a vast world. As a result, it is quite difficult to measure the size of a map. Considering how short the game is and how small the world is, it's safe to assume that this is the smallest Elder Scrolls game that still lets you explore the world. After all, the small island is no match for the main provinces that take place in other games.
6. Morrowind (16 km)
Veteran Morrowind fans might be surprised that Morrowind is Bethesda's smallest open-world game in the series. Vvardenfell has about 16 kilometers of playable space. The reason it feels so much bigger than Skyrim is because that game didn't have fast travel.
More precisely, it did not have a convenient fast travel. Players could either pay to use sludge skids scattered across the landscape to travel between cities, or those skilled in the magical arts could mark teleportation spots. Combined with the game's slow movement speed, Vvardenfell seems much larger than it really is. Those who own the Bloodmoon expansion can also travel to Solstheim by boat or by having a high enough acrobatics skill to jump across the ocean.
5. Skyrim (37 km)
It's a meme in the community that Bethesda has resold Skyrim half a dozen times already, including a special edition of the game, the Greymoor expansion for Elder Scrolls Online, and there's even a port for your Alexa.
However, people keep buying the game because of how incredible its world is. There is always something interesting going on around the player, whether it be random encounters or unexplored dungeons. Skyrim is much larger than Morrowind, more than twice the size of that game - 37 kilometers. Part of this space is water and mountains, but almost the entire landscape has something for players to discover. Breathtaking environments and quests have kept fans from returning to the game for nearly a decade since its release.
4. Oblivion (41 km)
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has the opposite problem as Morrowind. Many fans consider this game to be much smaller than other parts, but in fact the opposite is true. Oblivion is a larger game than the last three main installments, allowing players to explore the province of Cyrodiil.
In this game, 41 kilometers long, players will have to explore a huge landscape. As with other Bethesda games, large cities and dungeons keep players busy while exploring. This size gets even bigger when you include the Shivering Isles, a unique zone that is about 10 kilometers in size. Considering all the content of Oblivion, this is one of the biggest Bethesda games in recent memory.
3. Elder Scrolls Online (About 400 km)
It seems like a scam to put MMOs next to single-player RPGs, but The Elder Scrolls Online is surprisingly not the biggest Elder Scrolls game out there. Unfortunately, no one really knows how big ESO is.
Not only is this difficult to measure since each region is an instance, but new zones are often added in major expansions. However, the developers of the game commented before launch that Cyrodiil is about 100 kilometers and most regions are about 10 kilometers. If you add all the regions together and assume that the main expansion zones are about 100 kilometers in size, then the ESO map will be about 400 kilometers. That's bigger than the last three major Elder Scrolls games combined! It is the largest Elder Scrolls game ever made that did not use procedural terrain generation.
2. Arena (Unconfirmed; estimated 9,656,064 km)
Based on Bethesda's marketing alone, The Elder Scrolls: Arena would be the biggest RPG ever made by a huge margin. According to Bethesda, Arena is over 9 million kilometers in size.
The developers not only lied about the size of their games, but it's impossible to prove it. Players tried to walk from one city to another to measure the distance, but the game seems to repeat the same area endlessly when the player goes too far from the city. If you do this long enough, the game starts to break. However, the cities have a unique play space, but it can not beat our last item on this list.
1. Daggerfall (161,600 km)
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is the biggest game in the Elder Scrolls franchise by a huge margin, if you don't include Arena. The exact figure is a matter of debate, but many fans have come to the conclusion that Daggerfall is roughly 161,600 kilometers.
For comparison, the area of Great Britain is about 209,000 kilometers. The dimensions of both Arena and Daggerfall are explained by the use of procedural generation. Everything from environments to quests is randomly generated. Archaic dungeons and sometimes impossible quests are also the result of this, but the large sandbox that Bethesda created in Daggerfall is hard to beat. This game lives up to the Elder Scrolls mantra "live another life" better than any other game in the series. Players can buy houses, join guilds, get bank loans, own entire ships, and even take legal action in court! It lacks polish or compelling storytelling for future games, but the sandbox it provides is virtually limitless.
