How Big is Tamriel?

[rms827]

This question has kind of bothered me for ages. I've played EVERY TES game released, even Battlespire and Redguard, lol. Despite considering myself fairly lore knowledgeable, I don't recall seeing anything in the in-game books, etc... that spell out how big Tamriel is.

 

It appeared utterly HUGE in Arena, lol. Despite the fact the "countries" have been easily walked across in a day or two of in-game time since Morrowind, I've always assumed that Tamriel was about the size of Australia. As said, it was huge in Arena. It *IS* also described as a continent, and there are context clues in the games, such as the books about the "great war" describing one of the last battles as an epic battle between full blown naval fleets of the Dominion and Empire on the lake surrounding Imperial City.

 

Ergo I have to assume that the last few games have had landmass sizes scaled down to keep the programmers sane and keep the games small enough to fit on our drives, lol. You sure couldn't sail the Dominion fleet up the stream that Oblivion calls a river running South from the lake surrounding Imperial City. The lake itself was small too.

 

Given the descriptions of military battles in the in-game books, I'm again assuming a continent the size of Australia, maybe a bit smaller. I suppose Tamriel COULD be almost as small as the UK however. Not sure there is a definitive answer here, but I'm curious what others are thinking here. :)

[LoofSquared]

I've personally always imagined Tamriel as an absolutely massive continent, and this is supported by the vastly different climates where the South is dominated by desert and rain forest, and the very North by frozen tundra. That is, unless Earth is vast compared to Nirn, which we wouldn't know, but considering the few mentions there have been of getting over to Akavir and back seemingly taking loads of time, they seem of fairly equal size.

Edited May 8, 2015 by LoofSquared

[rms827]

Seems like logical assumptions. That's part of why I was saying about the size of Australia also. It has deserts, tropical regions and a (sort of) cold zone to the South. Not like Skyrim by my limited understanding of Aussie geography but still cold.

 

My guess of Tamriel's location on Nirn would be that it's a bit closer to it's North Pole than the UK is. Skyrim seems colder than Scotland but not as cold as Sweden or Finland, at least their Northern parts.

[Noortje]

Looking at the mapsize of TES games I'd say about the size of Asia. Then again, everything in Skyrim should be bigger (major cities, population, distance between places) according to lore, so it's probably supposed to be a lot bigger than Asia.

[vram1974]

Seems like logical assumptions. That's part of why I was saying about the size of Australia also. It has deserts, tropical regions and a (sort of) cold zone to the South. Not like Skyrim by my limited understanding of Aussie geography but still cold.

 

My guess of Tamriel's location on Nirn would be that it's a bit closer to it's North Pole than the UK is. Skyrim seems colder than Scotland but not as cold as Sweden or Finland, at least their Northern parts.

 

You don't need to guess. It's right here:

 

http://i.imgur.com/5PyfGG0.jpg

 

Edit- It occurs to me you wanted to know the literal size of Tamriel. Well, it's actually quite small. Anyone who has run from Markath to Riften knows this:

 

Skyrim, Oblivion, and the Fallout games use the same exterior cell size, which is a square 192 feet on a side. Skyrim's game world is a rectangle composed of 119 cells across by 94 cells high, so roughly 4.32 miles across by 3.42 miles high, or a total of 14.8 square miles (38 km2).

 

This of course differs greatly from Daggerfall (TES2) which was 161,600 square kilometers, or 62,394 square miles. Morrowind, the sequel, is one-one hundredth the size of Daggerfall.

 

Bethesda's seems to have traded in world size for LoD trickery and 3D rendering to make it appear larger than it is.

[AlarictheVisgoth]

This question has kind of bothered me for ages. I've played EVERY TES game released, even Battlespire and Redguard, lol. Despite considering myself fairly lore knowledgeable, I don't recall seeing anything in the in-game books, etc... that spell out how big Tamriel is.

 

It appeared utterly HUGE in Arena, lol. Despite the fact the "countries" have been easily walked across in a day or two of in-game time since Morrowind, I've always assumed that Tamriel was about the size of Australia. As said, it was huge in Arena. It *IS* also described as a continent, and there are context clues in the games, such as the books about the "great war" describing one of the last battles as an epic battle between full blown naval fleets of the Dominion and Empire on the lake surrounding Imperial City.

 

Ergo I have to assume that the last few games have had landmass sizes scaled down to keep the programmers sane and keep the games small enough to fit on our drives, lol. You sure couldn't sail the Dominion fleet up the stream that Oblivion calls a river running South from the lake surrounding Imperial City. The lake itself was small too.

 

Given the descriptions of military battles in the in-game books, I'm again assuming a continent the size of Australia, maybe a bit smaller. I suppose Tamriel COULD be almost as small as the UK however. Not sure there is a definitive answer here, but I'm curious what others are thinking here. :smile:

 

TBH, I always assumed Akavir was at least the size of Austrailia.....

 

But if that world graphic has any validity in terms of scale, then Akavir would be closer to the size of Eurasia (modern day Euorpe inclusive of modern day Russia, India, and China). So Tamriel would have to be considerably bigger than that. Perhaps the total land mass (without Akavir) the size of the North Pole and Antartica combined?

 

And for some reason, I always felt Greenland was roughly the size of Alinor (or even Ancient Atmora), with Sumemerset Isle about the size of Madagascar.

Edited May 8, 2015 by AlarictheVisgoth

[Noortje]

 

Seems like logical assumptions. That's part of why I was saying about the size of Australia also. It has deserts, tropical regions and a (sort of) cold zone to the South. Not like Skyrim by my limited understanding of Aussie geography but still cold.

 

My guess of Tamriel's location on Nirn would be that it's a bit closer to it's North Pole than the UK is. Skyrim seems colder than Scotland but not as cold as Sweden or Finland, at least their Northern parts.

 

You don't need to guess. It's right here:

 

http://i.imgur.com/5PyfGG0.jpg

 

Edit- It occurs to me you wanted to know the literal size of Tamriel. Well, it's actually quite small. Anyone who has run from Markath to Riften knows this:

 

Skyrim, Oblivion, and the Fallout games use the same exterior cell size, which is a square 192 feet on a side. Skyrim's game world is a rectangle composed of 119 cells across by 94 cells high, so roughly 4.32 miles across by 3.42 miles high, or a total of 14.8 square miles (38 km2).

 

This of course differs greatly from Daggerfall (TES2) which was 161,600 square kilometers, or 62,394 square miles. Morrowind, the sequel, is one-one hundredth the size of Daggerfall.

 

Bethesda's seems to have traded in world size for LoD trickery and 3D rendering to make it appear larger than it is.

 

 

Read the lore. The distances in the Skyrim game are downsized to make it playable. Accordin to the lore it takes days to travel from riverwood to whiterun, not 5 minutes. Just like the steps to high hrothgar have been reduced in number from 7000 to more like 700.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Noortje

[Lehcar]

I always pegged it to be around the size of Asia. I don't know. maybe it's just my imagination.

 

I wish they'd tell us more about the other continents though, like Pyandonea and Aldmeris... does anyone still live in Aldmeris?

[rms827]

Good question. :)

 

I keep hoping that they'll eventually do an Elder Scrolls game where we can visit places like that and Akavar. I'd assume Elves still live in Aldmeris though, unless there was a catastrophe that ruined that island (ala Red Mountain)

[Noortje]

aldmeris = atlantis. it's a mythic city that sunk into the ocean.