Is Breath Of The Wild's Map Bigger Than Skyrim?

When The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim released in 2011, it set the standard for open-world games going forward. It was massive, and it felt like you could spend thousands of hours in Skyrim without seeing everything there was to see. Then The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came along in 2017 and made us feel that way all over again.

The two games have a lot in common, but we'll have to save those commonalities for another discussion. Today we're answering something a lot of gamers have been wanting to know: is Breath of the Wild's map bigger than Skyrim?

The answer is yes. Breath of the Wild's map isn't blowing Skyrim's map out of the water by any means, but it does have the upper hand when it comes to size.

To give you a sense of how Breath of the Wild compares to Skyrim, we suggest you check out this animation. It places worlds found in past Zelda games (such as Ocarina of Time 3D and Twilight Princess HD) on top of Breath of the Wild's Great Plateau area, demonstrating the impressive size of that single area in the game. It also shows how, when you stack Skyrim up against those other Zelda worlds, Skyrim easily dwarfs them.

Then we get the finale: Skyrim's map placed on top of Breath of the Wild's. When all is said and done, Breath of the Wild's world is 1.66 times larger than Skyrim's, an impressive feat when you consider that most thought Skyrim was absurdly huge at the time of it's release, and that no other game would ever come close to achieving that kind of size and scale.

We imagine that The Elder Scrolls 6 will be even more massive when it finally comes out. And as for that Breath of the Wild sequel? It could expand on the original game's map, as well. Maybe we'll have a whole new competition between the two franchises in a few years.

For now, Breath of the Wild takes it.