Final Fantasy XV: Just How Massive Could The Open World Be in Square Enix’s New JRPG?

Giuseppe Nelva February 26, 2015 5:19 PM EST

Today Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata clarified previous statements about the size of the map of the final game, only leaving us with even more questions, because he left out an important part of the equation.

Here’s what Tabata-san said:

The area of the demo is only a single part of the Duscae region. The Duscae Region is actually a lot bigger than that. It’s a pretty large area. It’s a lot bigger than what you see in the demo. There are some quite large urban areas, and towns and cities in there, and there’s some very old ruins as well. There’s a lot more than what you’re gonna see in the demo in that one region. We’re taking just a small part of that area, a section of the Duscae region, and that’s what we’re showing in the demo. The most accurate way to answer the question of how big is the game, is probably just over ten times the size of the whole Duscae region, not just the demo, but the whole region in itself.

This, of course, throws my previous calculations out of the window, as they were based on Tabata’s previous statements, that have now been corrected. The biggest problem is that we have no idea of how big the Duscae region really is. We just know that it’s “a lot bigger” than then the 1.16 square miles area of the demo.

Let’s take another approach. A while ago, Tabata-san showcased a model of what appears to be the whole map of the game. Below You can see it below, with a few notes I added for an older article.

If we assume this to be the whole world map of Final Fantasy XV, then the Duscae region is roughly one tenth of it. So let’s subdivide it in ten areas.

It’s fairly easy to see that each portion appears indeed to be rather massive, with room for multiple towns and more. They’re definitely much bigger than the small valley we saw in the Episode Duscae demo.

Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to establish where that small valley is on the map, so comparing the two is not really feasible. You can see my guess below, due to the concentration of what look like towns. One of them looks like Lestallum, due to the fact that it’s split by a chasm, matching what we’ve seen so far.

Going by Tabata-san’s words, my guess is that the Episode Duscae region is between a pessimistic one-fifth of the whole Duscae region, and a very optimistic one-twentieth. So let’s try and calculate the size of the world based on those estimates, and on an average of one-tenth.

Demo x 5 x 10

The demo measures roughly three square kilometers, so the pessimistic scenario would see the whole map measure 150 square km (58 square miles), which is about four times the 37 square km map of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Demo x 10 x 10

The average scenario, considering the Episode Duscae valley to be one-tenth of the whole Duscae region, would bring the whole map up to 300 square km (116 square miles), which is about eight times the size of Skyrim’s map.

Demo x 20 x 10

Now let’s go for the grossly optimistic scenario. if the entire Duscae region is twenty times as big as the map of the demo, the whole map woule measure roughly 600 square km (232 square miles). That’s a whopping 16 times the map of Skyrim.

While that seems rather enormous, it’s not unfeasible. The map of Grand Theft Auto V measures roughly 100 square miles, and what we see above could definitely be at least twice as big as the world of Rockstar’s hit title.

Of course this is just personal speculation elaborating what we know, what we can guess, and maybe a little bit of wishful thinking. What will probably matter the most to the actual quality of the game won’t primarily be the sheer size of the map, but its density.

The team at Square Enix seems to be keen on filling the world up with intelligent fauna, landmarks and towns to visit and explore. If they will succeed in making the world feel not only big, but also lively as today’s trailer seems to indicate, then we might be really in for a treat.