I mean even beyond that: *HOW* are we determining square meters in a game? It's impossible to properly compare a real world meter to an imaginary game one. We usually do it based on estimates such as the size of the character and average human height, but this means any game with smaller characters sizes has a huge advantage when estimating size. For this very video, he acknowledges he's adopting FromSoft's definition of a meter. For all we know, FromSoft's estimate of a meter is *conservative* and the Lands Between are much larger than what this turned out to be. The reality is, we probably shouldn't try using real world measurements to try and relay how big a game is. If you run from Caelid to the Mountaintop, what makes the game feel big isn't the sheer time spent running or the raw distance, but the amount of content involved. Most of the game is about fighting, meaning if we want to measure content, how many fights and unique enemies there are is the better estimate, NOT world size. World size is what happens when someone wants to compare the size to GTA, which simply doesn't work. Even if you measure the distance to traverse the map from one corner to the next, it gives a rough idea of size, but doesn't account for movement speed or wonky, non-linear land formations such as the Lands Between. *TL;DR* - The entire idea of measuring in square kilometers is already flawed, because no matter what measurement we use, it is *NOT* a square kilometer. You just can't do that. The only accurate way to actually measure map size would be something like pixel count from one corner to the next. You could even convert *that* into a game version of a "kilometer" if you wanted, so long as it is equally applied across all games. Basically, it's just a very rough estimate of game content size that unfortunately also heavily relies on what the games themselves refer to as a kilometer.
@Longknive Modern game engines do absolutely have a fairly important and strict definition of a "meter", because any somewhat realistic game physics needs to take size into account. For example, real objects, when smaller, have less mass and are therefore less affected by weight and inertia. If you want to animate things correctly, they have to be sized appropriately relative to the physics engine, which is why it makes sense to use real world scales.
@@cube2fox Interesting. Just playing devil's advocate a bit though, how do we still ENSURE that an Elden Ring meter and a GTA meter are the same? Like, how do the game devs go about determining the meter length in the first place?
Sir Gideon Ofnir being used as a search engine was an unexpected but incredible start to this video. Makes me want a plugin for Chromium, where every time you search you hear Gideon saying "Ah, I knew you'd come…" Anyway, a worthy sequel for the first video, which is one of my favourite Elden Ring videos on the platform.
The Italian government was literally paying people to move into dying small towns, the problem is what to do once you're there. Don a mask and 2 cleavers and become a boss, maybe?
i love seeing stuff like that, how the devs use these tricks to create the illusion of somthin g far away DS3 did this alot - people just s aid it was because of time dilation in the Lore that things looked really far away, despite being close - it's cool to see these things removed so we can have a clear look at the actuallllllllllll map asset
A breakdown of the true size of Armored Core 6 like this is ought to be very interesting. You're piloting a huge mech in that game and the scale of certain places and objects is STILL utterly breathtaking at times.
The production value on this is crazy man, looks very professional and is explained in such a good pace, i can't imagine how much work this must have taken but it was really intresting, especially the part where St. Trina is in the deepest part while Miquella is at the highest part
I've not finished the video yet, but the removing of water is an interesting aspect. Daggerfall is HUGE but so much of it is just open water. You'd likely reduce the scale of that game enormously by not counting the water.
"the highest peaks, the deepest ravines and everything else that's... *puts on sunglasses* between", Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree title drops, Michaelzaki comes in through the door and pats Addy on the shoulder, Sekiro 2 - Shadows die Thrice jumps through the window, Peter Bloodborne and John Eldenring smash in through the door.
An excellent video, once again. You have such a talent for this. These videos always have me excited what you'll cover next! Thank you for taking the time and effort to share this with us.
This video and the Elden Ring architecture video are some of the highest quality videos I've seen about the game. I can't imagine how long it took to measure and record everything. You deserve a lot more attention.
The people of the land between is very efficient. They can make all the mega structure in just very tight space. I have always known that if we put Elden Ring in real life it would just be like a town level size. Because I used to walk around in limgrave and it didn't take me 10 minute to go from one end to an other. The walk speed that I see most people have is 1.2 kilometer per 10 minutes so it is not that big. And when people port other model in (like armor core) and use them to fly around it just take seconds to go through entire land between. How Fromsoft make people feel the world is massive show the true quality of the game. In contrast at Armored Core, you don't feel the world is that big because you are in an armored core suit that several times taller than a human. Only when you notice the "human size door" or "car" you start to think about it. They are truly master of game design and level design. About Leyndell. I think it is fair to say that the city should be considered everything inside the first "ring". Many people theorized that the nameless city was a part of Leyndellthen it was removed to underground and 2 society developed apart from each other over the years. It doesn't make much sense for it to have such a big gap and wasted space either. The main gate is cleared meant to be a direct road to the capital but because the area was removed, they have to seal the main gate and use the side gate. Imagine building your capital in such a place that have so limited area for transporting resource in and out and the "main gate" is cannot be used
This was truly a great video. Really well narated, sounds all really well researched and the visuals are also so good. I really hope more people will see this video and that you will get a lot more subscribers.
21:12 keep in mind that the shattering of the Elden ring changed the geography of both the lands between and the shadow realm greatly, its possible that the shadow realm once would have fit in the center sea. Excellent video btw
Excellent video! I'm so glad I discovered your channel is you make content unlike anyone else at incredible quality. I'm curious what the zone with the biggest disparity between playable area and actual landmass is? My guess is either the Mountaintops or the Jagged Peak.
Elden Ring is a LOT smaller than most people think. But FromSoft did an amazing job making the map feel quite large and filling it with enough to find and encounters so that you don't notice how small it is overall. Because of this we can forget we aren't looking at an "country" but something smaller in size than most major cities in the world. This also helps us ignore the odd aspects of this fantasy such as the vast diversity of cultures and species in such a small area.
Amazing video! Very sleek editing. I was wondering how you got rid of the fog, a run without it sounds fun. Also, are you Italian? I'm not completely sure but you pronouncing the name of that town correctly and your accent points that way. Great job!
the editing and production on this video is so good. ive always been amazed at how fromsoft guides the player through the map by its composition, and how the angle you view structures at can make them seem so much larger.
I loved your video, you can see the production time, and you really worked hard, I loved the part about comparing it to Lego, new subscriber, I love this content❤
I'm only 2 minutes in but I'm just so excited that someone else cares enough to point out the difference between the total size of the map, and the size of the total play space of the game! I was trying to figure out the functional size of the areas in Elden Ring shortly after it came out and I had to resort to doing the estimation myself since the google results were pure poppycock and only listed the total map estimate.
11:00 the center bay has always fascinated me. For it to exist, it MUST be freshwater runoff from the other regions, mostly melted snow from the Mountaintops and well water from underground. This means the water east of the Lands Between is brackish! And considering how much fresh water is constantly pouring into the sea, the brackish water might spread much further than that. This is interesting because it affects the sea life that can live in the area, like crabs and fish. Gives some insight into what people are eating and where they get their fresh water from in this game. Though that mattered more pre-shattering. Also now that we have the dlc, Rauh’s waterways should have originally pooled where the bay is now, helping confirm that it’s a fresh water basin. Edit: ALSO! The clean cut of the waterfall and the Farum Azula architecture at the edge of Caelid implies Farum was originally seated at the east between Caelid and the Mountaintops. The tornado that lifted Farum launched its architecture across the land, explaining the ruins we find in other regions. So the odd bay used to house the Shadow Realm and the waterfall used to pour into Farum Azula. Now it’s a strange elevated bay pouring into the ocean.
An awesome video. I was actually very curious about the size of the various mountains in the game and DLC, a desperate attempt to try and place where the Shadowlands might have attached at one point. That Suppressing Pillar is one hell of a red herring. A lot of us lore folks saw that and jumped on it as validation of what we wanted to be true. Aside from the Shadow Lands not actually fitting the other tell is that the Supressing Pillar doesn't match the Divine Towers at all. The Divine towers are similar to the Giant's Kiln or Rauh. The Suppressing Pillar looks like it was built by the Towerfolk of Belurat. So it likely wouldn't correlate with them. I also never really took the time to notice that entrance to Stone Coffin FIssure in the Cerulean Cost is in the exact shape of a water drop or tear drop. The water/tear drop is one of the constantly recurring visual motifs in Elden Ring. The drop shape is usually associated with life. It is on talismans associated with Erdtree sap (Erdtree is a tree of life), it is associated with the birth of the Albinarics, artificial beings who's existence involves a birthing droplet.
23:45 you know you can step off the ledge while casting an incantation that can be walked and held, like any of the protection incantations you get from corhyn, as long as you just keep holding it, since you're not in a freefall state it'll let you fall for over 12 seconds. same can be said for repeatedly swinging your weapon on torrent, because that's also not a freefall state, although i think this might've been patched recently
Leyndell used to be bigger, too. Used to stretch all the way to its second wall. The waterfall is near certainly is a gravity anomaly from an ancient meteor, or from the scaduland being ripped away.
So much of it feeling so big, is the movement speed of the player. Take full sprinting horse speed in ER vs Driving a car around the map in GTAV, you're gonna be able to cover much more ground in GTAV in much less time, but in turn, it feels smaller than ER map, and by a decent bit. Average time between furthest points would be a good measure of how the scale of all of the maps, whether it be a lap around the outside edge, or something else, although Elden Ring's unique shape gives it some advantages in that aspect, it also is part of why it feels so damn big.
17:17 ho my god I've wanted to see this exact trip for ever ! I've allways wondered how deep this part of the game was because of how long the trip feels It felt like I was multiple Km under ground when I did it for the first time ^^
11:08 finally someone mentioned this weird waterfall that's been perplexing me since release! It's like fromsoft messed up where sea level is mid-development and gave up on fixing it #DeepestLore?
No Caelid was once connected to the Mountaintops, or rather, that's where Farum Azula once was. You have the Farum bridge and the beastial sanctum at the edge of the area connecting the architecture. Also the big dogs and big crows are only found in Caelid and Mountaintops.
One thing I've always wondered is how the heights in the DLC compare to the main game. Namely, is Scadu Altus taller, shorter, or at the same height as regular Altus; where would the surface of Rauh be, and would the ruins we explore in the DLC be taller than or shorter than the ruins in the base game (e.g Ruin Struin precipice); are the coastal regions to the south comparable to the lower regions of the base game like Caelid, Limgrave, and Liurnia; and where would the Gravesite Plain fit into things?
My understanding of the waterfall is that within the internal "bay" of the lands between is where the Scadulands lie, shrouded by Marika's power. As such the illusion from above is that of just an ocean. However I'm not sure how well backed up this is by lore so take that with a grain of gold.
Fantastic video. Like you said it's truly impressive how massive the game feels despite being small in reality compared to other games. It also shows what can be achieved with clever game design.
That original assessment could never be accurate to life. You can walk from south to north tips of the lands between in two-three hours. That is just nowhere near possible IRL for similarly sized countries. Imagine the cities were actually built to house the workforces and armies the game suggests - they would be SOOO much bigger. I don’t really understand how the spatial compression works, but I’ve always found it hilarious how they talk about Radagon going on some sort of epic quest to conquer liurnia… literally down the road.
Thing about video game like zelda or elden ring is that the country you're in is, lore accuratly, very, very big, but for gameplay and boredom reason, it's scaled down to make it more enjoyable and yet having a feeling that the world you're in is massiv. Especially in elden ring.
I think a lot of it it's the means to move around too. As an example GTA V map feels so small because people move around very quickly with supercars and planes. A GTA map where the players could only move around with a non motor bike and filled with enemies to fight at every corner would feel huge
7:16 Scum Mage Infa explains how the deep root depths tree might actually be “The Great Tree” which through the lore of item descriptions is considered different than the Erdtree tree
It's interesting that while the game has quite small area compared to real world locations, its vertical heights (e.g. the depth of valleys) are actually somewhat more extreme than what can be found in reality.
I do like to wonder to what scale the Lands Between would be if they wanted to make it "life-sized" based off of the lore. despite the massive amount of exploration that would require to get anywhere, there would be so much more room for different ruins, towns/npcs, creatures, and so on. 1000+ hour experience LOL.
First up: That was a very nice and well done video. It is certainly impressive how massive the game feels compared to its actual size. Second: Thank you for introducing me to the music of Brianna Tam. I fell in love with the music instantly after hearing it in the video. xD P.S: I am sure the Lego set (regarding the expensive prices of Lego) would be so expansive, that you had to find an entire planet purely made out of gold or even diamonds to buy it.
the water between caelid and leyndell was where the land of shadow used to be before it was displaced. So that area is technically accessible. If you are going by the size of it now, then sure, but if we are comparing it to the size it once was at its peak? yea its pretty accurate. IM assuming this doesnt take the DLC into account.
I'm sure you've had this thought already, but I would love to see you give this treatment to the Dark Souls 1 map. There's been those 3D map viewers out for a long time that make it easy to see things like lowest and highest points, but I've always wondered what the true scale is of the game toe-to-tip, especially because it's so interconnected and labyrinthine. Would probably be difficult to calculate some of the areas but I'd love to see a similar rundown like this.
I think From still hasn't been able to surpass the absolute masterpiece that is the DS1 world map. I think that the kind of analysis I did is better suited to an open world game, for Dark Souls it would be much more interesting to see how all the areas connect to each other instead of focusing on the size!
A funny way to measure the size of the Lands Between would be to use Monte Carlo by spawning the tarnished on random spots on the map and recording whether they die in a bottomless pit.
5:52 why was the southern forest not included in your measurements? 7:11 why is the divine tower not included? Why is the shallow lake below gelmir excluded here? 8:36 12:07 you can’t actually explore that area north-east of the starting bridge at farum. Great video overall even if there are a few questionable moments
This is an amazing video, you have answered many of my questions about the game's geography, and I would love to know how I could do this myself. One question that I'm still curious about, is the grace before the big drop to the Garden of Purple (Putrescent Knight arena). How deep is that drop? And how far below is that grace below the sea level or the Fissure entrance?
They did not need to make boss arenas so fkn big. It's a pain in the ass getting to a catacombs at the end of radahn's arena. It's quite silly. Malenia or Maliketh's arena is perfect in size imo
11:01 this probably happened cause of the massive earthquake that happened in the lands between but that’s just my theory on why there’s a giant waterfall between Caelid and the mountain tops (could also be cause that’s around where farum azula coooould have been if it wasn’t always a floating city which I don’t think it was)
Surely, Elden Ring should have premade navmeshes for enemies like every other Souls game. Calculating the area of the navmesh would be the most accurate scale of the map.
If Elden Ring Map could have the size of a real world scale, the biggest structures would need to be bigger? or just expanse the areas that were suposed to be inhabitated areas?
Every part of BotW and TotK is accessable... however if you step one foot into any water one of the strongest heros in video gaming history will almost instantly start to drown.
Could please do a video showing the castles of the Lands Between from above with no fog like it shows @00:28 seconds in. I have been trying far far longer than I would like to admit to find images like that of all the castles and haven't found a single one. I mostly have been searching for Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, Caria Manor, Volcano Manor, and Leyndell. I get get a few small images from this video but they are a little bit too small or off center so they don't really work for me. If you could do that it would be greatly appreciated, I have searched for so long that I don't even think those pics exist at this point. Great video though, I imagine finding all of that out would have taken quite some time to accomplish.
Hey, thanks! The problem with the castles is that big structures like those are never fully rendered in the engine, the parts that are hidden from player's views are usually not loaded in and I'm not good enough to know how to force the geometry to render. That said, I'll give it a shot!
The 79sq km figure being run with without a shred of fact checking has always driven me absolutely crazy
Oh boy... if you're frustrated by that, you are going to HATE what we've been getting up to on Twitter. 😬
I mean even beyond that: *HOW* are we determining square meters in a game?
It's impossible to properly compare a real world meter to an imaginary game one. We usually do it based on estimates such as the size of the character and average human height, but this means any game with smaller characters sizes has a huge advantage when estimating size. For this very video, he acknowledges he's adopting FromSoft's definition of a meter. For all we know, FromSoft's estimate of a meter is *conservative* and the Lands Between are much larger than what this turned out to be.
The reality is, we probably shouldn't try using real world measurements to try and relay how big a game is. If you run from Caelid to the Mountaintop, what makes the game feel big isn't the sheer time spent running or the raw distance, but the amount of content involved. Most of the game is about fighting, meaning if we want to measure content, how many fights and unique enemies there are is the better estimate, NOT world size. World size is what happens when someone wants to compare the size to GTA, which simply doesn't work. Even if you measure the distance to traverse the map from one corner to the next, it gives a rough idea of size, but doesn't account for movement speed or wonky, non-linear land formations such as the Lands Between.
*TL;DR* - The entire idea of measuring in square kilometers is already flawed, because no matter what measurement we use, it is *NOT* a square kilometer. You just can't do that. The only accurate way to actually measure map size would be something like pixel count from one corner to the next. You could even convert *that* into a game version of a "kilometer" if you wanted, so long as it is equally applied across all games. Basically, it's just a very rough estimate of game content size that unfortunately also heavily relies on what the games themselves refer to as a kilometer.
Oh thank God it's not just me! It was driving me up the wall!
@Longknive Modern game engines do absolutely have a fairly important and strict definition of a "meter", because any somewhat realistic game physics needs to take size into account. For example, real objects, when smaller, have less mass and are therefore less affected by weight and inertia. If you want to animate things correctly, they have to be sized appropriately relative to the physics engine, which is why it makes sense to use real world scales.
@@cube2fox Interesting. Just playing devil's advocate a bit though, how do we still ENSURE that an Elden Ring meter and a GTA meter are the same? Like, how do the game devs go about determining the meter length in the first place?
Sir Gideon Ofnir being used as a search engine was an unexpected but incredible start to this video.
Makes me want a plugin for Chromium, where every time you search you hear Gideon saying "Ah, I knew you'd come…"
Anyway, a worthy sequel for the first video, which is one of my favourite Elden Ring videos on the platform.
I’d end up punching through my monitor after hearing him a few dozen times. Can barely stand that 🤡 in the game
"Clears search history"
-What a sad state of affairs
Suddenly I have the desire to get two dogs and move to a small town in Italy.
No!! You will become the guy
Do it my little rune arc
Good luck with that
The Italian government was literally paying people to move into dying small towns, the problem is what to do once you're there. Don a mask and 2 cleavers and become a boss, maybe?
Dont forget the cleavers
That just goes to show that the verticality in Shadow of the Erdtree is spectacular.
Removing the clouds with full render distance really gives an idea on how compressed the map is. Still feels very big!
i love seeing stuff like that, how the devs use these tricks to create the illusion of somthin g far away DS3 did this alot - people just s aid it was because of time dilation in the Lore that things looked really far away, despite being close - it's cool to see these things removed so we can have a clear look at the actuallllllllllll map asset
A breakdown of the true size of Armored Core 6 like this is ought to be very interesting. You're piloting a huge mech in that game and the scale of certain places and objects is STILL utterly breathtaking at times.
Zullie The Witch has done a few videos breaking down the size of AC6, including porting models and maps into Elden Ring for comparison
My guess for the smallest arena is the Miranda Flower in Weeping Peninsula.
That or the assassin in the northern liurnia catacombs
Mine would be either the well where you fight the lone shadow or the ashina elite dojo in the ashina castle, both from sekiro
@@JM2nd Any of the ones cited before are surely smaller than those
I was thinking DS2's Dragonrider arena in Heide's Tower of Flame after you pull the lever.
What about the arena where you fight True King Allant inside the Old One at the very end of Demon's Souls?
The production value on this is crazy man, looks very professional and is explained in such a good pace, i can't imagine how much work this must have taken but it was really intresting, especially the part where St. Trina is in the deepest part while Miquella is at the highest part
I've not finished the video yet, but the removing of water is an interesting aspect. Daggerfall is HUGE but so much of it is just open water. You'd likely reduce the scale of that game enormously by not counting the water.
in fairness, daggerfalls water is accessible with proper setup, whereas elden Ring's just fuckin kills ya lol
Most important thing is that a lot of the space in Daggerfall is just space you fast travel through because there's nothing to see there.
I'm quite sure Daggerfall would be way too big even with the sea removed!
Basically the landmass is tiny compared to the real world, but individual things are massive
"the highest peaks, the deepest ravines and everything else that's... *puts on sunglasses* between", Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree title drops, Michaelzaki comes in through the door and pats Addy on the shoulder, Sekiro 2 - Shadows die Thrice jumps through the window, Peter Bloodborne and John Eldenring smash in through the door.
🙌 ABSOLUTE CINEMA 🙌
“Power cord strum” 😎
Peak fiction.
Clicked off the video at the DLC part, to avoid spoilers, but WOW, fantastic video! Deserved many more views and subs!
An excellent video, once again. You have such a talent for this. These videos always have me excited what you'll cover next! Thank you for taking the time and effort to share this with us.
The Chapel drops a low rendered tear into the ocean, seeing how far the brave tarnished had come
This video and the Elden Ring architecture video are some of the highest quality videos I've seen about the game. I can't imagine how long it took to measure and record everything. You deserve a lot more attention.
That depths bit with it being videogame trickery is an inspiring lesson on game design and blockout, bravo
The people of the land between is very efficient. They can make all the mega structure in just very tight space.
I have always known that if we put Elden Ring in real life it would just be like a town level size. Because I used to walk around in limgrave and it didn't take me 10 minute to go from one end to an other. The walk speed that I see most people have is 1.2 kilometer per 10 minutes so it is not that big. And when people port other model in (like armor core) and use them to fly around it just take seconds to go through entire land between.
How Fromsoft make people feel the world is massive show the true quality of the game. In contrast at Armored Core, you don't feel the world is that big because you are in an armored core suit that several times taller than a human. Only when you notice the "human size door" or "car" you start to think about it. They are truly master of game design and level design.
About Leyndell. I think it is fair to say that the city should be considered everything inside the first "ring". Many people theorized that the nameless city was a part of Leyndellthen it was removed to underground and 2 society developed apart from each other over the years. It doesn't make much sense for it to have such a big gap and wasted space either. The main gate is cleared meant to be a direct road to the capital but because the area was removed, they have to seal the main gate and use the side gate. Imagine building your capital in such a place that have so limited area for transporting resource in and out and the "main gate" is cannot be used
This was truly a great video. Really well narated, sounds all really well researched and the visuals are also so good. I really hope more people will see this video and that you will get a lot more subscribers.
21:12 keep in mind that the shattering of the Elden ring changed the geography of both the lands between and the shadow realm greatly, its possible that the shadow realm once would have fit in the center sea. Excellent video btw
absolutely loved your architecture video, and loved this one. keep going bro :D
Excellent video! I'm so glad I discovered your channel is you make content unlike anyone else at incredible quality. I'm curious what the zone with the biggest disparity between playable area and actual landmass is? My guess is either the Mountaintops or the Jagged Peak.
Huge props to how well edited this is, very sleek!
Elden Ring is a LOT smaller than most people think. But FromSoft did an amazing job making the map feel quite large and filling it with enough to find and encounters so that you don't notice how small it is overall. Because of this we can forget we aren't looking at an "country" but something smaller in size than most major cities in the world. This also helps us ignore the odd aspects of this fantasy such as the vast diversity of cultures and species in such a small area.
For someone with so few subscribers, the quality, editing and attention to detail is astounding
This scratched every single itch of exploration that my heart had. A thousand thanks
Amazing video! Very sleek editing. I was wondering how you got rid of the fog, a run without it sounds fun.
Also, are you Italian? I'm not completely sure but you pronouncing the name of that town correctly and your accent points that way.
Great job!
the editing and production on this video is so good. ive always been amazed at how fromsoft guides the player through the map by its composition, and how the angle you view structures at can make them seem so much larger.
Ok, this is one of the best Elden Ring videos I've ever seen. Great job. Instant sub.
I loved your video, you can see the production time, and you really worked hard, I loved the part about comparing it to Lego, new subscriber, I love this content❤
This must have been one hell of an undertaking, that's for sure.
There is nothing more to say; Excellent job.
I'm only 2 minutes in but I'm just so excited that someone else cares enough to point out the difference between the total size of the map, and the size of the total play space of the game!
I was trying to figure out the functional size of the areas in Elden Ring shortly after it came out and I had to resort to doing the estimation myself since the google results were pure poppycock and only listed the total map estimate.
I can tell this channel is going to get big
11:00 the center bay has always fascinated me. For it to exist, it MUST be freshwater runoff from the other regions, mostly melted snow from the Mountaintops and well water from underground. This means the water east of the Lands Between is brackish! And considering how much fresh water is constantly pouring into the sea, the brackish water might spread much further than that. This is interesting because it affects the sea life that can live in the area, like crabs and fish. Gives some insight into what people are eating and where they get their fresh water from in this game. Though that mattered more pre-shattering.
Also now that we have the dlc, Rauh’s waterways should have originally pooled where the bay is now, helping confirm that it’s a fresh water basin.
Edit: ALSO!
The clean cut of the waterfall and the Farum Azula architecture at the edge of Caelid implies Farum was originally seated at the east between Caelid and the Mountaintops. The tornado that lifted Farum launched its architecture across the land, explaining the ruins we find in other regions. So the odd bay used to house the Shadow Realm and the waterfall used to pour into Farum Azula. Now it’s a strange elevated bay pouring into the ocean.
An awesome video. I was actually very curious about the size of the various mountains in the game and DLC, a desperate attempt to try and place where the Shadowlands might have attached at one point. That Suppressing Pillar is one hell of a red herring. A lot of us lore folks saw that and jumped on it as validation of what we wanted to be true. Aside from the Shadow Lands not actually fitting the other tell is that the Supressing Pillar doesn't match the Divine Towers at all. The Divine towers are similar to the Giant's Kiln or Rauh. The Suppressing Pillar looks like it was built by the Towerfolk of Belurat. So it likely wouldn't correlate with them.
I also never really took the time to notice that entrance to Stone Coffin FIssure in the Cerulean Cost is in the exact shape of a water drop or tear drop. The water/tear drop is one of the constantly recurring visual motifs in Elden Ring. The drop shape is usually associated with life. It is on talismans associated with Erdtree sap (Erdtree is a tree of life), it is associated with the birth of the Albinarics, artificial beings who's existence involves a birthing droplet.
23:45 you know you can step off the ledge while casting an incantation that can be walked and held, like any of the protection incantations you get from corhyn, as long as you just keep holding it, since you're not in a freefall state it'll let you fall for over 12 seconds.
same can be said for repeatedly swinging your weapon on torrent, because that's also not a freefall state, although i think this might've been patched recently
Leyndell used to be bigger, too. Used to stretch all the way to its second wall.
The waterfall is near certainly is a gravity anomaly from an ancient meteor, or from the scaduland being ripped away.
The nameless city in deproot depths likely occupied the missing part of Leyndell
A small but well designed and put together map can feel much bigger than a massive but empty map.
27:05 The isometric CRPG-esque view of Leyndell unlocked something inside me.
So much of it feeling so big, is the movement speed of the player. Take full sprinting horse speed in ER vs Driving a car around the map in GTAV, you're gonna be able to cover much more ground in GTAV in much less time, but in turn, it feels smaller than ER map, and by a decent bit.
Average time between furthest points would be a good measure of how the scale of all of the maps, whether it be a lap around the outside edge, or something else, although Elden Ring's unique shape gives it some advantages in that aspect, it also is part of why it feels so damn big.
17:17 ho my god I've wanted to see this exact trip for ever ! I've allways wondered how deep this part of the game was because of how long the trip feels
It felt like I was multiple Km under ground when I did it for the first time ^^
Love the videos, clicked on this immediately as it popped up. Keep up the good stuff
Another banger video from you, this sort of in-depth analysis is why I'm subscribed.
This is some great stuff, like others are saying the research, narration and visuals all come together to make something brilliant. Keep it up!
11:08 finally someone mentioned this weird waterfall that's been perplexing me since release! It's like fromsoft messed up where sea level is mid-development and gave up on fixing it
#DeepestLore?
No Caelid was once connected to the Mountaintops, or rather, that's where Farum Azula once was. You have the Farum bridge and the beastial sanctum at the edge of the area connecting the architecture. Also the big dogs and big crows are only found in Caelid and Mountaintops.
amazing presentation on this video, absolute props for the insane amount of work this video must've taken
One thing I've always wondered is how the heights in the DLC compare to the main game. Namely, is Scadu Altus taller, shorter, or at the same height as regular Altus; where would the surface of Rauh be, and would the ruins we explore in the DLC be taller than or shorter than the ruins in the base game (e.g Ruin Struin precipice); are the coastal regions to the south comparable to the lower regions of the base game like Caelid, Limgrave, and Liurnia; and where would the Gravesite Plain fit into things?
My understanding of the waterfall is that within the internal "bay" of the lands between is where the Scadulands lie, shrouded by Marika's power. As such the illusion from above is that of just an ocean. However I'm not sure how well backed up this is by lore so take that with a grain of gold.
Fantastic video.
Like you said it's truly impressive how massive the game feels despite being small in reality compared to other games.
It also shows what can be achieved with clever game design.
That original assessment could never be accurate to life. You can walk from south to north tips of the lands between in two-three hours. That is just nowhere near possible IRL for similarly sized countries. Imagine the cities were actually built to house the workforces and armies the game suggests - they would be SOOO much bigger. I don’t really understand how the spatial compression works, but I’ve always found it hilarious how they talk about Radagon going on some sort of epic quest to conquer liurnia… literally down the road.
Thing about video game like zelda or elden ring is that the country you're in is, lore accuratly, very, very big, but for gameplay and boredom reason, it's scaled down to make it more enjoyable and yet having a feeling that the world you're in is massiv. Especially in elden ring.
Very well put together!
I think a lot of it it's the means to move around too. As an example GTA V map feels so small because people move around very quickly with supercars and planes. A GTA map where the players could only move around with a non motor bike and filled with enemies to fight at every corner would feel huge
7:16 Scum Mage Infa explains how the deep root depths tree might actually be “The Great Tree” which through the lore of item descriptions is considered different than the Erdtree tree
some of the best mapping we have had in a long time
It's interesting that while the game has quite small area compared to real world locations, its vertical heights (e.g. the depth of valleys) are actually somewhat more extreme than what can be found in reality.
Fantastic video, very informative and comprehensive. I hope more people find this video.
I do like to wonder to what scale the Lands Between would be if they wanted to make it "life-sized" based off of the lore. despite the massive amount of exploration that would require to get anywhere, there would be so much more room for different ruins, towns/npcs, creatures, and so on. 1000+ hour experience LOL.
You really deserve more subscribers, your videos are great
First up: That was a very nice and well done video. It is certainly impressive how massive the game feels compared to its actual size.
Second: Thank you for introducing me to the music of Brianna Tam. I fell in love with the music instantly after hearing it in the video. xD
P.S: I am sure the Lego set (regarding the expensive prices of Lego) would be so expansive, that you had to find an entire planet purely made out of gold or even diamonds to buy it.
It's The Lands In Between Tuvalu!
So Elden ring was the true shibuya incident.
insanely good presentation in this video
the water between caelid and leyndell was where the land of shadow used to be before it was displaced. So that area is technically accessible. If you are going by the size of it now, then sure, but if we are comparing it to the size it once was at its peak? yea its pretty accurate. IM assuming this doesnt take the DLC into account.
I'm sure you've had this thought already, but I would love to see you give this treatment to the Dark Souls 1 map. There's been those 3D map viewers out for a long time that make it easy to see things like lowest and highest points, but I've always wondered what the true scale is of the game toe-to-tip, especially because it's so interconnected and labyrinthine. Would probably be difficult to calculate some of the areas but I'd love to see a similar rundown like this.
I think From still hasn't been able to surpass the absolute masterpiece that is the DS1 world map. I think that the kind of analysis I did is better suited to an open world game, for Dark Souls it would be much more interesting to see how all the areas connect to each other instead of focusing on the size!
This video is an absolute Masterpiece
Really cool video man, thanks
A funny way to measure the size of the Lands Between would be to use Monte Carlo by spawning the tarnished on random spots on the map and recording whether they die in a bottomless pit.
I love that
11:38 NOOOO NOT THE TELEPORT DOG! It is back again from DS3
The central sea area is where the shadow of the erdtree part of the map was thrusted into another dimension
Incredibile video, I very much liked the production. It must've taken ages to put it together
This is a really well done video.
If Miyazaki will tell us how tall is our tarnished, than we can proceed to calculate everything
Smallest arena?
The flower in Weeping has to be the smallest, I'm certain of it.
0:40
Everything else in between in "The Lands Between." I see what you did there :)
5:52 why was the southern forest not included in your measurements?
7:11 why is the divine tower not included?
Why is the shallow lake below gelmir excluded here? 8:36
12:07 you can’t actually explore that area north-east of the starting bridge at farum.
Great video overall even if there are a few questionable moments
this was cool. Thank you for making it
Excellent video once again
This is an amazing video, you have answered many of my questions about the game's geography, and I would love to know how I could do this myself.
One question that I'm still curious about, is the grace before the big drop to the Garden of Purple (Putrescent Knight arena). How deep is that drop? And how far below is that grace below the sea level or the Fissure entrance?
i really want to know how big Astel's arena is, I feel like it could definitely be up there in like number 2 or 3 in all of souls games.
I should keep track of when I hear Greenpath music used in videos. It's everywhere, like the Luigi's Mansion music, it's crazy
It's just that good
Thx for the video. You did a really great work
Stunning video, thank you
They did not need to make boss arenas so fkn big. It's a pain in the ass getting to a catacombs at the end of radahn's arena. It's quite silly. Malenia or Maliketh's arena is perfect in size imo
Wait, i haven't subbed to this channel
I swear i subbed after watching last video lmao
Awesome video!! Thank you 🙏
11:01 this probably happened cause of the massive earthquake that happened in the lands between but that’s just my theory on why there’s a giant waterfall between Caelid and the mountain tops (could also be cause that’s around where farum azula coooould have been if it wasn’t always a floating city which I don’t think it was)
What is the music playing at 4:10 ?
Hollow knight sound track
Hollow Knight OST
The specific track is “greenpath”
buddy finally dropped a new video after so long
Surely, Elden Ring should have premade navmeshes for enemies like every other Souls game. Calculating the area of the navmesh would be the most accurate scale of the map.
Miyazaki: The dlc map will be the size of Limgrave.
I did not know the average US farm was that large
that google-thing display really caught me off. great vid!
> Forms a perfect hexagon.
That is not a perfect hexagon by any strip of the imagination
i love your methodology here thank you
If Elden Ring Map could have the size of a real world scale, the biggest structures would need to be bigger? or just expanse the areas that were suposed to be inhabitated areas?
New addypalooza video, time to grab the popcorn.
Every part of BotW and TotK is accessable... however if you step one foot into any water one of the strongest heros in video gaming history will almost instantly start to drown.
great video, now measure every room of the shadow keep
You do that, man
Could please do a video showing the castles of the Lands Between from above with no fog like it shows @00:28 seconds in. I have been trying far far longer than I would like to admit to find images like that of all the castles and haven't found a single one. I mostly have been searching for Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, Caria Manor, Volcano Manor, and Leyndell.
I get get a few small images from this video but they are a little bit too small or off center so they don't really work for me. If you could do that it would be greatly appreciated, I have searched for so long that I don't even think those pics exist at this point. Great video though, I imagine finding all of that out would have taken quite some time to accomplish.
Hey, thanks! The problem with the castles is that big structures like those are never fully rendered in the engine, the parts that are hidden from player's views are usually not loaded in and I'm not good enough to know how to force the geometry to render. That said, I'll give it a shot!
Maybe the lands of shadow are actually buried under the ground and that's what the elevated sea is?