Zelda: Breath of the Wild is likely Nintendo's biggest game of 2017, and represents a massive new undertaking for the series. It's the first fully-fledged open-world Zelda game Nintendo has ever made, and offers players a new kind of experience--in many ways, it feels like the ultimate Zelda, the kind of game that represents everything that Eiji Aonuma has wanted to do with the series.
As such, Breath of the Wild will be massive in scale and scope--so big that it even ousts Skyrim's huge hyborean landmass.
According to Reddit user's HylianWarrior impressive Breath of the Wild map, the in-game world is an estimated 60% bigger than Skyrim. The map--which isn't completely accurate, mind you--pinpoints Breath of the Wild's open-world Hyrule at 61.2 square kilometers, whereas Skyrim checks in at 36.72 square kilometers.
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We already know that Breath of the Wild's Hyrule is 12 times bigger than Twilight Princess, and the demoed Plateau area represents just a tiny 1% of the overall map. Nintendo affirms that the in-game area will be peppered with tons of activities, enemies, quests and more to ensure that the open world doesn't feel stale.
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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launches simultaneously on March 3, 2017 on Nintendo Switch and Wii U.
Sources HylianWarrior used to create map:
- Breath of the Wild map size calculations by /u/EngineeringHyrule
- Twilight Princess map size calculations by /u/zcomuto (see the edit)
- Skyrim map size calculations
- Ocarina of Time map size calculations by /u/DarnVisages
- For the Wind Waker, the rather common estimate is that each sea tile is 250m x 250m, so I went off of that.