The Map for 'Elden Ring' Is Looking Like It's Going to Be Way Bigger Than We Thought

With the release of the highly anticipated Elden Ring just around the corner, players are all too excited to explore the vast open world of the Lands Between. The game comes from Bloodborne creator Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin, of Game of Thrones fame. From what we've seen so far, the sky's the limit for a game like Elden Ring, which, even for an open-world game, looks enormous. So, how large could its map possibly be?

Elden Ring takes place in the Lands Between, a realm overwrought with conflict after the destruction of the mystical Elden Ring artifact. Players become one of the game’s Tarnished, the exiles who return to the land in the hopes of becoming the new Elden Lord. The Tarnished are tasked with collecting the Great Runes while facing off against powerful demigods fueled by the Elden Ring shards they possess. How big could the game map actually become as you traverse the Lands Between?

If you've ever played a Souls game or read any book in A Song of Ice and Fire, you know that the creators behind those franchises are great at creating sprawling worlds filled with magic, fantasy, and horror. The world of Elden Ring looks to be no different, as the Lands Between is comprised of six main areas, each filled with dungeons and castles that players are free to explore. The game will eventually grant you fast travel, but players can also take in the vast land on horseback.

When it comes to the actual size of the game, the Lands Between of Elden Ring might be bigger than we could ever have imagined.

According to Kotaku Australia writer Junglist, who reportedly played a six-hour closed network test of the game, the world is supposedly big enough to travel across different shores to reach new areas. Not only that, but Junglist even encountered a mysterious warp point that teleported them far off from the already-immense starting area of the game. Based on that, the writer estimated that the starting area could be one-ninth of the full game.

"Mathematically, the map could be anywhere from two to eight times bigger than we thought," Junglist wrote. "But that's accounting for extremes ... Realistically, I'm wondering if the explorable landmass is [two-and-a-half to four times] what we previously thought."

Other sources seem to corroborate the massive size of Elden Ring. A user on Reddit guesstimated that the area used in the CNT accounted for approximately 13 percent of the known area for the game.

According to the game's creators, the main campaign isn't even terribly long. Elden Ring producer Yasuhiro Kitao stated in an interview at the 2022 Taipei Game Show that the main story could be completed in about 30 hours. But the game's side content and replayability could easily add dozens upon dozens of hours of playtime.

Elden Ring will release on Feb. 22 on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X and S.