Scale of the world

[Pixel]

Looking at the distances on the signs in Midgar, it looks like they have put a good bit of thought into the scale of the world.

It says Kalm is 51 miles. From Marlene's window, she can see Midgar on the horizon. That's the distance from where I am to Cairnryan on the coast of Scotland, and I can see that from my window at the top of the house.

Junon is 133 miles by road. Thats like going from London to a bit past Birmingham. The route our party takes would be like walking the length of Britain. Going from Belfast to Carlisle, down to Shefield to catch a chocobo. Through the marshes of Birmingham , cut through the mythril mines to Hereford, then up to Junon... Dublin? lol

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I once worked out the scale of the planet using the distances you can see on the sign over the bridge in Crisis Core. I then went to the physics teacher and asked him what the gravitational pull would be on a planet of that size.

He said, "I could just tell you, but wouldn't you much rather I showed you how to work it out for yourself?"

Me, "Not really...."

Despite my resistance, he made me sit down and we covered a lot of papers with drawings and angles and etc... and I didn't understand any of it. I was just kind of curious to know whether leaping tall buildings at a single bound would actually be possible in their world.

Of course, it might be the case that everything in their world is to scale, and that whereas by their measurements Cloud is 5' 8" or whatever, by our measurements he's only two feet tall. Lol.

 

[Pixel]

Hmmm i tried overlying the scale.

The whole planet would only be the size of Britain lol

That would make it smaller than Pluto

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

[whinges] I don't want it to be that small.

 

[NikolaiBroketheZoom]

[whinges] I don't want it to be that small.

Well to put it in perspective, Skyrim is about 14 square miles, whereas the UK is 94,058 square miles according to Google. Factor in scaling the world down and the planet is still a pretty big place.

 

[Flare]

So I'm guessing VII's world is really just a lot smaller than ours. That seems so weird, maybe because it's so real. Though, do you guys think it might still be 'scaled down' and not completely canon yet for the game mechanics? I mean I can't imagine someone making a game that's exactly to scale with our world yet, that would be huge.
151 miles to Junon is a lot closer than I thought it would be, but is that a straight shot to it? That distance isn't even as tall as the state I live in (Washington state).

Does anyone know how big Midgar is, like the radius of it? I'm curious how a city like that would look in our world.

 

[Octo]

^Somewhere, I can't remember where, and maybe I dreamed it. But I think they said Midgar was meant to be the size of Tokyo.

 

[Mayo Master]

The scale of RPG worlds has (almost) always been miniature, largely because of the matter of making exploration interesting. Of course, creating an Earth-sized world would be technologically challenging, but the use of procedurals (as what Bethesda used in Daggerfall) would remedy that. However, a procedural-generated world would not likely provide a lot of interesting stuff to do in this world.
In games, worlds have to be designed so that they're interesting to discover on foot, so it's very difficult to reconcile that with the notion of a large-scale world. No one would want to spend days and days of travel in large expanses of land where you'd find a "point of interest" every two hours (although, on Earth, the feeling of scale is extremely different whether you're European or North American). Can't see much interest in hiking through the Canadian prairies, for instance. In that respect, the best compromise to reconcile "large scale world" with interesting exploration is, in my opinion, described by games such as Dragon Age or FF XII, where you would explore local regions on foot and you would skip the traveling time between regions.

On another note, a Pluto-sized planet would have extremely low gravity (about 0.17 g with my estimation - the gravity of real-Pluto being even lower because it's mostly ice), OR you could partly remedy that if the planet's core is made of heavy metal

 

[Lex]

Hmmm i tried overlying the scale.

The whole planet would only be the size of Britain lol

That would make it smaller than Pluto

glasgow is forgotten capital confirmed

meanwhile, edinburgh is the icicle inn. Seems legit

 

[Clement Rage]

There's no scale that works consistently. A world that small wouldn't have an atmosphere, a bigger one would have vast areas of empty space...nobody wants to spend 72 hours of gameplay driving through the desert. The world is as big or small as you want it to be, that's how the Highwind always arrives at the dramatically convenient moment.

 

[Kionae]

The whole planet would only be the size of Britain lol

That would make it smaller than Pluto

Though, of course, that assumes that we're actually seeing the entire planet presented on the world map. It's feasible that there are other landmasses/continents not depicted as part of the explorable area (because why show them if you can't get to them?).

The "world map" may not be a map of the world at all. It may only be the equivalent of a map of Europe.

 

[55-]

Does anyone know how big Midgar is, like the radius of it? I'm curious how a city like that would look in our world.

It takes Evan 3 days to walk around the circumference in The Kids Are Alright. It could make a huge difference whether he was traveling close to the central pillar or out near the edge. But nonetheless I appreciated that sense of scale given to us. That's a whole lot bigger than it feels in FFVII.

Also worth keeping in mind is that canonically, it's supposed to look like nighttime all the time in most areas of Midgar because the plates completely block out the sky. That suggests some pretty massive plates.
Though, now that I'm thinking about it, the plates would have to curve with the curvature of the planet. Considering the apparent size of Gaia, those plates would be hella curved. That would make it more likely to block out sky right? I am garbage at science questions??

 

[Shademp]

Though, of course, that assumes that we're actually seeing the entire planet presented on the world map.

If that is the case then it feels really weird because in the original game we could travel around the whole planet and seemingly discover each and every landmass. The way that the FFVII world map is repeated and seen in both Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus also adds to the feeling that these continents and islands are all that the planet is composed of.

I wish I had taken extensive snapshots of the FFVII planet globe that can be seen on the upper decks of the Shera in DC, but my general impression is that it doesn't leave room for unknown/new landmasses. So if more continents are added to the FFVII world I'd consider it an epic retcon.

Considering the apparent size of Gaia, those plates would be hella curved.

Article: What is the name of FFVII’s planet?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Maybe it's the only area of the Planet not covered with Mist!

But I like the idea that we haven't seen the whole planet because it fits in with my plan for a sequel game which involves them all exploring a new continent under the leadership of Lucrecia, plus cooking mini-games.

 

[Shademp]

plus cooking mini-games.

FINAL FANTASY VII: EXQUISITE CUISINES

 

[Ite]

I would thank that a million times if I could.

 

[Mayo Master]

plus cooking mini-games.

FINAL FANTASY VII: EXQUISITE CUISINES

I would totally replicate the recipes in real life, like I did for Skyrim.

 

[Flare]

glasgow is forgotten capital confirmed

meanwhile, edinburgh is the icicle inn. Seems legit

The Northern Crater is pretty close to Scotland, Lex. Let us know if you see any creepy aliens masquerading as dead people, please.

 

[Flare]

Though, of course, that assumes that we're actually seeing the entire planet presented on the world map.

If that is the case then it feels really weird because in the original game we could travel around the whole planet and seemingly discover each and every landmass. The way that the FFVII world map is repeated and seen in both Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus also adds to the feeling that these continents and islands are all that the planet is composed of.

I wish I had taken extensive snapshots of the FFVII planet globe that can be seen on the upper decks of the Shera in DC, but my general impression is that it doesn't leave room for unknown/new landmasses. So if more continents are added to the FFVII world I'd consider it an epic retcon.

Wouldn't that be a huge shock if they added a whole new continent in the remake? Of course I have no plausible idea why. I could see them adding perhaps some more islands or something for the fun of it.

 

[Pixel]

A little off topic, but imagine the party running through a world that looks like this

 

[Flintlock]

I wonder if the world will continue to be toroidal, i.e. donut-shaped?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Tell us more, Flint.

 

[Starling]

I think he's talking about this post from the gameplay thread:

They should go ahead and make it spherical. But I believe FFVIII had both map styles?

Actually even FFVIII was still torus-shaped in terms of its gameplay travel-wise (as well as FFIX). This person from gamefaqs explains how it works:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/197341-final-fantasy-vii/43118152

Actually they're not sphereical. If you go north on a spherical world you would end up coming South after reaching the pole and come back down the map rather than wrapping around and coming up the bottom.

The "spherical" world map display that FF8 has wouldn't actually be accurate to the game's actual flat map is simply a distorted view of your current location on the flat map (with the edges shifted to keep your location centered).

There is no way to portray a round surface as a 2D plane where the top and bottom edges were originally connected as well as the left and right edges. Go ahead and try, take a piece of paper make it so that two opposite edges are connected, it will be a cylinder. Now try to make the other set of opposite edges connect, it won't form any type of regular enclosed shape. The closest thing would be a donut shape as the TC suggested, but that would create a hexagonal map.

Technically though, the world maps such as those used in FF7 and FF8 are just plain ordinary rectangles. They simply include code that makes it so that when you go too far in one direction your position is changed to put you on the opposite side of the map. And the terrain around you is drawn by simply cutting the left/right/top/bottom of the map off and attaching it to the opposite side before rendering the scene (similar to what 8 does to create its faux-spherical display).

This is what an actual 3D representation of the map-travel mechanics would look like for Final Fantasy I-IX (the example map is from Chrono Trigger)

 

[Flintlock]

I hadn't seen those posts, but yes, that is what I'm referring to.

 

[Flare]

A little off topic, but imagine the party running through a world that looks like this

Yes please. YES.