The creator of the YouTube channel Addypalooza released a video dedicated to the actual size of Elden Ring's open world. According to him, it turned out to be much smaller than many initially believed.
It's commonly known that the open world of Elden Ring is estimated at 79 square kilometers. However, Addypalooza claims that the map is actually much smaller—15 square kilometers (or 13.5 square kilometers excluding closed locations).
The creator explained that he measured the space by using the distance between two endpoints, then scaled the map in an editor and used a special program for analysis. Initially, he calculated the size to be 110 square kilometers. However, it turned out that a large portion of this space is inaccessible to players and is essentially unused territory. After further analysis, the YouTuber concluded that Elden Ring's open world is 15 square kilometers.
"I walked through every part of the map, trying to stay as close as possible to the walkable area to get an accurate size of the game zone", — said Addypalooza.
Notably, with the inclusion of locations from the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, the total map size increased by 5.52 square kilometers, bringing the overall size to 20.5 square kilometers.
For comparison, the map size of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is 37.1 square kilometers, and GTA 5 is 80.3 square kilometers.