@dudeglove:

Of course, Nintendo showed how the system worked. Only after completing temples do you have the option to lay down a blue marker and fast travel to that temple.

Aside from the glider and horses, there may be other methods to increase travel time significantly, when traversing as normal.

I have a sneaky feeling players will be shocked by how full of life this game turns out to be. Even on the Great Plateau, where it's lush and has everything to support a sizable town.

A world "corrupted by technology" also suggests to me that population growth in Hyrule may be a by product, as it is in the real world.

I expect vast cities, not small towns dedicated to the civilisations of the Zoras and others.

We still don't know what lies beyond that chasm, and whether that chasm is closed. If it is closed, by a seal or natural means, it could mean whatever civilisations lie beyond cannot enter, making Great Plateau more of a haven than it already seems.

It needs to have a good mix of emptiness and things to do. If you want to go for some realism with this game, you'd want some empty spaces like the real world has. Of course, it's a video game and not the real world. But still, the key is balance.

@kasaioni:

If you want to go for realism you have to use the geology, let the landscape dictate where settlements and industrial areas are. eg: water sources, and on the fringes of forests are common places for civilisation to settle.

Even the clouds seemingly. There is a photo posted online showing what appears to be a vast city on a cloud.

Oh man that sounds a lot like Dragons Dogma's Port Crystals. I guess as long as it doesn't consume an item to travel to it then people won't hate it.

@ivdamke:

I don't think you do consume anything to do so, because you use the Shield Tablet, and the items you use on that are seemingly unlimited, like the round and square bombs, and the Magnetism item.

@skinky: That's good but even with the unlimited ferrystone people still couldn't stand not being able to fast travel to every key location in Dragons Dogma. The lack of a horse in that game is the big differentiating factor but Zelda's world is 100x larger than Dragons Dogma so we'll see!

It's a hunch that I think we'll be able to fly in this game by means we haven't seen yet.

They keep calling it an open-air game, and while I've seen their explanation as to why, I think there's more to it.

Hopefully we can fast travel with a horse.

For everyone commenting that they thought the world seemed kinda empty from the E3 demo: keep in mind that they specifically said that they removed NPCs from the demo, probably along with other elements of the game, for the sake of not spoiling the story. It's not that they're not in the game yet. They were removed for the sake of the demo. Don't assume that the world is going to be empty based on an extremely limited demo in which they removed a lot of things to avoid spoilers. Save your judgements for the final game. Personally, just from the aesthetics, I know I'm going to love the game. They're simultaneously breaking the norms for the series and going back to what made the first game so great.

You May also need to travel back in time to see towns and cities at their height. Only a few like the Zora and Gorons could have continued to thrive after the great flood...

Hey, someone made a new map, he used some hacked game with infinite flying and used the flying minigame to measure the map. So if the games units are right it's 74.85 km^2 (square kilometers) or 28.9 mi^2 (square miles) Source: https://redd.it/5zkwbt

EDIT here is a older mesuared map that was only slightly off from this new one but it has some comparisons: Source