Honestly this is useless information in the grand scheme of things. Who cares how big or small the map is. It's so trivial and unimportant. This reminds me of the time when Sony announced that 5+ million bullets were shot in Killzone 3's multiplayer or some dumbass stat like that.
Debating about the map size and location of places is important for anyone who is curious about how this fits with the rest of the series.
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Nintendo has a whole page dedicated to comparing Legend of Zelda with Breath of the Wild:
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Their Japanese account even tweeted a comparison between LoZ and BotW
During a Treehouse the director paused the screen here to compare it with LoZ
Oh yeah another timeline hint:
A Conversation with Zelda Veteran and ‘Breath of the Wild’ Producer Eiji Aonuma - Waypoint
And where does this Zelda fit on the series' timeline, in its chronology, split as that is into three separate yet connected branches?
Eiji Aonuma: I wouldn't say that it obviously fits into any one part of the timeline, but if you play the game, you'll be able to work out where it fits. As you probably saw in the trailer, the most recent trailer, there's a woman's voice, and she says: "The history of the royal family of Hyrule is also the history of the Calamity Ganon." And as you know, the Zelda series, up until now, is a history of repeated attacks by Ganon. So, there's food for thought there. I don't want to say anything more as I'd like players to work it out for themselves, to play the game and see what they think.
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Cliff Notes:
Breath of the Wild has two save functions. We've an auto save, and a manual save. The game will auto save as you play, as you move around the map.
Instead of a lot of large dungeons, we decided to include a larger amount of smaller shrines (there still are some larger dungeons) to strike a balance, between this extremely large (over)world that you're exploring, and these goals and objectives to explore within that.
The reason we used voice acting in this Zelda has to do with a certain system we've used in the game. But I can't really tell you any more about what that system is, because it'd kind of be giving too much away about the game. You'll just have to play it, and see how the voice acting fits in for yourself.
