There are already some huge maps out there, Just Cause 2 and 3 both have maps at around 1000km2, and those games are beloved by their players. But if the next Cyberpunk game was announced with Night City now being the size of an actual large metropolis, say like New York, would you say that’s too big? What determines what “too big” is?
I think that all comes down to how the travel, visual appeal, and POIs are handled. As well as a personal interest in the gameplay loop. The following are my general opinions on a few games for why I think they do or do not work.
Daggerfall would be way too big, because the POIs are few and far between and there is no visual interest between, but it worked because it had fast travel.
Each of the successive TES games had more visual interest to them and wel spaced POIs and I spent a lot of time walking on first playthroughs without fast traveling anywhere.
Similarly No Man’s Sky could seem too big at first blush, but if you like the gameplay loop it’s infinitely fascinating. For anyone wanting to move further in it’s also helpful that there are gates to help make large jumps, without them being a requirement to enjoy things.
Cyberpunk 2077 was very visually interesting and had a ton of POIs and was fun to traverse on foot and in a vehicle. I thought the size was fantastic on my first two playthroughs. The third time the badlands areas got a little frustrating though.
Stalker and Stalker 2, are very fun to traverse by foot for me despite being very large. They are visually very interesting, especially 2. There are plenty of things you can stumble on and explore. In fact on my first playthrough of Stalker 2, I didn’t even realize it had a fast travel option for over 60 hours because I didn’t feel the need to look for one to use. Loved the huge size of those.
WoW was horribly oversized, as are many MMOs. WoW was(and imo still is despite many upgrades since I played, just not a fan of toony looking games) completely uninteresting visually, had no “on the way” POIs and had no motivation to look around. Long travel was a chore on top of a burdensome gameplay loop. I hated WoWs size. It felt big just because it would take people longer to play. I can’t express how fucking boring it was to me. And exploring had zero reward. I remember wandering into the water and swimming for like 30 minites to get behind some massive tree or something (all I remember was it was a brown gradient that’s how dull the visuals were) and I get behind it and there was fuckall. That was the last time I played I think. More brown gradient and uninteresting light blue water gradient stretched off into a foggy white gradient. Fucking hated WoW but especially its size. MMOs like that are the equivalent of having a rail shooter that’s more train ride simulator than shooter. It works for other people, I just couldn’t stand it.
Outward is a fantastic game but it’s world feels a little too big sometimes. I don’t really enjoy wandering it that much even though I enjoyed the game on the whole. Just felt I got to the point of sprinting from one objective to the next because I was tired of traversing the map.
So it’s really game dependant imo. If they nail some key aspects, size doesn’t seem to matter.
Echoing what others have said: size doesn’t really matter until it’s notably empty with nothing of interest to justify it.
But also, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
I am looking forward to Light No Fire and have played countless hours of Minecraft and Star Citizen.
“Too big” doesn’t exist as long as I am enjoying myself.
Having played Minecraft and No Man’s Sky, I can say that no world is necessarily too big, because infinite is not too big.
This is it.
GTA 5 was boring when it came to exploring, much of it was pretty empty unless there was a mission. Elder Scrolls Arena was just random generated repeated stuff - miles of it. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was a lot of copy and paste.
I’m of the mindset that it can never be too big, as long as it has some life to it. I don’t mind games taking a long time to finish. And I don’t mind if the grind is in the traveling. It’s cathartic in a way.
I don’t mind size so long as there’s meaningful activity.
For example, Just Cause 2 is huge with a massive variety of biomes but I enjoy hijacking military jets and blowing shit up on repeat and general traversal.
Infamous 2 and Second Son have very neat and small maps that are action packed and fun to traverse.
But then other open world games just bore me.
Witcher 3, gave I multiple tries and just got overwhelmed every time I looked at the map.
Huh, I loved it. I could either fast travel to get to the content quickly, or ride there and enjoy the scenery.
The halo infinite campaign open world was kind of not alive enough so even though I’ve played bigger game worlds I think that’s something to consider…
ARMA 3’s Altis map is too big.
Unless you’re flying a jet. Then it’s still too small!
Elden Ring is right on the threshold of too big.
Elden Ring DLC for me.
At least the main game, the world was kind of flat.
The land of Shadow’s map was kind of difficult to read. There was too many layers. Some things were underground. Some were above ground.
If the world wasn’t connected but broken by portals or something, it would have been fine. But condensed like that made it feel too big and I overwhelming.
I feel like having a toggle for overworld/underground similar to in the base game would have been very very nice.
I prefer smaller open worlds, like in the Yakuza series
As long as it has fast travel I don’t mind having a big open world but if the open world itself feels empty without much life then I’m immediately turned off by the game
Funny, I have the opposite complaint about Fallout 4. In what is supposed to be a nuclear wasteland of a city where everyone is struggling to keep their small communities going, there are just too many people in such a small space to make this feel real. I liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas more because the world was properly empty, but still had so many things to discover.
Reminds me of no man’s sky and it’s empty bajillions of planets.
I have 90 hours in no man’s sky and I got pretty burnt out on it. After a certain point, every planet feels the same and lifeless.
They have done some good work in last few years, specially the events here and there are fun. But after the event campaign is over. There is nothing else to hope for.
Depends on the mood I’m in.
Zelda BotW is a giant map and mostly chill game that I have tons of fun just taking my time exploring.
Far Cry 3 has me going around murdering folks and clearing camps non-stop at a pretty good pace.
Far Cry 4 was way too much pew pew and it bored me.
Depends how full it is, how interesting is it (note this is not the same as full), how fast you can travel, and how fun movement is.
There’s a lot of elements to open world and a lot of devs get the balance very wrong. You end up playing in a map rather than the world.
It’s too big when the developers are unable to fill it with enough interesting things to do and discover to keep my attention. But there’s no absolute size I’d automatically consider too big, as it also depends on things like traversal. If you ride through the map on a mech going 400km/h, it can be much larger and more spread out than if I have to traverse the entire map on foot.
That’s definitely a key point. Absolutely loved the first Forest game, the map was just the right size for what content it had, then the sequel has a map 4x the size that is just completely empty for 90% of it. They did make some improvements over early access but it was still mostly a waste
