2w ago

Fallout and RPG veteran Josh Sawyer says most players don't want games "6 times bigger than Skyrim or 8 times bigger than The Witcher 3"

www.gamesradar.com Fallout and RPG veteran Josh Sawyer says most players don't want games "6 times bigger than Skyrim or 8 times bigger than The Witcher 3"

Sawyer says most players, including himself, aren't "concerned with finishing games" either

Fallout and RPG veteran Josh Sawyer says most players don't want games "6 times bigger than Skyrim or 8 times bigger than The Witcher 3"

158 comments

World size, density, and traversal have to be balanced.
I tend to play without fast travel, and skyrim meets these three pretty well, using the carts and horse for faster travel.
GTA can be bigger, with cars and planes for long distances.
Large worlds are great, if they are packed w content, open barren landscapes are terrible.
Ghost recon wildlands for me is the sweet spot for a big, interesting world with good traversal options.
- I've been playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance for the last few weeks and have found the balance to be pretty spot on. At first the world seems massive, and you have to travel around on foot, then eventually you get a horse and can also auto travel between locations. I think they really nailed the balance in that game.
  
  Yeah, that game gets it right. I played it with the map turned off and the sleep walking perk and had the best time of it.
  Think the second one will finally make me buy a ps5
- Rdr2 is too fucking big lmao
  
  I found it to be so immersive, that the large map size was a bonus to me. I wanted to see it all, and by god I did. I have done every single thing on that game.
  I found it even more immersive by camping when it got dark out, cooking to eat, and then going to bed. When I woke in the daylight, I would sit there and have Arthur drink a cup of joe, break down the camp, and continue on with my journey to wherever.
  Now I want to play it all over again for a fifth time. >:(
- I'd be really interested to see an action RPG type game that just embraces the real-life scale of the world and lets you screw about with the rate of time passing like in Kerbal Space Program when you're walking a long way. You'd have to limit the scale of the story to make it manageable to develop, but I think there's the potential for something cool in there. Maybe there are only two or three villages in one valley, but they're all full villages and they're actually several kilometres apart. Make sure that whatever goals you have are time-gated in some way so that you actually have to weigh up whether you can afford to walk to the other village, because even though you fast-forward it so that it only takes a minute of real-life time to walk there it's actually most of the day in-game.
  
  Daggerfall was like this, if I'm not mistaken (I got into TES with Morrowind, and I've never found the time to play the older games).
  The map was about the size of Great Britain, and mostly empty, even if it had about fifteen thousand locations spread about it.
  
  Not quite KSP whole planet scale,, but uh, Kenshi.
  Its a pretty damn big world, pretty sure it is significantly larger than Skyrim.
  You've got world speed controls, rpg style mechanics and progression, and you can have multiple members of your party, and you can build your entire own town if you want to.
  The game is filled with many roving factions, who all have a sort of reputation dynamic with all other factions, as well as yourself/party.
  The game is full of many different story lines, many of them conflict with each other and cannot all be done, there is no such thing as a plot armored, impossible to kill npc, and there are tons of unique, npcs you can meet and have many kinds of interactions with.
  If you want to take on a huge faction, you can, but you're probably going to need to literally raise your own army to do so.
  Main downside is the control scheme is fairly awkward / old school... its basically like an mmo from the early 00's, but single player; click to tell your peeps where to go sort of thing, awkward camera controls by modern standards for an ARPG.
  You don't directly control the combat of your character like in Skyrim, the game basically rng rolls based on you and your opponents stats to determine who uses what kind of attack or block or dodge... but you can set different combat stances, basicsally.
  ... So its not an ARPG in the sense of Skyrim or AssCreed or Dark Souls... but it is an ARPG in a more loose sense, that its an RPG mechanics style game and world, without rigid turn based combat, which all revolves around action.
  But the scale you are looking for is there. If you don't set the time to fast forward, it can easily take 15 minutes to an hour or more to walk between settlements or major landmarks, depending on what part of the map you're in.
  Nothing is really obvious from the onset of the game in terms if what you are supposed to do, beyond not get murdered, eat, drink and sleep to stay alive.
  It's very much a sandbox approach, but theres tons and tons of stuff to do if you are capable of directing yourself.
  Also, lots of mods that add more content, immersion, and deepen or alter gameplay mechanics.
  Kenshi 2 is in the works with upgraded engine and graphics... ETA totally unknown.
  
  Outward is your game.
  
  It's not real life scale but I have yet to see another developer attempt anything like the slice of time that we got with Majora's Mask
- Agreed. And while there are some days where my "I just want to walk as far as I can" instinct has me wishing for bigger game worlds, at the same time it can be a bad experience when the game tells you that you have to go somewhere and it's either a slog to get there or you fast travel and skip the world entirely.
  
  ever played Death Stranding?
- Damn I'm literally playing Wildlands now. It's a really fun game to just drop in if you want to cause some mayhem.
- Same. I struggled with RDR2 and gave up on Elden Ring.

8 times bigger than Witcher 3 filled wilth Witcher 3 quality content would be a godsend. 8 times bigger than Witcher 3 filled with procedural generation and AI slop... not so much.
- I will argue that Witcher 3 did not have enough content for it's own world. Don't get me wrong, the content was great, but there's large swathes of emptiness inbetween. The devs tried to fill it with map markers that got repetitive very quickly (hello, random floating barrels).
  IMO, downscaling the world to 75% size and reducing the amount of non-quest content would have made the game better.
  
  The whole reason I burned out on W3 was trying to be completionist and doing all the map markers before moving to the next area.
- If we're copying Witcher 3 levels of content anywhere, can we leave behind like 95% of the ocean based points of interest? That was the absolute lowest point of the game for me by a mile.
  
  I would be happy if they never touched wayer again. Swimming and boating were awful in The Witcher series.
- I do think a huge world with an engaging and dense design can still be made worse with size. In some games like Skyrim, Breath of the Wild or GTA 5, you could probably drop me anywhere and I'd know where I was, half due to good and differing region design and half because the map isn't that big.
  Back in 2015 I'd dream of a GTA 5 expansion that adds San Francisco and Las Vegas to the map, turning the north and east of the map in to a 500 yard straight of water, but in reality, two more large cities and their surroundings suburbs and wilderness would have never kept it's memorability like the first region.
- Slightly OT, but I want to give a shout out to Witcher 3 as my favorite fantasy RPG.
  Early on in the game I kind of struggled with it. I found the UI and especially combat, to be 'clunky'.
  After I mastered the combat UI enough to survive, I started to wander and explore. In this wandering I found some old cave filled with some decent (but not overpowered) gear. As far as I know, there was no quest that would have sent me to this cave. Also, if I hadn't been pointed in the exact direction I was going, I never would have seen the cave entrance. These little details made the world feel 'real' and lived in.
  Later in the game, when I was much more experienced, I was following a faint path, in the snow, over a mountain and I see another cave entrance. I go inside the cave and I hear voices. I sneak closer and I hear a fart, Then I hear a voice complaining about the smell of a rotten onion. (it was 2 trolls cooking something). This was totally unexpected and I literally LOL'd. Once again, this little bit made the world feel more real.
  In summation, I don't need games to be 'bigger'. They just need to be 'good'.

I would never finish a game 8 times longer than Witcher 3+exansions. I started once, got burned out and had to restart a year later to get to the end. Enjoyed it a lot but yeah. I don't need like 1600 hours of anything.
- 1600 hours is insane gameplay loop not content size imo, I have that amount of hours in a few game but they're either fighting games or ARPGs which are repetitive by nature.
- cries in osrs*
  
  OSRS has obliterated my sense of what constitutes a grind. I've communities for other games tearing their hair out over a 1/300 drop.

I feel like how big I want the game to be is a weird quantum unstable value. When I'm interested in the game I want it to keep going. But at some point I lose interest, and I want it to wrap up. But usually I don't want to skip content that's at least okay, especially if it affects endings and other choices.
Like I enjoyed Veilguard, but there were bits near the end where I was losing focus and kind of wanted it to pick up the pace. There have been other games where I finished all the side quests but was like "that's it? I want more"
Not sure how to square this circle. I don't think procedural generated or AI content is quite up to the task yet.
I do think we'll see a game that has AI content in the critical path in the next couple years though. You'll go to camp and talk to Shadowheart, and it'll try to just make up new dialogue. I don't know if it'll be good. There will probably be at some weird ass hallucinations that'll become memes.
- Same happened to me with Zelda: ToTK. I did everything I came across, collected a lot of things I found, did a lot of questing, got so good in combat I could defeat everything without getting hit, but then I was like "it’s time to stop now" and I defeated the final boss and put the game down. It was amazing.
  
  I do think Botw and Totk would have benefited from having the map 50% smaller to condense the content. The underworld in Totk basically ended up just being collecting DLC armor from the previous game.
- I feel like how big I want the game to be is a weird quantum unstable value. When I'm interested in the game I want it to keep going. But at some point I lose interest, and I want it to wrap up. But usually I don't want to skip content that's at least okay, especially if it affects endings and other choices.
  I'm kind of at this spot right now with Pathfinder: Kingmaker. If I had realised it was a 200h+ game I might not have undertaken it. I've had a good time with it all things considered, but at this point I really kind of want to move on to the next game in my backlog.

If it's good it's good. I bought the witcher 3 DLC and would have bought more. I stopped playing Assassins Creed altogether. People just want good, crafted content.
What game developers should do is add more "jump back in" modes. I get busy with work so I might leave for a few months midway through a long game and forget some plot and controls.
- I would super appreciate “Jump Back In” mode..
  
  I'd love the option in a tutorial that for "I've played plenty of this kind of game - tell me what's specifically different in this game".

Honestly one of the best games I've played recently is the Stanley Parable and that game is a couple of hours of poking around a quirky but literal office. Would happily buy that 60 times over one massively mediocre rpg.

He's right. We don't need maps bigger than Skyrim, we just need content and good core gameplay loops. Being hugely moddable like Skyrim really helps too.
- Mods definitely help. Same reason why I think Fallout 4 is such a big hit.
- Exactly. GTA V's biggest selling point was the worst part for me: giant map. The only way a giant map is good is if it has a ton more fun stuff to do, and even then, I'd honestly rather have a sequel/series instead of throwing everything in one game.
  
  I still prefer gta 4, the city was worn out, lived in, cramped and dense.

I want worlds big enough that I can suspend disbelief. True scale is too much (True Crime: Streets of LA was awful to traverse, for example) but too small and it feels like being in one of those play parks for small children. It's a problem I've had with Fallout 3+, where the scale makes no sense. I don't necessarily need the additional space to be dense with content (if it's supposed to be a barren waste, why is it full of stuff?!).
I want to buy into these worlds, but I struggle when things feel ridiculous. Oh are you struggling for supplies? Even though there's supplies 50m away from your settlement? Come on!
The first Red Dead Redemption hit the spot for me, as did the native settlement in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The scale isn't actually realistic, but it's large enough that I feel like it could be. GTA IV wasn't bad either, but GTA V was too compact in many places for my tastes.
I suppose it's much like the theatre. If a scene is well written it feels fine, but if the play calls attention to the limitations of the medium too much then it starts to become a bit silly.
- Good point. If you look at the Yakuza games, they're typically set in a little entertainment district. The map isn't huge but it's not supposed to be. It feels the correct size for a busy little part of town.
  Meanwhile, yeah, Fallout 3 gave me the impression that even before the war the DC metropolitan area was home to maybe a thousand people.
  
  I recently rewatched Rango and the size of the main settlement in that is about the size of those in RDR. Reflecting on that, I suppose I want the map to reflect the kind of scale and focus seen in other media. A film or TV show doesn't show us every street (usually) but it gives a sense of the scale of the place. If a game map couldn't be used for an establishing shot without looking daft then it doesn't really work for me, I reckon.
  It's something I like about the overhead perspective used by games like Fallout and Wasteland - I perceive what's on screen as the area of the settlement that's relevant to me but with the understanding that there's more off screen. A character might mention going somewhere, much like in a play, and then reappear. Perhaps the player can go there, perhaps they can't even see it, but it makes the world feel larger.
  I suppose, much like in reality, we rarely visit every location of a place, but it needs to feel like it might enter our narrative in some way.
- The advantage of putting those supplies 50m away though is that it makes a better video game. Playing The Outer Worlds right after Starfield made me a-okay with every way they shrunk the Bethesda experience.
  
  How are we defining "better"? For me it makes the experience worse because I lose all immersion. I'm trying to be immersed and my brain can let a lot slip (realism is not required!) but for me the limit is when it strains even basic credulity. Yes, 50m makes the quest less hassle, but if I don't care about the quest due to the scope of the world then there's a more fundamental issue.
  In games where immersion isn't a factor (e.g. The Binding of Isaac) that stuff doesn't matter. In an explorable open world I content that it's rather crucial.
- Games like Skyrim always bugged me a bit as I couldn't walk for more than half a minute before I tripped over a quest or encounter of some sort. I feel like the devs were scared players would get bored if they didn't see something exciting every few seconds. Sure I want to do stuff, but I also want to breath and look at the scenery and think about what I'm doing.
  The real world is way more open; you travel for a good while between cities, and I really like when games do that as well. I'll have to try Red Dead, but I thought Kingdom Come Deliverance struck a good balance. Even at top speed on a good horse, it takes minutes to ride between the major settlements, with only rare encounters coming up now and again.
  
  I'm glad to hear it's not just me (I mean, statistically that seems unlikely, but still!). It's a little like modern cinema compared to '70s film making - let the story breathe, folks. Given that the tooling to make the world larger (but with the same amount of content) isn't all that complex, I wish it was done more. The amount of content is fine - often excessive. But give me a chance to feel like I'm actually travelling.
  I felt the scaling of Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey worked quite well in that respect. There was actual travel!

The only thing that I hate from open world is emptiness, you can have big or massive world but if it's seems so empty why bother to make it. Like Fallout & Skyrim we always use mods to fill that emptiness to make it feel alive.
I rather have game with small world but filled with many NPC like old Dragon Age
- Big reason I don't understand the obsession with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. The game world is empty and just feels like so much wasted space, and a ton of it looks like PS2 worldbuilding.
  
  I didn't play Tears of the Kingdom, but if you found large swaths of the map to be empty in Breath of the Wild, it means there's something hidden there that you didn't find.
  
  It's just about density. BotW/TotK were eerily empty and dead. But something like Elden Ring? I would play a game 10x the size of Elden Ring for the rest of my life.
- This is my biggest complaint about No Man's Sky. There are literally over a billion billion worlds, but they're all mostly empty, not to mention all the space in between.
  
  I played NMS ~2 years ago and thought for a huge procedurally generated game it was pretty good. The planets had lots of POIs and trading posts and stuff to go to. I quit mostly because the flight mechanics were too "on rails" compared to something like Elite Dangerous or X4. I just didn't get the rush I was looking for from dogfighting and stuff. I had constructed a series of bases that let me craft a ton of tradable items that gave me plenty of money but there was just nothing to spend it on because my ship was already plenty strong enough for everything I encountered..

The biggness doesn't matter as much as how much there is to do in a meaningful and rewarding way.

Horizontally I'm fine with how big games are. They should grow vertically, and I wouldn't mind 6 times the depth.
What do I mean by that? I have no idea. Maybe you people have
- A cyberpunk game that takes place entirely in a replica of the Kowloon walled city would be cool as fuck. Just as much map "area" as fallout 4 but packed into a 1 mile cube.
  
  I've thought a lot about this. It would have to be a game with no combat. Too cramped. It'd be a nice puzzle game like Myst, tho.
  Edit: Stray 2: Kowloon
  
  Wait I had a similar idea once! Youre right that would be cool af, but very difficult to get right. In open world games you usually get away with "isolated" side quests, in a dense cube this is difficult – which might be a good thing, it forces interconnectivity.
- I was nodding along in agreement but now that you mention it I also didn't really know what you were saying
  
  No, no he has a good point, let him finish
- I'd interpret vertical content growth as content per area, deep story lines, stuff like that. It's a common enough comment, see e.g. MMO players complaining about "content drought".

Skyrim is huge. I played it last year, going to all locations and doing main and side quests. That takes 100 hours or so.
Now I'm playing Elden Ring with SOTE, doing the same thing. I'm around 180h in and honestly I kind of want to finish by now.
So yeah, I don't see 600 hours of playtime as a positive goal. Unless they mean expand the map but don't keep up the content ratio. In that case, why the fuck would that be good? More travelling isn't worth anything.
- Honestly, my limit is about 80 hours, and that's only if the store and side content is really good. An average story/RPG game should target 20-40 hours IMO.

Skyrim size was just about right. I just want a deeper stat sytem that promotes more build diversity than stealth archer (but keeping the skill tree system intact - never want to go back to the Morrowind/Oblivion systems), enemies and items that don't level with me, more monster variety (so sick of draugr), and bring back levitation and modifiable acrobatics!
- Morrowind still has the best skill system concept. "Do what you think is fun and you will level up and get better at it" is great game design.
  Things that are the kernel of bad game design: Fetch quests in quantity, especially over large maps with limited fast travel points (fuck you Witcher, cyberpunk), having eleventy billion containers which just might be good to open (fuck you baldur3/divine divinity/Morrowind), or having an inventory system that makes you crave death every time you use it (same), or having an inventory system that makes you do endless, constant field checks to figure out which weapon or armor is best because you don't have space for more than 3 things (sooo many games, but cyberpunk, deus ex, and borderlands get a big old fuck you from me).
  
  I agree with pretty much all of your points, especially about limited inventories. In isometric arpgs in particular it drives me crazy that half the gameplay is essentially a gambling system of explosions of massive amounts of items - yet they give you virtually no room to carry it? Terrible.
  But on Morrowind, I love the game with mods like MULE, but the vanilla level up system makes the stat system self-defeating. The purpose of skill-based progression is to let me play the character I want to play, and do the things I want to do, and trust that my character is going to grow accordingly. But the level up stat multiplier system forces the player to do all sorts of things other than what they want, in order to get the most out of the stat system.
  It's even worse in Oblivion because everything levels with you much more in that game, which means if you don't do these ridiculous things to min/max, your enemies can actually become too powerful to beat!

I think the issue is that most game's core gameplay loops are not endlessly replayable. Lots of single player RPGs fall into the trap of being alright to progress through for maybe 20 hours, but you can quickly become so powerful that the rest of the game falls into busywork. It's really hard to meaningfully introduce new and interesting gameplay after the 30 hour mark, but without it things become same-y.
I'd argue this is just a fault of poor game design though. There are RPGs with really well iterated gameplay loops, with a wide array of variety, that I'm happy to put 400+ hours in. Games like Baldur's Gate 3, or Elden Ring, have a lot of freedom and variety in the way you can approach a playthrough, even allowing you to dramatically change things mid-playthrough, while still feeling mechanically satisfying to play. A 10/10 game will feel good to play forever, but a 7/10 might get boring after 15.

I look at the RPGs I enjoyed and the ones I didn't and I think what I want more than anything in RPGs is for them to be fleshed out and well fitting.
If the world is too big for the story it feels empty and the side quests don't feel connected. If it's too small, it feel cluttered. It's a fine balance.
A lot of quests in games have a specified start and an end, and are unimaginative. It's 2025. I'm not bringing somebody 20 orc horns for a slightly better sword. Well, I will, but I don't want to. It just feels lazy.
I'd rather stumble across a thread woven into the world and follow it both ways to it's logical conclusion, choosing any branches along the way.
Honestly, I think "big" works against developers if they're trying to make something that just fits. When you look at something like BG3, the world isn't that huge. But once you start filling out all the blanks, it takes you a long time to get through.

The thing about not finishing games is very true. Simply look at achievement stats. Most games have a huge drop off in achievements earned after the first 25-50% of the game, with any achievement for completing the story of the game having a super small number of players who earned it. Even games that are easy as fuck and practically play themselves!
- I absolutely want a game that I can sink 1000s of hours into. I do not want a game where I get bored half way tough because the dev clearly gave up or only the first 10 are fun.
  
  Same. That's why I don't really like The Witcher 3, but I keep coming back to Cyberpunk 2077. The Witcher 3 has a great story; but the game gets super boring and repetitive super quickly. Cyberpunk is setup more or less the same; tons of filler content that is ignorable, great main story, but I like the action more. I can skip through the story and still have fun blowing away gang bangers in a ton of different ways, as opposed to Witcher where there's not much variety in the action and every battle is just swinging swords and using the right spells on the appropriate enemy types.
  
  only the first 10 are fun.
  Or worse, a game where everyone keeps telling you that you need to put in 100 hours before it is fun.
  
  Bg3 acts after 1?

Agreed, to an extent.
I do think advancements in AI will eventually give us open world games with infinite procedurally generated engaging quests and NPC interactions. That’ll be cool. In the meantime, I don’t need a team of humans to burn themselves out to produce a large amount of bleh content.
- Ehh, I think it'll be a looong time before machine learning can make meaningful character interactions.
  It may be able to make maps faster, slightly better versions of something like No Man's Sky or Minecraft (both already sporting functionally "infinite" procedural generation), or fill a city like Cyberpunk 2077's with slightly less mindless wandering NPCs, but I don't think it'll help make story-based RPGs bigger in a useful way
  The NPCs that stand out in an RPG do so because they typically have a well-crafted, and finite, story arch which is incredibly difficult to do with machine learning and trying to make things more procedurally generated.
  
  I think we’re nearly there as is. There’s already mods that integrate ChatGPT with Skyrim NPC’s. There’s definitely room for improvement, but just these fan projects have achieved some impressive results.
  Pair that with the developers’ eagerness to eventually fire most of their writing staff, and they’ve got a lot of incentive to dump money into improving what already exists.
  My concern is that this will lead to more abandonware. Star Trek: Bridge Crew had integrated voice commands using some IBM service to process. Once their agreement with IBM ended, they shut down the feature in the game. So what happens when a developer integrates AI as a cornerstone to a game’s storylines, using remote servers to do all of the processing, and then decide to end support for the game?
- I do think advancements in AI will eventually give us open world games with infinite procedurally generated engaging quests and NPC interactions.
  If you want to believe in fairy tales that is fine, but the problem is when CEOs believe in those fairy tales and use them to fire their artists and developers which is already happening.
  ...and there will be no market correction back to actually hiring humans and paying them a living wage and treating them humanely once your only option for AAA games is AI slop...
  
  That's not what they said. There is a difference between using AI in a short sighted effort to cut costs and using it to enhance content created by people. AI is a broad term, and just because a bunch of rich asshole morons are misusing a version of it that does have use does not make it automatically bad. AI, Generative or not, is just a tool.
  There have been games that have procedural generation for decades in one form or another to create practically infinite content for players, but they are always limited in other ways. Minecraft can generate an "infinite" world, but what you do in the world is limited to what has been ready built. Hell, Games like Skyrim randomly generate NPCs all the time, but they are shallow and don't really add much to the game.
  Having people build out the mechanics, the spells, the world, and other features with a basic foundation of game play and then having AI implemented to combine those features in a way based on player interaction, or create NPCs that are doing similar things the player can that can make the world feel more alive is likely the next real advancement that games will have.
  Sure, you could have people make hundreds, if not thousands, of NPCs, but they are going to be very derivative and you'll see the usual "copy paste" people that aimlessly wonder around or do one or two things and making that many NPCs that aren't story driven would be mind numbing work.
  
  What fairy tale? You can run models right now that people have trained to work as DnD DM’s. I guess you’re not keeping up with developments, but it’s already happening.
  I agree. They won’t want to hire humans back. Capitalism will not continue to function in an AI driven economy. It’s going to be feudalism or communism. And if we don’t do something about it, I know which one the capitalists will choose.

I think the disconnect has to do with old gamers vs new. Old gamers were used to getting one game every 6mo to a year. New gamers are looking for a variety of that or short bangers. Idk I somehow fall between. I can play a long game as long as it comes in digestible amounts where I can easily drop it and pick it back up. All I know is 'AAA' type studios are out of touch as fuck. Only game I can think of in recent memory that was long and checked all the boxes would be God Of War. Horizon Zero Dawn as well. Coincidentally both ports from PS but I'm PC.
- It's funny, I actually was thinking it's the other way around. Older gamers have a million different things begging for attention, so longer games just aren't as appealing anymore. Younger gamers can easily find the time to sit down for hours at a time uninterrupted.
  In reality, it's probably somewhere in between. Younger people also gave increasingly smaller attention spans due to social media, so there probably are a growing number of them that just wouldn't sit with one game for that long.
  
  They mean gamers of old. That is, currently old gamers, but back when we were young, and had time, and not a lot of games to fill it with, so we appreciated a longer game.
  Current young gamers have vast libraries of games to choose from, and shortened attention spans due to social media.

Only if the interesting content scales with size.
I am honestly excited to what GTA6 can bring to the content map. Considering how dense some parts of GTA 5 already are.
- GTA V dense? I found it incredibly bare, especially coming from GTA SA.
  
  Yeah V has the most lifeless map of any GTA since 3. Even NPC detail was missing like umbrellas when it rains.
  
  Didn't play it so I can't comment on the SA part.
  At least they have loads of little details in obscure places

Honestly, I feel like games have been getting too big. The ends of RPGs always feel like a slog these days.
Maybe it’s because every game thinks it needs a 3 act denouement. Maybe it’s because there’s 100x the games coming out now compared to when I was young and the feeling of wanting to get to the next one is rushing me. Or maybe I’m just plain getting old.
In any case, I’m ok with shorter games.

I quite like sandbox games so in those cases I would like it bigger, but at the same time I have no need for some main storyline to be in the game either. I want to be able to live in the world and either challenge comes just from surviving or things you find while exploring.
- And I really don't like sandbox games, so I need a really good story or really compelling gameplay, and neither needs a huge map or tons of hours.
  Don't try to please everyone. A good sandbox game doesn't need a story, a good story game doesn't need sandbox elements, and good gameplay can be really short.
  
  Yeah a lot of these games that try and do a bit of everything seem to often fail to entertain anyone.

It's not an open world, but Mirror's Edge is a great game.
- Wasn't the second game open world tho? But that might be the reason it lost its charm for me.
  
  Yes, it was. But EA ruined it with their launcher, so you can't play it on Linux.

Yeah, I guess, but as long as the challenge is still achievable I can dig a large field.
It's easier to place and organize finished assets than to create new ones, though, so after a while a lot of it starts to feel copy-pasted. I'm sure that noticeable lack of effort will only be exasperated by modern automation.
- *exacerbated
  
  My spelling is accepted when I search the word.

I do care about finishing games but not completing them. I will play the main story and some of the side quests. I am happy with games being 20-100 hours long.
- I will play the main story
  hisss!

Huge game worlds were awesome back when it was challeng to make them. People have proved they can be done. Now it needs balance.

I'll take it if it's well done. I'm fine with it also not being done all at once (think expansions in MMOs). However, I'd rather the game be smaller (and priced appropriately) if quality will suffer.

I wouldn't mind a much bigger world. If it's actually populated. There needs to be shit to do. Reward me for going off the path.
- 8x the size of the world either means 1/8 the original handcrafted stuff per area or 8x the development time and cost, there's no way you can get around this

I actually might like a game that big... If it were actually a game that big. Starfield is a perfect example of pointlessly big but full of nothing. A game with the depth and complexity of some of the best cities in Bethesda games but EVERYWHERE instead of just a few select cities with barren wastes in between like a real world has might be incredible and be the last game I play for the rest of my life.
But that's not currently possible and all we can do right now is the fake BS where everything is empty but the map is BIG.

Honestly, I love open worlds that are meaningful, rather than just big for the sake of being big. Yakuza games have very small world, but they dense as hell. They are filled with wacky side quests and many distractions.

I think it really depends on the game.
An MMO or a sandbox game I can sink hours and hours into. I don't know how many hours I've lost to games like Minecraft, Rimworld, etc. Even if those types of games might have "objectives", I'm more likely to just kind of do my own thing.
And I had something like 500 days logged in with my Final Fantasy XI character. It was my default game and I kept playing because I always felt I had something to do and people to meet.
Narrative focused games? Nope. While I might enjoy playing, the narrative can feel more like a chore in a game that has too much stuff to do, especially if mechanics or areas are locked behind it. I will end up ADHD because I hit a block or feel like the game is forcing me to do the main story when I don't want to.
I had that happen in Fallout 3 where I was just wondering around, having fun exploring and stumbling on things, and I end up finding someone I didn't even know I needed to look for connected to my dad and suddenly I felt I was being pulled away from what I found fun.
Might be why I really liked 76 despite the hate it got/gets.

I don't need bigger game I just want Shakespearian spectacular quest and events, gripping storylines, and endearing character.
You could have a tiny map full of passion and I would love the game.

I would like that if it's like Skyrim. Actually it would have to be better. A big world and everytime I play it would be a completely different experience.

Counterpoint. Mordor II.

I can’t get into fully open world games anymore. I am more of a fan of open ended levels like you see in the original Crysis. I am a lazy bastard and simply like a decent linear game with good gameplay and story. I will admit I do prefer more open spaces in multiplayer games like what you see in the Battlefield series though. However, the RockStar games are the exception to this for me because they all have really tightly, well-made linear stories, but the world is so well crafted that I don’t mind it being open world.

Prey 2017 is one of my favorite games. Fantastic replay value. 5 hour long runs with each play through rewarding with a different experience for doings differently or out of order. Wish more games were like that.

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