Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth & Baldur’s Gate 3 Make Small Maps Feel Huge

Look, I know the above seems like a clickbait headline meant to make you mad. Because, yes, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3 are undeniably huge games. They are both big honking roleplaying adventures that take around 100 hours to finish. Both of them are packed 🀅with side quests and stories and activities that take up just as much time as the main story itself. You could get lost in both for hours and only scratch the surface of what there is to do. And it’s ironically all a reminder that smaller maps are better.

It’s counterintuitive, but when you try it, walking across maps in Rebirth, Baldur’s Gate 3, and - while we’re at it - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - doesn’t take that long. Without any battles or encounters, you can pretty much cross from one end of any of these maps to another in a matter of minutes. While the areas themselves look massive in FF7R and the vistas are beautiful, you’l🌞l end up following a magic owl about halfway across a continent in ten minutes, less once you get a Chocobo. Baldur’s Gate 3’s maps aren’t too different. And as for Infinite Wealth, you’ve gไot a handful of city blocks. Not much space at all.

It's Not The Size, It's How You Use It

Karlach smoking a cigar in Baldur's Gate 3

But here’s the thing: almost everything matters on those maps. Each location feels like it exists fo𝔉r a reason -▨ usually because it does! Baldur’s Gate 3’s maps seem a lot bigger when you consider every person to t✨alk to, every monster to fight, and every trap to avoid. While writing this, I opened an interactive map guide for BG3 and literally every inch of it is covered in tags for things to do. Conversations. Battles. Quests. Each with their own branches. It’s efficiently packed together. When every part of the map is useful, every part of the map feels alive. Which, you❀ know, is why I play these things.

Smaller maps are also easier to get lost in without getting lost in. I love that I can stray off the path in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and instantly stumble into a battle challenge or a Queen’s Blood game. I don’t have to walk from one end of a barren 🧔planet to another in hopes of finding a cave that has the same minerals as every other large, empty planet. Meanwhile, I’m definitely checking out every store, game parlor, and bar in Infinite Wealth. Sure, the areas in Infinite Wealth may be a fraction of the size of those in Far Cry or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed games, but also… good? I want to complete quests and play Virtua Fighter 3. I want to do karaoke. I’ve seen enough digital 🔜sunsets from a virtual mountain overlooking an imaginary ocean.

I love that these developers understood that a map could be small without looking small. Hawaii’s skyscrapers and shops and pedestrians make Infinite Wealth seem like a lived-in metropolis. The mountains and hills and bridges and rivers of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth crea🐷te an illusion of scale without sacrificing the player’s time. It’s a stupid comparison, but it makes me think of Cinderella’s Castle at Disney: they built it small for convenience but made it look big for dramatic effect. Every game has to do some form of this, even ones on larger scales. I just appreciate when I’m getting the smallest space for the most roleplaying.

But Bigger Isn't Always Bad

I’m not saying big maps are always bad. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Grand Theft Auto, Zelda, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elden Ring, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher - all great open world games with massive maps. I’m absolutely happy to play a game that has a giant map packed with things to do. Plus, there’s a reason that those games are considered the best open world experiences of all time: they’re carefully crafted over the course of many years with very large budgets. In those games there are far more things to do in the world besides going from one end to another to deliver something. My time is taken up doing rather than going. Although, to🌳 be fair, literally every game I’ve mentioned still has fetch quests. I’ve n🌊ever had consistent stances on anything in my life.

But some of the last few big, massive RPGs have convinced me that we don’t always need big, massive maps. A world can feel open without the filler of empty, procedurally generated meadows. And the more that happens in a smaller space, the more real and full that world feels. I respect that the bigger the map, the cooler the marketing. I know that everyone likes to compare the scale of their open world against a banana or something. “The map in our new game is bigger than the one in Grand Theft Auto 5!” Cool. Wake me up when that map has more to do.