I don’t care about the article, I want to know your opinion regarding the statement, do we need bigger games?
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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Smaller maps are fine as long as the story is good and there is enough content to keep the game feeling fresh and fun.
Its not the size that matters, its the personality 🥹
The world map has grown largely since Fallout 3, with Fallout 76 being MUCH larger than even Fallout 4’s map. In my experience of Fallout 76 this has been a good thing because of the CAMP system and the true beauty in the game, but most importantly that it isn’t empty, every road and trail leads somewhere and has something to do and the map is varied with several different regions each with their own quirks. So In my opinion having a bigger map can be nice, just so long as that map doesn’t feel empty or overly repetitive, and lastly that it fits with the mechanics of the game it is is. A long road with almost nothing on it might be fine for a game with cars or aircraft, but foot based Fallout would suffer from long perfect straightaways.
I certainly don’t want games to be like Ubisoft games where the map is just filled with filler stuff to do that has no real substance
I make the argument the space depends entirely on how it’s used.
Skyrim, and RDR2 I like the openness because it makes sense in a lot of ways. And generally they have enough going on that it isn’t just space.
My problem with some of Fallout and GTA is often buildings are inaccessible and basically nothing but space. But because they’re buildings, I want to go inside even if there’s little of value.
That said, it’s how you use it as well. I don’t care about how big a map is. I care that it feels like something, even if there’s a lot of open areas without towns or buildings.
Bigger has historically meant broader. A lot of open territory and nameless NPCs. What I’d like is deeper. A small city or a couple neighboring cities where every corner is accessible one way or another and every NPC is unique and intentional and at least some are very fleshed out. Kingdom Come Deliverance did kinda decent at this but it’s a bit more linear than is normal for a Bethesda game.
A game world can be massive, but if there’s no content there is no point
The area of a pool means nothing if it’s as deep as a finger.
‘Big’ and ‘fun’ aren’t mutually exclusive.
The world of BG3 isn’t the biggest by square KM, but its so dense that it feels bigger
I’d rather have a 10 hour well-paced game with meaningful content than 50 hours of filler. When game devs try to sell me on the size of their game, I usually take it as a red flag. The selling point should be the content of the game. The size should compliment that. There are some games that have no business building huge maps and long run times because the gameplay doesn’t give you anything worthwhile to do in that massive world, or the gameplay cycle runs out of steam.
Well I mean..
Do we really want games that are like AC Valhalla that is just a huge grindfest over a vast pretty empty map where its very clear that they just went out of the way to stuff in things to grind that didnt felt rewarding or adding to the story ?
I dont.
But there are games that are just feeling so complete that you could keep adding on to it far far more. Witcher 3 for example.
I am replaying Skyrim right now. What I think is important more than sheer size is scale. I no longer accept that solitude or windhelm are supposed to house à population of 50k. I know there were limitations to those games because of console power but that is much less of à concern today so build games that respect scale. I don’t care if I can’t enter à building but if you say there are 50k ppl in this city, I want to feel/see that reflected somehow. If you say this is the biggest mountain or the longer road, etc, I want to see and feel it
That’s spot on for me. I feel like wanting a bigger map just cause it’s big was something I grew out of. Just personally.
Funny thing is, I remember getting New Vegas and thinking “….Why is this smaller than 3s map?”. But then I realized why as I played and shut my stupid fuckin mouth.
bigger does not mean better…. how they say…. a lake thats mile wide an inch deep?
look at fallout 3 and nv! not as big as their future installments, but had so much character that ppl still play to this day!
now if we could get a lake thats wide and deep (pause) then maybe we might have something on the table.
i agree with him to a certain degree
What’s the point of big if none of it is engaging? You can make the game as big as you want but if it fails to grip the player then it may as well not be there.
I’d rather a tighter, more polished and fun experience as opposed to something wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle.
I’ve played giant open worlds like Just Cause 4, where it’s mostly empty jungle. A big map is filler unless you put something interesting in it. It’s one thing I’m really looking forward to with Avowed, they’re taking that Outer Worlds approach of a densely packed world that has a lot to do in it, but isn’t simply trying to as massive and endless as Daggerfall and No Man’s Sky.
I don’t think Sawyer would appreciate being called the “father of New Vegas”. All of his devtalks and interviews have emphasized all of the other people at Obsidian who contributed to making New Vegas what it is. Just call him the game’s director if you need to talk about him.
Just speaking on RPGs here; I’m actually quite fond of the KOTOR style approach of densely packed zones of hand crafted content. Outer Worlds did this & Bioware did quite a lot in their hayday. I have nothing against open worlds, but I just don’t have time to really dig in and explore like I used to
Zones filled with quality content can still provide plenty of room for exploration, deep role play, and satisfying combat. You can also connect them in a satisfying way to make the world feel cohesive, similar to overland travel in a TTRPG. I think Dragon Age Origins did this very well with their encounter areas between towns, with more triggering potentially based on distance. Outer Worlds could have had some random events and dogfights in space too for example, and if done well, it could’ve added an extra dimension to the overall experience.
I still like big open worlds too, but if they’re so big that you need to use AI to fill in the blanks & lean heavily on radiant quests, no thank you.
replay replay replay, size doesn’t matter if I can (have reason to) do it again, and again…
why can’t they be both big and fun?
I have to agree.
I want to have a lot to explore, but the map of a game like Skyrim is plenty big.
Look no further than Starfield to see that having a bigger map doesn’t necessarily mean a better game.
Wild thought, but how about a game that’s 6 times bigger and 6 times as much fun? One does not necessarily need to negate the other.
Fallout 2 was bigger than 1 by quite a bit and is generally regarded as a better game.
If it takes 15-20 years to make a larger game…. But only 2-5 years to make a phenomenal fucking game like Oblivion or Fallout 3 or NV or goddamn Morrowind. Yeah I’ll take a smaller map EVERY SINGLE TIME. You do not need to try and shake the earth with a game release if the development took so long your fanbase died of old age.
Smaller, denser maps are better than larger, empty maps.
I would love for a game to have the opposite of “miles long inches deep”.
Give me a Town where I can talk to anybody and everybody. Break into their doors at night and see them sleeping. It’s not even that kind of game. But you can do it. I’m not saying I specifically want that. I’m just saying I would love for a game to just be rich with detail and content.
NPC’s still feel like I’m on a Disney ride, with their canned expressions, continuing to do whatever it is they’ve been programmed no matter how crazy things get on screen.
I want an over engineered game. I don’t care if the map is literally a quarter of the size of Skyrim. Give me inches long, miles deep. I just wanna see what that be like.
?por que no los dos?
of course he’s right. Bethesda making bigger and bigger games is just a marketing gimmick and makes their games more hollow than they already were
I played thru Skyrim twice. I’ve beat FNV 10 times. It’s fun every time. Every 6 months to a year I get the itch to play thru it again.
Man has a point
I want games that have a good ratio of *quality* content : size. I think games like RDR2 can be a fantastic marker for how much quality content and depth is present in a massive game, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance is chock full of quality content in a relatively small game (while still being competitive with the big budget behemoths).
The issue is when you get huge beautiful worlds that feel empty and rely on simple systems without much charm or depth (AC: Valhalla). Alternatively, there are incredible systemic games that have so much depth you can’t see the bottom and they can be quite intimidating to new players (eg. Factorio).
There are also some games that strike middle grounds between these extremes and are wildly popular and successful. Naughty Dog/Santa Monica Studios have cut their teeth on delivering great quality games that you finish in 20 or so hours of gameplay. There’s also Respawns Star Wars: Jedi games – the second of which is a massive scale up on the first and is better for it on all fronts IMO.
There is no real one size fits all game – but the consistent theme for what makes a game good in todays climate is the ratio of quality content to size. A tiny game that feels *incredible* (Balatro) can provide as many fun-hours as a massive game with stellar execution (Baldurs Gate 3).
Balancing quality and amount of content is a theme I focus on when I work on my own games.
I guess it depends. World size should support the story and gameplay. Density is more important to me.
Examples:
1. mad max is not as dense but that is to allow the cars to shine and feel like an empty waste land. VS GTA and Just Cause you need more stuff to cause more havoc and chaos. Give me reasons to use the toys.
2. Death Stranding in an empty wasteland where you walk everywhere. You never know what you will run into and what you will need to do to overcome it. Vs starfield where everything is just a copy and you do the same thing each time.
3. Grounded, skyrim, and fallout are packed with stories and set pieces that are fun to explore and hype you for the next corner.
Real talk. I’m an old man with lots of IRL things to do. Give me quality over quantity every time these days. If it’s good enough, I’ll replay it.
Bigger doesn’t always equal better. Personally, I’m getting burned out more these days and find myself unable to really finish those huge, 200+ hour games. I end up going back to 20-60 hour games that I can finish.
A lot of the time when a game is “bigger” it ends up being bloated. It’s not fun exploring a giant map when that map doesn’t have anything worth doing or seeing inside it. Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda had this problem badly.
In the case of Fallout, I don’t think we need bigger. I thought FO3, FNV, and FO4 were decent sizes with fun stuff to do and see.
Smaller densely packed areas, make everything useful and meaningful. I loved the last 2 Deus Ex games for this, it felt really cool knowing the lay of the land and where I can run away if I needed to.
The newest hitman games are really good at this too! Dishonored 1 & 2 as well
Bigger games and maps are absolutely worse if they’re filled with more empty space and more repetitive tasks just so developers can say “more to do!” Or “bigger map!”
Both. I’m tired of paying for games that you can finish in like 15-20 hours. The maps should be big and with great treasures and interesting content lurking in the most random hard to get to places to reward players for exploring.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla would have been brilliant at half the length. There is a brilliant game under all that bloat.
I enjoyed Point Lookout more than core Fallout 3 so yeah, it doesn’t matter at all. Just price it correctly and make it fun.
Of course.
Games should only include bigger maps if they are going to fill them. Don’t make it bigger for the sake of being bigger, make it bigger to accommodate for more content
We need more Fallout New Vegas
Bigger is not automatically better, as proven by Starfield and No Man’s Sky.
You need content. Even if your whole schtick is random generation for “infinite replayability” you need handcrafted content to drive your story amd to keep players engaging. They need hub areas.