How Small Open-World Games Feel Big

good day gamers edit: gotten a few comments asking the spelling of Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. that is how to spell it! go play it!

The Yakuza series is probably the best example, the map is always small, but it's super dense, full of different activities to do, unique side quests and memorable ppl to meet, Kamurocho is always a joy to go back to.

"I want to leave wanting more" is such a fantastic line. This is how fandoms (and lifelong fans within) are born.

I paused this video to go buy A Short Hike, I played it all day, finished it, and came back to finish this video. I just wanna thank you for introducing me to this game, because due to some personal experience as of recently, it made me cry. I think it’s one of my favorite games now and I loved every second. I highly recommend it to anyone honestly. It’s that good.

Dark Souls 1 is definitely an attest to this. Exploring the world it feels huge your first time playing but the first time I saw a 3d model of the entire map I was mind blown by how small the world actually is.

Small open worlds conversation without mentioning Yakuza. The world is so compact it's basically just a block of a town with tons and tons to do, tons of entertaining and well written side quests about the residents of Kamurocho, all of the complete just there for fun games especially the Sega arcade games and the way the town just fleshes out the main narrative is a chefs kiss

Remember gamers: size doesn't matter, it's how you use it

It’s basically like how life feels shorter the older you get; there are less new experiences the older you get, so a lot of it is forgettable

Outer Wilds is also pretty amazing in this regard. I don't think I remember so much about the world of any other game. Outer Wilds and its planets have been stuck in my head from the day I finished it.

A short hike is incredible! Anyone should play it I think.

With a lot of the recent Ubisoft games, I just feel like too much effort were spent on making them big rather than filling them up, making me feel exhausted very soon and just want to rush to the end

A Short Hike was an extremely short experience, and yet one of the most satisfying games I've ever played. The smaller the scope, and the more linear, the more you can refine the experience!

I’m so happy people like you can express themselves on platforms like Youtube. How do you find all these interesting subjects on video games no one ever thought of? I love your videos, keep going!

You really hit the nail on the head with A Short Hike. Bigger games will always be impressive, but I'll forever treasure the time I spent with A Short Hike. It also helps for me that smaller games are more accessible to me since I don't always have a lot of time, but that also means it's a good recommendation to nearly everyone.

I sooo hope that small open worlds become the general consensus. I still remember every street, area and the whole school of Bully in the back of my head just because of how small it was. I think we're already past devs flaunting the fact that they made a city-sized map, and now we can go back to people actually being creative and putting as much as they can into smaller, more whole words.

It's a real shame you didn't talk about Subnautica or even it's recent sequel, Below Zero. Those games both have a small (4 km square) map but with the exploration and creatures and movement along the y axis as well as the x and z, these games feel so much bigger than they really are. The theme of always needing to go deeper added so much complexity to the playable area and I always knew that if I went off in any direction, I would find something new or get killed by some big fish. Great video as always Raz!

A good example I've not seen brought up is Beyond Good and Evil. The map is small but slowly opening it up over the course of the game with the hovercraft upgrades really solidified the pacing of exploring the map. Getting 100% in an open world game is usually just a chore but the BGaE and the games you mentioned never get to that stage like most AAA Games.

Breath of the Wild didn’t start to even slightly feel small until about 500 hours in because the main story is completely open and takes place in the far reaches of its giant map. I personally don’t believe that it falls under this very unfortunate umbrella that other AAA open-world games do fall under. Another weird beast is the game that was once easily classified as an indie, Minecraft, but it does however actually end up falling under the proverbial umbrella. This is because...well, it’s massive, seeing as the world literally never ends, but this means that players will probably never leave a small area that they eventually find, like, and end up calling home due to not having any incentive to explore much farther. If you have access to all of the necessary materials to your self-made projects in your minuscule cut-out of the world, than you will likely never leave unless you want to find a Woodland Mansion or something. But yeah. These are anomalies. It’s just like grammar: it can never stay within its own rules. Edit: This comment has honestly instigated some really interesting replies! I didn’t realize how many people felt that Breath of the Wild didn’t include enough in its world to feel wholly satisfying, and how many didn’t enjoy the combat loop of finding and using powerful weapons in what I thought to be exciting and skillful battles. I mean, sometimes I’ll load up the game just to beat the crap out of a Lynel for no reason whatsoever besides...just kinda wanting to. I have no hard feelings whatsoever, people have different opinions and I can totally accept that. I just think that it’s kind of funny that we’re already entering the age of Breath of the Wild’s life where everyone remembers the bad more than the good. Zeldas go through this in cycles. For instance, go back 2 or 3 years and ask someone if they like Twilight Princess, and you will be met with, “Ugh, it’s fine, but I don’t know...it’s just not the best one...” Nowadays, the majority of fans have admitted that it is in their top 3. No joke. Windwaker experienced this, Ocarina had a spell of time with it, and Skyward Sword will likely be leaving it in the next 2 or 3 years. It’s weird. (I also think it’s funny that only one person was more worried about my Minecraft talk than my Breath of the Wild talk. I realized that I didn’t clarify: I love Minecraft and have most certainly put at least 1000 hours into it across all of the platforms that I’ve played on. Just wanted to get that out there real quick.)

I believe that this feeling of "big open world" comes from the density of the world (most big open worlds being quite empty) and, as you mentionned, the variety of stuff you can find. A short hike has plenty of meticulously crafted unique interaction with the environment and the characters and it increase the credibility of the world, whereas doing the same action over and over again in different spot break this immersion (and thus the engagement) in big open worlds. Of course, a game like A short hike can't be scaled to an AAA level, but it might not be the right path to follow for video games...

Hands down one of the best open world gaming experiences I've had has been heavily modded skyrim. So many random encounters, added locations and (actually fun) sidequests, enemy patrols that would run into each other and start fights that you would come across in the middle of, huge battlegrounds full of bodies to loot and little clues to piece together what happened, etc etc etc. It was so fun that I actually stopped fast traveling entirely