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While it’s certainly true that bigger isn’t always better, an open-world video game can definitely be too small. Finding the right balance can therefore be incredibly difficult for developers, particularly when their games involve exploring entire planets or blasting through outer space.
Updated September 24, 2021 by Tom Bowen: Crafting an open-world video game requires a deftness of touch that not all modern developers possess. If the game’s world is too small, it can be very difficult to cram everything in and provide players with the feelings of freedom that many of them so desperately crave. If it’s too large, on the other hand, things can easily get lost in a void of seemingly endless nothingness; and, along with them, the players’ enthusiasm for the game itself. Striking the right balance between big and small is therefore incredibly important, but remains something that many developers still struggle with at times.
14 Minecraft (Too Big)
A lot of people praise Minecraft for its simplicity, but there’s actually a lot more going on underneath the hood than many players realize. For one thing, the world in which players must mine and craft is seemingly infinite in scale, with no invisible walls anywhere in sight.
Though certainly impressive, there’s arguably no real benefit to Minecraft’s world being as large as it is. Granted, there are more resources to mine as a direct result of its massiveness, but the main side effect of this increased size is seemingly an increase in the probability of players getting pointlessly lost.
13 Dying Light (Too Small)
Dying Light is an excellent survival horror game with great combat mechanics and wonderful controls. One of the only things holding it back is the relatively small size of its open world, though the developers did manage to mitigate the effects of this somewhat through clever game design.
By incorporating verticality into the game’s word and programming in parkour, Techland was able to make the game’s world feel much larger than it actually is; a true testament to the skill of the original development team. The game’s sequel seems to be promising more of the same, though it would be a little surprising if the game’s world isn’t a little bigger this time around.
12 Far Cry Primal (Too Big)
Following the unprecedented success of Grand Theft Auto 3 in the early two-thousands, just about every developer under the sun was rushing to bring their very own GTA clones to market. Some were a lot more original than others, with Far Cry being one of a handful that managed to steer clear of most of the classic GTA tropes.
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Unfortunately, however, Ubisoft, like many other developers during that era, was under the impression that bigger meant better. Each new open-world game, therefore, boasted a larger map than the one before it, though this increased scale usually came at a cost. Empty maps were the most common side effect, and Far Cry Primal is a great example of this; showing exactly what happens when developers sacrifice substance for size.
11 Yakuza (Too Small)
There’s something comforting about returning to the bright lights of Kamurocho time and time again. The area is inspired by Tokyo’s Kabukicho district and has appeared in just about every Yakuza game to date. With seven mainline entries and countless spinoffs having now been released though, it’s starting to feel just a little worn out.
Though players are able to visit other parts of Japan from time to time, the small size of Kamurocho and its ever-present nature can make exploring it a little dull for long-time fans of the series. There’s certainly room for expansion should RGG Studio ever opt to go down that route, but, for now, at least, it doesn’t look like Kamurocho will be changing anytime soon.
10 No Man’s Sky (Too Big)
People were intrigued by a game that had an unfathomably massive universe to explore. No Man’s Sky took the open-world concept and applied that to a seemingly infinite amount of space. Although many would argue that No Man’s Sky’s appeal is its scale, it could be argued that size is in fact its failure.
Traversing the worlds’ landscapes, players become lost in its vast emptiness. Sure, they can build a colony and mine minerals, but exploration itself becomes stale pretty quickly. Many years from now, No Man’s Sky may well be an inspiration for open-world game designers, but the games of today just shouldn’t be this enormous.
9 Grand Theft Auto III (Too Small)
When it comes to scale, Grand Theft Auto IV’s version of Liberty City is much closer to the real New York City than Grand Theft Auto III’s. Where the former focuses on the various boroughs and landmarks of the city, Grand Theft Auto III is but a small microcosm due to the limited RAM capacity of the PS2.
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Grand Theft Auto III was a huge open-world game when it was released way back in 2001. However, the game just doesn’t measure up to modern-day behemoths like Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5. Perhaps this is something that Rockstar will address in the rumored remasters of the original 3D trilogy though.
8 Just Cause 3 (Too Big)
Whether from an objective or subjective point of view, Just Cause 3 is a technical achievement because of its map’s scale. There really is a lot to admire, yet it’s a game that would arguably benefit from a much smaller map.
While most areas appear polished and beautiful, some of the others are a lot less detailed and feel a little unfinished by comparison. Just Cause 3 has one of the biggest open-worlds in the history of video games, but, at 400 square miles, the map is just far too big.
7 Assassin’s Creed (Too Small)
At 0.4 square miles, the area explored in the original Assassin’s Creed is far too small. The map doesn’t need to be as massive as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s, but it should at least be large enough to provide gameplay variation.
Due to the size of the map, players will quickly realize that Assassin’s Creed is incredibly repetitive. Fetch quests and trailing missions become painstaking. Thankfully, Ubisoft learned from its mistakes with the game’s sequel, which many consider to be a vastly superior game.
6 Test Drive Unlimited 2 (Too Big)
Blazing a trail on the road at over 200 miles per hour, players begin to realize that massive open-worlds can work very well with racing games. The sense of not having enough time to explore everything really adds to a game’s immersive experience.
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While open-world racers like Forza Horizon are beautiful and have polished gameplay mechanics though, Test Drive Unlimited 2 does not measure up. It’s frustrating to explore the game’s sizeable open-world when more detail and refinement could have been put into a smaller playable area.
5 Assassin’s Creed Unity (Too Small)
Assassin’s Creed Unity was the franchise’s online co-op game. With an emphasis on online play, surely the map would need to be larger, right? Unfortunately, at 1.06 square miles, Assassin’s Creed Unity is one of the smallest maps in Assassin’s Creed history. To make matters even worse, the game was a buggy mess.
On the other hand, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’s 1.4 square mile map proves that small open-worlds can work. What Syndicate lacks in size, it more than makes up for in detail; demonstrating that a highly polished, smaller open-world can also work just fine.
4 Final Fantasy XV (Too Big)
Final Fantasy 15 is possibly the most divisive game in the series. While games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake have a more narrow focus, Final Fantasy 15 flipped the pre-established formula upside down by incorporating one of the biggest open-worlds in the history of video games.
For a significant portion of the game, Players are riding in the Regalia, a luxury car with a regulator on its speed. Despite this, however, the game soon becomes frustrating due to its long travel times. A post-launch update added the Regalia Type-D, a monster truck that lets players go off-road, but this still isn’t enough to justify the game’s 700 square mile map.
3 Shenmue (Too Small)
Released for the Sega Dreamcast in 1999, Shenmue was once the most expensive video game ever made. The saga’s first two installments cost somewhere in the region of $70 million, with the bulk of that spent on the series’ first entry. Despite it selling more than 1 million copies, however, it failed to turn a profit due to its high development costs.
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Despite being commercial failures, there is still an awful lot to admire about the first two Shenmue games, particularly when it comes to their gameplay and visuals. One area where the original could perhaps have been better, though, was the scale of its map, with Yokosuka offering only a small fraction of the exploration on offer in Hong Kong and Kowloon in Shenmue 2.
2 Grand Theft Auto V (Too Big)
The scale of Grand Theft Auto 5 is awe-inspiring at times. How Rockstar Games accomplished this feat is beyond impressive. At the same time though, the game could’ve been a lot more detailed and immersive if the world was a little smaller.
Grand Theft Auto 5’s representation of Los Santos has an abundance of buildings, but only a handful of them can actually be explored. What’s more, around half of the map is little more than a vast wilderness that’s only worth venturing into a handful of times.
1 The Legend Of Zelda (Too Small)
Back when open-world games were still in their infancy, The Legend of Zelda was a fantastic early example of what they could one day become. Hyrule may have been less detailed than more recent The Legend of Zelda installments, yet there is still an antiquated charm to the original.
Players can complete dungeons in virtually any order, allowing for some unique and challenging runs. If the game is ever remade, chances are that Nintendo will make the world of Hyrule considerably larger in order to appeal to the modern open-world gamer, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
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