Favorite World Maps to Traverse

[Randy]

I love the good old Final Fantasy/ Tales style overworlds. Maybe FF9 I'd go for having the best. I especially enjoyed the Mist Continent because of the range in the elevation. Before that, most of the world maps were mostly flat with a few small mountain placeholder thingies.

They just left a bit to the imagination as you always would suppose the world had even more to see than is shown. A cheap trick to create a sense of epicness.

[Pike]

Morrowind so much also World of Warcraft. One time I was in a bunny costume and hopped all the way from the top of Kalimdor to the bottom. This was a while ago but I recorded it for posterity.

[Skyblade]

Final Fantasy XII is far and away the most notable FF world map. I enjoyed exploring all the new areas, which felt so large. It makes most traditional world maps seem tiny by comparison.

Suikoden V is my favorite traditional world map. It somehow managed to make the world feel massive when I first played it.

I feel the exact opposite. FFXII felt tiny. The entire game would fit inside Midgar.

That moment when you step outside, and you really see the scale and scope of the world, that's something you rarely get in a game without a true world map.

[Raistlin]

I don't see any plausible way where FFXII could feel tiny, absent a complete incapability of suspending disbelief about transferring between screens. You can traverse the playable areas of Midgar in mere minutes. There was far more actual distance to cover in FFXII than the overwhelming majority of other RPGs, with more exploration of the world. If you can readily accept traveling miles in mere seconds on most world maps on wildly disproportionate scales, I'm not sure how that's any real difference between your characters traveling miles between screens in FFXII's world.

I don't say many preferences are clearly wrong, but that is as close to an objectively wrong opinion as is possible in gaming (just shy of saying that FFXIII's plot is good). I really don't even understand what preferences could result in forming that conclusion.

EDIT: Taking after Pike, if we're including MMOs, I used to have a great time traversing all over the world of Ultima Online way back in the day.

[Pete for President]

I actually supremely disliked FF12's world because of it's scale. It was so fringing small. Yeah, lets go to this forbidden and mysterious otherworldly shrine of the 'gods'
...which happens to be closer to the capital than my real life Saturday morning jog. There is a reason to use scaling in maps.

FFXII had so much filler I can't even imagine how bad it would be if they added even more nothingness.

Ni No Kuni's world was really fun to traverse. Spira is up there too.

Dark Souls is my favourite, in a dreadful kind of way...

[Formalhaut]

But Spira had filler as well. I mean, pretty much every area between the temples was filler. And I really don't need to discuss the Mi'hen Highroad. That thing was a hike.

I suppose I do see your point, because at least cut-scenes still took place on the Highroad, and the other sort of 'travelling' locations, like the Moonflow or the Thunder Plains. Areas like the Paramina Rift in FFXII would be improved were there to be more meaningful interactions between the characters, and cut-scenes or even little moments would have made a difference. I still think FFXII's world was incredible, but I can see some room for improvement.

[VeloZer0]

FFXII had so much filler I can't even imagine how bad it would be if they added even more nothingness.

My point was that I don't see how it is possible to create a world that appears large without incorporating some sort of scaling or off-camera movement between areas. The only other options are to create something that is actually quite small in a real world sense (ala FF12), or create something with miles and miles of relatively un-intesting terrain, (ala travelling across continent in real life)

I don't see any plausible way where FFXII could feel tiny, absent a complete incapability of suspending disbelief about transferring between screens.

...

I don't say many preferences are clearly wrong, but that is as close to an objectively wrong opinion as is possible in gaming (just shy of saying that FFXIII's plot is good). I really don't even understand what preferences could result in forming that conclusion.

If you could imagine that all the FF12 maps required a good deal of travel between... well then you are lucky your could count on that to enhance the game play experience. However I don't see how you could assert that that is the defacto assumption that everyone would make. The way they are laid out in an interconnecting manner in the main map very much implies that they are close together. Especially when they are laid out identically in 'indoor' settings in which you know all the maps are in close proximity.

[Skyblade]

FFXII had so much filler I can't even imagine how bad it would be if they added even more nothingness.

My point was that I don't see how it is possible to create a world that appears large without incorporating some sort of scaling or off-camera movement between areas. The only other options are to create something that is actually quite small in a real world sense (ala FF12), or create something with miles and miles of relatively un-intesting terrain, (ala travelling across continent in real life)

I don't see any plausible way where FFXII could feel tiny, absent a complete incapability of suspending disbelief about transferring between screens.

...

I don't say many preferences are clearly wrong, but that is as close to an objectively wrong opinion as is possible in gaming (just shy of saying that FFXIII's plot is good). I really don't even understand what preferences could result in forming that conclusion.

If you could imagine that all the FF12 maps required a good deal of travel between... well then you are lucky your could count on that to enhance the game play experience. However I don't see how you could assert that that is the defacto assumption that everyone would make. The way they are laid out in an interconnecting manner in the main map very much implies that they are close together. Especially when they are laid out identically in 'indoor' settings in which you know all the maps are in close proximity.

Yeah, pretty much this. Everything is the same scale in FFXII. When you open a door and walk through it, you aren't journeying halfway across the country, you're walking through a door. The world is essentially one big dungeon. The lack of scaling, the lack of a perspective shift there, means that you never get the expansive feel of a true world map.

[Wolf Kanno]

XII was absolutely impressive for it's time and it's scaling worked for the most part considering the hardware it was working on, seeing how the only things that worked better with it's design were PC titles or MMORPGs. Besides, XII is technically a small region anyway and was never meant to represent some vast planet like FFs of old nor could it cheat like old-schools RPGs either. Even DQVIII cut corners and used lots of old and new slight of hand cheats to fake a large world.

There are probably too many to list for me in regards to the question asked and I like some in each type of style to not really have a preference over another.

[VeloZer0]

The scalling I'm talking about has nothing to do with hardware. Even if you have all the power in the world making a realistically proportioned map would entail days of walking to get anywhere. You can't make a map that has a realistic sense of 1:1 proportion while still making the game fun.

You have to abandon the 1:1 realism one way or another. One common way, that just about every open world game takes, is to just make the world extremely small or a real world scale. Other options that come to mind are games with area transitions that show that considerable distance has passed between them and that they are discrete areas of interest, or using maps that don't represent a 1:1 scale (like a traditional FF world map).

While the small but open world concept that FF12 uses has obvious proven itself very popular across many, many games it still can't compare in creating something that has the same scope as a whole overworld map. Which one you find more enjoyable is obviously personal preference.

[Wolf Kanno]

I would argue we are still getting closer and closer to it as games like Xenoblade have proven. I would never care to see a 1:1 scale map as I have done enough road trips to tell that good chunks of the planet are hardly scenic and if it could take me the time it takes to traverse all the Americas as it does the Bionis, I would be pretty stoked by that.

On the other hand, Overworld maps can be engaging but most of them are pretty samey with their experience. Even games like FFIII-VI had to keep changing up the maps to keep the player from being bored and even some of the novel elements of games like VIII and IX couldn't save their maps from feeling like lots of empty space with most of its "secrets" being an out of the way treasure or Draw Point. I'm more than willing to suspend my sense of disbelief by walking past a desert into a snow cap mountain over traversing a large overworld map with maybe five places of interest to see and lots of space to give the impression of a large world not really worth seeing.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I prefer having world maps that instinctively make me want to explore and I feel most of the world map types can work that way. Hell even BoFIV made the point and click map actually engaging. As you said, it just comes down to preference, I just agree with Raistlin that XII was one of the "good ones".

[Laddy]

WoW and Morrowind are solid overworlds because they have such visual appeal and great cultural flavor.

Final Fantasy, Tales, Eternal Sonata, and Xenoblade are indeed gorgeous. I always thought Dragon Quest VIII was quite nice in this regard as well, if not quite as creative visually or culturally being essentially Medieval Europe via Japan, but it was pleasant and charming.