Yahtzee Thinks Size Matters (Kinda) | Semi-Ramblomatic

My theory on this is that the feeling of "bigness" is a measure of "care density." Outer Wilds feels big because every chunk of it feels like someone cared about that chunk. Weirdly, an area can be procedurally generated and still have high care density if enough care went into the algorithm. Minecraft's a great example of this. Where you get that empty feeling in a big world is when the care density drops too low. It means you're caring about things that nobody else cares about, i.e., spending an hour clearing out a copy/pasted base that some designer created in thirty seconds. It makes you feel like your time is worthless.

The issue I find between big games and 'big games' is the density of content relative to the size. The large open worlds have the same amount of content spread across a much larger map making it feel inherently smaller than a more localised experience offering the same amount of stuff to do.

When fast travel (lite) was added to Sea of Thieves there was a lot of worry that the seas would feel smaller, as the sailing is such an intrinsic part of the game. It was the caveats that Rare added with the mechanic that have cemented it as a good thing for the game - you can dive (fast travel) to your selected voyage type, but you lose any treasure you have on board (except for consumable item storage chests) as you dive to a new server leaving and plunder bobbing in the sea behind you. The fast travel only took away half of the overall length of time to complete the task of travel to voyage location and sail back to an outpost to sell up your loot, keeping those emergent gameplay events (PvE and PvP) on the table. The latest season has subtly changed the mechanic to not allow players to dive to (and therefore spawn) a server event, meaning each one encountered is emergent and should be contested. The seas still feel huge if you stick to a server, especially so if the wind direction isn't kind to you!

A good mention is Kamurocho from the Yakuza games. Not that big size-wise, but so packed with things to do that it feels real and alive.

I've always broken this down into three categories to make your story/setting/world feel like it has some sort of size to it: Time, Distance and Change. Time is easy in theory, you spend a certain amount of time moving and you are bound to feel like you've gone somewhere, but the key is to feel like you are travelling - shutting me in a metal box for an hour and then telling me we've finally arrived doesn't make the world feel big, even if that's how I get to London irl. Distance also shows up best when you break it - fast travel is one thing, but also speed of information - when everyone knows everything that happens the moment it happens, it feels like everyone must be sitting in some magic spectator gallery watching everything when they are offscreen. Change is what I think really kills Starfield for me- the procgen robs the world of all context, so everything feels the same. Every planet looks a bit different, but it's all just scattered POI locations and random groups of the same enemies. You could tell me that these places were all on the same planet and I'd believe you, which isn't good. I've always found it interesting that these are more rules you break than adhere to - this is why JJ Abrams' directing style annoys me. In his films everything feels like it took place in a series of locations right next door to each other over the course of a very busy afternoon, even when whole literal worlds are supposedly in scope. In contrast, I was playing PS2-era JRPG Dark Chronicle last week, and I was struck by how they used authored monster lists for their otherwise procedurally-generated dungeon floors to let the player feel like they were traversing a whole location, rather than the tenth reshuffled version of the same floor.

I think Yahtzee and KC shut be sat down together to discuss terminology between kiss, smash, push-back, vibes, tent poles and recursiveness. Lots of potential for productive cross-polination there, I feel. (If you make it so that they lose points whenever they mention that it's about video games, it could be a very fun conversation indeed).

GTA4 and a map that didn’t get fully utilized in the single player was the first ‘why is this big-ness here’ that I can think of. GTA3, while the third area wasn’t great but you still explored most of it getting all the collectible packages and missions.

Do these no longer get posted to the Sponsor Free Playlist? It looks like the last one to be posted there was the exotic weapon episode, a month ago.