World maps/Overworlds - why did they fall out of vogue, and what else can be done with them?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

When you read fantasy novels, part of the feel of the story is that the heroes are usually traversing over great distances. This makes it much more grandiose and larger than life. Movies often translate this to a montage of hiking shots.




Videogames not being restricted to a 2 hour long affair (though I guess Joruney is a 2 hour long game) means that more of the audience's time can be spent on journeying than a 2 minute montage. Sometimes, a humongous world or series of zones is great at conveying the idea you have gone on a very long journey in a vast world. Galloping across the Forbidden Land in Shadow of the Colossus felt epic. Or long hikes across Vana'diel in FF11 through multiple different zones to reach another city or a dungeon. But producing large landscapes such as these can take a lot of time, or might not mesh with a game where the designers just want to model small locations where stuff happens.

In that case, game devs found a way to still communicate that players were travelling a long distance. Enter the overworld/world map, where the devs just have to model a smaller scale representation of the world:






Unfortunately, 20 years ago it seems that world maps have fallen out of vogue with game devs, and games overall feel a lot less "epic". I was playing Baldur's Gate 3 a few weeks ago, and couldn't help but think how much more grandiose that game would have felt if it had used an overworld to communicate the idea that I was going on a great journey, rather than everything taking place in a local area with stuff happening 40 feet down the road from each other. (Final Fantasy X and Xenoblade Chronicles 1 are RPGs without a world map, but better convey the idea that you have travelled far with many more environment transitions, and the party resting at different inns or houses instead of the same vague camp site over and over).

My question is: why are modern game devs so averse to world maps/overworlds? And what can be done to further iterate on world maps? FF9 (in a one off scripted cutscene shown above) and then Mount & Blade had the idea of showing other people in the world moving around on the world map (rather than the typical implementation where you are the only person in the world moving around). What else could be done here?

P.S: for Mount & Blade, I thought that the scouting skill to increase the distance at which you can see other people in the overworld, see tracks and get more information from mousing over on them, and increasing overworld movement speed was neat.

[Cipher]

Laziness and incompetence.

One of my favorite things about having played BG1 when I was 13 years old was the sense of wonder, seeing the map slowly opening and exploring the Sword Coast. Yoshinori Kitase, a man you have praised in the past and shown great respect for, was the one that axed them for the FF series with FFX, claiming that the world map would consume too much time and resources to build and then providing the cope answer that making it linear felt more thematic with Yuna's pilgrimage.

It is because of this standard that FF moved away from an overworld. I know you disagree, but this is why I have said in the past that everything wrong with the series started in X and why IX is the actual FINAL Final Fantasy. What came after IX is just a different series altogether with a different ethos.

On the more charitable and pragmatic side, it does put a lot of burden into the animators, artist and devs for an engine that works with a "live" overworld like Mount and Blade. The game is basically designed around it. Such thing would require the game to be dedicated to it. A more conventional overworld like in the FF series and most 90s era JRPGs is more feasible. But again, it requires resources that the gaming audience has demonstrated it doesn't really put too much value in. I agree with your premise that it was a big part of why those games felt like a journey and, specially, with the FF series it was always a great expectation to finally get your airship and be able to roam around the world to find stuff, y'know, actually explore.

Another problem is that Ubisoft distilled the concept into their "open world" slop with towers. So, now an overworld is mostly associated with that same style of game, to the point that FF7 Rebirth copied the concept wholesale for their so called open world.

Now, I have always said that a well-made and tight gaming experience is better than feature creep, so not every game needs an overworld/worldmap. But, for RPGs, I can't really think of a good reason as a player that an overworld won't enhance the experience. On the other hand, if that means ubislop tower bitchwork or the new Metriod Prime 4 empty desert to trick the audience into believing there's actually an overworld, then those games would be better without it.

[rusty_shackleford]

One of my favorite things about having played BG1 when I was 13 years old was the sense of wonder, seeing the map slowly opening and exploring the Sword Coast.

fun fact about BG1's map: it mostly stitches together into one big map

[Cipher]

One of my favorite things about having played BG1 when I was 13 years old was the sense of wonder, seeing the map slowly opening and exploring the Sword Coast.

fun fact about BG1's map: it mostly stitches together into one big map

Yes! That was the best thing about it. Also the time passing mechanic so you would travel and then reach the wilderness in the night, with the party weary and tired. But, you knew you could get attacked if you rested in the wild so it was a consideration to go back to the Friendly Arm Inn or just risk it.

Now, I know it's almost always worth it to just rest but as a kid it felt like a world that is alive and my choices along the entire journey mattered a lot.

[Dorateen]

The last overworld exploration I enjoyed was the Legend of Amberland series, which of course took its cues from the Might & Magic rpgs.

Designing a fun overworld map is like crafting a hex crawl adventure. Populating points of interest for the party to interact with, from strange locations, to treasures, clues and enemy camps. None of which need be anchored to a central plot or narrative device. Just a wilderness open for the player to discover its mysteries without prodding from the developer.

[wndrbr]

You either fill the overworld with details / quests / encounters / loot / hidden areas and dungeons, or you leave it barren. If you go with the first option, it would be too time-consuming and expensive to build, so the overworld ends up being small and thus loses its original purpose of emulating the sense of journey over long distances. If you go with the 'huge but empty' option, then the players will complain that it's just padding.

[Norfleet]

You either fill the overworld with details / quests / encounters / loot / hidden areas and dungeons, or you leave it barren. If you go with the first option, it would be too time-consuming and expensive to build, so the overworld ends up being small and thus loses its original purpose of emulating the sense of journey over long distances. If you go with the 'huge but empty' option, then the players will complain that it's just padding.

Overworld maps are still common in space games, precisely because "huge but empty" is exactly how space is supposed to be and players expect this and will not complain about it as a result.