I've been thinking about something that has bothered me about open-world game design for years: the tendency to compress enormous real-world locations into relatively small, densely packed maps, often sacrificing geographical authenticity in favor of constant stimulation.
I understand why developers do this. Most players probably don't want to spend 20 minutes driving through an uneventful forest or passing miles of farmland just to get from one location to another. Developers want to make sure there's always something interesting nearby, whether it's a landmark, an activity, an encounter, or some other point of interest.
But personally, I feel that this approach often undermines the very thing open worlds are supposed to provide: the feeling of exploring a large, believable, interconnected world.
Take urban open worlds, for example. In many games, you can drive from one end of a supposedly enormous metropolitan area to the other in just a few minutes. Entire neighborhoods are reduced to a handful of streets. Different landscapes and environments are compressed into tiny geographical areas. There's something interesting around practically every corner. For me personally this is not as exciting because it feels off.
As impressive as these worlds often are, they can end up feeling more like theme parks than actual places. They capture the highlights of a location, but not necessarily its geography, scale, or atmosphere.
For me, the seemingly boring spaces between interesting locations are just as important as the locations themselves.
Driving through miles of forest, farmland, suburbs, or otherwise unremarkable countryside isn't necessarily wasted time. Those stretches establish distance, geographical context, and a sense of scale. They make arriving somewhere feel meaningful because you've actually experienced the journey.
Among mainstream open-world games, I think Red Dead Redemption 2 handles this particularly well. Its world is obviously heavily compressed, but Rockstar managed to preserve a sense of wilderness and isolation. There are places where you can simply ride through the landscape without constantly being bombarded with activities or distractions. The world is allowed to breathe.
However, my personal gold standards for this kind of immersion are actually Microsoft Flight Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 / American Truck Simulator.
Microsoft Flight Simulator is admittedly a special case. Recreating the entire planet at a 1:1 scale isn't really comparable to designing a traditional open world from scratch. But that's precisely what makes it so fascinating to me. You can experience the actual geographical relationships between places, the gradual transitions between landscapes, the sheer scale of cities, mountain ranges, forests, and entire countries. It's an experience that no conventional open-world game has ever quite replicated for me. The one that comes closest might be LA Noire with its more or less 1:1 scale recreation of parts of Los Angeles.
The Truck Simulator games are arguably an even more interesting example from a game design perspective.
Their maps are compressed to approximately 1:19 or 1:20 scale, yet they still manage to communicate an impressive sense of geographical scale and authenticity. Driving across several US states feels like an actual journey. You experience changing landscapes, regional differences, long stretches of relatively uneventful highways, and the gradual transition from one geographical region to another.
Obviously, these games make plenty of compromises themselves. But I think they demonstrate that geographical authenticity doesn't necessarily require a 1:1 recreation of the real world. It's also about how a world is structured, how distances are communicated, and how much room is given to the spaces between destinations.
This brings me to GTA VI.
I'm expecting it to be an incredibly impressive game, especially in terms of visual fidelity, environmental detail, and the sheer amount of work Rockstar is putting into its world. But I suspect it'll also continue the series' tradition of heavily compressing its real-world inspiration.
Vice City and the surrounding state of Leonida will presumably represent a condensed version of Miami and Florida, featuring the most recognizable landscapes, neighborhoods, and landmarks within a relatively small area.
And that's exactly what I find somewhat disappointing.
To me, an authentic representation of Florida isn't just Miami Beach, the Ocean Drive, downtown skyscrapers, and recognizable landmarks. It's also the seemingly endless stretches of swampland, agricultural fields, suburban sprawl, forests, and relatively uneventful roads.
Miles of empty Everglades or orange groves are just as much a part of Florida's identity as the neon lights of Miami Beach.
I would genuinely enjoy driving through those areas, even if there were absolutely nothing to do there.
Of course, I realize that GTA isn't trying to be a geographical simulator. Rockstar has to balance realism with entertainment, production costs, pacing, and the expectations of millions of players. A geographically realistic Florida would probably be completely impractical for a game like GTA.
I'm also not arguing that bigger maps are inherently better, or that developers should simply fill enormous worlds with repetitive procedural content.
My point is that spatial compression itself has a cost, and I think that cost is often underestimated when discussing open-world design.
We constantly talk about map size, graphical fidelity, interactivity, and content density. But I feel like we spend comparatively little time discussing whether the actual geographical structure of a virtual world is convincing.
Sometimes I wonder whether open-world design has become too focused on maximizing the amount of entertainment per square kilometer, rather than allowing the world itself to be the experience.
Perhaps the distinction is between designing a world primarily as a collection of interesting destinations and designing it as a believable geographical space that happens to contain interesting destinations.
I'd especially love to hear perspectives from people with experience in level design or open-world development, since I'm curious how developers approach this trade-off.