Editorial: Overworld: Underrated

Jason Tandro · Aug 25, 2016

It's about that time again. More rambling from the JT. Today's topic is on the role of overworld maps, inspired by my recent playthrough of FF7. Looking for insights, thoughts, spot edits, etc. Thanks for the continued support gaiz! :aah:

Google Doc Version of the Article

Overworld: Underrated

We recently got a taste of what the latest Final Fantasy - consciously ubiquitous in its ten year absence- might be like once it is finally released. And no, I’m not referring to the Platinum Demo. While it was impressive to see the updates to the combat system and the general feel of the demo was fun, pretty skyboxes do not a sense of wonder invoke. No, I am referring to Episode Duscae, the demo that we paid $40 for that for some inexplicable reason was bundled with a dolled up Type-0.

Episode Duscae was actually very impressive, especially as far as demos go. It’s not like the good old days of Shareware - where literally an entire portion of the game, sometimes as much as 1/3rd would be given away for free in attempts to siphon cash out of your parent’s credit card- but it does stand up as one of the most substantial demos for a Final Fantasy game we’ve ever seen. Duscae gave us a massive open world to explore full of sidequests, monsters to slay and even a couple of small dungeons to traverse.

It’s clear that the developers know the importance of delivering the feel of that open world which has become an old hat by now - sandbox open worlds are the order of the day for AAA gaming. Whether you love roaming through the wilds of Tamriel in the Elder Scrolls games, or dying in a variety of high speed collisions in Grand Theft Auto, the open world is something with universal appeal. We feel connected and fully immersed in a world free of load times.

It is true that open worlds are the next logical step, especially since we are finally making it out of the awkward in-between phase of Final Fantasy X and XIII’s respective “pretty line” worlds. But while it may seem anachronistic, I feel like the shift to a fully immersive world is missing something basic, yet profoundly connected to the classic RPG experience - the overworld. An overworld map may seem positively quaint in an age where you aren’t considered next gen unless you can actually count every individual blade of grass in between you and the next soon-to-be corpse, but I argue that leaving the overworld behind has robbed us of some great things that we took for granted.

A Sense of Scale

I want to start with an exercise you can do at home. Get a piece of paper or two and something to draw with. You don’t have to be a super good artist, just follow along as best you can. I want you to draw for me a rough estimation of the world map from Final Fantasy VII. Assuming you’ve played it all the way through even once you should be able to get the basics down pat - 5 major landmasses: east, west and north continents, the Wutai island to the west of Nibelheim and the Mideel archipelago south of Ft. Condor. Maybe you remembered the Cactaur Island, Goblin Forest and the resting place of Knights of the Round and if so good for you.

Now draw me the world map from Final Fantasy X. Unless for some reason you have the world map as your desktop wallpaper or spent inordinate amounts of time starting at the airship hub, this is probably more difficult. Here’s how it goes for me: Uh, Besaid Island… Kilika Island… giant hot dog continent.

“Well what are you on about?” I hear you asking. “So we’re not cartographers. Final Fantasy X still gave us a much closer and more personal look at the world we were in.”

Did it though? I mean I love X but the personality of the world that we got could have been entirely maintained, and probably enhanced, through the use of a traditional overworld map. In fact, I argue that the design may have ended up better in the long run if we didn’t have to have those “nothing” spaces to denote travel time. You know what I’m talking about, the Mi’ihen Highroad and the area around Djose Temple (and to a lesser extent the Calm Lands). The “pretty line”. Now Final Fantasy X masked a great deal of that through clever use of story and just enough variety in the terrain to keep interesting. But outside of a handful of dungeons how many branching paths do you remember actively exploring in the game? The closest we got to an open world was the Calm Lands and it was basically a giant field (a design that Final Fantasy XIII would later use and expand for its Chapter 11 apology for the rest of the game).

If the plan was the begin paving the way for worlds where we were truly invested in the landscape around us and didn’t feel cheated for experiences by the scaled down overworld, perhaps a more open world would have been preferential. This is chiefly what Final Fantasy XII did right. It’s massive open world and variety of terrains gave the world a massive and epic feel and remained immersive even with those dreaded loading times.

A Sense of Dread

This might seem an odd and personal point to make, but it’s an Editorial. And besides, I think I can sway you to my way of reasoning. You know what always got me excited with the older Final Fantasy games, and old RPGs in general. When there was something on the World Map that I knew was important and it filled me with that slight sinking feeling in the gut as I approached it. That worried sensation of “Am I ready for this?”

Remember playing Final Fantasy IV and flying around the overworld in your brand new airship? You soar through the skies to the lower left hand corner of the map and your peaceful adventure is interrupted by this massive tower. You know at some point you are going to be at this tower and it is going to be a massive part of your adventure. How about your first time approaching the N-Zone (Interdimensional Rift) in Final Fantasy V?

The Playstation era took the overworld game to the next level. Starting with Final Fantasy VII there were other things roaming around the world map. The most terrifying for me as a young lad was the ever-present shadowy visage of Emerald Weapon swimming around in the already pretty intimidating underwater map. Though definitely I must give props to Ultima Weapon’s floating nightmare, Diamond Weapon’s slow ambling presence which definitely knew how to amp up tension and Ruby Weapon’s little head poking out of the sand. The visage of the Lunatic Pandora and Galbadia Garden in Final Fantasy VIII also come readily to mind.

And Final Fantasy IX took it even a step further with weather effects on the overworld. First the Mist that enveloped a great chunk of the overworld was its own level of creepy, but the rains of Burmecia, the whirling sandy tornado of Cleyra and the various elemental shrines each offered their own bouts of the jibblies.

One final thing is that a sense of foreboding can be obtained by separation and isolation, which is harder to capture in a non-overworld. The Deep Sea Research Center in Final Fantasy VIII is all nice and tucked away in the corner of the map and when you first stumble upon it you immediately know “something important is here.” Round Island from Final Fantasy VII is similar. Final Fantasy IX has a cute variant with the Chocobo Paradise. When we pop into the Omega Dungeon in Final Fantasy X and are told that it’s far off the beaten path, a bit of that connection is lost.

A Sense of Wonder

Lightning Returns is a beautiful game with some wonderful scenery. The Wildlands in particular have an ethereal beauty to them as you traverse field, forest and canyon. Episode Duscae in similar fashion presented us with that amazing open world to freely explore within the set, though extremely liberal boundaries (unless you were cool and got the car to push you out of bounds and found Titan, but hey).

Many fans of the newer style say that you just can’t evoke the same marvel from an overworld as you can seeing the world stretch out before your very eyes. There is some merit to this, and I feel like it is chiefly why developers have been shying away from the overworld design in recent years. But I don’t know that it’s fair to say that the overworld is devoid of enchantment.

For starters when we lose the overworld, we lose the overworld theme, which is very often the main theme of the game (except in the case of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VIII). These themes also do a wonderful job of setting the tone for the entire game, be it adventurous (Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy V), somber (Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VIII), or contemplative (Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy IX).

Traversing the overworld is also one of the most remarkable things about the traditional design. Who hasn’t torn the sky a new one upon getting their first airship? Who hasn’t spent inordinate amounts of time under the sea, or on it? Or on the back of a chocobo? Or passenger in a dune buggy, car or train? Perhaps the thing that people missed the most about the loss of an overworld was what happened to the airship. It went from sky-soaring fun, to hub world and finally to just gone altogether.

Also, the overworld always went above and beyond to show some artistic flair for the various worlds. The dusky plateaus and switchbacks near Cosmo Canyon, the frosty plans and islands of Esto Gaza, the rails of Galbadia. The land was always well thought out and the little touches are what make the world feel alive. You remember how a great chunk of the land of The Forgotten Continent in Final Fantasy IX was essentially open space, save for the Chocobo Lithographs? And yet they went above and beyond giving us small islands, random scattered bits of rock - the shape of a land over time.

Then there are the bits of the world that were just there for the sake of that one person who went out of the way to find them. Not hidden dungeons or towns, but hidden geography. When you got the airship, did you ever go to that one plateau that had nothing on it but you just wanted to see what was there? Did you ever sail around to a corner of the globe simply to say you did? When all signs pointed you in one direction, did you go off in another just to see what was there? Well if you have, then you know that a simple overworld can be a wonderful thing indeed.

Conclusion

I appreciate how this may seem the nostalgia-blind ramblings of a romantic. I want to stress that I’m not against the new design of world map at all. I, like you, can’t wait to go buzzing around in my flying Batmobile while listening to the Distant Worlds remix of Johnny C Bad. And as for my desire to give myself a heart attack, I am quite excited at the possibility of seeing a massive creature on the scale of WEAPON towering over me in the open world.

Moving forward and giving us this deeper, more intimate connection with our world (rather literally seeing the forest for the trees) is without a doubt a good direction to be going in. But for the time being at least it does mean that we will be losing certain things that were inherent to the old design philosophy. Even so, as we gear up for both Final Fantasy XV and the Final Fantasy VII Remake, my level of excitement grows with each passing day. And just like my first tentative steps outside of Midgar, I can’t wait to see what’s over the horizon.

Octo · Aug 25, 2016

*applause* You're 100% percent correct Jason. Except off course for the bits where you're nice about X and XIII :monster:

RedFFWolf · Aug 25, 2016

I'm just doing a wee bit of proofreading for you now, JT. I've downloaded the document and am working through it at the moment. Nearly there, in fact. I'll send it to you via FB when I'm finished.

I'm mostly focusing on a straightforward spelling/grammar check, as content-wise your expertise is not something I feel I could match. Regardless, I've thrown in some feedback - enjoying it so far, I most certainly am

EDIT: Okay, it has been sent to you now. Hope there's something of use there with some of my comments and observations, and that I don't simply come across as a pedant who filled your document with unnecessary bold font (which, if you see this post before the message, highlighted suggestions).

Great job on it all

It was an enjoyable piece. As I wrote in the document, the imagery alone invoked from reading it genuinely makes me want to relive the glory years of FF on the PS1.

Mayo Master · Aug 25, 2016

Good text, but personally I don't really agree on the merits of the Overworld that have been pointed out. Or maybe I just don't get how you make the distinction between "Overworld" and "big-ass open world". For instance, where would you classify XII?
If "Overworld" only refers to the PS1-era style way of moving between locations at a "planetary scale", I don't think it's more immersive than the system that had been set up for XII, for example. I don't see how the old design philosophy is superior to alternate designs we can do nowadays. Or am I just missing the point of the article?

Jason Tandro · Aug 25, 2016

Mayo Master said:
Good text, but personally I don't really agree on the merits of the Overworld that have been pointed out. Or maybe I just don't get how you make the distinction between "Overworld" and "big-ass open world". For instance, where would you classify XII?

Overworld map is specifically a "to scale" world map in the style of Final Fantasy I through 9. XII would be something closer to an open world but it's not really "open", but just a lot of segments that are connected together.

If "Overworld" only refers to the PS1-era style way of moving between locations at a "planetary scale", I don't think it's more immersive than the system that had been set up for XII, for example.

Granted. I actually said for the immersion factor XII did a much better job at that.

I don't see how the old design philosophy is superior to alternate designs we can do nowadays. Or am I just missing the point of the article?

I also don't say that it's superior, in fact I make a point of that in my conclusion. I just say that there are things that you could accomplish with with the overworld map that you couldn't accomplish (at least in the same way) with the map styles in X through XIII.

Mayo Master · Aug 25, 2016

Jason Tandro said:
Overworld map is specifically a "to scale" world map in the style of Final Fantasy I through 9. XII would be something closer to an open world but it's not really "open", but just a lot of segments that are connected together.

Personally, I am not so nostalgic about the world map concepts like in FF I to 9. I mean, sure, there were great designs relative to the times they were made, but when I replay one of these games today (well, mostly FF VII, else I'm not much of a retro-gamer), it more gives me the impression of a planet which is the size of a county, which I find non-immersive as far as the sense of scale is concerned.
That being said, I'm aware that conveying the sense of scale is always a balancing act, since one needs to recreate the feeling of immensity but load the environments with "interesting stuff to do and points of interest". Back to the No Man's Sky discussion, eh?

CrashOuch · Aug 26, 2016

This was a good read, JT, thank you very much!
I totally know what you mean, as well. The one thing that does look really cool, now we've been given those 50ish minutes of gameplay from XV to gawk over, is how it seems like the local map might be playing more of an integral role in the game this time around than some of the other recent FFs. It definitely seemed as though you'll spend a fair amount of time checking your map out, trying to fill in some areas, heading off in the opposite of your pointed direction, like you said, just to go check out what that suspect map area is about. For sure it won't be the same as the classic Overworld, but I think it looks like a pretty exciting midway point?

hian · Aug 26, 2016

Mayo Master said:
it more gives me the impression of a planet which is the size of a county, which I find non-immersive as far as the sense of scale is concerned.

For me personally, it's the exact opposite.
When you use the over-world of the older FF games, I get to see a physical representation of the landmass that is supposed to separate the various locations, which as an abstraction, let's me appreciate the scale the world is supposed to have - or telling me that it has.

When you remove that, all you're left with is the actual "in-scale" scenic maps - and there's nowhere near enough of them to actually represent an entire world in any single-player FF game up until now.

When you go from Midgar to Kalm on the overworld, you know how much land is supposed to be between the two, and that we're looking at an actual world.
If you had removed the overworld, and simply had a couple of grassy maps then you'd lose that to my mind.
After all, if everything is presented as being in scale we then either have to accept that the path from Midgar to Kalm is literally just a couple of minutes of jogging, or we have to accept that the black loading screens between each map represent some sort of arbitrary travel that we're not privy to.

On the overworld though - we get to see it. It's not in scale - but it allows at least for a minimum of visual representation of the traveling that's going on.

The removal of the world-map robbed us of that up until now. Nowadays, we can actually replace the overworld with an actual, almost planet-size world that fully fleshes out the traveling between point A and B with proper visual representation - but back in the days of PS2, that was not the case.

And despite the increased map size of XII compared to X, both of those games felt much less adventurous and immersive to me than the earlier games.
It just did not feel right to have the narrative tell me I'm on this world-spanning adventure, only to then have in-scale locations where you can literally run from continent to continent in matter of minutes.

Overworlds were, as a contrast, purposefully presented as down-scaled versions of the world so it did not invoke the same kind of dissonance to me.

The airship/vehicle thing also rings true to me.
Being able to fly across the world in an air-ship was a highlight of pretty much every FF game up until X.
I was really really sad to see it be replaced with this quick-travel map thing.

Jason Tandro · Aug 26, 2016

RedFFWolf said:
I'm just doing a wee bit of proofreading for you now, JT. I've downloaded the document and am working through it at the moment. Nearly there, in fact. I'll send it to you via FB when I'm finished.

I'm mostly focusing on a straightforward spelling/grammar check, as content-wise your expertise is not something I feel I could match. Regardless, I've thrown in some feedback - enjoying it so far, I most certainly am

EDIT: Okay, it has been sent to you now. Hope there's something of use there with some of my comments and observations, and that I don't simply come across as a pedant who filled your document with unnecessary bold font (which, if you see this post before the message, highlighted suggestions).

Great job on it all It was an enjoyable piece. As I wrote in the document, the imagery alone invoked from reading it genuinely makes me want to relive the glory years of FF on the PS1.

Took all of your suggestions to heart, save one minor wording choice. Regarding your comments at the beginning, yes I am a skilled writer but I also have a tendency to word vomit and in my haste my sight-editing skills are not on par with many others who have a keener eye for this stuff. That is why I always ask for people's input.

Side note: Vis a vis my antiquated double-spacing after a full stop. It's just how I was taught in grade school and while many others, such as Flintlock, have told me that it is no longer necessary it's something so firmly engrained in my writing that I doubt I'll be able to consciously stop. That said, I stuck with your edit, deferring to your skill on that front.

Again, much obliged for you taking the time to try and make sense of my rat maze writing. I think the updated version looks far better thanks to your attention to detail (never call perfectionism in the scope of editing "pedantry". We all want this to be as good as possible! :monster:

)

RedFFWolf · Aug 26, 2016

Jason Tandro said:
Took all of your suggestions to heart, save one minor wording choice.

Glad I was of help, then. And, yes, when it came to word changes, I didn't apply those automatically as in the end they were your calls.

Regarding your comments at the beginning, yes I am a skilled writer but I also have a tendency to word vomit and in my haste my sight-editing skills are not on par with many others who have a keener eye for this stuff. That is why I always ask for people's input.

Sure even the greatest authors have their work stripped to the bone by editors before reaching the shelves. Truly, there is nothing greater than a fresh pair of eyes. But believe me when I say there wasn't a lot in there that required actual reflection.

Side note: Vis a vis my antiquated double-spacing after a full stop. It's just how I was taught in grade school and while many others, such as Flintlock, have told me that it is no longer necessary it's something so firmly engrained in my writing that I doubt I'll be able to consciously stop. That said, I stuck with your edit, deferring to your skill on that front.

Ha-ha, not to worry. I just found myself doing it and after a few sentences realised this was likely deliberate.

Again, much obliged for you taking the time to try and make sense of my rat maze writing. I think the updated version looks far better thanks to your attention to detail (never call perfectionism in the scope of editing "pedantry". We all want this to be as good as possible! )

Wasn't hard at all - I've been doing this kind of thing for the last two years for someone whose first language is not English (for heavy-duty academic work, at that) (and with my FF: BR fanfic project). If anything, prior to those two years, I wouldn't have had the confidence/skills to approach work like this.

Oh, aye, I've no problem for myself spending half an hour researching whether I ought to use something like "at" or "by", or even for a comma choice, but when it comes to others I don't want them thinking I'm storming in like some disapproving aunt yelling at people to tIDy tHeir CoMMAs :monstersmash:

Mayo Master · Aug 26, 2016

hian said:
For me personally, it's the exact opposite.
When you use the over-world of the older FF games, I get to see a physical representation of the landmass that is supposed to separate the various locations, which as an abstraction, let's me appreciate the scale the world is supposed to have - or telling me that it has.

When you remove that, all you're left with is the actual "in-scale" scenic maps - and there's nowhere near enough of them to actually represent an entire world in any single-player FF game up until now.

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fficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]-->Sure, but in that respect, I think the world map concept isn’t really superior to some kind of interactive map with a scale, or the description of travel between locations shown in Monkey Island (shown between 8:49 and 8:55 in this video).<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w

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hian said:
When you go from Midgar to Kalm on the overworld, you know how much land is supposed to be between the two, and that we're looking at an actual world.
If you had removed the overworld, and simply had a couple of grassy maps then you'd lose that to my mind.
After all, if everything is presented as being in scale we then either have to accept that the path from Midgar to Kalm is literally just a couple of minutes of jogging, or we have to accept that the black loading screens between each map represent some sort of arbitrary travel that we're not privy to.

On the overworld though - we get to see it. It's not in scale - but it allows at least for a minimum of visual representation of the traveling that's going on.

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o

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fficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]-->The sense of scale given by the world map remains very subjective. How much distance would there be between Midgar and Kalm, based on the world map presentation? 2 km? 5 km? 10 km? 50 km? More? It’s anybody’s guess, really. The time it takes to reach the destination doesn’t really give much of a hint either. I think the notion of how much distance it would be depends on how it compares to something relatable – and I think most people would relate it to the scale of worlds in other games. On a personal level, back when FFVII was released, I did perceive the world was huge, because it was the biggest environment I got to travel in a video game. Now that I’ve seen much bigger video-game environments (often describing a much smaller part of their respective worlds), the entire world presented in FFVII world map looks very small to me. In a sense, it is similar to how my perception of urban environments in video games has changed – now old-school RPG towns look pretty silly to me. For Midgar to feel “huge” in FFVII remake, it would need to be orders of magnitude larger than it was in the original.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w

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hian said:
The removal of the world-map robbed us of that up until now. Nowadays, we can actually replace the overworld with an actual, almost planet-size world that fully fleshes out the traveling between point A and B with proper visual representation - but back in the days of PS2, that was not the case.

And despite the increased map size of XII compared to X, both of those games felt much less adventurous and immersive to me than the earlier games.
It just did not feel right to have the narrative tell me I'm on this world-spanning adventure, only to then have in-scale locations where you can literally run from continent to continent in matter of minutes.

Overworlds were, as a contrast, purposefully presented as down-scaled versions of the world so it did not invoke the same kind of dissonance to me.

The airship/vehicle thing also rings true to me.
Being able to fly across the world in an air-ship was a highlight of pretty much every FF game up until X.
I was really really sad to see it be replaced with this quick-travel map thing.

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o

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fficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--> I agree that the “quick travel” map is not satisfying because it fails to convey the sense of scale. Other games that rely on this method (like Dragon Age Inquisition, for instance) tend to give the feel of isolated, disconnected locations where you can’t get a sense of how big the world is as a whole.
I disagree, however, that FF XII felt less adventurous and immersive than its predecessors, namely because it gave a number of additional visual cues which helped building a sense of scale. The first visual cue is that FF XII showed the neighboring regions on the horizon of the zone you were currently travelling, which gave the sense of having the regions being connected, and how much distance you have to travel to get from one to the next. The second visual cue is that weather could change when you were wandering through different parts of the region you were in, giving a notion of a “in-universe” time it takes to travel through regions (i.e., “the time it takes for weather to change”). One factor which is missing from the PS1-era world map is the notion of how much “in-universe” time it takes to cover distances.
Following that line of thought: I believe that the inclusion of dynamic weather and day/night cycles greatly help to develop a sense of scale, because you can relate the distance you travel to the time it takes for the weather to change, or the distance you can travel in a day. If you could realize whether it takes 1 “in-universe” hour or 1 “in-universe” day to reach Kalm from Midgar on foot, it would give you a very different sense of how big the world of FFVII is as a whole. Of course, I’m not criticizing the absence of day/night cycles in FFVII, since we began to see dynamic lighting in games about 8 years later. I’m simply saying that including the notion of “travelling time” is one of the best ways to give a good idea of distances.
I would think that I have been much more indifferent to the removal of the airship in later FFs than most. Fun? Sure. Immersive? No. To me, the airship had mostly the “fun” value about being able to quickly navigate with a sort of bird-eye view to the location you wanted without the hassle of random battles (and having a “mobile base”). However, I didn’t find that being able to fly around the world under a minute was helping to give the world a proper sense of scale.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w

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hian · Aug 27, 2016

Mayo Master said:
Sure, but in that respect, I think the world map concept isn’t really superior to some kind of interactive map with a scale, or the description of travel between locations shown in Monkey Island (shown between 8:49 and 8:55 in this video).

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verrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]-->I disagree. Not only is the kind of map you show here even more abstract, it offers less interactivity, which is arguably one of the most important aspects of video-games.

Mayo Master said:
The sense of scale given by the world map remains very subjective. How much distance would there be between Midgar and Kalm, based on the world map presentation? 2 km? 5 km? 10 km? 50 km? More? It’s anybody’s guess, really. The time it takes to reach the destination doesn’t really give much of a hint either.

I don't see why that is a problem?
I said the overworld "let's me appreciate the scale the world is supposed to have". I did not say that it gives me a "definite sense of scale" - which I don't think it does not should require to do to begin with.

In either case, is it less or more subjective than the other abstract world-map alternatives?
In most case I would argue less, which makes this objection moot in either case.

Mayo Master said:
I think the notion of how much distance it would be depends on how it compares to something relatable – and I think most people would relate it to the scale of worlds in other games.

That would be your problem though wouldn't it?
I don't do that, so it's a non-issue for me - and gauging by the reaction to this thread, most of the other people here don't do that either.

The notion of distance to me, or how I envision it playing a game is by looking at how the various components of that game fit together internally, and then doing a little bit of common sense deductions of the subject matter based on what is likely to have been intended by the creators, which is fairly easy to do seeing as how they're likely to be working with similar frames of reference for reality as we know it, seeing as how we're all human being living on planet earth.

So even when I see Midgar represented only by a limited amount of frames, I still take notice of all the stuff towering in the background that I don't get to visit and deduce from this, that Midgar is a huge city.
I hit the world-map, and I see Midgar taking up a large amount of space on what is a graphical representation of an entire continent, and I deduce from this too, that Midgar is indeed huge.
I do not do this for Cloud's representation on the map, because I've seen Cloud's size relative to Midgar when he's inside the city, and so I realize that his size on the world-map is an abstraction allowing for ease of travel, and for the player to be able to see both him, and as much of the map as possible at the same time.

When a game, like FFX or FFXII do not provide me similar frames of reference, I am left more, if not completely, in the dark in regards to scale up until the point I receive the quick travel map, at which point the illusion of the game being in-scale is entirely broken, because I now realize that not only have I not realistically, in-scale, traveled the distance the game now tells me I have - but I was never presented with any game-play or meaningful visual cues to tune me into that fact prior to receiving the map, and that feels cheap to me.

You go on later in your post about how you don't feel like this applies to FFXII due to how the environments are designed, showing the next location looming in the back-ground, changes to the weather etc. but that doesn't cut it for me.
Not only is this not always true for the maps as they transition in FFXII, it's true for a lot of the map transitions in FFX, that for some reason don't get the same flack as FFXII, showing a decided selection bias on part of the people making the distinction, probably due to the fact that they dislike or like each game on so many other levels as well, and can compartmentalize it.

In fact, this kind of screen composition has been going on since FFVII, and the FF franchise's move to 3D, and they used a world map on top of that as well.

The fact of the matter though is that you're still left wondering to a much larger degree, what sort of distances you're supposed to be spanning between each location, you're not given any interactivity when those gaps are bridged between locations on loading screens, and you're still supposed to be running across continents/countries despite the fact that what the game-play and visual cues are telling you don't make sense of that. You're not given any sense or even meaningful interactive simulation/illusion of doing so.
FFI-IX simply went "These are world-spanning adventures, but we can't actually give you that granted tech limitations, so here's an abstraction".
FFX and FFXII went "Look at how real this is - we've made everything in scale to make things feel more immersive" despite still not having the tech to make a proper sized world, leading to my mind, to much larger cognitive dissonance.

When you run the distance from Kalm, to the Chocobo farm, through the swamp, through the cave, past the Condor Fortress, and into Junon, you're given constant close-up visual cues confirming the scale in the same way as FFX and FFXII, on top of which no arbitrary distance is ever covered during a loading screen, on top of which you can constantly move about, go off on detours, and even engage in non-linear game-play (crossing the swamp with/without a chocobo, doing the Condor mission or skipping it, getting Yuffie, or not) on what could very well have been reduced to a black loading screen on any PS2 FF game.

Mayo Master said:
On a personal level, back when FFVII was released, I did perceive the world was huge, because it was the biggest environment I got to travel in a video game.

I think you're doing the game, and your own mind, discredit if you think that's an accurate reading of what was going on in your brain when you perceived FFVII's world as being huge.

The entire game is carefully crafted to generate the illusion of size, despite being set in relatively small, divorced environments.
Its environments might very well have also been the biggest ones of any video game that you had played at the time, but they weren't the biggest ones of the time period, and plenty of people having played games with actual bigger environments, then and now, will still walk into the game and appreciate its sense of scope.

The world map is arguably a large part of building that feeling.

Mayo Master said:
Now that I’ve seen much bigger video-game environments (often describing a much smaller part of their respective worlds), the entire world presented in FFVII world map looks very small to me. In a sense, it is similar to how my perception of urban environments in video games has changed – now old-school RPG towns look pretty silly to me. For Midgar to feel “huge” in FFVII remake, it would need to be orders of magnitude larger than it was in the original.

Again, that would be due to your specific personality.
For me, it depends entirely on what game I'm playing and why I am playing it.

I didn't sense that the traditional small and unrealistic towns of old JRPGs felt out of place in I am Setsuna, which is a contemporary game.

There's a place for realism and there's a place for fantasy. There's a place for game-play systems aiming to simulate/emulate reality, and there's a place for purely abstract systems existing for their own sake entirely.

Sense of scope, or size is not somehow inherently linked to realism, nor is realism necessary to efficiently convey it.
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The entire point of this article, and most of the people who argue the merit of the overworld, is that ultimately this fantastical abstract better conveys sense of scope while providing a base for game-play, and without creating stylistic inconsistency than what some would consider botched and inconsistent realistic approaches.

Cognitive dissonance is born from elements that feel incongruent with one another, and the gap between abstractions and realism will always stand out the larger propensity of use for either one.

Ridiculous fantasy in a game that is generally ridiculous is not going to feel as inconsistent as one fantasy element popping up out of nowhere in the middle of an otherwise realistic story.

FFVII's entire presentation is decidedly absurd, unrealistic, filled to the brims with abstractions, and really, it is just totally mad.
Within that package, the "silliness of a giant Cloud walking across a miniature planet" should not seem out of place unless your view of the rest of FFVII is severely skewed by selection bias by focusing only on the serious elements of the game.

What the overworld does do though, is allow for a sense of scale, interactivity, additional exploration, and visual cues to bridge the travel gap between distinct locations - something which no other system of the time could do and could not until we finally figured out the open world RPGs of today - which I also happen to like btw.

My issue isn't with the overworld being ditched in and of itself - my issue is it being ditched prematurely long before Square had anything good to replace it with.

Going into some of the specific of conveying scale from your post though :

Mayo Master said:
One factor which is missing from the PS1-era world map is the notion of how much “in-universe” time it takes to cover distances.

Is that necessary to convey sense of scale though?

Also, from a game-play perspective - I'd still rather have a game give me an overworld, or a full-scale open world to traverse and interact with between locations, than just teleport from one area to the next ones I hit the map limit, and then get presented with some sort of symbol for the passage of time to show "how long time it took" to do something that I for some reason, as the player, was not allowed to do.

Mayo Master said:
Of course, I’m not criticizing the absence of day/night cycles in FFVII, since we began to see dynamic lighting in games about 8 years later.

You don't need dynamic lighting to create day/night cycles in games. Games have had those since the SNES days. Legend of Zelda on N64 had those.
FFVII could easily have had them to, if the devs thought it would add something of value to the experience.
They probably didn't, which is why FFVII, nor any of the following ones feature day/night cycles.

Mayo Master said:
I’m simply saying that including the notion of “travelling time” is one of the best ways to give a good idea of distances.

If you were to give realistic measures of scale to a game like FFVII using time, you'd have to spend ages on abstraction showings us the weeks and months it would take for those travels to come to an end, unless we presuppose that the world is actually really really small, or unless you're skimping on the time presentation, in which case :

What would that accomplish and what would be the point?

When I say "give a sense of scope" - this is not me saying that the world map tries, aspires to, and/or succeeds in giving an accurate sense of the size of the world.
Rather I'm talking about its function in terms of visceral estimates.
We assume it's roughly the size of an earth-like planet - we assume the the continents roughly match up with continents in the real world. That's all you need - because that's all we know.

Secondly, I'm talking about its value as a stylistically consistent part of larger game's ecosystem.
Thirdly, I'm talking about its value from a game-play perspective.

Problem is that we make those same kind of assumptions for FFX and FFXII, yet they not only do not make up that kind of land-mass in-scale, which is true for all FF games thus far, but they also don't actually present much of anything to fill out the blanks we know must exist between each map.

You might feel that they don't need to as long as you can see the edges of the next map looming in the horizon - to me however, that's not enough.
It cheapens the experience for me.

Mayo Master said:
I would think that I have been much more indifferent to the removal of the airship in later FFs than most. Fun? Sure. Immersive? No. To me, the airship had mostly the “fun” value about being able to quickly navigate with a sort of bird-eye view to the location you wanted without the hassle of random battles (and having a “mobile base&#8221. However, I didn’t find that being able to fly around the world under a minute was helping to give the world a proper sense of scale.

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Then again, nowhere did I say that the air-ship was any of those things - I was simply lamenting its removal, in fact thinking about it fondly due to how much fun I had with it, and the fact of the matter is that the overworld was what facilitated the interactive airship of FFI-IX.

I reject your distinct use of the term "immersion" though - as there are many ways for something to be immersive.
Fun is immersion.
Immersive fun, I would argue, is most of the time more important in a video-game than the sort of immersion I think you were thinking about when you wrote this post.

The problem throughout your post is that you seem to labor under the perspective that everything in a video-game exists for the purpose of creating narrative immersion, or if not, that for whatever reason, you've singled that out as a complaint to latch unto in regards to the overworld despite the fact that the article, and I, am not making an argument about the overworld resting solely on that.

It's a composite argument consisting of several different parts.
Even if it were the case that the world-map did not help people with narrative immersion in any sense what so ever, everything other function it does serve would still be true.

Here's the thing - as a gamer, I have more fun controlling a character, or a vehicle than I have making choices on a list when I could be moving my character through game space - and thus if the removal of the overworld means less interactivity in regards to moving through game-space, I consider that a loss.
Also, if it means that I'll have less reference points in terms of the world in order to deduce things like size and scale, I consider that a loss.

Now, if your means of satisfying the latter means sacrificing the former, or vice versa, that's not optimal to my mind.

That's why the overworld is great.
Having an overworld in FFX or FFXII on top of everything else would not in any way detract from game-play or the story as far as I can tell.
It would however add many things to them, improving upon the experience.

That's the end-argument for me in this regard and why the overworld was a good game-play element.

Jason Tandro · Aug 27, 2016

hian, you bring up some really fascinating points here.

I'm not being flattering here when I say I would love for you to write a companion article about this very topic.

hian · Aug 27, 2016

I'm flattered non the less.

I am however, not a particularly gifted writer - prone to abusing commas and having no idea how to make proper paragraphs - so perhaps I should contain my writing to forum posts XP

Jason Tandro · Aug 27, 2016

hian said:
I'm flattered non the less.

I am however, not a particularly gifted writer - prone to abusing commas and having no idea how to make proper paragraphs - so perhaps I should contain my writing to forum posts XP

That's what editing is for brother. :monster:

The Twilight Mexican · Aug 27, 2016

hian said:
The entire point of this article, and most of the people who argue the merit of the overworld, is that ultimately this fantastical abstract better conveys sense of scope while providing a base for game-play, and without creating stylistic inconsistency than what some would consider botched and inconsistent realistic approaches.

I think I'm primarily in this camp's feelings.

That being said, I think you guys are kind of doing the same thing to gauge sense of scale when you play while applying it to different aspects of the in-game presentation:

Mayo Master said:
I disagree, however, that FF XII felt less adventurous and immersive than its predecessors, namely because it gave a number of additional visual cues which helped building a sense of scale. The first visual cue is that FF XII showed the neighboring regions on the horizon of the zone you were currently travelling, which gave the sense of having the regions being connected, and how much distance you have to travel to get from one to the next.

hian said:
The notion of distance to me, or how I envision it playing a game is by looking at how the various components of that game fit together internally, and then doing a little bit of common sense deductions of the subject matter based on what is likely to have been intended by the creators, which is fairly easy to do seeing as how they're likely to be working with similar frames of reference for reality as we know it, seeing as how we're all human being living on planet earth.

So even when I see Midgar represented only by a limited amount of frames, I still take notice of all the stuff towering in the background that I don't get to visit and deduce from this, that Midgar is a huge city.

You guys perform literally the same cognitive process -- only with one of you applying it to the space between playable environments and the other applying it to the space within individual playable environments.

hian · Aug 27, 2016

The Twilight Mexican said:
You guys perform literally the same cognitive process -- only with one of you applying it to the space between playable environments and the other applying it to the space within individual playable environments.

Then it wouldn't be exactly the same cognitive process anymore would it?

Furthermore, it would be more accurate, if you follow along exactly what I said as you quote me, to say that I do both.

I'm also looking visual on-screen cues when I construct the sense of scale.
However, to me, in the context of FFX and FFXII, that alone is not enough - while in Mayo Master's instance, it is.
I think that means that we have a fundamentally different approach mentally to how we parse the data being offered to us by the game.

Add that to the fact that my argument is a combination of various aspects - namely how the overworld ties diretly together with game-play as well as functioning as a platform for other game-play mechanics (such as the airship) - and is also tied to how my appreciation for these outweigh my need for realism in order to feel immersed, there is an even larger gap cognitively in terms of how we approach games it would seem.

So I don't think your characterization here is accurate.

The Twilight Mexican · Aug 27, 2016

I was (pretty clearly, I think) speaking to that one element of what you had described -- but now that you bring it up, I also think it's fair to say that one element is the building block of the rest of your mental map for scale. That's where your own description of things started, with the rest building off it: backgrounds tell you the size of Midgar, you can see Midgar's size on the abstraction that is the overworld, and you extrapolate from there.

And yes, the backgrounds thing I highlighted that both you and Mayo are working with is still the same process up to the point where you deviate. Which I'd again say was rather implicit by the context of the discussion at hand, therefore not needing an explicit call-to-attention.

hian · Aug 27, 2016

The Twilight Mexican said:
I was (pretty clearly, I think) speaking to that one element of what you had described --

It seemed more general to me, since you didn't say that we share one of the cognitive processes in regards to how we asses scale or something to that effect. Rather you seemed to be saying that the process in general is the same because it shares that one facet.

The Twilight Mexican said:
but now that you bring it up, I also think it's fair to say that one element is the building block of the rest of your mental map for scale. That's where your own description of things started, with the rest building off it: backgrounds tell you the size of Midgar, you can see Midgar's size on the abstraction that is the overworld, and you extrapolate from there.

The problem is that I didn't actually do that in the sense that I think you think I did.
I brought it up in that one place you quote for the sake of providing an example of how FFVII and FFX/XII do the same thing in terms of how the maps are designed to convey scale - I wasn't speaking to whether or not I personally build off of that to understand the scale - although of course, as goes without saying, I do that too.

Even if non of the background images in Midgar had truly highlighted the scale of the city, the mass it represents on the world-map would still serve as an indicator of size, albeit less specific without that context.

The reason to say that there's a noticeable difference to the cognitive approach here though, is not just related to the discussion of scale - which is why I didn't understand the why you'd make a general remark about cognitive similarities based only on that.
But as you've now clarified, you were speaking in specifics, so there's that.

To clarify though - the reason to say that there's a noticeable difference to the cognitive approach here because one one hand you have a lot of people who reject the overworld as an unrealistic game-play relic that takes them out of the fantasy, and others celebrating it because it doesn't to them.
This indicates a very large difference in how people process abstractions in games, and what they view the intended role of various game elements to be.

To Mayo, although I don't want to speak on his behalf, I get the impression that it's important for him/her to have a game (or at least certain games) deliver an experience that isn't explicitly "gamey", lest it ruins his ability to forget that he's actually playing a game - not actually taking part in a story.

For me on the other hand - I enjoy (most) games, knowing and appreciating that they are games - not simulators.
I do not require realism in any way shape or form to be immersed, nor do I find that "gamey" elements detract from the experience - rather those elements are the experience, and the primary reason I'm playing the game.

In the context of games like Final Fantasy, granted all the other abstractions that are clearly present (even in games like FFXV), I reject the notion that an overworld should somehow represent a larger blow to immersion than anything else.
It seems like a clear case of confirmation bias at that point.
I mean, what about the weird menus you navigate half the time to stat progress your characters, or flying numbers everywhere, or the "wait mode"?
Clearly, we're playing games.

The Twilight Mexican said:
And yes, the backgrounds thing I highlighted that both you and Mayo are working with is still the same process up to the point where you deviate.

But would you not say that the point of deviation is in fact the central core of this argument and disagreement?

Would it also not be reasonable to say that this is a [not insignificant] difference in cognitive approach to how we engage with the media in question?

Mayo Master · Aug 27, 2016

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]First, just a small bit regarding one's cognitive approach and sense of scale: I believe that one's change of perception about the scale of a 20 years old video game is pretty normal, first because the scale of video games have been changing considerably over the past 20 years, second because one's sense of scale in the real world is highly likely to change over a period of 20 years (not to mention how it affects people who have been travelling to different places where the sense of scale is highly different – the “medium size” of apartments, cars, cities, t-shirt is very different whether you're in Europe, Asia or America – I think a bunch of us can appreciate that).[/FONT]

hian said:
To clarify though - the reason to say that there's a noticeable difference to the cognitive approach here because one one hand you have a lot of people who reject the overworld as an unrealistic game-play relic that takes them out of the fantasy, and others celebrating it because it doesn't to them.
This indicates a very large difference in how people process abstractions in games, and what they view the intended role of various game elements to be.

To Mayo, although I don't want to speak on his behalf, I get the impression that it's important for him/her to have a game (or at least certain games) deliver an experience that isn't explicitly "gamey", lest it ruins his ability to forget that he's actually playing a game - not actually taking part in a story.

For me on the other hand - I enjoy (most) games, knowing and appreciating that they are games - not simulators.
I do not require realism in any way shape or form to be immersed, nor do I find that "gamey" elements detract from the experience - rather those elements are the experience, and the primary reason I'm playing the game.

In the context of games like Final Fantasy, granted all the other abstractions that are clearly present (even in games like FFXV), I reject the notion that an overworld should somehow represent a larger blow to immersion than anything else.
It seems like a clear case of confirmation bias at that point.

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Actually, you're spot on about this. We have very different approaches about how we enjoy video games as a media, and as a result we do not appreciate the same things in the same manner. I prefer experiences where I'm sucked in the universe I'm playing in, and I dislike reminders that I'm playing a game. The more the gameplay aspects are incorporated within the universe, the better. Maintaining the famous “suspension of disbelief” is something I value highly. In my opinion, most “gamey” aspects are artifacts we used to have in the early ages of video games because we didn't have the means to do anything better – matching very much your statement that some could perceive “the overworld as an unrealistic relic that takes them out of the fantasy”. [/FONT]

hian said:
I mean, what about the weird menus you navigate half the time to stat progress your characters, or flying numbers everywhere, or the "wait mode"?
Clearly, we're playing games.

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]What about these?[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]First, I dislike the “flying numbers” that are used to describe damage in combat. I appreciate they had good reason to exist in early games because we didn't have better means to describe damage, but now that the devs can show visual damage on character models, using numbers feels like an obsolete gamey relic. Show me an enemy split into two, don't show me a big “9999”, for crying out loud.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Secondly, I greatly appreciate when a game takes the effort of integrating the menus into an item which has a good reason to exist in the universe in question – the Pip-Boy in Fallout, the integrated HUD in retinal augmentations in Deus Ex, or even Zack's cell phone in Crisis Core.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]And finally, it wouldn't surprise you to learn that I always play FFVII by configurating combat speed to the max, never in “wait” mode

[/FONT]

Jason Tandro · Aug 28, 2016

And the editorial is live folks.

Read the Article On the Front Page

Thanks everybody for the support, as well as the lively discussion! :monster:

Flintlock · Aug 28, 2016

Looking good :salute:

Shademp · Aug 30, 2016

A very pleasant read! Editorial link has now been added to the Reviews & Analysis page.

There are definitely pros and cons to both the overworld and the sandbox.

Editorial: Overworld: Underrated

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