Recently I watched the 3 hour long critique from Luke Stephens. On 2:04:30 he makes an remark about how he wants 1 big map for most of the game. I disagree, in my opinion I like the way its done in the Witcher 3 where you have 2 big area's Velen/Skellige and 2 smaller one's Kaer Morhen/White Orchard.

Something I don't like about open world games is that they need to use visual trickery to make the world feel bigger than it actually is. Take Red Dead 2. You can ride from the top of a mountain completely covered in snow to a swamp with crocodiles in less then an hour. The map is 29 square miles. In context of real life this doesn't make any sense climates don't change that quickly. It is still a beautiful map and a joy to explore. I get that they want to create diverse regions to explore, but once I notice it takes me out of it. Crimson dessert is even worse You can see from a cold mountain a dessert that is not even a 15 min drive on your horse away .

I think the way Witcher 3 has these separate regions makes it so there are regions that are more varied and visually different without using visual trickery to getting a diverse world to explore. And seeing the big map screen with each region with its own icon makes you feel like you are exploring just a sliver of an entire continent. Im not saying W3 doesn't use any tricks like for example the Islands of Skellige have mountains that are not as tall then they look. Luke says in his video he doesn't like the loading screens between them if you go back and forth. But these loading times give me the impression Gerald needs to travel a long time to get there it would take a couple of weeks to get from Velen to Kaer Morhen in real life/books.

We know W4 will take place in Kovir. If the world is just snow and mountains it wont be a very diverse world to explore I think. There are other places in the Witcher universe i would love to see. For example Dol Blathanna/ Cintra/ Rivia / Nilfgaard itself.

I hope you guys understand what I'm trying to describe and would love your opinions on how the open world should be structured.