New Zelda Scans: 2 to 3 times bigger than OOT

[A Black Falcon]

That all said, if the game is trying to give you some weird artsy message that can only truly be done by redundancy, go for it. Keep in mind I better really FEEL it. I'm not letting Bungie suddenly tell me that Halo is modern art for example .

For instance, P.N.03, which does great with very redundant locales... :)

And that's basically how massive expansive areas need to be handled. Make the journey itself FUN, make the landscape vary to enough of a degree that it's interesting the whole way, and throw in a lot, and I mean a LOT, of both hidden areas that are developed in UNIQUE ways (the one thing WW didn't quite get right in that area), and many interesting and unique events that happen as you travel along.

Yes... but in addition, as I said, the greater the illusion that this is really a real place, the more immersive it has the potential to be...

You know, considering the nature of this conversation and the opinions revealed thus far, I'm surprised we have yet to bring up what is basically endless similar region incarnate. Wind Waker's oceans.

It's endless waters with nothing for a LONG period of time. It's pretty close to actually being on the scale of a very small island chain. However, I actually don't mind sailing around there, THE FIRST TIME. I was very happy to get the warping ability at a certain point in the game, but I did enjoy those first moments of sailing.

WW is both an example of good scale (the size of the world feels nice and substantial... it takes time to get places. It's not a "real world", given the extreme small size of the islands, but it's close enough to not matter much, especially for a Zelda game. As for the warping, it does great... except that there is no warp close to the northwest corner, which is pretty annoying. :)

At any rate, yes, some locations are incredibly redundant in the real world. But, take some of the massive locals that are not. Consider for example being in the midst of a massive jungle (the REAL real world, try placing your boss in a situation such as THAT next time they say "yeah well, this is the real world" in response to any time you point out obvious logical flaws safe in the knowledge that you are indespensible and can at least get away with criticism), but not just that, a jungle location next to a massive upshifted part of the land forming a continuous SHEER mountain range and at a certain point, a huge waterfall. There are enough variations in the land to keep you just staring at it for DAYS, so long as you do it in such a way as to avoid looking PARTICULARLY delicious.

Would you prefer invisible walls? :) At least massive instant-mountains are a (bad) excuse for why you can't go that way... and you can't let people go everywhere, of course.

So, variation is needed in video games. I'm not asking for every single moment to be effectively a whole new game, but enough that I feel like it's all new and stuff.

Definitely, but there is a way to make a large world that takes time to navigate that doesn't feel boring, I'm sure... (that is, not all large areas need to be like Quest 64... :)) so I don't think that it's an either/or, completely. Yes, the larger you make the world the more you cut into the originality of each area, but you can make a pretty large world and still have most every area feel unique in some way... just play any decent MMORPG for proof of that.