RPG World Maps
 

I notice a prevailing trend in RPGs these days, is not having a blown-up version of the world map to traverse. I'll still play the games, but there will always be that nitpick in the back of my head that, "It's just not the same, it's not like old-times."

I see this in games like Final Fantasy X, Star Ocean 3, Xenosaga Episode I, the Grandia series in general...what other RPGs can you name that have been following this trend? (Hint: They seem to all be on the PS2).

Towns are directly connected to real-size versions of the terrain, rather than having to traverse a world map to get to a specific town, field, forest, mountain, etc.

And I think that rather takes away from the geography of an RPG entirely. One of the most creative parts of an RPG is its world(s) and their respective map(s).

Demand a return of world maps to your RPGs!

On a sidenote, why not discuss your favorite/best/worst RPG world maps, as well?

Final Fantasy VII had a great world map; three continents, and they made you traverse the entire map on foot, before you could easily travel over all of it with an airship or other vehicle that allowed you to significantly bypass anything.

Final Fantasy IX had a decent world map, the Mist Continent being the most intricate, and that's probably it's only flaw; all of civilization is on one continent. You have the dwarves of Conde Petie on the Outer Continent, but for the most part, the rest of the other continents are only graced with ruins.

Final Fantasy X has been by far the most uninspired world map as of any RPG I can think of to date. It's more or less just one continent, and it significantly resembles the South American continent of our own world and time. And you don't even get to take a closer look at it, or fly over it, like they at least let you do in games like Secret of Mana.

ive just started playing FFII today and ive gone all the way through to the hero becoming a paladin. ive yet to see the world map. id really like to see one for FFII. and yes it is much appreciated when there is a world map with the RPG as it gives the game more character and realism. makes it actually seem plausible ya know.

If you think about it, Breath of Fire IV (PS) is a lot like the movement of airship in FFX, where you can skip over places, and there are no random battles between. Except, of course, rare story based cases. While I am almost totally for world map games, I do have one complaint: the random battles. They're great (what would an RPG be without them?) but on a world map, they are often even more frequent.

I think the world map actually takes away from the realism and character of the game and story. It's really nothing more than another game device standing between you and your characters, their story, and their development. Not to mention it stands between you and actually experiencing the world.

An area of green with simplified versions of your characters moving over it doesn't allow you to experience a vast field the same way as the view in FFX allows you to view, say, the Mi'hen Highroad (I probably spelt that wrong).

Granted, they could have done it BETTER in FFX. There wasn't any place you could really go, no exploring to really do in the world, until you got the airship, and even then it was pretty crappy exploring.

However, getting rid of the basic world map, and making games have more of an OoT, Fable, etc. feeling to the 'world map', instead of just the silly top down, isn't a bad thing.

It's not neccessarily a GOOD thing either. Some game conventions are fun. World maps can be fun, for instance. And I like the 'classic' RPG battle system sometimes, even though it DOES disconnect me from the action, and breaks from the story.

I guess what I'm trying to say is just that world maps aren't really superior. It's nice to have them sometimes, but the games that lack them have their own advantages over the games that have them.

I happen to like FFX's navigation system. Much of the game was based around travelling the world on foot (it's a PILGRIMAGE, not a shopping spree), and it did a pretty good job of connecting you to the people you were supposed to save, etc.

It's sad that there's no freely navigable world map, but like krylo said, everything else made up for it.

The thing that makes a world map so special, though, is that there is a lot of exploration involved, which helps hook players in. While travelling in FFX was fun, it didn't feel as though the world was a giant chest of secrets, unlike FFIX. Being able to chose exactly where to go and where to adventure gives you more control.

You didn't really have the ability choose where to go in FFIX, though. You had to go to where the next story point was. Sometimes you could go do a sidequest here and there, or you could backtrack and do random fights, but, really, that's no different than FFX.

It's just as linear, it just gives the APPEARANCE of being less so.

I would like it if they had made the personally traversible areas of FFX bigger, however, and less direct. So that you could go exploring.

But, in all the other games you only had a few dungeons you could explore, and the world map was just a link from one to the other that you got to wander around in and have random battles.

It may not be a technical "world map" but i think Morrowind got across the idea of a gigantic island and what to explore.
And besides most Rpgs today do not have the time for large world maps that you can go across.

You're spending 60+ hours on the game anyway, whether there's a world map or not. I wouldn't consider time an important factor.

Personally I prefer the world map. FFIX's world map (or maybe Xenogears') would probably be my favourite whereas Chrono Cross my least favourite. It depends on the game though. Ocarina of Time, for instance, doesn't need a world map because the game essentially takes place on a 'world map'.

Well, back on the NES/SNES, wasn't the world map more of just a way for you to see where you were going without the desgners having to make a huge amount of Bitmap backgrounds allowing you to walk from one place to another? I think world maps had more to do with having more space for the cities or other areas than because they were too lazy or didn't want to be realistic.

And now that games can be anywhere from 1.8-9 Gigs big (GC Disk-2 Sided PS2 Disk), they have the space to make the game both as realistic and as big as they want, geographically speaking. That is a HECK of a lot of a difference vs say a few Megabytes for a NES game or even something like 32 Megabytes for a N64/GBA game.

Pretty much, those old world maps were probably both a time saving device and a memory saving device, just as Sprites were to 3D polygon models. But I personally do enjoy world maps over the completely real maps because, at least in the games I have played, many of them are too big and involve going over places I've been MANY times to get back to a city (the mountains in FFX, the mountain between the Grasslands and Caleria in Suikoden III, etc.). I like the old system where you could, in many games, travel a path once and then the next time skip it if you wish.

But there are some games that make the realistic overworld thing fun and enjoyable to travel. Like Zelda: OoT or WW, Suikoden II, Final Fantasy VIII. Yeah, I know these games are debatable on the 'overworld' fact but Zelda does have a similar overworld type to a FFX in its 3D games. And FFVIII and Suikoden II (as well as Suikoden III for that matter) have the old type overworld maps, but they also have large cities and really long paths that are not 'deungeons' or the like that are really fun.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. One game I don't really remember ever having a difference between 'overworld' and walking (and sailing) everywhere was Seiken Densetsu 3. And that game rocked.