User blog comment:The Joker~/TES games-Smaller and more detailed world or bigger and less detailed world?/@comment-4237253-20121204131002

Finding a good balance between more exploration and more detail is a tricky thing. Certain games, like Fuel for instance, are huge, but not worth exlporing. Then you have games like Red Dead Redemption, Just Cause 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. These game all have huge open worlds, yet they never feel empty. The first game especially has an amazing attention to detail, and the second one is chock full of things to do, places to explore, and amazing vistas to see. Hell, Just Cause 2 has an entire landmass put in there simply for the biggest and most dedicated easter egg of all time.

And then you have the Elder Scrolls games. Daggerfall was huge. It was also randomly generated, like Minecraft. As the series progressed, the maps got smaller and the amount of dungeons decreased. However, the dungeons are also hand crafted, and much more worth exploring. I would like to see more kilometres of open world and more dungeons, all of which are handcrafted, and that, I think is what we should be striving for technologically.

In the end, it's a matter of quality and quantity.