Yeah, well. A normal action adventure with not much interactivity to speak of is what I expect, so ”disappointment” is indeed out of the list. Disheartenment over wasted potential however...
The size of the map as an isolated issue does nothing, really, to me. The idea of squaremileage or km^2 kinda has associations beyond vistas and traveltimes, those two are just empty ideas alone. Although it (the map) being one singular element, it implies some heeeavy compression, which, in turn, affects the ”feel” of the place (i.e. compare the ”idea” of Night City versus what we’ll be getting... a bustling futuristic metropol versus a stylistic high tech town).
Yeah, the feel is what I'm referring to. This is why I care about this issue.
At this point (sadly), there's little about the game that truly excites or interests me, but the "
feel" of exploring what I hope to be a dense and believable futuristic city is still something I look forward to. Hence, I'm back and mostly hanging out in this thread. I'm pretty tired of the usual gameplay/mechanics discussions now. Maybe for the next CDPR game.
I don't care about the size alone, but it's what the size implies or brings with it. If the city is large, perhaps a bit smaller than Velen+Novigrad in the Witcher 3, I think we will have a lot of interesting areas to explore and atmosphere to take in. Short of in-depth gameplay and interactivity, this is at least something new that few other games do (not even GTA V or 4 had cities as apparently large and dense as this).
If it's very small, as you said, it will feel compressed and that will negatively impact the feel. As much as I want to believe Rawls' opinions on the map size are accurate, there are too many things that make me feel otherwise, and I think the map size will be much closer to what we saw on the World Book map.
So... We'll see. I care about the map size insofar as it affects my suspension of disbelief. As its own thing, as a number on a piece of paper or as a point of bragging/comparison between other games, I don't care at all. But if this city doesn't impress me, I have zero interest in playing the game.
This is one scenario where reviews (video or written) will be helpful.