A lot of thought has gone into the question of just what it is console
RPGs do that is so much fun.  Some people say it's the combat systems,
but even an RPG with a flat and pointless combat engine (such as Lufia
2 or Skies of Arcadia) can be considered a top-quality entry in the
genre.  A lot of people play them for story or music, but nowadays
these elements can be found in almost every game on the market.  So
what is the one thing RPGs do that no other game can do better?  They
set a scene.

No movie or book can throw the viewer or reader into a setting the way
a good console RPG can.  Even in a game where the story is linear, the
opportunity to just stop and look around gives the player a chance to
see how the game world fits together.  The place where this usually
happens is on the world map--here players can explore the world on a
scale that shows the shapes of mountain ranges, the geographical
relationships of cities and towns, the imposition of a forest or body
of water, and ultimately to give a sense of scale and scope of how far
the characters in the game have traveled.  The world map is clearly a
vital tool for an RPG to convince its players that its world makes
sense, and in this feature we explore some of the genre's most
significant offerings, good and bad.


The Legend of Zelda:

Genre arguments aside, there is no disputing the role that setting has
played in this series.  Its creators have always strived to give the
player the experience of going on a great adventure like the ones a
child fantasizes about, and the massive quantity of ancient relics and
impressive monsters have done much to convey this.  Even more
poignant, however, was the experience of traveling around Hyrule.

In the original Legend of Zelda, the player became familiar with the
world a piece at a time, seeing obstacles he or she may or may not
have even dreamed of overcoming.  Overgrown trees, giant rocks, and
vast oceans all give way over time.  The player can even come across a
system of underground tunnels, and control the winds to travel in a
heartbeat.  This approach rewarded the player for exploring
distinctive areas while only rarely forcing him or her to slog
aimlessly through repetitive landscapes.  Every single screen of this
game's world had a sense of place, as though one could picture oneself
actually being there, and nothing about this game contributed more to
its place in everyone's hearts and minds than that.

Years later, the series first used 3D graphics to provide
unprecedented realism.  Unfortunately, it was a double-edged sword.
While the Nintendo 64 allowed the various caverns and temples to be
fleshed out in amazing detail, it lacked the power to properly render
outdoor areas.  Places that had felt vast and liberating in previous
Zelda games suddenly felt claustrophobic and stifling.  Even the vast
"Hyrule Field" was just a giant central hub with nothing in it,
serving more to make it take a long time to get anywhere than to make
the journey interesting.

Much later, Wind Waker managed to convey these open areas with the
appropriate sense of majesty and beauty, but so much of the world felt
empty and without purpose that it was sometimes easy to forget the
fact.  Basically, it solved the problem of dull, confined areas while
still inserting huge empty spaces in between.  The player is left
understanding the size of the world without getting any sense of
depth.  Succeeding on both points requires a lot of time and effort
from the developers as well as powerful hardware, and Zelda's
coming-of-age has demonstrated this quite poignantly.


Final Fantasy:

Traditional RPGs such as Final Fantasy have done the most to cement
the definition of a world map.  The difference in scale is often
jarring, and usually more than a little absurd, when it comes time to
reveal the world at large to the player, but the payoff is that it can
be a significant tool for expressing the gravity of major plot events.

The best example of this is in Final Fantasy VI.  Halfway through the
game the world suffers a major catastrophe, and the surface of the
planet is disfigured.  The sky is stained red, the ocean floor rises
up, and deep fissures open up in the ground.  When the player is given
the chance to explore this new world, he or she finds a scarred
terrain where trenches are now land bridges, cities are surrounded by
mountain ranges, and everything looks and feels broken.  Without the
chance to step back and look at it all on a large scale, without the
chance to see what happened to something as constant as the
arrangement of continents, the seriousness of this pivotal moment in
the game might be lost.

Recently the series tried to shake itself up and tell a story from a
smaller scale, without a world map.  The events in the game are still
massively important and threaten the world, but to give a sense of
journey the areas are linked by roads and forest paths instead of a
world map.  The Playstation 2 was up to the task graphically, but in
the end something is lost.  To keep the story moving, the player is
almost never given the chance to stray from the road and explore side
areas.  When the characters acquire an airship, they travel by
inputting GPS coordinates on a map that does little to convey the
personality and identity of the locations one travels to.  Kingdoms'
relationships are explained, but none are as deeply felt as, for
example, the relationship between Alexandria and Lindblum in Final
Fantasy IX, which is experienced both on a small FFX-style scale and
by simply flying overhead and seeing how they would have to coexist in
a global context.


Legend of Mana/Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance:

That such wildly different games can be grouped together in this way
testifies to the absolute lack of a sense of place.  In both of these
games the player is allowed to lay out the world map by his or her
self.  This idea has potential, but it forces the developers to design
the game such that the relations of the world's locations makes no
difference whatsoever in the game.  Instead of giving the player
involvement in the world, it robs the world of any meaning, and robs
the player of anything to explore.  Stories in such settings always
feel awkward, since each region has to have its own completely
self-contained events.  In the end, nothing could be more damaging to
an RPGs presentation than a world without a unified identity.


Shadow of the Colossus:

It may not even remotely resemble an RPG, but in a strange and
powerful way no game has ever demonstrated the importance of a really
good world map like Shadow of the Colossus.  Maybe it's because of the
amazing ways in which the player controls the horse, maybe it's
because of the imagination and effort the developers put into the
world, or maybe it's just because there's so little else going on in
this game, but the purpose and effectiveness of a world map has never
been so artfully demonstrated.

Since the only tasks presented to the player in this game are sixteen
boss fights and some very simple platform puzzles, the spaces in
between were made breathtakingly beautiful.  As the player travels a
certain plain for the first or second time, he or she might be simply
impressed at its beauty.  Future journeys, however, reward the player
with a feeling of familiarity and ownership.  Every area exudes
uniqueness and personality, conveying not only the subtle history that
pervades the territory, but also what it has become over time.  In
short, it does everything a world map should do, and does it all
without really offering the player any tangible in-game rewards.

And really, this demonstrates what world maps really do better than
anything else I've said: regardless of what kind of game it is, what
monsters, relics, challenges, or rewards a part of the game's setting
offers, having a lively and consistent area for all of it to be done
in gives the player the experience of adventure all on its own.  It
all has to be done in the right context, of course.  It would be as
inappropriate for a game like Vagrant Story to give you a map of the
whole world to wander around on as it was for Final Fantasy X not to.
But whether the game takes place across the globe or in a single
blasted wasteland, simply making the setting real and convincing has
been responsible for most of gamers' favorite memories over the years.