>>713453891
I also thought the open world areas were full of well designed segments. I can actually recall what I had to do in many areas of the open world areas because the activity felt distinct, even if the pieces were reused. From The Great Desert, I remember:

>trying to reach Abbadon on the roof
>the lone turret protecting the ship in the Northwest
>the fight with quest fight with Behemoth
>the hypertube entrance
>the small fishing hole at the bottom of the hypertube
>the ruined spine splitting the desert in half
>the rope swinging sequence near the end of the spine
>the solar tower and fight with Stalker
>the opera house
>the weight puzzle next to the opera house
>the singing angel hidden in the highway tunnel
>the ruins gated a fence, quicksand and hidden bombs (pic related)
>the hideaway for the nanosuit designer on the outer wall of Xion
>the enemy rush fight near one of the camps
>the lone escape pod in the West of the map
>the location where the Xion refugees met their fate
And a variety of smaller experiences scattered throughout The Great Desert.

The way I think about it, it seems the developers created the smaller segments and then stitched them all together rather than creating the open world area then trying to fill it in with content. The latter is what I've often experienced with open world games, where they create this massive world for a sense of scale, but end up using a lot of copy/pasting to fill it up with content to meet deadlines.

They could have made The Great Desert bigger. They block us with a sandstorm effect once your reach the edge of the map. The map itself is not that big. So, it was probably a conscious decision to keep the map relatively smaller compared to other games so the content felt more immediate.