>>37273869>I think it’s SM’s fault.Nah, there was a lead-up progression to what we saw in S/M. X/Y, for instance, had incredibly piss-poor routes that were each like 20 grid units across. There's a reason they never even bothered having the map show your location other than general area, whereas in previous gens you could see exactly what part of a route you were on. Because the map they made consisted of tiny routes that don't actually connect properly at all.
And then even before that Gen 5 started the simplification with its map of Unova mostly being a straight sequence from the starter town to the E4. BW2's map was better though, to be fair. But the point is there was an incremental build-up to the corridor simulator we got with S/M.