>>39230129No, I'm talking about something like Xenoblade. While the areas are huge, the game is still linear. Here's one area in the game. You can't access it until you progress the story in the previous arena. Once you do access it, you enter from the top-left (where the arrow pointing up is.) and you can't go to the next area until you progress the story, but you're still free to roam this large area, find secrets, do side quests, etc. instead of a small corridor.
Pretty much what
>>39231035 said; make the roads huge, but keep them as roads, don't let the player go to a late-game area from the start. This helps keep a better sense of progress and also doesn't hinder the game with the "empty with no content" shit that plagues open-world games.
