>>39050430In part because it would be.
You can do open world without this kind of garbage.
All open world requires is freedom to move about what does exist. It doesn't need to be a giant square to do that, that just means no matter what you do you're going to leave parts of the world feeling empty.
Which is fine for something like Breath of the Wild if you're not a retard who understands the world has been fucking destroyed for the last hundred years with little to no real leadership and would therefore obviously be pretty fucking empty but Pokémon has no reason to be that way.
Better that the general experience be open among specific routes etc. than there be no routes.
The routes still basically being big squares at non-90 degree angles is part of the problem in S/M.
If they had just used what they had and didn't drag you along by the hand, they would've been much better games.
And US/UM could've done it even better given the base story
https://pastebin.com/raw/JFHUwZjV.
