>>54768762I'd say it felt more like the game had a lot more roads. A lot of the activities are really empty and poorly scripted.
Like the two castles and the Snorlax. It's three old gimmicks: poverty facility next to lavish facility (Saffron gyms), chase the Pokemon around the bush maze (Illex Forest), and using the key item on the roadblock Pokemon (Snorlax). The difference is these set pieces were all independent of each other, designed to be accessible at multiple progression points, and we're very short. X and Y has two big routes and nothing to do on them aside from the first gimmick. But then they realize there's nothing interesting about the two castles, so these other two gimmicks are attached. But there's no reason to interact with any of it aside from Snorlax, so it becomes a linear sequence of events the player is forced to go through. Now that the player has no options, the content is shallow. So there's a lot of "stuff", but nothing to engage with.
TL;DR, the game has more physical locations early on, but those areas are still as empty as the rest of the game.
