Far Cry 4's map isn't any bigger than Far Cry 3, but that shouldn't worry you

Ubisoft’s Alex Hutchinson has revealed that Far Cry 4’s map is around the same size as it’s predecessors already-sprawling landscape.

The developer’s philosophy behind the latest entry in the celebrated open-world franchise is that of density over size, explained Hutchinson, during a chat with Game Informer. However, he admitted the studio did initially flirt with the idea of making a larger game world.

“There's always a desire to go bigger in open world games because it just feels cooler," he siad. "You know what I mean? That sense of if it's bigger then there's more to do, there's more to explore. So we talked about it a bit, but with Far Cry 4 we felt that the map size for [Far Cry] 3 was really good. Maybe you could even go slightly smaller, and instead of going bigger areas we would focus on density.

"For me it was trying to pack in more events where you come across NPCs, more events where you come across enemies doing unusual stuff. We have these new things we're calling Karma Events which are there to entice you to interact with the bad guys depending on what they're doing or help out the local populace as you're navigating the open world. They really add a sense of life and improve the feeling of density."

The creative director added, "scale-wise it's pretty much the same square footage as Far Cry 3, but we have a bunch of new traversal methods, new animals, [and] new incidents that we're packing in."

Far Cry 4 is scheduled to ship on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC in November.