Z-axis and overall density, really. The world is dense but with hand-placed stuff, so you never get the feeling you are exploring a randomly generated world. Every square inch feels lovingly made and with interesting things to discover.

ELEX also makes excellent use of verticality, more than any other open-world RPG I've played. I love the jetpack and think it's a must for future RPGs like this (or some form of vertical exploration ability, levitation or what have you.) Wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda brings back levitation after they've seen ELEX. :)

ELEX also obviously increases the scale greatly, but the world is not diminished in any way, actually enhanced. Gothic 3, which I've played recently, can be argued to be much emptier overall, whereas somehow PB with their 25 person team was able to fill the world with interesting things everywhere, everything hand-placed down to the coins you find in a chest. Remarkable and fascinating indeed.

Not that I'm aware of, but you can speed up the process by clicking the < > icons with your mouse at the same time you're holding down the arrow key.

Try ALT < > or CTRL <>.

In previous PB games that's how it worked.

Oh yeah, the world of ELEX is definitely more interesting than that of Gothic 3. The only thing I miss from Gothic 3 is more settlements. The ones in ELEX are certainly much more interesting though, so we got quality instead of quantity here. Would have been nice to have both.. :D

Indeed, leading to +/- 10 or 100 at a time. Doesn't work that way here, unfortunately.

Oh well, worth a try [emoji3]

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

I don't know, but anyone that says Happy Happy Joy Joy, is OK in my book. I love Ren and Stimpy you IDIOT :)

Mmm really? I admit I always failed replay gothic 2 past the first 3 plays, and gothic 1 even less.

No way I have the wide outdoor syndrome, I see the coming trend of wide outdoor games as a painful curse coming. So I have doubts it's the point.

I could be wrong, but I remind that Gothic 1&2 had an art of obstacles design that was and still is unmatched, until some DAI areas. And this point plus a dense filling are what destroy the cramped feeling and that makes an area feel a lot bigger. DOS is an half succeed example, succeed because the world feels definitely bigger than it is objectively, failed because it fails fully build the feeling it's a world more than some areas. In my opinion there's various causes:
- The task is much harder with the iso like view than the almost first person view of Gothic.
- DOS is very very far to have the same art of designing obstacles that has Gothic 1&2.
- Past first areas, no way the filling density matches Gothic 1 or 2.
- The lack of scheduling like has Gothic 1&2 diminishes the illusion of a world.

For Risen series, ok I don't know.

EDIT: For ELEX the Jetpack is a clear difficulty to design obstacles and make the world feel bigger than it is. Fly and absurd climbing and jumping is what destroyed Morrowind world feeling that at a point start feel tiny. So the world probably had to be bigger in ELEX. But I'm waiting some Po'ed clones since decades so I won't complain too much, even if ELEX will hardly match. :-) Also if really the filling density is high, it's a new thing I never experienced before, wide world always felt somehow empty, and The Witcher 3 failed avoid the feeling for me, at least overall, not for every part of it.

They fixed it in the recent patch. There are now additional arrows that will yield +/- 10 instead of 1. Works very well.