I watched Maximillian dood react to the new trailer. He made a statement I hadn't really considered before, in terms of scope.
In the new trailer, you see the bird flying towards Midgar in the distance. Surrounded by a vast desert type area.
It was a "Desert" area in the old game as well. Though once you exited that scene towards the world map, it takes you around 3-4 seconds of walking until you hit grass.
Then the new "desert area" surrounding Midgar from the intro video of the remake.
In terms of size / scope, Max mentions that in FF7, you can get an airship, hold a direction, and you circle the world in around 30 seconds ish. And I remember that. Give or take few seconds, that is the scope of the world map. It really isn't that far between major areas in terms of distance once you get an air ship/golden choco.
However, going by the desert area leading up to Midgar in the new trailer, and that actually representing the crater / desert area of sorts Midgar finds itself..... Just how massive in scope is the new game?
I really hadn't considered that before. I just looked at the new trailer, saw a bird flying in a barren environment and towards a city. I did not wrap my head around that the bird flying, in an area as far as the eye can see, with a town in the distance, is the scale representation of the tiny little barren/desert area from the original that takes a few seconds to traverse on foot once on the map. Once you move forwards, I'm not even sure if you have time to trigger a random encounter before hitting grass.
Implement that size scale towards Midgar itself, and it really isn't an issue spacing that out for an entire game. As he mentions, we see small parts here and there in videos, but it's easy to lose track of how large it actually is.
It also makes me worried. I have no doubt they can make a massive city world to fit a full game/"part 1" in. But, if the above is an accurate idea of the scale of the actual world, it will be an insane undertaking in terms of development if that is the scale of the world. Especially if you're supposed to traverse that in a modern realistic setting, meaning you traverse the "world" not just a scaled down version of it with areas that zoom in. So you exiting Midgar, and running around, would make you a tiny spec on that image of the desert.
That scale can't be accurate can it?