Something huge about Phantom Liberty was the verticality, one of my biggest pet peeves with open world design is having an x and y axis but no meaningful z. Even having 2 stories for a combat arena dramatically impacts the complexity of encounters, not to mention how much better the environment becomes visually.
Saw a time ago people calling Yakuza open-neighborhood, smaller open areas works really well.
Another example is the Phantom Liberty compared to the rest of cyberpunk 2077.
Something huge about Phantom Liberty was the verticality, one of my biggest pet peeves with open world design is having an x and y axis but no meaningful z. Even having 2 stories for a combat arena dramatically impacts the complexity of encounters, not to mention how much better the environment becomes visually.