Small worlds and denser stories

I recently watched the web series Suzhal - The Vortex, and was blown away. It stayed with me for a long time. Two days went by, and I was stuck relistening to its soundtrack and scenes from youtube. I felt far more connected to the plot, compared to the ones which involves International Intelligence, A global terror plot etc. 

I love huge open worlds in games. Typically when i used to choose games , acreage was one of the big factors considered. Huge worlds means lot of things to explore right !? Thats true to some extent, but then there is only so much a game/story can fit in before hitting the hard stop. Huge maps were my goto when I open a new map in OpenTTD ( Not Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam. Transport Tycoon Deluxe ). It took me a while to realize why i typically get bored after sometime with large Open worlds.

This video by Razbuten and one from GMTK ( This channel never stops giving. ) opened my eyes to why this strange phenomenon was happening. 

We typically tag a game/movie as a huge world when it involves lots of characters/ multiple cities, countries etc. But what we ultimately care about when we experience a game or a movie is the content. Our brain strengthens a neural pathway when we recall the memory related to that path. Something similar seems to be happening with stories. In a small world, there are not many characters/places to write the story with. So the entity is reused for other purposes. This seems to not only keep the entity from fading into irrelevance, but to strengthen our connection with a story.

With interactive media aka Games though it seems it is a weird mix. The number of meaningfully different interactions matter. The entity doesnt matter. But if the story has to stay then the entities have to be limited. In Deus Ex, eventhough it involves a global conspiracy and all those good stuff, the game was engaging and never allowed me to relax. There is always something to find in Deus ex. And to add to that, like mentioned in the GMTK video, the lack of a dynamic map adds to the necessity of learning the landscape better to do anything. But the story of Deus Ex consists of too many important characters, which after a certain point just renders everyone except a select few useless ultimately.

How then can we get games which are good at both ? A near perfect example is A Short Hike. The map is tiny, the characters are few. But at every nook and corner you are bound to find something. Some of the characters have multiple dimensions. What do i mean by dimensions ? In A Short hike, sometimes a single NPC can be involved in more than 1 thread of quests. In Witcher 1 , A trader can be involved in a robbery, a murder plot, a conspiracy against the king simultaneously, and asks you to fetch some flowers from an island. All almost simultaneously. Not of all of them are linked. The story feels real. Typically in open world games, all characters are very very single dimensional and they want/do one thing.

Video games have limits. Since there is a limited amount of resources, the size of the map and the content available tends to be inversely proportional all else remaining same. That is maybe why in most GTA games above san andreas, there is always places where nothing interesting is going on with repasted buildings.

Coming back to where i started from, Suzhal does this excellently. Seemingly everyone has multiple angles. Some people I talked to, about this series, were critical about some plot threads which dont lead anywhere, and the plot could have done without those threads. But in my opinion, thats real life. Not everything is relevant to the biggest plot point. And it adds one more layer of mystery. If something juicy is revealed, it remains to found whether it is actually relevant to the outcome, in addition to how it is relevant. From a shear mathematical POV, it allows the mesh density to be even more. Infact in Suzhal masterfully uses misdirection to effectively use these unclosed threads.

I used to be put off by stories with very limited scope. But with an overload of grand stories, stuff like Before Trilogy , The Man from Earth and 12 Angry Men captivate me and from time to time shape who I am.

Any other small worlds which stayed with you for a long time. Please mention in the comments. I am looking for movie/game suggestions anyway.

Thank you.