Wow, the ENTIRE massive ocean of Windwaker with all the islands loads faster than single rooms for other games. And then zipping around it so fast from the sky, all the islands seems so small compared to how big it all felt playing the game as a kid
I was also surprised about how "small" Kakariko willage from OoT was. But I guess that's some of the cleverness of the time. Make something small, but fill it and make it feel alive.
It's really crazy what camera angles and clever design can do. Check out GTA San Andreas for what I feel is the best explanation of this - the game felt enormous when I was a kid, but when you see the actual true size of that map, it's pretty damn small.
"Big" and "small" are funny terms when you talk about computer graphics. A surface 10 units long is short if your character moves at 10 units per second. It's long if your character moves at 1 unit per second.
You can easily see the entire GTA map and it might seem small, but if you place the camera at street level I think it's clear the map is rather big.
