I agree, huge open worlds are often exhausting for me, and the developer need to fill it often ends up with cheap copy and past Ubisoft methods (collectibles, etc)

If Skyrim was the size of say, Assassins Creed Odyssey, it would’ve honestly suffered horribly, largely because one of Skyrims best features was the fact that their map was handcrafted and full of detail and secrets.

Sure you can add secrets to a procgen map, but that developer process that lead to the best ones are largely gone.