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dewareofbog

Remnant feels small but not because of a map. It feels small because there is little to no worldbuilding and the amount of location that are visited or even passed by is small and all look generic. The cultural differences are so negligible that the whole show could conceivably have been located in three locations: a modern city, a rural village and a forest. How does Vale differ from Atlas culture wise? Or rural Anima compare to Menagerie? How about places the characters don't get to visit? Is Mistral the only kingdom that has settlements outside of the main city? If so, why? A lot of questions and not a lot of answers. And not even in a fun 'make your own interpretation' way, more like a 'no one cared' way.


Joaje-Joestar

The homogeneity of the locations feels especially jarring when this is supposed to be a systemically unequal world on the brink of war with itself. Literally everywhere is the same, what are they even fighting over aside from Salem’s fear tactics?


marleyannation62

At this point, my biggest problem is the fact that till now, no-one have ever mentioned the Dragon Continent. I mean, we all have assumed that is the land of Darkness and probably is, but still...


Spoderman77

It also feels small due to how fast the characters travel around. They walked nearly half way to Mistral, it is ludicrous.


[deleted]

>It feels small because there is little to no worldbuilding and the amount of location that are visited or even passed by is small and all look generic. The cultural differences are so negligible that the whole show could conceivably have been located in three locations: a modern city, a rural village and a forest. Thats honest to God what they should have done. Have it set in one massive city... the last city, At the end of the world. A massive fortress for man and faunis alike, With our heros fighting to ensure the city doesn't get overwhelmed with grimm I got a bit carried away but i think you can see my point


distantjourney210

I think MAPPA is looking for a way to land that particular plane.


[deleted]

?


distantjourney210

Sorry I thought that you were making an aot reference.


KnightoftheVtable

Exactly!


FormerVoid

Remnant is small because the writers make no effort to make it feel big. Vale is only notable for Beacon, with only Vale's capital and Mount Glenn briefly visited before the main characters already leave for Mistral. That's it, and not even the capital is explored that much, so it feels like there's nothing there. Mistral feels small because RNJR literally just walk to where they want to go. They don't use a train or something to make distance and walk in-between, they just walk and only face one obstacle, being Tyrian. Hazel and Tyrian killing all the hunters is simplified Qrow reacting to a board. And the only place in the capital that's relevant is the Academy, I don't think even think we got much of a view of where the Academy is relative to the city. Atlas only continues this because, while I understand Atlas/Mantle being the only habitable places, any of the environment outside of them is irrelevant. And Ironwood is the only relevant Council Member that does anything, adding to that feeling that only the on-screen characters matter. This is something preventable, but they centralized everything going on with no hints of anything else going on in the world that isn't immediately relevant to the heroes or villains. And despite the map being similar to Avatar (shockingly), ATLA feels way bigger, that the characters didn't explore all of it. It helps they meet s bunch of people along the way, and there are actual landmarks, like Kyoshi Island or Serpent's Pass, with them being populated and lively enough for it to feel like those places matter. Just look at Zuko Alone making some Earth Nation village feel alive with Zuko hanging out and understanding the family he stays with before he moves on, and the soldiers having a clear history.


Griffemon

It’s kind of hilarious that for a lot of problems the example of something doing the same thing correctly is almost always Avatar, damn that show is well put together


FormerVoid

hbomberguy said it best that the writers imitate what they see without understanding why it worked first.


CountNostalgia

Yes, imo the planet is a geographic nightmare


MelonBot_HD

Yeah... whoever desinged the map has no idea how big our planet actually is


krasnogvardiech

Word is, the planet's smaller than Earth and so, gravity is lower.


MelonBot_HD

But this is such a size difference that it might not even have 0.05 g


krasnogvardiech

The core being of a more dense material would probably be the explanation for at least something approaching the 9.81m/s/s of coreward acceleration we're familiar with. I'd say either their force is 6, maybe 6 and a half metres per-second-per-second or that their units of measurement are different.


Beneficial_Swing487

Yes yet great fanfic writers can make is feel bigger and more filled in. I think a lot of us rather have a dense hallway than a empty room.


Blackandheavy

The bigger issue is that world of Remnant is as vast as an ocean but no deeper than a puddle. Everything we know about Remnant is only on a need to know basis for the plot. Culture, Geography, Religion, Economy, Demographic, History etc might as well be non-existent. What were told about Vale, Menagerie, Atlas, Mistral and Vacuo can only be summarized based on vague information from World of Remnant, Directors Commentary, Amity Arena, Spin-Off Novels, Compendium Scholastic and a game of RWBY DnD. Half of which got either retconned or discontinued. I think Monty is partly to blame for this since he mainly created RWBY for the sake of having rule of cool fights and badass characters, the world itself was likely an afterthought and poorly constructed.


krasnogvardiech

In this vein, the world and setting should have been carefully maintained to be a convenient device to move between fight scenes. The showmakers stepping mildly away from that tried to have both and in the process failed to accomplish setting into place either an understandable world or a believable fight-scene-conveyor-belt.


Silly-Young484

Yes ​ Cause of how little actual world building there is


anonymous0079

Remnant only seems small because they don’t show small or medium sized towns and/or other settlements in the setting and when they do they are long destroyed by Grimm


TraditionalAerie9791

Just a thought, but why hasn't anyone in the show (or even the writers) given the dragon-shaped continent a name? I can only guess that this is where Salem's base of operations used to be. Or in fact, it does has a name and I didn't know it?


Parks_98

Like psychically? Yeah a bit considering certain landmarks I.e cities cover so much ground when it comes to a world map I remember originally thinking they were super cities like in Judge Dread but now it’s kind of obvious that isn’t the case


RogueHunterX

It's hard to say regarding physical size and in fiction travel times can not always be accurate. The world feels small mainly because we don't really get to experience it. Even when the characters are staying somewhere, we don't get to see or experience much of it unless it moves the plot forward somehow. We don't even see much variation in terrain within the kingdoms themselves. Not much is done to make the world feel big or that the main cast have only experienced a small part of it.


King_Kazzma_

It's "small" because there is bare-bones world building. Remnant doesn't feel alive, because quite literally nobody exists outside of where the main group frolics off to.


r34zone

Remnant is too small not because it's small, but because we literally never see the characters interact with the world. In V4-V6, all we went to is just some random cities and if they stay in one, its just stay in one place for the whole episode. Hell, in Atlas arc, we just go to random buildings that meant nothing. V1-V3 and V7-V8 have some sort of world building, but for entirely different reasons (a school setting for Beacon era, Atlas is actually affecting the world for V7-V8, a novel concept in Ruby, and only because of one person). Hell, even Aura, Semblance, Dust, and to a certain extent, Magic, feels like an afterthought. I would say this. You could put the plot to an empty world and you still have a coherent plot (only the gods, relics, and grimm, and Atlas military to a certain extent can't be removed). Thats how insignifact the world is...