Ok, all I want to comment on is where you mention Dark Souls. In Dark Souls 1, if you saw a place, you could go there. Not so much in DS 2, but still to some degree. I agree with the Zeropunctuation review for Dark Souls on Youtube in that it should be a rule in video games that you can only put things in your skybox if the player can go there. As Yahtzee said, "games like Syndicate would look like they took place inside a ping-pong ball while Dark Souls would be laughing because if you ever see a distant ruin or tower you'll eventually go there"