Using map designs that where plotted out earlier in the project I began to grey box the overal scale and boundaries of the world. I mostly stuck to unreal engine's preset cubes and the enviroment editor to play around with height in the game map.
One big inspiration when looking at framing sections of the map was from the recently released From Software game Elden Ring, designed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. The game doesnt utilise an on screen map during gameplay and doesnt display ui markers over areas of interest so theyre are many moments in the game where the player is introduced to new areas of the map and is given clear vistas of areas and show distinct points for the player to make the decision if they wish to explore that area.
I wanted to also capture this sense of choice in exploration so when grey boxing the main boundaries of the map I wanted to allow several parts of the map the player could get a good view of potential places to explore.
Above you can see a run through of the whole map in its current state.