It's such a shame. Pokemon has *so much* potential, but Gamefreak/TPC are... a bit shitty. They could take a leaf from Morrowind. Open world, but use terrain and fog to hide the limitation and funnel the players along the points of interest. Then late game let them go nuts, flying everywhere seeing the less than pretty areas. Like Breath of the Wild had some empty ugly areas, but the worse areas were off the beaten path. Also the bland areas were also usually hiding a shrine or something.