Small Charlie

I hope that the win for Astro Bot taught developers one thing - it’s not always about big open worlds. We enjoyed linear adventures with tight controls and events the director of the game wants us to experience in the game. We don’t care how big the world is - it needs to be fun first and foremost.

Older games didn't have reflections, if was simply a sort of bitmap of your character's avatar put in a specific place in the render, almost like another NPC. Today, that will just look stupid, and making your character "reflect" and look realistic will take a helluva lot of processing power.