It's also an (exaggerated) depiction of what I felt when building CT2, and have felt when looking at maps of a lot of other games with large hubs or environments - that when laid out like that, the map looks pretty simple even if there's a lot there at the small-scale level... but when the screen size is restricted, the mystery of exploration increases thousands of times, having to look around and take in each part of it gradually and build up a mental map of the entire space on your own...