Brett

I respectfully, but wholeheartedly, disagree, especially as the game progresses.

Yes, it absolutely makes sense initially to not have a map; you're exploring the continent after a cataclysmic event ravaged the world, so when you arrive, it stands to reason that you have no idea of what to expect, but as you explore? I think you should unlock one as you progress; if breaking immersion is a worry, make it toggleable, so those who want to explore without it may, but the people who want and need one have it. I contend it's just as immersion-breaking to get turned around and end up wandering aimlessly around the same area, all the while getting frustrated about the lack of progress, especially in certain areas, where the terrain gets surreal and convoluted.

I see the lack of a map being a glaring oversight narratively speaking as well, especially for a group known as Expeditioners; one of their secondary priorities in these expeditions is, should their own expedition fail, is to lay the course for expeditions that come after, and considering the availability of journal logs you can find from earlier expeditions throughout the game, failing to add any sort of map anywhere seems a hideous lapse of judgment. Dozens of expeditions come and gone, but not one of them thinks to bring along a cartographer? I don't buy it.

It's also not like the development team couldn't have introduced an area map system that is dependent upon map exploration; StarOcean: The Last Hope had a system like that, where you filled in the mini-map by exploring, and that game's 15+ years old; you can't tell me that having a similar setup, possibly updating the map at checkpoint flags, couldn't have worked. Still a great game, but the lack of a mini-map is one of those rare areas where, to me, the dev team dropped the ball.