Most likely, especially since this is ubisoft after all, but I don’t see why this naturally follows having a hand crafted world in your line of arguments. On the contrary procedurally created worlds are usually the ones which are most prone to be huge but empty (or bloated with similar copy pasted content).
my thought process was essentially: without enormous amounts of crunch (or slave labor) to fill in these spaces, they will wind up with hand crafted-but-empty spaces if they want to launch the game on any reasonable timetable
Most likely, especially since this is ubisoft after all, but I don’t see why this naturally follows having a hand crafted world in your line of arguments. On the contrary procedurally created worlds are usually the ones which are most prone to be huge but empty (or bloated with similar copy pasted content).
my thought process was essentially: without enormous amounts of crunch (or slave labor) to fill in these spaces, they will wind up with hand crafted-but-empty spaces if they want to launch the game on any reasonable timetable