Ubisoft is effectively dead
(twitter.com)
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You only played through the Mass Effect games once? I know I played them multiple times. The Witcher 2 was a game I played through probably 10 times, but only played through TW3 once. I played Dragon Age Origins multiple times... and I'm sure I've played through many other 15+ year old RPGs multiple times.
Even if you want to be more generous and mention more semi/smaller open world games. I've played through the Yakuza games multiple times, which features smaller hub based cities. Kingdom Come Deliverance (1) is an example of a smaller open world that I enjoyed replaying, but that was at about the limit of what I would want to deal with in an open world. IMO, big for the sake of big is just stupid and a waste of time/resources. I'm not against smaller open world games that can keep the world dense and interesting.
For RPGs, if you make the player's choices matter, and have decisions change the world then you can play easily make hub based games replayable. If you must have an open world style game, then making the world smaller and more intimate is a better design choice. Filling open world games with countless travel hours does nothing to improve the experience to me. I'd rather spend hours exploring every inch of a city than going there just to receive some quests, then being forced to go somewhere else, come back, get a new quest, on repeat. For example, Citadel in Mass Effect is probably one of the most memorable RPG locations I can remember. I can also probably play through Flotsam in The Witcher 2 or even Vizima in The Witcher 1 blindfolded (exaggerating obviously). There's nothing like that in these open world games.
I find that most of these larger open world games lack any memorable locations because every new location is just another quest giving hub with little to do because the game requires you to experience the rest of the world that the devs spent countless hours building. It also ruins the focus of the game. I'm not saying some devs don't ever pull it off, but it's rare IMO. Everyone wants to try to do it, but most can't.
You aren't asking for once a generation series like Mass Effect. You are asking for more games like Max Payne (10.6 hours on a blind playthough) Max Payne 2 (7 hours), The entire FEAR series which are all less than 5 hours. Or the Original Ghost Recon series which are also all less than 5 hours.
Also you contradict yourself
The Citiadel is exactly that kind of location.
I'm not asking for 10 hour games. I'd rather 30-40 hour games (like Mass Effect). When I say hub, I mean games where you spend a long period of time in a single area exploring, getting quests, doing quests in the vicinity of that area, etc. before progressing the story to the point where you then move on to a new area. Some games do this with acts that keep in that one place until the act is complete, others allow you to explore a limited amount of locations until you need to move on to new places as the story demands.