Of all the value add items they used to put into RPG games, I think I miss cloth maps the most.
Begun by Richard Garriot with Ultima II, the cloth map was the physical bridge between the real world and the Fantasy world running inside your computer. Cloth fantasy world maps have fallen out of use even in limited edition games, with paper being the substitute.
The designers of Fable II for the Xbox 360 went to the trouble of designing a cloth-look map for the game, but it didn’t see the light of day even as a limited edition. They did release the high resolution source file however, and it was this file that was used to inkjet print the map of Albion onto heavy canvas to make this cloth map. The map is massive – I think nearly 2 feet to a side. The real map, had it been made would have necessarily needed to be much smaller.
