> 99.99% a me problem: I had a hard time with spatial awareness and a difficulty building a mental map of the world and my best guess is that it's because I personally found the default field of view to be too "zoomed in".

Agreed on the spatial awareness issue. I think games like Mario Galaxy are a bit better in that regard because you see more of the world at a time. In this game you can sometimes not see what's 5m in front of you.