Yeah, I have to add locked doors on the houses to prevent entry excepting the ones that will be occupied by NPCS. As far as playable area reduction, I was thinking to reduce to 1/2 and 1/4 and see where the balance point is between the feeling of expansiveness of landscape I am going for and the cost to render. You're right though, as it is now it is needlessly large. The empty space between the houses is accurate to the region the area is based on (I took a little field trip) so I probably don't want to change that for authenticity sake.