At the time, it was unheard of to think that the first time you would see the world map in an RPG was ~7 hours in. Pretty risky move, but they executed it so well.
They sure did. FF7 was my first RPG so I did not know what I was getting into. I just assumed we'll go around blowing up the Mako reactors in each of Midgar's sectors. I thought that was gonna be the primary focus of the game. How wrong was I...
I love that about FF games in general. The first 5-10 hours are literally just an excuse to introduce the real story to you. FF10 deviated from this but I thought it was excellently paced so even if you knew your primary objective pretty much from the start it was still great.