I appreciate how Kingdom Come Deliverance handles fast travel.
The further you travel the more likely shits gonna get fucky on the way
I’m currently playing The Outer Worlds on the hardest difficulty which, among other things, disallowes fast-travel. For the most part, the worlds have been small and it hadn’t been a problem, but yesterday I had to go back and forth to 3 locations several times in a row in different corners of the map. It only took a five minutes each time, but ugh. It got old.
This was me with Horizon Zero Dawn. I finished my first playthrough without ever fast traveling. Then after the credits rolled I spammed it.
No ragrets. Was fun.Same.
But that’s why good fast travel is important. Once you’ve seen the world, you can skip the stuff you’ve already done.
But even more important is a world you want to see so you don’t want to fast travel at first.
Looking at you, Starfield.
And if you do have a shitty world, make sure the fast travel is actually fast.
Looking at you, Starfield.
Fast travel is a symptom of poor game design so don’t feel too bad
Bingo.
Fast travel remains a staple mechanic because game devs:
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Often can’t figure out a way to make travel itself into a gameplay mechanic or experience that is varied and interesting.
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Keep designing checklists of things for the player to do, with games built around them, as opposed to inverse of that… which trains players to just be checklist checker offers.
There’s no point to having an open world if it is not engaging or interesting, so… when your open world lacks depth, you end up in a nonsense situation where you have a poorly designed feature, with essentially a ‘skip’ mechanic for said feature.
… Why bother with the feature, at that point?
Hell, even the Rockstar games would give you interesting dialogue, in transit… not really gameplay per se, but it is generally engaging, can help with action intensity pacing, and of course, give you the story.
There are so many ways you could gameify or at least make travel itself more interesting.
Do that, and fast travel becomes near totally pointless.
Yeah but a realistic open world is boring as hell
Even in real life you have hours of a road trip to get anywhere and you stop and piss a few times until you finally get to your real destination
So games can’t do a lot when basing around that
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I almost never fast traveled when I played Skyrim. To busy exploring every random cave and building along with climbing random mountains because why not.
The mountains I managed to clip my way up… I spent way too much time doing that. Climbed the “Throat of the World” before I got the shout that would clear the wind barriers—because why not lol
I didn’t fast travel except all the treks to and from High Hrothgar. That got old quickly.
Pretty sure I went there once in all the time I played Skyrim.
From what I remember if you did all the Greybeard stuff you were up and down there many times.
First to meet the Greybeards After the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller The Civil War meeting
That’s just off the top of my head having not played Skyrim in yonks
Would be a great name for a dispensary
There is one in my area called Skooma.
I tried that and gave up after being attacked by five bears within the same quarter mile stretch of road.
Get stronger or stay at home.
Morrowind was perfect without fast-travel. You had to come up with creative solutions. On the way to Balmora and don’t want to hike through the ash hills? Just use the spell Waterwalking and use the river as a convenient highway.
Use Divine Intervention to teleport to the next temple in a town, then use the siltstrider to travel to the next city or boats to go alongside the coast. Mage Guild offered teleport devices to other cities. The Spells Mark and Recall did the rest.
That’s the trick to Morrowind. It does have fast travel, it’s just integrated into the world building much better. Between Silt Striders, Boats, Mage Guild Teleportation, Mark and Recall, Intervention spells, and things like Levitation and the Boots of Blinding Speed, you can actually often get around the map faster than in later games (just watch a Morrowind speed run). But to do so you needed to build up both your character, and your own knowledge of the game world.
Fast Travel wasn’t some feature that broke immersion to add convenience, it instead added to both. It enhanced the feeling of exploration, and character progression, while teaching the player about the world.
Until I played Morrowind, I had no idea that planning your commute to work can actually be fun. “Wait, so if I take the StriderBus to there I can transfer onto the MageMetro and then it’s a straight shot over the hill to my destination? Amazing!”
That being said, first mod that I made for Morrowind back in the day, was an extention of the transport network, with a bunch of teleportation points, and random silt strider stops all over. As much fun as it was to jump around, it gets old eventually
I’ve been hooked on Dragon’s Dogma 2 for a bit now.
I haven’t even used a fast-travel item because world traversal and exploration is so much fun. It’s a game that actually uses it’s open world as something other than an overworld to move to the next quest.
I’m practically allergic to fast travel, no matter the game. I don’t play games to “get through them”. If I’m playing something where I’m that bored with traveling in an alternate universe, I should probably just pick another game.
I take transit in Cyberpunk and it makes the world feel way more alive. Downtime is something some games are entirely built around so the moments of action have that much more impact. I admit some games do this poorly, but those are ones I typically just avoid in the first place.
I like when my games feel more like roleplay and less like an action movie.
Wait, does this mean they got the train working?! I haven’t played since early on.
Yes! There is so much they’ve added since launch. You should absolutely replay.
Ok, I really should. It was a major disappointment when I played at launch and looked everywhere for how to board the train and couldn’t find it.
Depends on the game, is travelling fun and/or the world interesting to look at? I never used fast travel in Spider-Man.
