Fast Travel Is a Plague
Jun. 25, 2016Fast Travel Is a Plague
Fast travel is a plague. Now, before completely dismissing this idea, hear me out. I’m actually not talking about all fast travel, just a specific and unfortunately very common kind of fast travel.
We all know the kind. The “once you’ve been somewhere you can teleport there and back basically at will”kind. You may be familiar with it from such small indie titles asFallout 4, Skyrim,Dark Souls 2, Dragon Age Inquisition and Fable 3. What’s the problem? It cripples world design. It’s actually a piece of a larger problem related to convenience at the cost of game design but that argument is for another time and venue. Still, it’s a big and deceptively complex statement, so let me unpack it.
The first thing it does, is free the developer from having to consider how people (both NPCs and the player) actually get around in their world. If you’re just going to teleport everywhere after being there once, all that effort worldbuilding is basically wasted. Some developers will do it anyways (Obsidian for example) but in my experience most won’t, or won’t do as well. It reduces the world from a living and mostly coherent thing to a big themepark.
Take for example, Skyrim. Ask yourself, how does Falkreath transport lumber as they say they do, and who in the towns they apparently ship to receives it? Only a couple of the major towns have nearby mills to get that lumber to a usable state, and nobody in the towns appears to be running the a construction company that would be buying it. Considering the civil war, why are all the trade routes not well guarded but instead infested with bandits? Trade routes are literally the most important aspect of maintaining an army. Why the nitpicking? Because Skyrim presents itself as a living breathing world, but can’t be bothered to commit to asking what should be some pretty serious questions. What it is, is a series of important landmarks that have something to do in them that have been hotglued to a map will only the thinnest possible interest in establishing how the world actually works. Why? I’d argue that it’s in large part because the player isn’t required to interact with the world in the same way a person living in that would would be.
Now let’s look at Morrowind. You don’t get to teleport anywhere you want at a whim. You have to take the same buses and boats everybody else has to. Unless you like being mauled to death by daedra or bandits, you also have to take the same major trade routes that people actually living in the world would have to (for the same reasons.) This forces the devs to actually think about how people and supplies get from place to place. After all, if they want to ask the player to behave in a way that would be rational for someone living in the world, they have to know whatisa rational way for people in that world. Obviously there is still plenty of room for lazy shortcuts, but it’s still a fundamentally different mindset. Bandits don’t just live along major trade routes where guards would quickly catch on and eradicate them, they live on more minor roads or a good ways off the major road, because if they want you to use the main roads like a real person they can’t throw hoards of bandits at you for doing so. As a result of the different mindset, I know how the netch leather gets from Vivec to Balmora. I know who makes it and who buys it, because after bothering to figure out where the major trade routes are in order to inform the world layout and encourage the player to use them it’s very little effort for them to throw in a couple NPCs who’s jobs it is to make and buy that leather.
Second, and related but different enough to be worth mentioning, it undermines attempts to encourage exploration or take the world seriously. In Dragons Dogma, I know where every lich, ogre, cyclops, chimera, hydra, drake, golem, and bandit camp is. I know if they can be avoided and how they can be avoided safely if so. I know the shortest route to every rest stop from anywhere on the map and I know the shortest route between every rest stop. Why do I know all this? Limited fast travel. The world is dangerous, and I have to walk everywhere. Perhaps counter intuitively, this encourages exploration. Oh, you might die if you go exploring, but secrets like shortcuts that you could find if you don’t die are suddenly extremely valuable, as any Dark Souls fan is probably well aware.
When you combine all these aspects of theany time you wantbrand of fast travel, you end up with comparatively shallow and poorly thought out worlds that devalue and discourage exploration and lasting familiarity with ones environment. The reason I say it’s a curse? Because when the game is built with it in mind this is almost always what happens. As a person who thinks world building is one of the most important parts of games that present worlds and level design is the one of the most important parts of most games, it single handedly ruins a lot of games I might otherwise enjoy. It keeps springing up in games I’d argue it has no place in, complete with all of the problems I’ve mentioned.
This isn’t to say it’s automatically bad and always ruins games. Fallout New Vegas has a painfully detailed world and either makes the map marker an area to search or uses misleading markers often enough to help make up for where it falls short, and it uses the lure of finding a vault and promise of treasure to help as well. In games like Borderlands it doesn’t really matter, they aren’t asking you to take the world seriously as a place, it’s a playground for interactive gunporn.
What I am saying is thatit should not be built into the game as an alternative to actual world or level design. I honestly wouldn’t mind a remake of Morrowind or something that had thewhenever and wherever you wantfast travel, provided it did not come at the cost of the rest of the experience and the properly integrated ways of travel and navigation that are already there. I wouldn’t use it, and I’d go so far as to mod it out so I wouldn’t be tempted to use it, but it wouldn’t hurt me. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of a single game that is built so fast travel (or those damn compass markers that have similar problems) never feels necessary because there are well considered ways to navigate the world without them. Even New Vegas falls short in that area. You can actually see where the level design takes a hit in the firstDark Soulsonce you have the ability to fast travel.
Seeing as I’m apparently forced to make a choice between 2 extremes, I’ll go with no or extremely limited fast travel and properly built games every time.
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20 something years old, living in the western United States. I enjoy wrestling, jujitsu, snowboarding, manga, anime, movies, card games, board games, video games D&D, ect. Also food.
I like Red Dead Redemption style – it takes some work to actually do it and time travels accordingly.
EDIT: Crap time to fire up my NEW PS3 (got it for Demon’s Souls) to play RDR.
That is not a good argument. You can physically see the comparative lack of effort that is put into being able to get between areas/bonfires quickly because of the fast traveling. I can “just not use them” but the game was specifically designed for them to be used and so other methods of travel are cumbersome. DKS3 is more or less structured like Demons Souls, but with more checkpoints, so it can sidestep the problem (to an extent) simply by being fairly linear.
I detailed that problem in the article. In theory, we can all get what we want with a game designed without fast travel in mind that then layers fast travel over it, but nobody really does that.
There are about a dozen different ways to move extremely quickly in Morrowind. The starting walking speed is perhaps overly slow, yes, but there isn’t exactly a lack of options for moving quickly. You can boost acrobatics to jump everywhere (which is faster than running, oddly,) you can fly, you can boost your speed stat directly, you can keep intervention scrolls on hand to warp to the nearest temple (which usually have a ferry service, mages guild teleport or bus stop near by,) ect. It just comes at a cost.
My favorite are the boots of blinding speed. 1 counter spell later I have some or all of my sight back (they litreally blind you, in case you aren’t aware) and so get to run around way faster than anything that doesn’t fly is capable of moving.
I do kind of agree with this. Though many people find it better, I did not like Dark Souls 1 not having fast travel until half way through the game. The argument usually is that forcing the player to backtrack gives it a sense of meaning and importance in being prepared for long treks in the early part of the game. It allows them to familiarize themselves with the game world, and stops them from just skipping over significant parts of the game. To me though, it just makes for boring tedium. I already went through the level, beat all of the enemies, and found everything. Walking through an area with absolutely nothing to do but walk is just boring. I JUST NEED MORE MOSS DAMMIT!
The bonfires are there, it’s a key part of the Dark Souls franchise at this point. You don’t need to use them, they’re just there to help you get around the world easier, like what air ports do. You can easily explore the world through the multitude of playthroughs.
Y-y-you can move in Morrowind? I always thought pressing W did nothing! Oh my God!
Th only reason I don’t like the limited fast travel in Morrowind is because of how movement works. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo sloooooooooooooooooooow. If that isn’t the case however, I wouldn’t mind limited fast travel. As long as my character can move effectively on his own two legs, and there is a mount or vehicle I can access, fast travel limited only to a few landmarks and cities is like limiting a car’s mobility by taking off the hood ornament to me. If you make a game with an open world, it should be interesting to explore, and to re-explore once you’ve been there.
It should also be fun to traverse, like Five says. The Infamous games made running through the world awesome.
Linear level design FTW! No fast-travelling, no back-tracking, no questions!
Seriously though, either open-world level design goes towards:A- Tight, sleek design in which shortcuts are everywhere and nothing’s too far even without them. Having the multitude of linear routes we see in DkS2 or DkS3 is just really fricking cheap.B- Actually good random encounters systems, so that even if we’re going through a boring place, we might find something interesting. Just imagine walking through Falkreath and randomly seeing Sheogorath hugging a huge cheese.C- Infamous, basically.
Couldn’t agree more and surprisingly elder scrolls online adheres to the morrowind style of fast travel over the skyrim style.
Can I port anywhere I want any time I want? Yes. Will I soon be broke and unable to repair my gear because each port from the middle of nowhere increases the port cost. However, if I walk to the town I can port for free.
This isn’t AS well incorporated as in morrowind, but it’s a big step in the right direction.
You are encouraged to walk everywhere and towns are destinations. Furthermore, they took the time to consider the environment and what would be needed for a thriving city to occur.
There are trade routes, you meet merchants taking their goods between cities, you see bandits JUMP the merchants, wealthier merchants have guards to fight the merchants… the devs actually thought about and did a great job.
