Navigating massive, open-world games like Bethesda Game Studiosā Starfield or CD Projekt Redās The Witcher 3 usually requires a shortcut to span their sprawling maps. Though you can hop in a car in Rockstar Gamesā Grand Theft Auto or travel by horse in Ubisoftās Assassinās Creed Valhalla, players often look for a much faster way to get around. And sometimes, in games like the huge RPG Starfield, fast travel is required to get from one end of its galaxy to another. Despite its convenience, fast travel can be a contentious issue in game design, and Dragonās Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno has something to say about it.
Read More: Dragonās Dogma 2 Hands-On: Weāre So Back
Pre-order Dragonās Dogma 2: Amazon | Best Buy | Humble Bundle
Dragonās Dogma 2, the upcoming sequel to Capcomās cult classic high-fantasy RPG Dragonās Dogma, will feature various ways to move around its world. While fast travel is one of them, itās not the only means of traveling, and thatās because Itsuno believes that fast travel can be boring when relied on too heavily.
āJust give it a try. Travel is boring? Thatās not true. Itās only an issue because your game is boring. All you have to do is make travel fun,ā Itsuno told IGN in a January 22 interview. āThatās why you place things in the right location for players to discover, or come up with enemy appearance methods that create different experiences each time, or force players into blind situations where they donāt know whether itās safe or not ten meters in front of them. Weāve put a lot of work into designing a game where you can stumble across someone and something will happen, so while itās fine if it does have fast travel, we decided to design the kind of map where players will make the decision for themselves to travel by bike or on foot in order to enjoy the journey.ā
Itsuno isnāt throwing shade at any one game, though the first one that comes to mind isĀ Starfield. With its thousands of largely empty and static planets, the 2023 RPG practically necessitates the use of fast travel because of the vast amount of nothingness between the floating space rocks. Unfortunately, charging your thrusters for warp speed all the time, every time, cheapens spaceās impact and limits the spontaneous encounters you could have. This is what I think Itsuno is really getting at here; fast travel impedes on emergent gameplay, an important facet of open-world game design that provides those random events that tend to stick with us long after a gameās main quest ends. In Starfieldās case, fast travel became something of a crutch for a lot of playersāmyself includedāwhich prompted Bethesda to work on ānew ways of traveling.ā
How does travel work in Dragonās Dogma 2?
Like the 2012 game before it, Dragonās Dogma 2 will offer a limited way to fast travel in the form of the expensive and rare resource known as Ferrystones. These magic rocks allow you to teleport to a Portcrystal, temporary or permanent fixtures in the world that you can spawn at in order to make getting around easier and quicker. There are also Oxcarts, wooden wagons pulled by the worldās many horned bovines, that can be absolutely decimated by any of the gameās ferocious beasts, as Itsuno explained to IGN
āWhile riding one, you might find the path blocked by goblins and have no choice but to get off and join the battle. Then as you do, a Griffin might swoop in and destroy the entire cart with one blow, forcing you to walk the rest of the way while cursing its name,ā Itsuno said. āBut none of that has been set up by us in advance. Instead, Griffins naturally have an inclination toward attacking cows they discover as they move, and these pieces all just happen to work together to naturally create the situation. So yes, an oxcart ride in this world may be cheap, but a lot can come as a result of that cheapness. I think thatās the kind of world weāve managed to create.ā
Lead developer Kento Kinoshita explained that because fast travel isnāt a major priority for Dragonās Dogma 2, there are a myriad of extemporaneous encounters you could have in the game. Goblins could destroy a bridge youāre trying to cross, prompting you to take a different path, which might see you run into a peddler who has their own motives. This kind of gameplay philosophy, Kinoshita said, was designed to give players the space to think for themselves.
āI guess we wanted there to be a cost to shortening a long distance,ā Kinoshita said. āIn a way, that strongly mirrors the real world too. There are a lot of rules in real life that are needed to make a system possible, and ignoring those rules makes things seem less realistic, or less valuable.ā
Read More: Dragonās Dogma 2 Joins A Divisive Gaming TrendĀ
Pre-order Dragonās Dogma 2: Amazon | Best Buy | Humble Bundle
The wait for Dragonās Dogma 2 isnāt much longer now. The game launches on March 22 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, so in time, weāll find out just how importantāor notāfast travel is to getting around its world. For now, Iām just stoked for the many unexpected moments Iāll have during my journey.
