this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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I don’t get the philosophy of “good games make you want to explore instead of skipping it.”
No. If the game was 3 hours? Sure. I’ll walk every inch multiple times. But if you’re making me play 40+ hours and expecting me to travel 10 minutes to get to a checkpoint, you’re out of your mind. Even the most talented devs cannot sustain enough interesting or unique/fresh features in a game that long.
The point is that sandbox games are often filled with massive dead space to inflate the size, that fast travel is used as a band-aid for. Games like Hollow Knight make extremely full use of their space, and also give an in-game fast-travel checkpoint system, which would not be the same thing as putting tons of blank filler land and using fast travel as a quick fix.
Obviously, for players that don’t like exploring every nook and cranny of a world, fast travel should be an option. But for those who do, giant empty maps often feel like an infuriating middle finger to them specifically because most of the map is boring as fuck and the only way to tolerate it is to skip it… even though the favorite part of games to those people is normally travelling and exploring.
I mean even compare something like Gothic 1 or 2 to newer open worlds. The former have much smaller worlds, but packed to the brim with interesting content, and every nook feels unique. You get a kind of fast travel but even without it, travel doesn't feel like a chore, because there is very little empty space in the game, and even if you need to go from one side of the map to the other, it won't take you that much time.
It's much more interesting to provide an in-universe fast travel network instead of "click to go here". Silt striders, boats along the coast, trains, horse-drawn carts, whatever - then sprinkle in a handful of warp locations or mechanics. This turns your journey into a multi-legged navigation problem, which is fun. It's interesting. Which is the point of playing the game!
And then Kojima roll in with his strand type game, and everyone likes walking again.