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[Gojiira]

No, thats fucking stupid. Is he saying Elden Ring is boring? What a muppet. If he expects me to walk areas I already walked for hours than I wont be playing ur game no matter how decent it is.

Are you dense? Elden Ring literally follows the same structure for travel he’s advocating. On foot/on mount when exploring, fast travel is only to places you have already been but in DD it requires a finite item…Fucking moron

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Did you play FFXI in its heyday? There was a whole player economy built around travel.

You could either:

• Take airships/boats
  • They ran constantly on a real time schedule so you had to catch it on time and the ship traveled in real time. There were even RNG events that would happen on the boats with hidden 'notorious monsters' and encounters (like ghost pirates).
• Teleport to Outposts
  • You had to have visited and completed a mini quest to be able to do this, while your nation controlled the area. Areas could only be controlled if there was a concentrated effort by players to "own" the area by various methods or just by people from your nation gaining a lot of XP in that particular area. This made it very rare to have the outpost teleport for the areas bordering other nations, for instance.
• Teleport spells
  • These had a whole economy built around them, where people would level the jobs and then sit in towns waiting for people to request a spell (kinda like portals in WoW) for in-game currency.
  • Black Mages could cast "Warp" and "Warp II". Warp was a mid level spell that would let you instantly return to your home point (you select it by touching crystals located around the world, and can only have 1 home point at any given time). Warp II would let you cast the spell on others. Many players would level black mage just for the first spell to go back to their homepoint for free
    • It's worth noting that in other games, players would just suicide to go to their home point, but when you died in FFXI you lose a hefty amount of xp and can actually level down, eating hours of progress in just a handful of deaths. Some players did keep level 1 jobs just for dying and home pointing with them.
  • White Mages could cast Teleport to any of the teleport spires they had already visited AND leveled up enough for AND bought the (somewhat rare at the time) scrolls to learn the spells. There were 5 or 6, I think. From there, at each spire (and at every nation and various other locations) you had an NPC that provided...
• Chocobo riding
  • Bought from NPCs for certain amount of gil (gold). You could ride for a long time limit (50 mins I think?) but once you got off, the Chocobo was gone. While you were mounted, you couldn't be targeted or attacked, but if you stood near AoE attacks, you could get hit and knocked off your chocobo, making you lose it. They also could not enter caves or areas that weren't considered "overworld".
• Job skills
  • Some players would level jobs like Bard or Thief just for the skills/spells that would allow them to run faster. In addition to travel, it also helped them 'claim' superbosses and other monsters that had valuable drops.

The crux of why these worked was because the world of FFXI was extremely dangerous. As I mentioned above, you could lose XP and level down from dying, and monsters even 20~ levels below you could kill you if you ran into too many or were unprepared for the mechanics. Not to mention that monsters never lost agro at that point in the game, so they would literally chase you across the map until you died.

All in all, it combined for just a super satisfying system that the danger made each of the options something to consider to even GET TO the place that you wanted to play that night. I think Dragon's Dogma's world, while not nearly as dangerous as FFXI, does enough right that it will make the travel worthwhile, for similar reasons.

Damn that ended up being much longer than I was planning. I fucking miss peak FFXI so much...

While I do have some good memories of FFXI in it's heyday, I'm much older now and have no desire to return to that today. Were I once again a teenager with absolutely nothing to do with my time, sure. But now? No fucking way. FFXI was a game built entirely on the mechanics of sucking all your short mortal lifetime away.

 

[KungFucius]

"Travel is boring? … It's only an issue because your game is boring." - Hideaki Itsuno

• You have your standard on-foot travel. This is how you explore the world, and is the bread-and-butter of traversal in general.
• Oxcarts are a mid-tier of travel introduced in DD2. It's faster travel along linear routes, and is cheap to use. However, you're vulnerable to dynamic encounters, such as Griffins predisposition to preying on Ox's; in a worst case scenario, the cart could be destroyed leaving you to stroll to your destination.
• Ferrystones & Portcrystals return in DD2, as expected, and are the most expensive mode of travel but carry no fluff. A to B, instantly, no risks; just costs.]

Article

I can't remember having issues with DD, but as Starfield has shown us, a game built entirely around fast travel does get old quick.

 

[bbeach123]

DD's Portcrystals system actually great .

Except they gave you too little portcrystal at the first 50 hours/ first playthrough .

When you get like 5 port crystal and make your own fast travel system its actually feel so fcking good .

Hope they give you more port crystal in this game .

 

[Pejo]

While I do have some good memories of FFXI in it's heyday, I'm much older now and have no desire to return to that today. Were I once again a teenager with absolutely nothing to do with my time, sure. But now? No fucking way. FFXI was a game built entirely on the mechanics of sucking all your short mortal lifetime away.

Understandable. There's definitely a trade-off for having a rich game world that really immerses you and has severe penalties/consequences. I myself probably wouldn't have the time or patience for that era of FFXI right now, but I can say it was a gaming experience that I'll never probably have again, and I'm glad that I got to play it during those days. Anyways, I don't think DD2 is going to be nearly that punishing or demanding of the playerbase, even without ferrystones.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Are you dense? Elden Ring literally follows the same structure for travel he’s advocating. On foot/on mount when exploring, fast travel is only to places you have already been but in DD it requires a finite item…Fucking moron

Your reading comprehension is moronic.

 

[masterkajo]

When you travelling to new area for the first time its super fun to travel on foot or mount but if you already fully explored the area and you want to go back for quest or item you forgot to get then there is nothing wrong with fast travel.

But that is just it. It is boring to go back there because you know exactly what to expect and nothing new comes of it. That is how games have always been. This is what should be challenged. When you go back to get an item that you "missed", than maybe you find, see and meet new stuff along the way. This would solve the "boring" problem and make the world feel alive.

 

[consoul]

No, thats fucking stupid. Is he saying Elden Ring is boring? What a muppet. If he expects me to walk areas I already walked for hours than I wont be playing ur game no matter how decent it is.

You didn't read the article.

FYI, he's not saying fast travel is bad. He literally says "it’s convenient and it’s good." They just wanted there to be some cost to shortening distance travel in their game.

 

[sigmaZ]

"Travel is boring? … It's only an issue because your game is boring." - Hideaki Itsuno

• You have your standard on-foot travel. This is how you explore the world, and is the bread-and-butter of traversal in general.
• Oxcarts are a mid-tier of travel introduced in DD2. It's faster travel along linear routes, and is cheap to use. However, you're vulnerable to dynamic encounters, such as Griffins predisposition to preying on Ox's; in a worst case scenario, the cart could be destroyed leaving you to stroll to your destination.
• Ferrystones & Portcrystals return in DD2, as expected, and are the most expensive mode of travel but carry no fluff. A to B, instantly, no risks; just costs.]

Article

Hmm... This game does seem to have fast travel, just one that's not free, which I'm fine with. I don't agree with the no fast travel ever arguments in the comments though.
Fast travel can improve the game in several ways:

1. Time Efficiency: There are far too many content filled games out and a large share of the single-player gaming market is made up of people who work full-time and have life obligations. If basic traversal unnecessarily eats away at gameplay time it may make certain games more inaccessible or kill the pacing. Remember traditionally that games are level/stage progression based so that you keep pushing forward until you beat the game. With a lot of modern games a huge part of total gameplay time is traversal which leads to the next reason.
2. Gameplay Variety and Pace: Fast travel contributes to a balanced gameplay experience. It helps maintain the game's pace, preventing it from becoming too monotonous or tedious. This is especially important in large open-world games where the distance between key locations can be quite significant.
3. Player Autonomy: If you don't want to use fast travel, you don't have to. Most open world games are not made with enough unique or dense content to warrant the lack of it. BG3 for example is one of the densest when it comes to recent games and it gives the player total freedom when it comes to fast travel, vastly cutting down on a game that already spans over 200 hours. I personally couldn't stand the lack of fast travel in Cyberpunk, but fortunately there was a mod to address that which greatly improved my experience with the game.
4. More Motivation to Explore: Knowing that you can fast travel back to places later can actually motivate you to explore more as you can pause exploring one part of the world in favor of another. Combined with the flying and physic mechanics, this vastly improved my experience with the recent Zelda.

Yeah exactly. The game should just automatically fastforward through encounters with enemies too, so I don't have to sit there and spend time fighting them. You should also be able to just click a button and have the best gear/build for your character, who has time to waste thinking about that shit? It'd be nice too if in story heavy games, they just summarised the story down to a few paragraphs at the start so I don't have to watch all the cutscenes.

Reductio ad absurdum - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[darrylgorn]

Yes, Ocarina of Time was a boring game and that's why it needed fast travel.

 

[BlackTron]

What's wrong with giving the user options. Use it, don't use it. At long as you choose how you want to play.

I believe in giving options like, the options menu. When it comes to game design, there might be an actual reason they do or don't want you to do things a certain way. Fast travel may make no difference in some titles but to add convenience, but impact others in a very negative way.

 

[DevilMayFlyForAWhiteGuy]

I don’t know part of the reason I get bored of DD1 is because of how monotonous fighting mobs of bandits and/or wolves gets every five minutes. But the portcrystals at least make it so there’s no trip back to the city.

 

[Portugeezer]

I don't agree with that.

When I like a game and enjoy the world, I'll spend more time in it, but every game has its limits and sometimes you just need to get from point A to B.

 

[Bry0]

Portcrystal system is brilliant, allows for player choice in where to place fast travel points instead of some brain dead clicking icons. It’s a great middle ground and keeps the player grounded in the world and encourages you to prepare (fill your lanterns with oil, buy up some healing items) before heading out. Otherwise the open world becomes a pointless checklist of icons.

 

[Roman Empire]

I don't see the problem here to be honest. From all the gameplay previews I have watched and footage from players who got to try the demo, there both systems. You can use ox carts to go from one city/village/settlement to another for cheap, but there is a chance you may be ambushed by monsters alongside the roads. Then you have the Ferrystone and Portcrystal fast travel system, and from what I saw there are portcrystals placed in every major location, you just have to activate them and have a ferrystone to travel to any of these discovered portcrystals, it is not that hard or complicated.

You still have the portable portcrystals as well where you place anywhere and you set a new fast travel waypoint. The game has no shortage of traveling systems, be it by foot or be it by ferrystone teleportation.

 

[Bernkastel]

Fucking shots fired. Can't help but feel that's a dig at the elder scrolls. He's right though.

It was already there in the first DD game. Unless you played the OG 360/PS3 version (before DA) where you had to buy Ferrystones which could only be used once. They put Eternal Ferrystones in DA because of this criticism of the Ferrystones.
Also, by your logic they are also firing shots at FromSoftware and CDPR. Most importantly DD's open world was much smaller than TES/Witcher III/Elden Ring.

Are you dense? Elden Ring literally follows the same structure for travel he’s advocating. On foot/on mount when exploring, fast travel is only to places you have already been but in DD it requires a finite item…Fucking moron

In the original 360/PS3 version. Most people did not play that version. Most 360/PS3 users also bought DA.

You can use ox carts to go from one city/village/settlement to another for cheap, but there is a chance you may be ambushed by monsters alongside the roads. Then you have the Ferrystone and Portcrystal fast travel system, and from what I saw there are portcrystals placed in every major location, you just have to activate them and have a ferrystone to travel to any of these discovered portcrystals, it is not that hard or complicated.

If you want your instant fast-travel gimmick, you can have it. It's there.
It's optional, like some people wanted it. Just save some money and buy enough ferrystones.
Problem solved.

If they still have the same system as DA, why are they pretending they don't have fast travel?

 

[Mister Wolf]

Gatekeeping fast travel. Refusing to add co-op. Itsuno better prepare to be disappointed.

 

[Bernkastel]

Gatekeeping fast travel. Refusing to add co-op. Itsuno better prepare to be disappointed.

It already has fast travel. And co-op is not necessary when you have pawns.

 

[duck_sauce]

What's wrong with giving the user options. Use it, don't use it. At long as you choose how you want to play.

The Dark Souls Crowd would argue that games should be played like the developer intended.

 

[Mister Wolf]

It already has fast travel. And co-op is not necessary when you have pawns.

GATEKEEPING fast travel.

 

[stn]

I love it, it works for a game like DD. It adds a certain element of strategy since you have to plan your excursions.

 

[Bernkastel]

GATEKEEPING fast travel.

Skyrim, Witcher III and Elden Ring, all of them only allow you to fast travel to locations you have discovered first. How is this any different? Do you want the Ubisoft experience?

 

[Mister Wolf]

Skyrim, Witcher III and Elden Ring, all of them only allow you to fast travel to locations you have discovered first. How is this any different? Do you want the Ubisoft experience?

A finite resource used to fast travel. Which is why I said "gatekeeping".

 

[Fbh]

Will reserve my judgement until the final game is out because having limited fast travel CAN be cool if the world and quest design is good.
IMO the fast travel in the original sucked. It didn't make "exploration more exciting", because that's mostly related to world design and quest design. It just made moving around the world more annoying and time consuming.
I hope at very least the encounters are way more dynamic and unique because in the original you had to fight the exact same trash mobs with the exact same enemies in the exact same location every time and it got old fast. Also the limited sprinting sucked, I hope you at least get unlimited running stamina in the sequel (it's one of the first mods I always install on PC).

Skyrim, Witcher III and Elden Ring, all of them only allow you to fast travel to locations you have discovered first. How is this any different? Do you want the Ubisoft experience?

Most games only let you fast travel to locations you have already discovered, most Ubisoft games included.
The difference is that by making it a limited resource it means you can't do it often and need to waste time going back an forth between locations.

Imagine Elden Ring but every other time you need to go back to Roundtable hold you have to spend 20 minutes getting there on foot and then 20 minutes to get to your next destination.
Or you got the souls/stats to buy a new spell from Sorceress Sellen but, again, you need to spend 15 minutes getting to her just to buy a spell and then 15 minutes getting back to

 

[Fess]

Imagine Elden Ring but every other time you need to go back to Roundtable hold you have to spend 20 minutes getting there on foot and then 20 minutes to get to your next destination.
Or you got the souls/stats to buy a new spell from Sorceress Sellen but, again, you need to spend 15 minutes getting to her just to buy a spell and then 15 minutes getting back to

Bad comparison when you can’t even go there on foot.

That said, the most fun I had in Elden Ring was when I walked into new areas and couldn’t fast travel. Once I could fast travel I mostly bounced between sites of grace, often skipping areas I later learned had secrets I had missed at my first run to the site of grace.
And no it’s not a choice to fast travel, the quest design and size of the world just isn’t built for no fast travel. That’s the real problem. Goes for the whole industry, it’s like an infection, just gets worse.
And sure it’s convenient but is it fun? Moving a cursor on a map and pressing a button?

And this is my all-time #2 game so no trolling. I just don’t think fast traveling is fun.


Another one, take GAF’s favorite Starfield. The ease of fast-traveling is literally one of the biggest issues with the game. They often even let you completely skip the space flights, in a space game, go from a cave on one planet into a big city on another. Meaning you don’t actually need to take one single step inside the ship you might’ve spent hours designing to perfection.

To not just whine, here is a solution: I would’ve made the space flights interesting instead. Make the journey the game. Interupt the flight for pirate attacks, avoiding asteroids, repairing the ship, crew talks, dropping midway to refuel in some small planet off grid town where something cool could happen, etc. Mix it all up with procedurally generation so it doesn’t become repetitive. And no uninterupted delivery boy planet A to B to A quests. And some sort of planetary vehicles needs to be there, hover bikes, add some vehicle combat too. Then they can have all that as an Immersive Space Adventure ON/OFF option.

And this is another top 10 favorite of mine and my GOTY so no blatant trolling there either. I just don’t think fast traveling is fun. It’s really nothing but missed opportunies from my perspective. And it’s there to help us go through the game faster. But if I like a game I don’t need to go through it faster. I just want to have fun while playing it.

 

[lughnasadh123]

It doesn't matter how well crafted your game is, people will want fast travel.

 

[Raven117]

I I liked the way Witcher 3 did it. You couldn’t just fast travel anywhere at anytime, but you had to find a sign post that was close but not exactly where you wanted to go.

Gave you just enough to work through the world when you “fast traveled.”

 

[Traxtech]

Port crystals are great, just plan ahead and you'll be fine

 

[Johnny Concrete]

“Wow look at that massive open world, I can’t wait to fast-travel around that”

I don’t know where that quote originates from (might be GiantBomb), but it always struck me as weird that nowadays games are made with big open maps, but they let players teleport to wherever they want.
What’s the fucking point of one big map if you just load-screen to the next area??

Dragon’s Dogma II, you have my vote.

 

[Alebrije]

Fast travel is fine of You Discover fast travel locations while exploring, is wrong of You can travel to any point of the map at the begining

 

[_Idea_of_Evil_]

Dragon's Dogma is meant to be carried into NG+ and beyond. You'll have created many fast travel points in the initial run, and keep them going into NG+.

I see no issue in exploring during NG until you earn your fast travel points like in the first game.

 

[Fbh]

Bad comparison when you can’t even go there on foot.

That said, the most fun I had in Elden Ring was when I walked into new areas and couldn’t fast travel. Once I could fast travel I mostly bounced between sites of grace, often skipping areas I later learned had secrets I had missed at my first run to the site of grace.
And no it’s not a choice to fast travel, the quest design and size of the world just isn’t built for no fast travel. That’s the real problem. Goes for the whole industry, it’s like an infection, just gets worse.
And sure it’s convenient but is it fun? Moving a cursor on a map and pressing a button?

And this is my all-time #2 game so no trolling. I just don’t think fast traveling is fun.


Another one, take GAF’s favorite Starfield. The ease of fast-traveling is literally one of the biggest issues with the game. They often even let you completely skip the space flights, in a space game, go from a cave on one planet into a big city on another. Meaning you don’t actually need to take one single step inside the ship you might’ve spent hours designing to perfection.

To not just whine, here is a solution: I would’ve made the space flights interesting instead. Make the journey the game. Interupt the flight for pirate attacks, avoiding asteroids, repairing the ship, crew talks, dropping midway to refuel in some small planet off grid town where something cool could happen, etc. Mix it all up with procedurally generation so it doesn’t become repetitive. And no uninterupted delivery boy planet A to B to A quests. And some sort of planetary vehicles needs to be there, hover bikes, add some vehicle combat too. Then they can have all that as an Immersive Space Adventure ON/OFF option.

And this is another top 10 favorite of mine and my GOTY so no blatant trolling there either. I just don’t think fast traveling is fun. It’s really nothing but missed opportunies from my perspective. And it’s there to help us go through the game faster. But if I like a game I don’t need to go through it faster. I just want to have fun while playing it.

Well personally I enjoyed the exploration in Elden Ring (and to a lesser extent Breath of the Wild) way more than any other open world game (Dragons Dogma 1 included) and I didn't find the fast travel detracted from the experience.
Fast travel is convenient and I don't see why it needs to be fun. The fun is getting to the location the first time and exploring areas you haven't been to, not lengthy traversal in between locations you've already discovered.

The examples you give for Starfield sound like they'd be fun the first 5-6 times they happen to you, afterward it would just be annoying when you want to move on with a quest or get to a new location but you constantly get interrupted with time wasting distractions on the way. Haven't played Starfield but from what I've seen and read IMO what would have made it better would have been to not focus on size, don't have 1000 planets, have 5, make it take place in a small solar system but make a single seamless open world packed with interesting locations and quests to find through exploration. Try to make a more open approach to quests like the main quest in BOTW/ToTK which encourages you to just go explore and organically come across main objectives, etc.

I do think DD2 can take steps to make the shitty fast travel less annoying:
- Infinite sprinting
-Focus less on quests which are "go here, kill X and come back"
-Have camps, towns or settlements spread around the world which offer basic features like buying/selling/upgrading gear, changing classes,etc so there's no need to constantly go back to some hub area. Make it so all vendors have the same stuff (which gets updated as you progress through the game) so I don't need to constantly travel to a specific vendor to get what I want.
- Make it so you don't have to turn in most quests (unless there's major story implications upon your return to the quest giver)
- Have some magic bullshit explanation that let's characters communicate with you remotely so you don't have to constantly go to a specific location just to be given a quest
- Make enemy mobs more randomized instead of the same enemies always appearing in the same location as in the original

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

I know he didn't just call RDR2 open world boring, lmao.
You don't HAVE to use fast travel...but why not giving the option? No one is forced to use it...

 

[sendit]

I know he didn't just call RDR2 open world boring, lmao.
You don't HAVE to use fast travel...but why not giving the option? No one is forced to use it...

Questioning peoples ability to read atm.

 

[Hibs]

Damn what year is it, did Oblivion just release and everyone upset at Fast Travel again?

I agree fast travel sucks some of the fun out of the game for sure, but it also depends on the game. It's all optional at the end of the day so really, who cares.

 

[Neilg]

I didnt fast travel once in the first DD and it's a much better game for it.

The best part of the first is getting stuck out after dark because a journey got derailed in some way and now the sun is setting, checking your resources and realizing you under prepared, then the new monster noises start and you can sort of just about make out where you're going on the horizon. Bethesda dont come close to making emergent gameplay that hooks you that well.

Fast travel is not right for dragons dogma, a huge part of the game is designed around not using it. He only included the crystals in the first reluctantly.

 

[Danjin44]

Also let me remind people even games that’s not open world has fast travel….like Bloodborne, from Hunter’s Dream you can fast travel any areas you been before.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

The Dark Souls Crowd would argue that games should be played like the developer intended.

I played some souls games through i didn't finish them but i do get it. Just my opinion that it would be nice to have options.

 

[BlackTron]

I love it, it works for a game like DD. It adds a certain element of strategy since you have to plan your excursions.

Sometimes the journey is the point. Imagine if Oregon Trail had fast travel! Dumb example aside, it's an accomplishment to make a game where adding it would actually negatively affect anything. It would already need to be some high-level game design weaving the whole experience together.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

If this is like that red headed jedi game then they can fuck right off.

 

[Fess]

The examples you give for Starfield sound like they'd be fun the first 5-6 times they happen to you, afterward it would just be annoying when you want to move on with a quest or get to a new location but you constantly get interrupted with time wasting distractions on the way.

That’s because you’re focusing on the goal instead of the journey.

It would be possible to make a whole game about one single quest journey by filling it out with great content.

Instead we’re traveling by moving a cursor on a map and pressing a button… And when we’re there we’re walking up to a person with a quest marker on their head and press a button again, a quick talk later we have our ”well-earned” XP from doing such a good work on a quest that takes a few minute that is basically letting you skip a whole potential game.

And this is all rpgs today, often open world games in general. Quests are mostly simplistic delivery quests and the maps are too big and worlds too static that doing an on-foot journey even one extra time can feel like a chore. You often sense relief from unlocking a fast travel point knowing you won’t have to do that walk again.
To me that seems like a design problem, industry wide at this point.

Devs have no trouble making it fun to drive around a race track lap after lap. Why can’t they invest some time and money to make it more fun to travel between quest locations in a RPG? Make the traversal more fun, make the world more dynamic and alive, give me a solid gameplay challenge, surprise me. Fast-travel should be the absolute last resort when it really makes no sense at all to travel the normal way, imo.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

“Wow look at that massive open world, I can’t wait to fast-travel around that”

I don’t know where that quote originates from (might be GiantBomb), but it always struck me as weird that nowadays games are made with big open maps, but they let players teleport to wherever they want.
What’s the fucking point of one big map if you just load-screen to the next area??

gaming tourism.
youre not really playing the game, youre mostly visiting.

it's for people with little time and/or short attention spans. usually the latter.

respecting the player's time is very important though.
if youre not going to allow fast travel, or youre going to highly restrict it, the world and quest structure need to accommodate this.

 

[Fbh]

That’s because you’re focusing on the goal instead of the journey.

It would be possible to make a whole game about one single quest journey by filling it out with great content.

Instead we’re traveling by moving a cursor on a map and pressing a button… And when we’re there we’re walking up to a person with a quest marker on their head and press a button again, a quick talk later we have our ”well-earned” XP from doing such a good work on a quest that takes a few minute that is basically letting you skip a whole potential game.

And this is all rpgs today, often open world games in general. Quests are mostly simplistic delivery quests and the maps are too big and worlds too static that doing an on-foot journey even one extra time can feel like a chore. You often sense relief from unlocking a fast travel point knowing you won’t have to do that walk again.
To me that seems like a design problem, industry wide at this point.

Devs have no trouble making it fun to drive around a race track lap after lap. Why can’t they invest some time and money to make it more fun to travel between quest locations in a RPG? Make the traversal more fun, make the world more dynamic and alive, give me a solid gameplay challenge, surprise me. Fast-travel should be the absolute last resort when it really makes no sense at all to travel the normal way, imo.

I mean I mostly agree. I'm not a fan of most open world games.
The only ones I've truly liked this last decade are Elden Ring and the 2 Zelda Games (and the Witcher 3 but for a different reason)
And it's precisely because they don't follow the standard open world formula. I don't like open world design that's primarily based around following waypoints on your minimap, I also think open worlds with a very linear main quest sort of miss the point.

I think Zelda/Elden ring actually make it about the journey just as much as the destination. They are the only modern open world games where instead of looking at a minimap or a waypoint marker in the distance I actually looked at the in game world around me, saw stuff that seemed fun or interesting in the distance and went exploring.
Discovering Soifra River in Elden Ring is still the highlight moment of this gen for me, coming across this elevator that goes way doing and arriving in this big, awesome looking (and completely optional btw) location with unique enemies gave me a sense of exploration like no game before. I wasn't sent there on a quest, or because there was an icon on the minimap or because a very linear main mission sent me right past it. I just got there through exploration.
And the game having a fast travel option didn't detract from that at all

 

[Griffon]

Strong words... coming from the guy who made DD1.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

I sort of agree. Spider-Man 2 has maybe the coolest fast travel system I’ve ever seen, but the combination of web slinging and wing suit was so enjoyable that I barely used fast travel in the game.

Even in Elden Ring which undoubtedly has one of the largest open world maps I’ve explored, I probably spent 90% of the time on foot, not even using my horse, because the world was so interesting to explore.

It takes less than 3 minutes using a combination of web-swinging and gliding to get from one end of the map to the other in Spider-Man 2. It's a massive stretch to compare that to a game like The Witcher 3 where it can take close to an hour on horseback to traverse the main map from end to end.

 

[Warablo]

That travel system with random encounters sound great.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Strong words... coming from the guy who made DD1.

Now he making 1.5 Will be interesting to see how this game does on the market. Looking forward to the thread because if it goes like I think it will then im going to unload.

 

[DeepSpace5D]

It takes less than 3 minutes using a combination of web-swinging and gliding to get from one end of the map to the other in Spider-Man 2. It's a massive stretch to compare that to a game like The Witcher 3 where it can take close to an hour on horseback to traverse the main map from end to end.

That’s why I also used the example of Elden Ring which is an absolutely gigantic open world map.

Two different games, but both achieved the same result for me. One with very satisfying traversal mechanics, and one with an incredibly interesting world to explore.

 

[Fess]

I mean I mostly agree. I'm not a fan of most open world games.
The only ones I've truly liked this last decade are Elden Ring and the 2 Zelda Games (and the Witcher 3 but for a different reason)
And it's precisely because they don't follow the standard open world formula. I don't like open world design that's primarily based around following waypoints on your minimap, I also think open worlds with a very linear main quest sort of miss the point.

I think Zelda/Elden ring actually make it about the journey just as much as the destination. They are the only modern open world games where instead of looking at a minimap or a waypoint marker in the distance I actually looked at the in game world around me, saw stuff that seemed fun or interesting in the distance and went exploring.
Discovering Soifra River in Elden Ring is still the highlight moment of this gen for me, coming across this elevator that goes way doing and arriving in this big, awesome looking (and completely optional btw) location with unique enemies gave me a sense of exploration like no game before. I wasn't sent there on a quest, or because there was an icon on the minimap or because a very linear main mission sent me right past it. I just got there through exploration.
And the game having a fast travel option didn't detract from that at all

I love Elden Ring, have over 500 hours invested in it, and I agree on many things you say there.

But besides not using quest markers it’s falling into the same trap for me. Awesome first journey into new areas but after I have my fast-travel point I often find myself foing the map and cursor gameplay.

Torrent makes traversal a ton better than in other games though. And there is the paraglider in Zelda BOTW. Those two are definitely not the worst. But they are still too big for that type of back and forth quest design imo and eventually get i repetitive when overusing fast travel, which is common when it’s easy to do.

I like Cyberpunk, quests are usually more than AB delivery quests, you can drive cars and bikes, there is a metro and fast traveling at least require you to go to specific spots. But the map is too big and the world isn’t dynamic enough.

And just to make things clear. Open world games games are my favorite type of games. All the games talked about in this thread has been played for 250+ hours.

 

[Quartermaster]

Realized I leveled up faster when I stopped using fast travel. The road gets easier once you've figured out where enemies are. Fast travel then becomes mainly for the end game.