Large open-world games like Bethesda Game Studios’ “Starfield” or CD Projekt Red’s “The Witcher 3” often require some form of traversal to navigate their vast maps. While players can hop into cars in Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto” or travel on horseback in Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla,” they often seek faster means of travel. And sometimes, in games as massive as the RPG “Starfield,” fast travel becomes a necessity to traverse from one end of the galaxy to the other. However, fast travel can be a controversial topic in game design, and the director of “Dragon’s Dogma 2,” Hideaki Itsuno, has something to say about it.
“Just give it a try. Is travel boring? That’s not true. It’s only a problem because your game is boring. Just make travel entertaining,” Itsuno said in an interview with IGN on January 22. “That’s why we place things in the right spots for players to discover, create enemy spawn methods that generate different experiences every time, or put players in blind situations where they don’t know if it’s safe or not ten meters ahead of them. We put a lot of work into designing a game where you unexpectedly come across someone or something happens. So, even though there is fast travel in it, we decided to design a map that allows players to decide whether to travel by bike or on foot to enjoy the journey.”
Itsuno is not criticizing any specific game, although “Starfield” is the one that comes to mind. With thousands of mostly empty and static planets, this 2022 RPG practically forces players to use fast travel due to the immense amount of empty space between the floating rocks in space. Unfortunately, constant use of fast travel diminishes the sense of the cosmic space and limits the spontaneous encounters one can have. This is precisely what I understand from Itsuno’s statement; fast travel inhibits the development of emergent gameplay, an important aspect of open-world design that provides us with memorable random events long after completing the main story of the game. In the case of “Starfield,” fast travel has become a crutch for many players – myself included – prompting Bethesda to work on “new ways of travel.”
So, how does travel work in “Dragon’s Dogma 2”? Similar to the 2012 game, “Dragon’s Dogma 2” will offer limited fast travel options in the form of expensive and rare gems called Rift Crystals. These magical stones allow teleportation to Portcrystals, temporary or permanent landscape elements where players can appear to facilitate and expedite movement. There are also Grain Wagons, wooden wagons pulled by numerous horned cattle in the game world that can be completely destroyed by one of the game’s wild beasts, as explained by Itsuno in an interview with IGN.
“While riding, you may encounter goblins blocking the road, and you have no choice but to dismount and engage in combat. Then a Griffin might swoop down and destroy the entire wagon with a single strike, forcing you to continue on foot, cursing its name,” Itsuno said. “But none of these things were preplanned by us. In nature, Griffins have a tendency to attack cattle they encounter while on the move. All these elements naturally intertwine with each other, creating such a situation. So, traveling by wagon in this world may be cheaper, but many things can happen as a result of that affordability. I think we’ve managed to create such a world.”
Lead producer Kento Kinoshita explained that since fast travel is not the main priority in “Dragon’s Dogma 2,” the game features many random encounters. Goblins may destroy a bridge you’re trying to cross, forcing you to choose an alternative path where you might come across a merchant with their own motivations. This kind of gameplay philosophy, as Kinoshita stated, was designed to give players space for independent thinking.
“I think we wanted to give a cost to shortening a long distance,” Kinoshita said. “In a way, it strongly reflects the real world. There are many rules in life that are necessary for the functioning of the system, and ignoring those rules makes everything seem less realistic or less valuable.”
The wait for “Dragon’s Dogma 2” is almost over. The game will be released on March 22 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, so we will find out soon how important – or not – fast travel is in the game world. For now, I’m excited about the unexpected moments I’ll experience during my journey.
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