An Example Of Fast Travel Done Right

What is your favorite fast travel system and why? Let us know in the comments section!

Another good point of the Morrowind fast travel system: it's a money sink. In the early game it forces you to either be very careful about planning your routes, or take the cheaper option of traveling on foot. Both of these immerse you deeper into the game. Later in the game when you get so rich you no longer care about the costs it rewards you with that sense of privilege, the ability to just go anywhere on a whim. Hard-earned freedom. And it keeps money at least somewhat relevant for the whole game, even when you're kitted out in the best enchanted gear you can possibly own.

As a long-time Morrowind player, when I play Skyrim I only allow myself to fast travel using carriages and boats. Although I did install a mod that adds departing carriages to four cities that don't have them in the vanilla game.

It’s a lot simpler, but I really enjoyed the fast travel in Hollow Knight. Not only is the travel well-explained in universe, the cutscene that plays gives it weight, and makes you feel like you’re actually covering ground. Plus, the stag stations are just sparse enough that it doesn’t completely negate the need for physical exploration.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance had a great fast travel mechanic too: Firstly, you can only travel between certain locations (in this case towns, one castle, one monastery, and a camp added with one of the DLCs). Secondly, you had to watch your map icon psychically move across the map (with the speed depending on whether or not you were mounted on a horse). And while the icon was travelling the map, you might happen upon random encounters on the road as if you were travelling normally: Bandits might be lying in ambush, or a beggar might ask you for food. You weren’t not subject to these encounters when fast travelling. Lastly, time flies by when you’re travelling; by the time you arrive at your destination in this game, it might be evening nighttime. That’s on top of the tiredness and hunger mechanics naturally in this game, meaning you have to pack some jerky for your travels if you’re worried about finding food wherever you’re going. If you’re tired when you arrive, then you have to try and find a tavern that offers such a service, or hope there’s a simple, uncomfortable bed somewhere outside the town. I loved the fast travelling of Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s normal mode (hardcore mode had no fast travel), so it’s a shame that I haven’t seen a mechanic such as this one in other games.

9:11 It should be mentioned that the morrowind makes a real effort to teach you the travelling network through the quest the mage guild and the fighters guild offer to you. Many of them will send you to locations far away, but the questgiver will give you real directions on usind the network to get there. Through the mainquest the game will also push you towards these guilds. The task of learning the network really isn´t all that difficult and happens pretty organicaly through normal play.

I feel like there's one aspect that also ought to be mentioned here: Sometimes, there's the possibility to sidestep the issue and make moving around the world fun . That's what the recent PC port of Spider-Man does for me. It has a fast-travel system, but I almost never use it, because swinging around NY feels so much better (and isn't that slow, anyway).

When Fallout 3 came out, me and my friend had no idea you could fast travel on our first play through, which really made the game immersive. It was a pretty intense experience trying to fight our way through the DC ruins trying to get to Rivet City, only to stumble across Super Mutants in The Mall and have to turn around and go back home to Megaton for supplies because we were low on ammo and stims.

The boots of blinding speed were another very useful item in Morrowind that I remember fondly! They increased my running speed dramatically, but at the cost of blindness! I played as an Orc, who are slightly resistant to magicka so I could still see just enough for them to be useful.

Kingdom Come Deliverance had a pretty solid compromise of the two, where travel happens on a real map and requires time, planning, and caution. It's very easy to get caught by a group of bandits or enemy soldiers and robbed or even killed. It still keeps you pretty mobile - nothing is unreachable due to geographic conditions or what-have-you and I think they could have gone further with the system, but I think it addresses much of the issue with fast travel while not requiring such attentive forward-thinking.

On the subject of Elder Scrolls fast travel, the Skyrim Special Edition has a survival mode built in that you can turn on after Helgen that requires you to deal with sleep, warmth, and food in addition to turning off that standard fast travel, so all you have access to is the cart network. Travelling via cart isn't very expensive, but it does take time, and therefore will result in your character needing food and sleep when you arrive, so you still have to have some idea of how far away a place is in terms of how much you'll need (particularly since making a large dent in hunger requires cooked food, and cooked food typically requires salt, which can be a pain to get hold of). Given the limited number of places you can get a cart to or from, you end up having to do a lot of walking, which has its benefits because there are a lot of cool things you can come across when doing things that way.

Not to mention that with the amazing spell modification system you can create a jump spell that lets you literally leap from town to town. I've never seen any other game with such creative options and potential when it comes to travel via your own spell craft.

One of my favorite fast travel systems comes from Hollow Knight. First being that riding a stag is so fucking cool and adorable in the setting. The fact that there is lore with each station unlocked and that the stag itself shares its memory of each and has its own personality. At the base of stag stations you still must know the entrance point to each on the portions of the map that have one requiring you to remember roads/ routes. Outside of the stag stations the gated elevators and crystal leap provide immersive fast movement within the game.

Kind of reminds me of a statement by the team at Rocksteady when they were talking about the size of Gotham for Arkham Knight. In response to the question of would the game have fast travel they said something along the lines of “We do, it’s called the Batmobile”.

Before Morrowind I played "Might and Magic 8", and there they used something similar to Vvardenfell silt strider network, but they took it one step further: there were stables in different towns, and you could pay for traveling, BUT the routes were scheduled for different days of the week. For example, the trip to a certain town could be accessible on Tuesday and Frideay, on Wednesday the stables were closed, on Thursday the caravan could bring you to another place. So, if you wanted to use fast and safe travel, sometimes you needed to pay for the inn for a day or two, and only then go to the stables, pay again and then travel to the needed destination. :) I think it's a bit too far in realism, but I really liked Morrowind system, where one had to rely on his ability to determine landmarks and directions.

I really loved how the fast travel system worked in dark souls. You weren't able to fast travel without completing the majority of the game. It was a late game reward. By that time you had already ran all over the map a dozen time. At that point, you can fast travel, but you are aware of the scale of the map.

I walked all the way between Markath and Riften more than once and even then was astonished to learn that fast travel wasn't simply using carriages which I found I could do much later, but something that made even carriages obsolete. At least I experienced the magic of climbing that mountain I could see and being genuinely glad for it, no loading, no skipping a single step of it.

As a kid I thought Morrowind's system was so cool, and I loved using the paper map the game came with.

The GTA series has a great fast-travel system in that it can take you anywhere within moments, but the driving and flying mechanics are so much fun that you rarely use the fast-travel service. Some players may even be unaware of its very existence.

Your grocery store analogy really makes me appreciate European urban planning. In Europe, life is far more similar to a modern fast travel system thanks to essential services being in walking distance and public transport being simple and reliable. While travelling in Europe is not quite as simple as pointing at a map, it's a close as you're going to get!