Dragon’s Dogma 2 Director slams ‘boring’ fast travel

Say what you want about the advent of fast travel, but it's certainly seen its fair share of the spotlight in the last year. People predominantly took issue with Starfield's approach to space travel, reducing itself to a series of menus that use arbitrary ship capabilities to severely limit your movement.

Starfield's fast travel wasn't fun or immersive, and it felt like using a spreadsheet to travel from one planet to the next. Not very RPG-y, if you ask us. It appears it's not just players who are unimpressed, as one developer has brought the entire practice of fast travel into question. 

Dragon's Dogma 2 developer doesn't want much fast travel

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Speaking with IGN, the director of Dragon's Dogma 2 has a bone to pick with fast travel and its tendency to become pretty dull. Hideaki Itsuno spoke about the monotony of fast travel and claims that it doesn't have to fall into being boring. In fact, Itsuno claims that if the means of transport is boring in your game, you've probably got wider problems.

"Just give it a try," he says. "Travel is boring? That’s not true. It’s only an issue because your game is boring. All you have to do is make travel fun." Although he doesn't name any specific titles, a few spring to mind - we're looking at you, Starfield. 

Itsuno continued, "That’s 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 don’t know whether it’s safe or not ten meters in front of them."

Fast Travel in Dragon’s Dogma 2 will cost you

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In a bid to keep players engaged with the world directly around them, Dragon's Dogma 2 isn't planning on letting you get away with fast travelling for free - in fact, it'll cost you Port Crystals. Even then, there's still a chance that you'll be ambushed while using an Oxcart to reach your destination.

You're not going to fast travel without having to set it up thoroughly first in Dragon's Dogma 2 - which may be a good thing given how much excitement lies around each corner of the game. Maybe strap your walking boots on. Who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy it.