![]() Miyazaki trusted you to put the effort in and explore its swathes of secrets: getting hopelessly lost, enduring endless agonising boss runs and lengthy backtracking were part and parcel of the experience he and FromSoftware intended you to have. If you were to pluck Lordran from the screen and place it in a showroom, just like the complex innards of a intricately crafted watch, you’d be able to see every region fitting together in a beautifully seamless fashion. There’s no minimap, there’s no compass, there’s no smiley pixie to give me a sparkly push in the right direction and there’s certainly no fast travel from the off. I couldn’t possibly fathom where I was meant to be going or what in fact, I was meant to be doing. It would actually take longer hammering it there on my Grey Ram and waiting for everyone to bloody touch the summon stone – “Come on buddy, got dinner in 20” – than to clear the Scarlet Monastery of baddies in the end. While communication was now easy enough, I was probably an age away slaying Kobolds, while “GnomenAway1994” and all the rest of the crew were selling oversized shoulder pads in the hustle and bustle of the auction house, or collecting materials to make that fabulous cloak that’s totally in fashion right now. Once you’d spammed “LFG SM” enough, you’d get the heartwarming ping of a pink whisper, leading into a hefty drum roll as the portrait of your dwarf paladin clunked into place alongside four other determined Warcraft folk. It was easy to view the aged opulence of the monastery through rose-tinted glasses (quite literally) and even if it was plonked nicely in the opposing Horde’s territory, it was still worth treading a treacherous path to get there. If you wanted to partake in a team-based jaunt through the Scarlet Monastery as a member of the Alliance in World of Warcraft, it was something you had to book in advance. Head backwards in time just a few years, and the struggle was real. And in worlds so vast, we couldn’t do without it. Taking the underground is so much simpler, even if it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing journey, it gets the job done. It’s effortless, I haven’t got the time or energy to roam about, I’ve got dungeons to crawl, chests to loot. Give it a minute, and I’ll be hopping off the train, making sure to tap my Oyster on the Autosave before heading out into the wild again. I can step out of the game for a second, dive into a menu like I’m commuting to work on the tube, catch the “Impossibly Fast” line, and wait patiently with my inventory tucked between my legs because I’ve done this all before – I know the etiquette round these parts. I can hover my pointer and bam –loading screen with revolving item – I’m in Whiterun.įor those of us in a no-nonsense mood, fast travel is exceptionally convenient. It’s bliss there are as many icons blanketing the landscape as there are arrows in my bulging quiver. When I’m not politely declining Roman’s banterous advances for a game of pool (Ayyy, Nico!) or needing to soar to Viridian City sharpish, I can conveniently press the menu button and bring up Skyrim’s map. ![]() Whether it’s hailing a yellow cab on Grand Theft Auto’s city streets or hopping on the feathery back of a faithful Pidgeot, getting around in the majority of open world games has never been that much of a problem. The list could go on, and the sheer variety of games and their genres would get pretty mind boggling, but one thing seems to have cemented itself as near constant: fast travel. Years later, we’ve had the privilege of roaming the western wonderland of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2, blasted our way through the chaotic continent of Borderlands 2, and fought robotic creatures in the wastelands of Horizon Zero Dawn. In 2004, Blizzard set the benchmark for MMOs with none other than World of Warcraft, boasting an iconic world that’s still growing with each and every expansion, and arguably, is still both the envy and aspiration of every MMO developer out there to this day. People couldn’t believe the 3D, open world environments of Grand Theft Auto III when it first burst onto the scene in 2001, and certainly wouldn’t anticipate the crazy scale of The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind a year later. Nowadays, video game worlds aren’t only painstakingly crafted, but they’re also growing considerably in size. ![]()
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