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.

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.

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.

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 like to play Skyrim without fast travels and even without the map, to find myself I mostly use the environment, the direction boards and the compass, it's a really fun way to play

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.

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.

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!

i really like the part of rdr2's fast travel where you see the landscapes you pass through when you're fast traveling. i also like the part of fallout 1 where random encounters can occur between destinations. and, as you noted, the subway system of morrowind is great too. i think you could incorporate all three of these elements and get a great system. and it wouldn't be very hard. maybe add waypoints to the strider/boat network for new players though.

I understand why you didn't mention the Propylon system as it wasn't really implemented well I'm the base game. But with the Propylon Index expansion that Bethesda released, the Stronghold system is reworked and become yet another worthwhile network. I actually use the Strongholds quite a bit. Seeing as they're further out in the wilderness, they tend to get you even closer to any caves or ruins you might need to get to

I think this is one reason why I really liked some aspects of Death Stranding. Moving through the world felt very meaningful, as you could not bring stuff with you when you fast travelled. It meant that I was queueing up deliveries that all went to the same place so that I could optimize my travel time. I think that gave a really good feeling of immersion to the game.

Morrowind fast travel reminds me of the STALKER fast travel system. It has "guides" in safe bases that take you to different bases for an (expensive) price, new players cant afford the guide to travel yet. This also means that new players have to explore the starting regions first and keeps them from higher dangerous areas. However, as missions go to further places and you start having to backtrack more they become great ways to travel.

The main issue I have with the fast travel system is you don't actually experience the journey like with skyrim if you walk down the road you might be forced to fight bandits or wolves or you might find a deserted camp that gives you a quest to find out what happened those things are some of the most fun and imersive things I've experienced in any game

I like fast travel. But I think alternatives should always exist, because options are a beautiful thing. If I don't have time, or am making a 2nd (or 263rd) playthrough of a game like Skyrim 10 + years on, I don't really want to travel the same roads 6000 times. BUT, having horses, or carts that carry you, trains whatever depending on the game, is great for immersion.

Another thing that makes Morrowind's fast-travel system so interesting is how it mirrors the politics of the main factions, and how it makes quests more challenging by the simple fact that you must sometimes travel outside the main fast travel routes. The south-west is ruled by the business oriented and open Hlaalu faction. The area is safe, well populated, and has multiple interconnected systems that makes it easy and fast to travel anywhere you want. The north-west is ruled by the traditionalist Redoran faction. The area is more sparsely populated and are multiple stops away from the larger towns where you will spend most of your time (such as the capital Vivec). This makes everything feel a bit more distant and isolated. To the east you have the isolationist Telvanni faction. All its faction towns are connected by fast-travel routes, but the only way to get there directly from the other main faction towns is through the mages guild. Anything else will require a long trip by boat. And finally, later in the game your quests will start taking you further in towards the hostile center of the map where fast-travel is limited. Each trip must be planned out in advance and there are physical obstacles that you must find ways around. It isn't the danger that sets the central areas apart, it is how challenging and time consuming it is to even get there.

I appreciate you referencing Gothic visually if not by name. The reason it's version of fast travel works is not just the fact it's written into the magic system (aka more immersive than dealing with a separate menu) but first and foremost the perfect timing of when it's delivered in one's playthrough: right around the point when you've already explored most of the main roads on foot and would start to get bored with them. This way preserves all the joy of exploration but releases the player from tedious retracing later in the game

The best testbed for this theory I found is in the Enderal standalone mod for skyrim. There you cannot fast travel either and have to use a combination of teleportation spells and riding Wyvern taxis, so very morrowind inspired. It worked surprisingly well and made the world feel bigger and more believable somehow

When I was playing Skyrim I naturally found myself avoiding the fast travel because I felt so immersed in the world. After having played the game for hundreds of hours I had never fast traveled once and I enjoyed every minute of my adventures on foot. And trying to get Lydia home safely to boot. :)

I think that WoW also has a great fast travel option, the game has a few ways to travel from A to B, when traveling from one world to another you usually are limited to portals but traveling inside the continents you can use the flying options that each faction has, the flying mounts that you pay have a pre determined route that was chosen by the developers so this way, you fly in a relatively fast speed but also apreciate the scenario bcs of the route chosen, and also flying from different points can result in different routes, wich is great!

I love the RDR 2's approaches. Players could choose between fast travel and auto-travel. The fast travel itself for me still could give us the sense of distance by showing cinematic cutscenes on the route.

To my knowledge the best iteration on fast travel was done on *Kingdom Come: Deliverance* In KCD you could only fast travel to very specific points of settlements, or towns. But here's the catch. First, you had to be on a proper road, or near one. If you were in the middle of the woods, it would just be rejected until you at least reached a beaten path. Secondly, if you DID fast travel, you weren't just going to "teleport" from point A to point B. Your character was going to traverse a specific path and take the main roads to get there, and he would take time to get there, so if you were in a hurry, it could bite you in the ass. Finally (and this is the best part), when travelling you risk getting a random event, from weird encounters, to traders, to ambushes with either bandits or raiders. You had a lot skills and perks to better engage and spot or sense what was happening, but sometimes you could get a guy selling you a treasure map, or whom you could kill and rob for nice loot, or you would be the target of a robbery.

Teleportation is somewhat passion of mine in games. Most notably in World of Warcraft where I played mage and spent most of my time collecting items that could teleport me somewhere. Finding the optimal route, combining certain items or just using something that would send me to random place I could explore again was so much fun.

I love RDR2's fast travel system, it's convenient enough and goes well with the flow, all while still forcing you into exploring the world, only con is you miss on the random events which is why I tend to avoid it unless I'm not having it and just want to go somewhere the animal I wanna hunt for is at

Another thing that I like about Morrowind, and that is related to travel, is the lack of quest markers. You actually have to figure out where to go yourself by talking to people or reading signs. That plays very well into the "travel planning" you described. Great video! I'd recommend that you maybe add some music as otherwise we can always here some background noise from the microphone whenever you talk.

I played Morrowind and both it's expansions when I was around 10-12 years old. I remember using the mages guild teleports and especially the silt striders quite often. The amazing thing about your video: I NEVER noticed there was a ship network too xD whenever I was doing quests in the east and northern part of the land I walked/swam for hours, it didn't even come to my mind to talk with the NPCs standing on the boats. Child me was stupid, but being stupid helped to master athletics and acrobatics in no time haha

I recall a mod for skyrim that made fast travel better. Made time go by now realistically. Also had a chance to load you in somewhere randomly along the way attacked by bandits or something. As if you were just riding along in the wagon and got attacked.

Enderal (Skyrim mod overhaul) has a nice fast travel system, it's got teleport scrolls which are explained in-game and they repurposed Skyrim's dragon models to be these sort of flying creatures that can take you to various waypoints, and then there's the mark and return spells as well

I loved Morrowind the moment I started playing. It was the first open world RPG I ever played. My favorite aspect of it was that it didn't hold your hand when telling you what your objectives were. If you had to go to a certain location, it gave you a general idea of where it was at and you had to go explore to find it. Most modern games automatically marking the location on your map. This drastically increased the exploration part of the game and added to the overall effect of "go anywhere and do anything."

Am I the only one who really enjoyed the Vertibird fast travel in Fallout 4? It made sense within the world, you had limited uses before you had to re-up on Flares, and the door gun was an interesting mechanic. I would regularly find myself making a flight plan over a behemoth or raider settlement so I could rain fire down on them from relative safety, thinning the numbers before I go in

Technically… Morrowind is the only main entry Elder Scrolls game that doesn’t have point to point fast travel. It’s predecessors, Arena and Daggerfall, had full fast travel…. But probably because a significant amount of those game worlds were procedurally generated. I have no doubt in my mind the movement away from this type of fast travel was done in favour of simplifying and streamlining the experience for casual newcomers to the franchise. Morrowind is great, and it’s dialogue based directions are extremely clever, but it isn’t exactly accommodating to new casual players, who might spend an eternity searching for an obscure cave in a mountain region. I like to think of it like this… Daggerfall would be to first time Morrowind players what Morrowind would be to a first time Oblivion players. The first 3 games in this franchise are full on role playing games, and the balancing act of combat and fast travel befit a player anticipating such things. People rant about not being able to hit any monsters in Morrowind, but they neglect to notice they designed a character who favoured axes and spears… not the short blade skill necessary to use the very weapon the game first gives you (a dagger in a table).

This might just be the best video I've seen on this topic. Thank you. Eye opening.

In the Lord of the Rings Online there is a hybrid system. The normal fast travel is through stables. You have to go to a stable, and depending on what stable you are at, it offers certain destinations (so everywhere doesn't link to everywhere, and you still get a sense that you are on a journey as you have to think about the "connecting stables" you will need to go to). Once at a stable, you can get a "slow horse", where the horse moves in autopilot, as is a little faster than your own mount. Or you can take a swift horse, which starts the same way, but you don't watch the entire journey, the screen fades to black shortly after starting, and fades back in as you are arriving to the destination. This keeps the immersion reasonable, while making travel fast. And yes, characters have teleport skills they have to earn, but for most classes those are usually skills with long cooldowns (think 1 hour). The only exception is the hunter. A class whose feature is how fast he can move around the map with travel skills, modelled on the rangers.

You didn't mention the propylon tele-fort-ers, although they were on the map While difficult to start using, they are one of the best methods for fast travel that is not limited to towns. You also failed to mention levitate and fortify speed, which allows you to skip mountains and travel as the bird flies. Icarian flight super jumping was limited, if very useful. Morrowind had more options to travel across the map at speed that felt good than a lot of games. Loved it.

Gothic (and Gothic 2) also did have fast travel, but it was with use of teleport runes (and portals in Night of Raven). It wasn't early game though (well it was introduced in perfect moment - when you were strong enough that traveling wasn't a challange anymore and you saw most of overworld anyway). EDIT: Also,, the more I learn about Morrowind, the more I am willing to give it a chance (having played Bethesda's Fallout 3 and watching few of my friends play Skyrim... I really didn't want to play any Bethesda-made RPG).

Another game with a rather deep and complex mix of partial fast travel systems is Runescape. This game also highlights another advantage of more immersive fast travel systems: You can organically tie it into player progression by involving quests, rewards and recurring activities in the unlocking, accessing, using and paying for different fast travel networks or particular nodes within them. E.g. there's a questline where the player supports an inventor with creating and testing prototypes for hot air balloons, allowing them to explore different routes including obstacles and map them out during/after the quest. Later on, the inventor lets the player use these explored routes as part of an air balloon fast travel network. There's also dwarf underground train lines, boats, fairy rings, sentient spirit trees, magic portals between wizard guilds, teleport spells to certain locations using consumable runestones, gnome gliders, magic carpet rides, camel caravans, river canoes, various shortcuts like ropeswings or wallclimbs that need to be unlocked using materials or requiring certain stats and skills to use, and a set of ancient portal frames leading to randomized destinations within a certain area, as well as giant eagles travelling between mountain top nests once you befriended the eagles, discovered and explored those peaks. And various enchanted jewellery pieces that can teleport you to one or a few specific locations related to the specific piece of jewelry. And then there's the chaos tunnels, the definitely-less-chaotic shortcut tunnels between some dungeons or through certain mountain ranges that are difficult and/or dangerous to walk over/around normally... some other shortcuts even require temporarily transforming into apes or other creatures to use them using items and knowledge obtained from quests. And then there's some areas that are initially or permanently only reachable or directly connected via certain puzzle/parcours/obstacle navigation mechanisms ("slow travel") differing from normal walking in the opposite direction as opposed to fast travel, further expanding the spectrum of gameplay mechanics, tasks and travel speeds available in the game. E.g. one area is separated via a maze-like swamp full of dense vegetation, muddy water pools, dead ends and hostile ghosts that will cause food in your inventory to rot away if you don't bring special protective artifacts with you, and even airborne vampire creatures occasionally attacking you while being immune to most conventional weapons. Those anti-food-rotting artifacts as well as blessed anti-vampire weapons can be crafted and later upgraded after completing unique quests related to the overarching lore of the area, and later in the game's progression you can establish a fast travel route across the swamp, but also unlock a sort of minigame where you can escort npc adventurers through the swamp with various randomized encounters, rewards from the npcs and even persistent progression of those npcs who gain experience over time as well. Plus, the more pilgrims and travellers make it across the swamp, the better also for a small settlement at the other end of it, which also profits from player-orchestrated repairs and protective measures to fend off vampires. And that's just one small area within the extensive game world.

You really have thought about and researched this topic. Thanks for covering this. I agree with your viewpoints. Glad that you shared this and educated people about fast travel drawbacks.

I think another thing that people never talk about when discussing fast travel is how the actual game should be built around it and built around distance. I limited fast travel system is fine but if the game is constantly expecting for you to go pinging around the map doing short objectives then it feels very tedious. By the end of my time with Morrowind I was just using a spell that let me jump so far that I could clear mountains which made travelling a joke. I did this because I was enjoying the story of the game but was sick of one NPC in one town telling me to go speak breifly with an NCP in another town just to then be sent back, especially the story mission where you need to get all of the houses and ashlander tribes to accept you as the Nerevarine. That mission is just walking back and forth between places and talking to people. Games need to give a sense of scale by making each region of the game world slightly seperated from each other in terms of missions so that when you are sent to region A you get to stay there for a while doing quests in a more local area and it feels more significant when you are eventually need to move to region B even if region B isn't actually that far away. This would make major quests where you do need to travel back and forth around the work feel more meaningful because you are usually not required to go as far. A good example of why games need to be built around there systems is when a game shoehorns in a hunger system. Since most games have very short day and night cycles you character is constantly getting hungry and keeping up with the hunger system feels like a chore. If the game hasn't taken into account how long objectives or quests in the game are going to take and how often the character will need to eat then it begins to feel less realistic because nobody in real like is stopping mid activity to eat five wheels of cheese, in real life we built our schedules around our need to eat and therefore eat in a few set meals. Travel should be considered in the same way. A game in which travel is important should take travel into account when planning out quest lines and other mechanics so that travelling actually feels like a part of the gameplay and not just something you are forced to do to get from one story beat to another.

Dragon’s Dogma had an interesting fast travel mechanics, you had to put a beacon to fast travel and it was really expensive. It really gave you a sense of “travelling” you had to plan ahead and be careful of the night. I think it was immersive

All the forms of travel in Morrowind are instant as well so it does not preserve sense of distance at all. Also a significant note to remember in video games is that not everyone plays to have a realistically immersive playthrough. I like current fast travel cause it keeps my play snappy when I want it to be. I feel the biggest issues are modern map and quest designs making the player walk multiple 20+ minute trips without fast travel

The quest system also causes a lot of back and forth between far cities for trival tasks, to lead to the player demand for fast travel. Even trying to plan by gathering all the same city travel quests, still runs into this problem.

The most important problem is that you're out of the flow state and worse, into the long loading screens.

Best thing about Morrowind's map design is that quest locations have actually verbal descriptions on how to get there in your journal and from NPCs. No floating quest marker, only your wits.

I remember playing this game where you could only teleport back to your house. It was absolute torture going anywhere. It didn’t help that you couldn’t jump either.

I’ve always played BOTW this way, I thought I was the only one 😂 After my first playthrough, I realized how weird and unfun it is to teleport across this whole beautiful landscape, and on my second run (to 99%) I relied on an actual horse because the fact horses automatically followed paths meant I could relax and essentially watch a cutscene of Link crossing the world (with a few little taps to push the horse down the right roads). It VASTLY improved the experience.

Daggerfall also is a good example of fastravel done well. Similar to Skyrim fastravel, but takes a little research of where a town is and locating it, calculating distance, price, time, safety, mode of transportation, and makes you actually figure out how much time you have to do said quest and return before your time to complete it is out. I love that level of realistic detail and immersion in older games. I think they had the same fast travel system in Arena, too, but I haven't properly played Arena yet, only Daggerfall and the other subsequent games in the elder scrolls series.

Honestly my favorite game of late has been Kingdom Come Deliverance which doesn't really have fast travel. Instead the game features auto travel which takes about just as long as doing it yourself, and you have to stay present as there are random events during the auto travel. It makes me want to travel places manually more as it's generally faster, and I'm already prepared for a battle if needed.

My favourite experience with fast travel is in Fallout 4 survival with a mod called JOURNEY. It re-enables the fast travel, but only between settlements that you have set up a supply line to. It feels realistic because you, well, travel with your caravans on their route, and an appropriate amount of time passes. It is also limited in that you have to be "safe" in your settlement to travel to somewhere else "safe". The only downside I have with the mod, and it's a very small one, is that it makes the Local Leader perk even more mandatory, but I would assume that 99% of players take it ASAP anyway.

I also think, that the world itself has a really big impact on the fast travel system. For example Red Dead Redemtion 2 has a very great world imo. It looks great and there are lots of things that can randomly happen to you. You might get ambushed, you might stumble into someone needing help, you might come across an animal which‘s pelt you need. This makes it fun to traverse the world yourself and so on all 4 of my playthroughs I have barely used any fast travel. And because of that, they could make the fast travel immersive and sparse. There are basically 2 options, train and stagecoach. The train takes you to some cities and a few places in the wilderness. But it is only available in the flatlands where you spend most of your time, but if you want or need to go to the mountains or later in the vast desert, you are on your own. The stagecoach takes you from all the cities to all the cities, nothing more nothing less, but it is more expensive than the train and at times it might not be available for no apparent reason. Again, I thought it was a perfect fit for the game and I really enjoyed it. But, if the same system had been used for Assassins Creed Valhalla, I would have absolutely gone mad. The World in Valhalla, while beautiful, is just so boring. You just know you won’t miss out on anything if you fast travel because there are no random encounters and most of the places where you can find wealth, mysteries or artefacts are highlighted on the map as soon as you have completed a synchronization point. And boy did I make a run for them. As soon as I git to a new area I checked out all the synchronization points and to them, I mostly traveled by boat so I also unlocked all the harbors in the area, which allowed for fast travel too. And this system was, well not good by itself, but it was necessary for how the map is build. So it was a good for the game, a necessary evil. And similarly to the Red Dead fast travel that would have destroyed Valhalla, the Valhalla fast travel would have destroyed Red Dead.

I have to admit that you've raise some extremely valid points. Of course the counterpoint is time. The time I have to travel sometimes in the game impacts the real life world that I am in while I play the game and it takes too long to do something. So by fast travel I save real world time IRL time, and sometimes this is extremely important to me because as a nurse I work from waking up at 5:30 in the morning to getting back through the doors at the end of the day at 8 o'clock at night. Not complaining just stating. So I want to make it where I can get to the point where I can do something in the game to progress the game, so the modern fast travel is handy but I would like to have this alternative where you have to use the multiple methodologies to get from one place to another that would be very interesting. I would like to see that implemented in Skyrim six I think it is right? What the new one would be called.

I really liked Morrowind's system. I also liked the old school Fallout systems where you "travel by map". It's fast, but you see yourself moving on the map and can have random encounters. It's fast, but it still cuts into your supplies and time sensitive quests.

Dragon's Dogma was one of my favorite systems. I remember going out into the night to travel, surrounded by hordes of lizardmen wondering when my lantern fuel would run out or I would die, it was genuinely tense. It was only later I learned about Portstones and even when you do have them there are a limited number you can place and you need a consumable item to activate it.

You're so right. I think that's the main reason I remember loving Morrowind so much. The level of immersion you get from that mode is incredible

I liked the fast travel system in Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, in the game you have to reach a tower (one of five or six on the specific map you're on) activate the tower then you can fast travel to it whenever you want. The reason I like it however is that when you fast travel time still progresses, in a game where the orc captains are constantly moving and doing things, this makes you debate whether or not it pays to fast travel or if it would be better to go on foot. The captains also hold events that are only available for a time.

I actually did a video on the different types of fast travel in Morrowind: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f6hyabFz17Gnm4U.html Btw, at 5:00 when you say "crossing it is out of the question": you can actually find Silt Strider corpses in the Ashlands above Red Mountain. So, lore-wise they probably did try to use them, but it didn't work out. xD

I liked Kingdom Come Deliverance version. You could only fast travel to towns or a few other important location. During fast travel the map come up and shows you’re character walking across the map. Events and encounters can still happen and may snap you out of fast travel depending on the situation.

Nice points. I'd also like to give a shout out to the various incarnations of the Ultima series' moongates, which also needed study in order to understand and use correctly, and similar to your routes only allowed regional travel between fixed locations which maintained the need to "normal travel" from there to your destination. Also, I have totally noticed that, since a decent local market opened down the street from me, I totally shop more frequently for fewer things at a time.

I'm a fan of the Ballad of Gales from LoZ: Wind Waker. It has to be unlocked late in the game through a side quest that's hinted at if you don't find it on your own. It's a little clunky in that you have to play it like any other song, so it keeps you immersed in the game world. It uses the map as a menu, which you will already be using a lot to sail between islands. And it has a limited set of locations which unlock all at the same time, including the biggest islands and one key location that is not accessible any other way.

I think Fallout 1 & 2 (and Arcanum, to some extent) had pretty good system. It gives you sense of distance, but isn't major pain in the a$$. It allows You to have some encounters between locations. And, unless You travel in area with high random encounter density, it was FAST, without being instant teleportation.

The original Sacred from 2005 had a neat compromise: There was a network of about 20 portals scattered throughout the map and you could activate them one by one and then use them. On top of that there were scattered pairs of portals that coul donly get fom one half to the other and it took some time to figure out how these could be activated and where the other half was. Sometimes it was part of a quest, sometimes they were aparently broken... it gave a sense of athmosphere. And again, you had to walk/ride a long distance anyway as the portals were far apart and not evenly spread.

Great video! Another feature of Morrowind that i love is how quests are managed: no quests marker or any shortcuts. You had to read carefully the quests and to pay attention to the directions given to you. I still remember my 11 yrs old self, barely understanding english, taking literally weeks to find some dude waiting for me at Ald'ruhn. Nonetheless today i still find quests markers the most immersion breaking feature in rpg games.

I was fine with Morrowind's fast travel system and having to follow directions to places. The issue was just that a number of times the directions weren't very good or they were poorly recorded in the journals if they were recorded at all, making it a feat just to find the place sometimes.

One of the best systems was in the Might and Magic 6-8 series. You had two standard motes of travel - by ship (coastal and islands) or by stables (inland). Not only that you had to pay and you were limited by the stables location, but they also had their own schedules, meaning that on Wednesday the stables from Harmondale went to Erathia but on Thursday to the Turalean Forest. This also meant that you sometimes had to wait, or you had to change the mote of travel (stables were often not far from ships). Also, there were opening and closing times. There were also two ways of magical transport - the "Town Portal" spell that allowed you to transport from anywhere to an already visited major city (e.g. MM7 has about 14 different zones but only 6 Town Portal areas) which means you still need to use the public transport or you have to fly and cross the border on your own. The second magical transport is "Lloyd's Beacon" which allows you to create a beacon and then return to it from anywhere. This beacon expires based on your skill. The Beacon spell is a Grandmaster level, so late-game, and the Town Portal is Master level, so mid-game. Town Portal also has a limitation at Master level - you cannot teleport with enemies nearby. This is bypassed at GM level. To add more options early in the game, you can hire a companion (non-combatant) who takes 20% of all gold found but allows you to cast Town Portal on Master level (no enemies around) once per day. This is however used rarely as the majority of players opt for different companions (extra XP or a little more XP and unlimited item identification, full heal once per day, gear repairs). This type of transport, even though at a point one click away, never breaks immersion. To get to the "modern" type of fast-travel, you need to progress in the game quite a bit. The Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos works in a similar manner.

This gives me an idea for a concept these games could use: Close Quests Bubble. A shorter list of quests that are within a walking distance away from you, so that if you travel to a big city for a main quest, you can take a look at all the other small quests that are close to you. Thanks for making this video, you explained everything really well.

Very good video. I really like Morrowind's fast travel system. I have to say my favorite is in Dragon's Dogma. You can't fast travel at all, at first. Then as you do quests (some optional), you find "portcrystals", which you can pick up and place in different locations. Only then can you fast travel anywhere, and only to places with portcrystals. Only the major city and your starting town, as well as the DLC island, have static portcrystals. Not only that, but you need an item called a "ferrystone" to teleport to any portcrystal. You can find them in the world and as rewards for some quests, but up until the endgame, they're very limited. If you ran out or forgot to pack some, you're gonna have to walk. When you use one, it even has an animation of the player throwing the ferrystone into the air and opening a portal to their destination, so it's even immersive and explained by the lore ingame!

One thing I started doing in Skyrim as a compromise is to only allow fast travel back from dungeons to a major city or town. Otherwise I cart and hoof or foot travel to locations and use a camping mod to sleep the nights away

Kingdom come deliverance actually had a great system. It follows you on the map and shows you how the travel affects you. Riding a horse makes it faster. You have random encounters that stop you as well. I quite enjoyed it.

Great vid, I was literally thinking of how great Morrowind travel was right before you started talking about it. I remember 13-year old me being overwhelmed by the vastness of the game because you really had to experience it all. Even though Oblivion and Skyrim have larger maps, they felt way smaller with fast travel. It seems like the best kind of FT are those that are a) part of the in-game lore itself and b) limited enough to require players to actually interact with the world and explore it properly.

It gets particularly good with divine and almsivi intervention interactions. These teleport you to the nearest shrine of that type. And if you get used to it, this allows a lot. In some cases you learn that from one side of town almsivi takes you to say Balmora, but from the other side you get to Aldruun. From which you can divine your way to gnisis, I think, and so forth. Sometimes you can take a boat to get into almsivi/divine range of your destination. Key is, you have enormous options, but you have to figure it out. You can even get keys to the stronghold teleports - which generally aren't worth the effort of collecting them, but it does allow fast travel to some more rural areas. All in all, you have the options. But you have to think about it. You have to learn it. And importantly: it's only between hubs. You still have to walk through the world to get to the dungeons. Finally, of course, Morrowind deliciously screws with you by allowing a great fast travel option that leaves you mostly blind. Figuring out how to get around that is quite satisfying. Great game, among the goats. And if anyone disputes it, may the cliff racers find them! :)

In Skyrim I completely missed a major storybeat that happens on your way back to town from a short trip outside. The fast travel was right there and it felt like it beckoned me to use it, but then I got to town and everyone talked about how basically the heavens themselves talked to me and I had not noticed any of that. I went back and loaded an older save to see it and since then I made a point out of not fast traveling at all and have discovered a lot of fun random encounters along the roads as a result. Not to mention getting familiar with the land itself.

Morrowind was such an amazing game on so many levels.

In Morrowind you also have teleport locations, marked green on your map (Propylon Indices). Great addition where you need to get pass to use it

vanila WOW was top for me. U really felt the size of the world. Going from IF to do dire maul runs was a true adventure

There is one more fast travel option in Morrowind: Propylon chambers. They are good four out of reach places, but require you to find the key, the propylon index.

My favorite form of fast travel in Morrowind? Easy, it's Windform scrolls. (500 Levitation for 60 secs., + Invisible for 60 secs.) Expensive, but what's money in TES3. (Avoid Windwalker scrolls, exact same 2 effects, but 5 times the gold.) Flying over the landscape at high speed is cool af, and I can stop if I see something interesting. And I often do. 👍

In my last full playthrough of Morrowind, I extensively used silt striders, boats, and mages guilds to travel around the world but eventually, I found a use for Mark, Recall, and Intervention which made me feel like a master wizard. I would mark my current location, use divine intervention to travel to the nearest imperial shrine and restore my magicka through the shrine, then recall back. I got so good at this, I could refill my magicka and be back in combat within 10s including loading screens.

I think two aspects of travelling / fast travelling haven't been mentioned yet: a) Quests/Storylines that have a ticking clock. "You need to be there before next full-moon...". These type of quests can give the player a better 'feel' of distance if done right. It's one thing to see days fly-by in a fast-travelling-situation, and quite another seeing the clock tick towards the deadline while doing so. b) the joy of "building" one's options. Being able to "build up" a fast-travelling network can feel very satisfactory. This can be done by "discovering" shortcuts (teleport regions), or "opening" possibilities (becoming friendly with Gryphon-riders etc.), or even literally building them. (Spending in-game money to build horse-posts or whatever is appropriated in townships you frequently visit.) When you add some feeling of "achievement" to (finally!) being able to quick-travel, it is a lot more satisfactory then just having a ton of icons pop up on a map. Personally, I was less bothered by being able to quick-travel to Bethseda hotspots than by the fact that you "auto-discover" them when even remotely getting near them. I "found" so many interesting places without ever having to actually "see" them in the game-view. That was super-annoying. If, instead, one really has to inspect one's surroundings and for example 'find' some teleport-location before it shows up on the map, it would feel so much better.

After a couple thousand hours of Skyrim, I got tired of fast traveling and just traveled by foot or by horse. It became so much more enjoyable

Days Gone has a great fast travel system in that it limits your range to the distance you could travel with the amount of fuel in your bike. So as you scavenge fuel and eventually buy larger tanks, your fast travel range also goes up. Very heavily underrated game IMHO.

I agree in theory, but not necessarily in practice. As someone who doesn't have a lot of time to play open world games (and when I do, I play them stretched out over a long period of time, which makes learning systems like the ones in Morrowind more difficult), I quite appreciate having a Bethesta style fast travel. Also, personally, I like having the option to pop around on the map, doing a thing on one end and then another quest on the other side of the map, although I appreciate having another form of faster travel, like a mount.

A game that had a similar, if less refined, system, was Cartoon Network's crossover MMO FusionFall. There were two fast travel systems: one was instantaneous, but only travelled between one hub location in each major region (well, one major region had two, but the region was very long and narrow). The other was more local, and had more stops, but only had one in each subregion, not all subregions had them, and-crucially-it was real-time; you had to sit and wait as your character was ferried. The travel speed was faster than on foot and took some shortcuts over terrain that would be difficult or impassable on foot, but it was still a not-insignificant time investment, and certainly communicated the scale of the world. Additionally, both were money sinks, and both required you to travel to each station on foot before it became available. Edit: There was also a sort of tram system in that long, narrow region I mentioned. It was a couple of floating platforms that would do a circuit up and down the region at a slightly higher speed than walking and would pause at stops along the way just long enough for people to get on. Basically, a streetcar.

Gothic's 1 and 2 fast travel was great too.(having to earn or find teleportation runes but you still have to travel on foot and learn your surroundings) Public transit is nice too, GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption use it nicelly too

I don’t think they should remove the easy fast travel altogether because sometimes you don’t have time or just don’t feel like being immersed or walking that long distance especially if it’s a back and forth trip. But they should also keep the immersive fast travel because it’s important for the game and it is pretty cool.

My favorite fast travel system was a new Vegas mod from pushthewinbutton that gave the player a motorcycle (though I always made it a requirement to dump 3000 caps in the trashcan in prim where it is found as "payment" before taking it) that allows fast travel the same way that the base game does to any unlocked map marker but with the caveat that it costs fuel and wear and tear on the bike (which made it less fuel efficient making trips cost more fuel if you didn't keep it maintained) to travel and that you had to return to the bike to travel again so that if you parked the bike at the gun runners for example then hiked to boomtown you couldn't just fast travel back to the gun runners but would have to travel back on foot to where you last fast traveled before being able to travel again. I find that this provides the positive incentives to route planning, investment and immersion that morrowinds systems granted but while also side skirting the confusing aspects and need to make sure that you kept the right guild happy so you could travel and whatnot. I also do like using skyrims carriages as if they are the only means of fast travel with mods that increase the price based on distance and also mods that make the fast travel time scale realistic so that my character gets properly hungry and thirsty through traveling as well.

In Valheim, an open world survivial game, you can build portals wherever you want but can't travel through them with metal ores and ingots, which are necessary materials for upgrading both your equipment and crafting stations, requiring you to make the trek aaallll the way home on your ownsome knowing one unlucky ambush can have you respawn back at home with your cargo stuck halfway across the world

Breath of the Wild is a huge improvement on the Skyrim Model. Shrines only act as teleport points if you specifically activate them. They’re not always in the most convenient spots, but you can teleport to any town. You select destinations from Link’s Sheikah Slate and have to watch him spaghettify into blue light and back again every time, explaining how this mode of travel is possible within the setting. Finally, the towers don’t overload the map with sidequests. It only provides a topographical map that the player can scour for possible destinations.

I've said it previously and I'll say it again: I really like how WoW handles traveling (especially in the early versions). You have your two feet, later you'll get a mount, you can travel with gryphons/wyverns, which still take time but also force you to take in the landscape, zeppelins, boats, hearthstones, spells, etc. It's just really diverse and imitates the way a real public transport mesh functions (e.g. walk to bus station, take bus to train, take train to airport, take airplane, and so on). And none of them are free, they always cost money, time, or effort.

I got so bent out of shape over the fast travel in Bethesda's later titles that I was using mods that removed it. Atmosphere and immersion is greatly improved and you can appreciate the worlds the devs created, plus you really consider preparation before venturing forth