so this is what the botton of the barrel video game essayist looks like. Self pitying humor leading up to shameless plug and calling boswer's fury open world? yeah defenalty the botton

19:24 i believe "exaggerated swagger" is the correct term for how this game feels

i want the hour version now...

The timing of "You fall off ... ... ... and die" with the second lightning strike and the immediate cut was perfect

Rdr2 was the only game where I never wanted to fast travel. The beauty of the world was a factor but it really was because of the plethera of random events or abandoned places you could find. Also, you can still fast travel whenever. Just pitch up a tent and then you can tp anywhere on the map. Idk why you didn't mention that.

“ careful shifting, it’s sticks in second” killed me

I feel like traversal can be made fun by making it challenging. In outward you can't see yourself on the map, meaning you have to use landmarks to know where you are and where you will be going. This allows you to get lost, and means you have to concentrate on where you are and where you are going. The same applies for Kingdom Come: Deliverance hardcore mode, and I personally find it makes traversing somewhat entertaining.

I think that in red dead the travel was good because of the people and side quests you would meet along the way making every journey feel like an actual lived in world rather than an empty field

What I really like about Death Stranding is that traversal of the world IS the game Going from A to B is full of danger. You need to prepare, evaluate the risks, choose a path and survive without destroying the packages you are carrying

This reminded me of insomniac’s game before Spider-Man, Sunset Overdrive, and how that game’s traversal was so well made and fun that I never used the fast travel even if I was going across the map. The grinding and wall running was just such an enjoyable thing to do that to skip it felt like I was neglecting myself the game I wanted to play. It reminded me a quote from someone which was “if you need to use fast travel to move around in your game you have failed at game design.” Now I don’t fully agree with it since many games I enjoy I utilize their fast travel, but the idea of if a game can make me not want to fast travel then it’s definitely won game design

Lmaoo "exaggerated swagger" nice reference 👍

This was always a problem I noticed. The easy, and genuinely most effective method to make travelling long, mostly empty distances is just to have a fun character controller. Let me platform around, anything more than just holding forward. I think it's disappointing how few games want you travel these big landscapes quickly. Everyone loves a big sense of speed and really the only games I can think that manages that feeling is just cause, or just straight up driving games. I think that idea is what everyone got excited for when sonic frontiers came out, but that quickly tapered off as soon as the game was revealed to be more of a rail grind simulator than anything, which is one of the most automatic and least engaging mechanics in all of gaming... which is all to say that it was incredibly disappointing. I even had a problem with botw and totk because you just move so slowly, at least tears gave you some cool contraptions to throw a rocket onto but I just spent more than half of my time holding forward while gliding out of a sky tower, and good lord is that slow, and somehow faster than a lot of other methods. I just want more games to let me go fast man. That's all I want.

I don't call "Marvel's Spider-Man" by its name. Instead, I call it "Insomniac's Sony's Marvel's Spider-Man".

This video is very entertaining, informative and high quality. Also the very first thing I thought of when reading the title was the traversal of Just Cause 3, which is some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a video game, so thank you for shedding some light on it! You’ve earned yourself a subscriber, my good sir.

I’ve been playing a lot of Kenshi lately and I’m loving how expeditions and exploration feels. Traveling starts as frightening risk but you learn how to avoid things and what risks are good risks as you play. It’s so engaging. The world feels so lived in with all the camps, fights, bounties, and bodies you stumble upon. I recommend it so much.

I was completely unaware of Just Cause, and while I don't think it's a game I would want to play, I very much loved seeing that car spin up into the air. Great video as always!

how do you only have 5k subs

The humour you have is priceless. An amazing video essay, thanks for blessing us with this!

Red Dead 2 takes the idea of Instant gratification and pummels it into oblivion.

I recently had one of my other channels have a similar surgence to yours so i know how it feels to finally find your audience, and being part of that audience feels special. Very quality vid, will be sticking around for more in the future :)

This is the first video of yours I’ve come across and it’s so good. Look forward to watching more of your stuff!

This seems like one of those videos that should have a million views, surprised to see it at only 200

I really like RDR2 traversal it give me nice vibes and its calming.

I can't belive how well the video was made, i actually was really suprised this channel isn't in the hundreds of thousands of sub range. A really great channel!

I really enjoy these more frequent uploads, even though they take more effort to push out. Hoping KZfaq will push these out to a wider audience like the last one.

Great Video! Really hammered in on the reasons I ended up liking Death Stranding, despite usually liking more reactive games. The satisfaction from learning how to traverse the world from A to B is amazing, and it itches a scratch that makes movement actually MATTER

This was a fantastic intro to your content. Great video! "Sunset Overdrive" is some of my favorite open world traversal. I rarely used the fast travel in the game.

days gone has my hands down favorite travel system you have to be near or on your bike to fast travel and when you do it takes gas which means if you don't have a big gas tank you can't travel far and most of the time infestation zones block your ability to fast travel so it makes it where you have to actually ride your bike instead of stare at a loading screen for the early game and late/post game when you're trying to get 100% it's easier to go to the place you need just by fast traveling (although i never really do) also if you just fast travel it takes more gas than just taking shortcuts and going places yourself and i love it

Great video, thank you for sharing. A part 2, sure, I would love to see where you take it. Have fun :)

This is why dying light has always been so interesting to me, never once while playing did i even remotely think of fast traveling, the interactivity with the parkour makes the transportation so engaging. Having to focus on every little jump and step makes the player stay consistently on the move.

One thing I find very much worth mentioning about BotW. Some of the glitches and physics engine exploits are *very* fun to use. Wind Bombs especially, are very satisfying and very versatile. A slightly more consistent version of them that doesn't damage Link could honestly have been a been a very believable traversal method in TotK with all of the Zonai Tech in the game.

20:05 As soon as you started talking about the game, I suspected this would come up lmao. Great vid, looking forward to more from this channel!

The way you traverse and transition from subtopic to subtopic to full on subjects with in this genre of video essay is incredibly fluid unlike what what I’ve ever see, makes me feel like I’m watching a biased yet unbiased documentary at the same time because of your personal experience with these games. Really good content.

Great essays on nice humor, looking forward to part 2!

Brilliant stuff! I think I've found a new favorite channel!

i love this video so much wow, its a wonder you dont have like 100k because this is so high quality and seems like a video you'd get from a really popular channel

Just earned yourself a subscriber. Needless to say, I'm interested in a part 2!

Damn you made this quick. And a 20 minute video too? Shit takes me like a month and a half

I'm a huge fan of Subnautica for.. many reasons. I love how it really utilizes the fear of the unknown to scare players but in a way where it feels satisfying to face those fears and continue onward. Especially because the story is so interesting. Helps that I'm autistic and have a huge obsession with biology- particularly Marine and Speculative LOL This is such a fun video! I'm glad I watched the totk video and found your channel!

Never before has one video from someone I don’t know made me subscribe with full notifications, 11/10!

Yooooo, this was a great video, keep them coming mate

The swinging difference between Miles and Peter is the same difference between free-running and parkour

Death Stranding is an open world game where getting from point A to point B is the fun part. Highly mindful traversal

This was really well made, hope you get more attention. This was awsome

I was suprised you didnt mention death stranding! Great video btw :)

I really wish I could enjoy Subnautica; I've tried it multiple times but it's never quite clicked for me. Just Cause 3, though? I've never wanted to -destroy- liberate public infrastructure more. Love the editing at 17:20, btw. Great video! Although I do think it could be improved with a tighter thesis. You gave some examples that I'm inclined to agree with, based on my own gameplay experience and other essays I've seen, but failed to tie it together beyond "good traversal 👍". If you gave some more ideas about what makes a traversal system excellent, or how to design the world to be complementary to the gameplay (or vice versa), there would be a bit more to take away at the end.

Great video mr wing and I'm not just saying that because I'm being paid in earwigs by the big man himself and if I was they've a nice crunch to them and I wouldnt blame me!

Would love a part 2, points made here were very good and interesting and seeing you expand more upon them would be great

You nailed it on the head with Just Cause 3, I hadn't played that far into JC4 because I got decision paralysis from all the balloon/rocket settings, but I LOVE just being a human jet in JC3, just flying in it in my spare time without even landing and shooting any bad guys, the fact that JC3 is so beautiful is a big cherry on top. It's also why I love the old Assassin's Creeds so much - the traversal is not just a means from A to B, but a legitimate form of gameplay in itself. You can go online and see people who'd played 1000 hours just doing the most smooth and insane parkour and it is so satisfying when you get to do it yourself.

Honestly the difference between how traversal works in these games relies on the underlying methodology behind the minds that make the game, Skyrim and RDR2 want to make these immersive and indepth worlds that actually feel like worlds, filled with atmosphere and spectacle. Super Metroid does a damn good job of this in some areas, the levels feel incredible to explore and it's not because of the gameplay because honestly in terms of gameplay Super Metroid is shit compared to the rest of the series, but its the areas, the forboding feeling that the areas inspire. I was playing ES Oblivion and even though it's an old as hell game made 800 years ago I stopped and just had to take a moment to enjoy the landscape, it was really pretty and done incredibly well, yeah in terms of gameplay I was just moving forward, but I still remember how fun it was traveling in the game, even thought the last time I played it was a year or two ago. I love Bowsers Fury but I don't remember a single thing besides having fun and big bowser, there was no real feeling of exploration, no feeling of awe and wonder, I was just hopping around this silly little jungle gym and thats what most games do when they focus on making travel fun. What each company wants is for the player to play it and to have an enjoyable experience doing so, Nintendo puts priority in fun and exiting gameplay and it does such a damn good job at it. I wouldn't really say that the travel in Skyrim and RDR2 sucks, I honestly like the feel of it, how slow it is compared to other games. Because real travel is slow, and tedius and true travel, like what you'll see in these games is something that you will rarely experience anywhere else, because it's pretty easy to die. BOTW came close to perfecting travel in my opinion, making it slow and steady, presenting danger and in some areas it was incredible, the cold places had to be prepped for, the hot desert and lava areas as well, but above all BOTW was made to be fun, and because of that travel was removed that beautiful monotony and spectacle that it had, that ability to enjoy the landscape and replaced it with fast travel, really cool fucking shield surfing, and horses. What I'm saying really boils down to, Morrowind was fun and I miss that feeling of adventure, of truly exploring the world.

I think the main issue at play with open world traversal is that we lump all "Open Worlds" into a single category when there are multiple types, and each type appeals to different kinds of gamers. Let's take Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, and Horizon Zero Dawn as examples. In Skyrim, there are no towers to climb to reveal the map and/or markers. You discover the whole world organically by either being directed there through a quest, or just stumbling across it. The core gameplay of Skyrim is rather shallow and repetative, but every single quest in the game is dressed up in lore. For me, personally, this is still my all time favorite open world game of all time, and the main reason is because I enjoy set dressing so much. Give me a story that is even the slightest bit interesting and keep the dialogue above awful, and I'll be hooked. In contrast to that, you have Horizon Zero Dawn that has a much more "traditional" open world exploration model where you climb up towers to reveal the map and activities to do in the area. Luckily, Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't fall into the pitfall of other open world games where the towers unlock literally everything in the area, but the reason that this version of open world exploration doesn't fall flat (for me) is because, again, all the quests you can do are dressed up in interesting story beats. While the majority of activities in Zero Dawn are fairly repetitive, they all have set dressing that fills in the lore of the world. You might have 50 different quests to kill certain enemies in certain areas, but the person asking you to do it will always have a different reason for it. Lastly, let's discuss Breath of the Wild. In Breath of the Wild, you have towers that you climb to fill in your map, but that's all they do. No additional map markers are unlocked through doing this, and really, aside from being able to look at a nicer map, it doesn't really provide you with anything gameplay wise (maybe you can find a few things by looking at your map alone). The quests in Breath of the Wild are also extremely repetative, and there are barely any in the game. Most of the "quests" boil down to the 120 shrines and Divine Beast quests. The main appeal of Breath of the Wild isn't the quests, it's the exploration and traversal. The bulk of your time in Breath of the Wild will be spent just moving through the world doing micro-activities on your way from point A to point B. This method of exploration is so satisfying that it has rightly been praised by every person on the internet. However, for me personally, this is one of the weaker open world games for me, and it boils down to the point of the open world. Breath of the Wild is personal choices over everything else. Every shrine gives the same reward, and you choose how to apply the reward, there are very few quests that have any kind of story to them, and generally these stories are extremely self contained. So, we look at these three games, and we can see that each has a different focus and they are going to appeal to different players, even though they will generally have broad appeal. Skyrim is great because of the lore and story, not the gameplay (not that it's bad, just hardly a highlight), Horizon Zero Dawn has a bit of mix between having solid mechanics and lore excuses to engage in these mechanics, and Breath of the Wild focuses on Gameplay over everything else, even payoff. There's nothing wrong with preferring one type of the other, but I do think that at this point we need to really explore the nuances of open worlds more than just "it's got a big interconnected map" because there's much more to them than that.

Great video. I'd love to see you do a similar breakdown of different ways of approaching crafting, or inventory management, as it seems they are an almost obligatory part of modern open-world games. You can definitely add my sub to the list.

This videos great. Congrats on all the success, you def deserve it.

Haha, this guy just hits me right! Wonder if he has played Dragon's Dogma? And YES!! If you read this, make a part 2 (1 hour would be fine too).

I love the transition at 2:07

First video I saw from you. Loved it. Can’t wait for more

Just randomly got your channel in my recommended gave it a shot very high quality fire vid essay keep it up bro

camwing will be a household name if he makes a part 2

20:06 this line made me laugh harder than it should've

Original and great vid bro keep it up dawg no way u only have 8k u deserve way more and the quality is one of a mil or more channel fr

This video really brings me back to those old Egoraptor sequilitis videos, love to see video game essays that isn’t just someone blandly reading a script👏👏

Another banger of a video, Camwing!

We have seen fun open world travel in the past. A long long time ago, in a little game called _Morrowind_ There were no map markers, each corner you turned held new dangers and experiences, and almost all quests had their own intricacies. The world was made to look large (mainly with fog due to hardware limitations at the time), but when you knew the way, distances were short to travel yet the roads still had many points of interest on offer.

man you're good with your cuts, well done

I can’t believe it take so long for me to discover this channel!! I love your style and I subscribed :D

My unpopular opinion was I loved the open world travel of death stranding mainly because of the atmosphere

While not necessarily open-world, Sonic Frontiers is basically the opposite of Horizon: Zero Dawn. Traversing from one place in the story to another is easy, but the bulk of the game is running around the map and collecting items so you can watch a story cutscene, and with the bulk of the game being running around and platforming, Sonic Team made Sonic a ton of fun to control and run around (especially after update 2), and that is typically more fun than the destination (unless you're about the fight a titan).

Excellent video. So glad I subscribed after your last one

This video was so good! Would love to see a part 2.

I think weighing Skyrim against Bowser's Fury to determine the quality of their open world traversal is pointless, as they're in completely different genres and aim for completely different things. While yes, they are both open worlds, the open worlds serve very different purposes. Bowser's Fury is first and foremost a platformer game, where movement is at the core of the gameplay experience, and therefore the open world serves as a fun and seamless way to connect the bulk of the game's content while exemplifying the core gameplay experience - but its just that, a great way to seamlessly connect the main content of the game. With Skyrim and its open world, while the movement itself does boil down to pushing forward, the traversal entails so much more than pointing yourself in the direction of the quest marker and moving towards it, it's about all the things that will sidetrack you away from that quest marker. All the random encounters causing you to stop along your way, small points of interest often including little stories, mysterious caves along the roadside that entice you to delve deeper within, bandit occupied keeps, and sometimes even other quests entirely. Much like Breath of the Wild in that aspect. What I'm trying to say is, both games aim for very different things with their open worlds, and traversing the open world of both games is fun but for very different reasons, and though traversing Skyrim's open world doesn't personally click with you, that doesn't make it objectively bad. If you read through my comment, thank you. Sorry for the big wall of text, I'm just a young man trying to articulate my thoughts pertaining to a game I consider one of the most important I've ever played, and this took over an hour for me to write.

Definitely my favorite GameCube game.

Dude I stumbled upon this channel thinking it was some 1M KZfaq video game documentary guy, actually very surprised to see he only has 10K (not bad, just surprised) definitely earned a sub

There is no way you only have 7k subs this is genuinely amazing content. Keep it up bubba

Outer wilds is basically the definition of great open wirld experience. The whole game is based of discovering by yourself, without any mission at all.

Kingdom Come Deliverance, and Elden Ring deserve some mention. I feel Elden Ring is still somewhat linear, due to the world literally being shaped like a finger, you can’t go from Caelid to Leyndell without warping, or traveling 80% of the map via everywhere else.

Its ALWAYS the underrated youtubers with like 10k subscribers that make the most enjoyable and meaningful content. Damn I dont even remember how long its been since I watched a youtube video thats about 20 minutes long and isnt related to school or studies. Good sstuff man, very on point

A great video dude. Insightful and well written. The quality of this video easily matches the well known video essayist standard. Keep it up, and you're bound to be successful one day.

This is a fantastic video! To add to open world traversal and good open world video games. I think how the game responds might be a factor? Admittedly I’m more familiar with metroidvanias and platformers but the way the game reacts to what you do just feels very important. I adore Outer Wilds and piloting the ship and exploring the planets is really fun to me, and I play on keyboard! I think the map being so small while feeling so big helps (since there’s less space in between everything) but exploring in that game is just great. Partially cause the game’s story and mystery is just fantastic but also cause there’s a lot of things to take into account while playing Outer Wilds, from your speed, to the gravity, to your resources to how the area changes overtime. But also due to one Really Important Kinda Spoiler Game Mechanic your encourages to go and try doing something dangerous. Traversal is almost like a science experiment really. If I do X what will happen? How much fuel can I use? Is it possible to do Y? And it just makes it all the more fun. A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game are also fantastic, they have different ways of movement but the way there maps are made are Really Good for similar reasons. There’s so many Ways to traverse in those games, so many different ways of getting to a place, and since the maps are pretty small, everything’s more interconnected. When you climb a mountain fall because you overestimated the amount of energy you had, there’s a bunch of other ways to get to where you need to be if you just look around, heck falling down the mountain might of made you notice a completely different path, which encourages exploration and problem solving and what not. Honestly I can talk forever about games which have good traversal, it’s always really important to me that it feels interesting. Uh Good video if you ever make a part 2 I’d be really happy to watch it.

This is coming from someone who is generally a fan of slow-paced media and overall immersive and atmospheric craft. So I think I'm the only one who liked traversal nature of Red Dead 2 including the cinematic cameras everyone else hated but I loved it due to the vibe and atmosphere it provided to me. It'd had been a while since a game respected my odd tastes so I was happy. And I was glad it wasn't afraid to not be traditional and slow things down. Type 2 fun I think it's called idk Yes, I am the only one thinks this. And I know that I deserve to be forgotten and called the enemy of gaming- I'm used to it.

Great Video! Would love to see more!!

yeye part 2 i love ur voice and i feel like u explain everything really well

your content is awesome keep it up mate.

Talking about traversal in open world videogames without even mentioning death stranding is a crime

I NEED that part two the SECOND it is ready

Awesome video, I'd enjoy another part to it.

based and true

Prototype (1 specifically) still has an amazing feeling traveral system, very responsive once you max out your skills and master the system, your agility is unrivaled and you go around parkouring with superpowers, what's not to love?

Great video man, really great pacing new subscriber yo

In 2017, Botw ruined every other game for me. Horizon Zero Dawn's open world sucked ass compared to Hyrule

I think Outer Wilds is another great example of traversal done right. It's basically the main part of the game.

A thing I learned from watching Masahiro Sakurai's KZfaq channel is that Japanese devs have a strong belief in a central game design tenet: push/pull. Essentially, that for something to be fun, there has to be some kind of tension for the player in doing it; if you push at it, it pushes back, if you pull at it, it pulls back, there's some kind of tug-of-war there. Western game devs don't really seem to have centralized this core concept NEARLY as much as Japanese devs have, from what I've noticed. So when it comes to really basic things in game, like traversing a space, western devs seem to just presume, "well we want to make it as simple to accomplish as possible, and maybe make it easier/more convenient to skip the boring parts," so if the player pushes something in a direction, there's as *little* resistance as possible. Which is great UI design or UX design if you're talking about general software usage. But it's TERRIBLE *game* design. Because what makes something a *game* is that tension, that question of success. The Japanese devs look at traversal and think about how they can add that tension back in, not remove it or make it as simple as possible, but actually adding it back in. That's why there's a way to fail at climbing a mountain in BotW, or that you can get a high score when riding Plessy in Mario just moving between places - because there's tension there (both negative and positive examples) and just getting from point A to point B is fun in and of itself, and it's the lack of understanding this push/pull dynamic which is why in every Bethesda game they just add more fast traveling functionality and wonder why it seems that people like their games less and less. "We made it more and more convenient to get to the tailored content! Why are people mad?" is what the Bethsoft dev says, not understanding that half the fun of their games comes from what happens inbetween their bits of tailored content, and they've erased *that* bit of magic that people used to enjoy in their games (this btw is why Oblivion is the best TES game - the AI routines make the traveling between places extremely random and this adds tension).

1:35 That is some next-level pain.

Omg you got me into so much nostalgia of theese games. Thank you!

Enjoyed this video a lot. Hood you make a part two mentioning the Arkham series.

Sunset Overdrive has a really fun to explore open world because the movement feels so good

Really smooth edit at 17:24, that looked really nice

Really enjoyable video, thank you both

In the funny pirate game (Sea of Thieves) the part where you do an absolute ton of sailing may seem unappealing or boring, and sometimes it is, but sometimes you'll find yourself ambushed by a skeleton ship, hunted by a massive shark, or fighting the mighty tentacles of a ferocious kraken. Or worst yet, the other pirates also playing the game. When you amass your treasure and are transporting it to a port where you will sell it all, you're not just worrying about the wind direction and the amount of islands and rocks in the way, you're also worrying about every single ship and hostile creature that could be out there. That's what I love about it. No two voyages you play in will be the same. In some you may have a great time, pillaging fort after fort while your emissary flag reaches tier 5 and you get that sweet sweet 150% increase in sales, while in some, you're chasing or being chased by another pirate, seeking one another's booty. There's also multiple ways to play the game. You can explore sunken temples and shrines of a depressing past, you can pilfer the loot right out the hands of some ghosts in a fortress out at sea, you can become a part of the Reaper's Bones and hunt emissary ships, including other Reapers. The game doesn't expect you to become a legendary voyager of the sea, or become a skeleton warlord of death, but it provides the option for those who wish to, or seek the cosmetic options. For those who love naval combat, there are two factions you can join for rewards, or if you really just love battle. The Guardians of Fortune seek to prevent the other from making the sea go into ruin, the Servants of the Flame seek to do exactly that for power and control, for a true pirate's life where there are no rules or a code. Of course, the war is never ending so the game doesn't change drastically, but if you reach rank 100 in either faction, you gain a special reward... curses. Special cosmetics that change your body appearance in drastic ways, such as gilded skin, hellfire possession, or being a ghost. Anyway, if I were to continue any further, I'd just be ranting about how the game works, rather than just it's open world mechanics, but I thought I'd throw this game in the pool.

i’m respectfully demanding part two please

I'm so happy I found this channel, amazing content