Dragon’s Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno has explained why the upcoming sequel will limit fast travel for players. The feature has been a staple in most open-world games for years now, allowing players to open up the map and simply teleport over to another location (typically one that was previously explored and unlocked). However, Itsuno says Dragon’s Dogma 2 will take a different approach to fast travelling.
Speaking to IGN in a recent interview, Hideaki Itsuno went into some detail about how the fast travel system will work in Dragon’s Dogma 2. The director initially criticises the feature, calling it “boring” if developers aren’t able to make the game’s world compelling enough. In the case of Dragon’s Dogma 2, however, fast travel will be limited to two options: players can either use it but it’s going to cost them some rare currency called Ferrystones or alternatively, they can take an Oxcart but risk having their travel interrupted by a world event.
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Itsuno explained:
“Just give it a try. 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. 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.”
“We’ve put a lot of work into designing a game where you can stumble across someone and something will happen,” Itsuno continued. “So while it’s fine if it does have fast travel, we decided to design the kind of map where players will make the decision for themselves to travel by bike or on foot in order to enjoy the journey.”
Itsuno’s point is understandable here, as many AAA open-world games fail to give players enough reasons to go out and explore the world, instead pushing them from one designated fast travel point to the next for the sake of simply unlocking the map. Thus, less effort is also put into creating a compelling world. However, games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Elden Ring managed to use fast travel in a clever way, still populating its worlds with interesting things to find but unlocking the feature via organic exploration.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 launches on 22 March 2024 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Source: IGN
