“Travel is boring? That’s not true.”
Dragon’s Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno has weighed in on fast travel in video games. His thoughts? Travelling the traditional, ‘long’ way itself isn’t boring. It’s more about whether the game you are playing is interesting enough to keep you entertained while you travel.
“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,” Itsuno told IGN when asked about fast travel mechanics.
“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 metres in front of them.”
The Dragon’s Dogma 2 team has designed a game where players can “stumble across someone and something will happen,” Itsuno explained. “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.”
Much like the first game in the Dragon’s Dogma series, developer Capcom has included pricey Ferrystones in its sequel, which will allow players to hop around the map to designated areas with Port Crystals. Additionally, this time around the developer has also added Oxcarts as a means to get around the map.
These carts will allow players to travel along a specific route, but with potential ambushes along the way. Itsuno said the team didn’t want to make a “simple method of safe transportation” in Dragon’s Dogma 2, but rather use these Oxcarts as a way to enhance a player’s experience within the world.
“While riding one, you might find the path blocked by goblins and have no choice but to get off and join the battle. Then as you do, a Griffin might swoop in and destroy the entire cart with one blow, forcing you to walk the rest of the way while cursing its name,” Itsuno explained.
“But none of that has been set up by us in advance. Instead, Griffins naturally have an inclination toward attacking cows they discover as they move, and these pieces all just happen to work together to naturally create the situation. So yes, an oxcart ride in this world may be cheap, but a lot can come as a result of that cheapness. I think that’s the kind of world we’ve managed to create.”
Dragon’s Dogma 2 will retail for $70 on PC (via Steam), PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S when it arrives in March. This will mark the first time Capcom will sell the base version of a new game for that higher price point.
As for the game itself, our Ian has already been hands on with the upcoming release. “Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels very similar to the original, for better and worse,” he wrote in Eurogamer’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 preview.
“All in all, the game felt at times sloppy and confusing, yet also familiar and quite frankly, very entertaining. It felt like putting a bomb under a nicely laid out set of dominos, where your carefully laid plans can explode into utter pandemonium,” he said. “I really loved how unpredictable each encounter was and how the game kept its basic ‘go here, kill these monsters’ questlines feeling fresh and full of laughs and surprises.”
