Itsuno talks about the decision to avoid adding too many fast travel options to the game, stating that the only reason people might think that travel is boring is because “your game is boring”. Dragon’s Dogma 2 hopes to avoid this by adding more interesting encounters that players might face along the way as they journey across the world.
“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,” said Itsuno. “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, 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.”
For the sake of context, the original Dragon’s Dogma offered fast travel through the use of items called Ferrystones and Port Crystals, which players could put down at specific place and then fast travel to at later points. This more limited method of fast travel will also be available in Dragon’s Dogma 2, along with the addition of Oxcarts that can ferry players across specific paths.
This new method of fast travel will come with its own potential dangers, however. Itsuno says that their trip on an Oxcart has the chance to be interrupted thanks to different events that take place in the open world. Examples provided by Itsuno ranged from goblins simply blocking the Oxcart’s path, to a Griffin invading and destroying the cart in a a single attack.
“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 explains. “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.”
The subject of fast traveling is a contested one when it comes to gaming discussion circles. While many love the fact that games allow them to quickly hop into and out of action at their own convenience, others criticise the idea of being able to largely ignore the open world in favour of what is often described as the “only interesting parts”. Itsuno himself states that he likes the option of fast travel in games, while also adding that keeping a sense of scale and distance is important to Dragon’s Dogma 2.
“I guess we wanted there to be a cost to shortening a long distance,” adds lead developer Kenta Kinoshita. “In a way, that strongly mirrors the real world too. There are a lot of rules in real life that are needed to make a system possible, and ignoring those rules makes things seem less realistic, or less valuable.”
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is slated for release on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on March 22. For more details on the game, check out Kinoshita and Itsuno talking about Pawns in an earlier interview.
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