In a recent interview with IGN, Dragon’s Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno didn’t mince words when it comes to his preference for actually exploring open worlds instead of zipping around via the map menu express: “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.”
Both Dragon’s Dogma and its sequel have more limited forms of fast travel, requiring users to spend prize resources if they want to avoid going from point A to point B the old fashioned way. Itsuno is keen, however, to make sure that doesn’t result in uneventful slogs across the world map.
“We’ve put a lot of work into designing a game where you can stumble across someone and something will happen,” Itsuno explained. “While it’s fine if [a game] 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.”
Dragon’s Dogma 2 will introduce a second form of “fast travel” in addition to the first game’s Ferrystones, but even this will have a twist. Dragon’s Dogma 2 will feature carts to take the players between settlements in a similar fashion to Skyrim’s wagons or Morrowind’s silt striders, but it sounds like this fantasy public transportation will be complicated by random encounters on the road.
Itsuno goes on to describe the sorts of surprises players can find out in the open world or via the new transit system. Goblins might barricade a road, forcing you to clear them out, while hungry griffins might intercept you, drawn to the pack animals pulling your wagon. These sorts of systemic hazards are intriguing to me—I already enjoyed how Morrowind could make you feel like a schlub taking the fantasy bus with its silt striders, and adding the curve ball of systemic attacks sounds like it could really bring things to the next level.
Ultimately, Itsuno isn’t necessarily opposed to more generous, easy-to-use fast travel systems, calling them “convenient,” but the unique focus of Dragon’s Dogma’s grounded approach could really make this open world sing.