How Do We Make Traveling in Games Fun?
A friend of mine recently said to me, “You know, I’ve been meaning to play this horse game for a while. You just run around on a horse! Through different landscapes! Isn’t that fun!”
“Ooh, did it come out recently?” I asked.
“No, no, it came out a while ago I think, there’s cowboys in it maybe?” she replied. “It’s Red… Red something?”
I looked at her, a little incredulous. “Do you mean Red Dead Redemption?”
“YES! That’s it, Red Dead Redemption! It’s been on my list for forever.” She exclaimed, “I love horses!”
That was a fully real conversation I had only a few days ago, and I’m still thinking about it to this day. Red Dead Redemption, reduced to a “horse game”? What about the cool lassoing? The gun-slinging? The carriage robberies?
Though not primarily lauded for it’s amazing Horse Mechanics, there’s something so interesting about Red Dead Redemption’s travel mechanics being such a memorable part of the game. I mean, my friend had heard about the horse-riding and the travel, but nothing about the rest of the game. She wasn’t even sure if it was actually about cowboys! But based purely off of the positive things she’d heard about the horse-riding in the game, she was fully willing to buy it and play it. She loved the idea of traveling around different landscapes, and didn’t much care for the violence that pervades the rest of the game.
Travel in video games has long been a design challenge. We love to create richly detailed worlds populated with unique characters, and taking our player from location to location to encourage exploration. But the problem is the journey, not the destination — we tend to focus on the end game of the location rather than the method of getting there, and that’s where the design challenge exists.
How do you create large worlds and not bore the hell out of your players by making them travel the real-life equivalent of 100 miles? How do we balance big worlds with long periods of stagnant travel? How can you make a player love your idea of travel so much, they’ll buy the game? In short, how can we make travel in video games fun?
I’ll be looking at travel through these three games: Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Red Dead Redemption, and Legend of Zelda: Windwaker.
Make it Relevant to Character
Players expect certain traits out of certain character tropes: ninjas will usually be stealthy, and usually equipped with ninja stars; aliens will usually ride in spaceships that beep and boop; fairies will usually fly, sparkling in the air. Taking advantage of these character tropes and building game movement around them can integrate mechanics with character (and therefore, story), as well as improve the experience of your player. It makes traveling feel less like a chore, and feel more like an important, integrated aspect of the game.
For example: Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag (AC: BF) went full-on pirate, and what kind of pirate game doesn’t include sailing? AC: BF was a game that faced the challenge of “Lots of Locations — Long Travel Time.” Players would have to navigate their ship from the western end of the Caribbean to the eastern end, a distance that covers over a thousand miles in real life, and that often meant long periods of time at sea.
Though spending 3–5 minutes here and there to sail ship is relatively small in the context of a near 40-hour game, those 3–5 minutes are spent looking at a similar environment, with nothing to do but steer (excluding encounters for now — we’ll get to them later!). Sailing long distances can easily get monotonous, and players may feel their finger itching for the “Skip” button instead. So what makes it exciting, not boring? Well, the answer lies in Edward Kenway.
A failed merchant turned fearless outlaw, Edward Kenway is the main playable character in AC:BF and a certified badass. Constantly on the run from both the government and pirates, he needs to always be on the move, and his only method of transportation is a decently-sized ship. The sense of urgency that is built into his character translate into the sailing mechanics — he is an impatient man and a sea-faring merchant, of course he would be sailing everywhere. The identity of the character and what that character’s goals are align with the travel needs of the game, uniting travel and story. Time at sea didn’t feel like a chore, it felt like an important leg in the pirate’s story, and the travel mechanic integrates more naturally with the rest of the game. People expect sailing from a pirate game, so give it to them!
As for Red Dead Redemption, there’s the obvious horse example. There can be no cowboy without a horse! It is so integral to the trope and idea of a cowboy that people would notice if horses were missing. The playable character, John Marston, always makes a point to take good care of his horses with casual pats and brushes here and there, and you can tell that horses matter to him. He’s a cowboy and an outlaw — he needs a quick getaway that doesn’t require any additional witnesses (like a carriage), and horses are perfect for that function.
By making players travel by horse, the cowboy character trope is reinforced, and it keeps the experience going. Often, I’ve found that fast travel teleportation can halt the action of a moment and completely take me out of it. If I’m running out of town, chased by bandits one moment, then staring at a loading screen the next, the suspension and tension of that moment can be completely lost. By encouraging players to hop onto their horse to escape and travel, the in-game tension is sustained and pushed forward. Indeed, as you feel your horse accelerating, the momentum of the narrow escape feels like it carries into the speed of your horse — realism through immersion. Travel, in this sense, is built into the character and environment as a necessary and highly beneficial thing, and it makes the game that much richer.
Though Legend of Zelda: Windwaker is one of my favorite games, it doesn’t do this aspect of travel as successfully as my other two examples. Yes, travel is integral to the story goals in the sense that you couldn’t complete the game without it, but sailing is relevant to the ship character King of the Red Lions, not so much Link.
Link, a young boy of roughly 13 or 14, had grown up on a island with his younger sister and grandmother. Though it’s typical for Zelda games not to give its players too much information about the various reincarnations of Link himself, we don’t see any sailing specialties or skills in Link. The King of the Red Lions, an important spirit in the game who had taken residence in a boat, is the one who guides Link on his sea voyages. The travel is simple, often just adjusting the sails as needed, but not nearly as closely tied to the main playable character. Though beautiful to look at, I’ve found that travel in Windwaker can sometimes drag — perhaps because it doesn’t support the story as strongly.
Incorporate Experience Density
Another major way to improve traveling in games is experience density: basically, “how many things are happening within each set unit of time.” With more for players to do or interact with while traveling, the less traveling feels like wasted time. Game designers can really take advantage of traveling in this way — there are opportunities to include side quests or encounters that may not necessarily fit into the overall grand plot that can provide a lot of life to the game.
Because Edward Kenway is an outlaw, he’s being chased by both the government and fellow pirates. That means he encounters enemies not just in port cities and mysterious mansions, but also on the high seas. Getting from one location to another often means clashing with an opposing force, which provides one of the greatest mechanics in the game: ship battling. Players have the option to fight other ships on the sea, unleashing heavy artillery while simultaneously trying to avoid enemy fire. Sea battles can be difficult and long, but the constant barrage of attacks at such specific angles makes traveling on the sea much more exciting than simple fast travel.
There are not only enemy ships, but there are large sea creatures, opportunities to explore deserted islands, opportunities to pick up stranded people. Every few seconds there is something happening on the ocean — high experience density — so travel never feels boring or like wasted time.
Red Dead Redemption too had high experience density. If you weren’t paying attention, you could get attacked by wolves, boars, or even bears; there were robberies on the road, people to save or escort; policemen needing help to chase down escaped criminals. There was also always something happening when you traveled, a series of options presented to the player to enrich their experience.
Most fascinating about this is that all of the traveling activities that appear all play into John Marston’s morality compass. Should he stop his own business to help this woman in trouble? Do you save your fellow outlaws and let them escape? This game does the double whammy of character-focused travel mechanics and detailed travel pathways, which results in an exciting and highly intensive game.
Again, Windwaker doesn’t do this as successfully as the other games do. It isn’t as experience dense as the other two examples. Sure, there are things flying at you sometimes, or barrels with rupees you can jump over, but all in all you just gotta steer until you reach your destination. Maybe part of the appeal of this more peaceful sailing was to provide a moment of levity between high-action moments, but that’s not true throughout the game. It is an albeit beautiful and peaceful form of sailing, but it can sometimes drag on when there’s nothing else to do.
Peaceful sailing can be quite relaxing and charming, but in a game that is based in the essence of time, it can be a little lackluster.
Make It Pretty
There’s no denying that people enjoy looking at pretty things more than they do ugly things. Though pretty art doesn’t solve all the problems, it can greatly enhance a player’s need to explore. By making things looks visually attractive, they may not mind spending so much time traveling in them.
Traveling doesn’t have to be boring, tedious, or stagnant. It can provide opportunities to showcase character, integrate story and mechanics, and show off cool encounters that you wouldn’t necessarily get to incorporate otherwise. It enhances the inherent fantasy of each game — the fantasy of being a cowboy, a pirate, an adventurer — while keeping its players immersed in that fantasy.
As for me, when it comes to travel — I’ll just be over here with my friend riding virtual horses in virtual America.
