Fast travel says something about what the designers value in a game.
It feels like this is a conversation worth having.
So, to begin with something obvious: Starfield is huge.
It takes an absolute age to get anywhere in space.
Even things that seem close are separated by huge gulfs.
Starfield needs to create a sense of all this.
If you want to travel in a place like this, you’re dealing with massive distances.
But massive distances are annoying when you’re following the thread of a storyline.
SoStarfield uses fast travelto get you from one place to another.
You move from planet to planet and cut out a lot of the space travel stuff.
Starfield’s a bunch of discrete spaces, separated by loading screens and animations.
Animations are where the spaceship takes off and lands.
This is one of the game’s crucial choices.
It’s close-up work.
Starfield, and other games like it, goes in the other direction.
On the plus side, lots of quests and side-quests!
you might linger in your ship.
you’re able to admire it on the launch pad and take it into dogfights.
you gotta keep a part of your brain building the mental space that you’re travelling through.
And this for me is where fast travel actually becomes really interesting.
If I want to get to Pharoah Park, I need to head to this particular highway.
I’m suddenly somewhere else.
These are fascinating moments: moments where seen and unseen video game space converge.
Sometimes it doesn’t always work this way, though.
Marvel’s Spider-Man is an open-world game that offers fast travel across the different areas of New York.
So you select fast travel, and the game mockingly reminds you that you’re probably playing it wrong.
Convenience, but at a cost.
