Traversal abilities make exploration better when the route itself is enjoyable, expressive and useful for discovering the world. Fast travel makes it better when crossing familiar ground would add repetition, interrupt pacing or delay the next meaningful objective. Neither mechanic wins in every open world. The strongest designs make movement satisfying, keep fast travel optional and let each serve a different purpose.
What the two approaches actually do
Traversal items and movement abilities
Traversal items are tools or abilities that change how you move through the world: a grappling device, glider, mount, climbing gear, dash, wingsuit or a set of linked movement actions. They turn the journey between objectives into interactive play. You steer, choose routes, manage momentum and often notice landmarks or secrets that would be invisible from a map menu.
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Good traversal is more than increased speed. It gives the player decisions every few seconds. You might take a direct path, chain a launch into a swing, climb for a better view, or detour toward a structure that caught your eye. The world becomes a space to read and master rather than a backdrop between missions.
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Fast travel removes most or all of the physical journey. A player selects a discovered location, pays a cost or meets a condition, and appears at the destination. It is primarily a pacing and convenience system: it prevents a ten-minute return trip from becoming a twenty-minute obligation after the interesting work is finished.
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Fast travel can be presented as a menu, a map interaction, a network of stations, a vehicle route or a short in-world transition. Its presentation matters because an instant menu hop feels different from boarding a train, opening a gate or following a diegetic route through the setting.
Why traversal can make travel feel like play
Moment-to-moment decisions create engagement
Traversal is compelling when movement has a learnable rhythm. In Marvel’s Spider-Man, Insomniac connected swinging, zipping, wall-running and point-launch moves so players could preserve momentum rather than repeatedly stop and restart. Game director Ryan Smith described the goal as “smoothing the connections between all of our traversal moves, enabling the player to build and maintain momentum through traversal.” His 2018 Game Developer interview explains why the system remains enjoyable even when the destination is familiar.
That design produces a useful distinction between moving quickly and moving well. A player can improve route choice, timing and camera control. Mastery becomes its own reward, and a routine trip can still feel different when the player experiments with a new line through the city.
Movement can expose the world
Traversal abilities also act as discovery tools. Gaining altitude reveals silhouettes, roads and unusual terrain. A wall-run may expose a side path; a glide may let you land on a roof that is not marked as an objective. When movement and level design are built together, the player learns the geography by doing rather than by memorizing a static map.
Guerrilla’s 2017 GDC session on Horizon: Zero Dawn describes traversal mechanics for complex, organic environments, including the interaction between code and animation. That relationship is important: a movement system feels convincing when it responds to the shape, height and material of the environment instead of treating every surface as interchangeable.
Traversal can be expressive and accessible
An expressive system lets players choose how to move rather than forcing one animation or route. Some players optimize speed; others take scenic lines, practice difficult chains or use movement to avoid combat. To serve a broad audience, the game should provide forgiving input windows, camera assistance, clear landing feedback and alternatives for players who cannot perform complex sequences repeatedly.
Speed alone is not accessibility. A very fast system can be tiring if it demands constant camera correction, precise button timing or long uninterrupted sessions. Designers should consider toggles, remappable controls, automatic momentum assists and a safe way to slow down without cancelling the player’s chosen route.
Why fast travel can improve an open world
It removes low-value repetition
Open-world games often ask players to revisit a settlement, vendor or quest giver. The first trip may teach the landscape and reveal encounters; the fourth trip may only replay terrain the player already understands. Fast travel lets players preserve attention for new decisions instead of repeating a solved route.
This is especially valuable after a difficult mission, when a player wants to spend earned rewards, or when a quest sends them across a region they have already fully explored. Convenience is not automatically the enemy of immersion: forcing every return journey can make the world feel like a commute rather than an adventure.
It protects pacing and progression
Travel time affects the tempo at which players unlock abilities, meet characters and reach story beats. FromSoftware president and game director Hidetaka Miyazaki described the challenge in a PlayStation Blog interview about Elden Ring: “Another challenge making an open world game is the tempo and pacing of the player’s progression, essentially trying to balance how the player paces themselves as they explore this vast open-ended map and how that factors into the scope of freedom and progression they provide.”
Fast travel is one lever in that balance. It can prevent a large map from diluting narrative momentum while still leaving room for optional wandering. It also gives players control over their own pace: a player who wants atmosphere can ride or walk, while a player focused on a quest can skip a known segment.
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It can still belong to the fiction
A fast-travel system does not have to be a sterile menu. Stations, transit lines, magical gates, mounts or caravans can make the shortcut understandable within the world. In Marvel’s Spider-Man, subway-themed travel vignettes provided opportunities for humor and storytelling. Smith said Insomniac “always expected” fast travel because a city the size of its Manhattan made player convenience important, even though swinging was designed to be easy and fun. The interview presents convenience and enjoyable traversal as complementary rather than contradictory goals.
The Pathless: what happens when fast travel is removed
A deliberate identity choice
The Pathless takes the opposite approach. Matt Nava, founder and creative director of Giant Squid, wrote that the team removed both fast travel and a conventional map to encourage organic exploration, strengthen immersion and make players understand the space through experience. In his PlayStation Blog explanation, Nava summarized the rule: “There’s no fast travel, there’s no map, and there’s no game over.”
Removing a shortcut works only when the replacement is strong. The game combines archery dashes, eagle flight and a spirit mask that reveals explored terrain and distant points of interest. Nava wrote, “Combine that with the archery dashing mechanics, and traveling even great distances is a rewarding, joyful experience.” The lesson is not that every open world should delete its map or fast travel. It is that a no-fast-travel decision must be supported by movement that is quick, reliable and satisfying, plus navigation that keeps players oriented.
The costs of the no-fast-travel model
Players who enjoy learning a landscape may appreciate the intimacy of this approach. Others may find it restrictive if they need to cross a region for a task they have already completed. Without a map or shortcut, the game must communicate direction through landmarks, sightlines, color, sound and readable terrain. If those signals are weak, immersion turns into confusion.
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Traversal versus fast travel: the practical comparison
| Design question | Traversal abilities | Fast travel |
|---|---|---|
| Is the route itself enjoyable? | Yes, when controls, momentum and camera feedback make movement engaging. | No; it intentionally removes most of the route. |
| How does it support discovery? | It exposes views, shortcuts, hidden spaces and environmental relationships while moving. | It preserves time for discovery at the destination but can skip incidental encounters. |
| What happens on repeated journeys? | Repetition remains acceptable only if routes stay fun or can be varied. | Repeated journeys become optional and much shorter. |
| What does it do to pacing? | It adds playtime and can create a deliberate sense of scale. | It accelerates progression and protects story or quest rhythm. |
| How does it affect immersion? | Continuous movement can strengthen a feeling of inhabiting the world. | A diegetic system can preserve context; a bare menu may create a sharper break. |
| How expressive is it? | Usually high: players can choose routes, timing and techniques. | Usually low during the trip, but high in the strategic choice of when to skip. |
| What are the accessibility risks? | Complex inputs, motion, camera demands and fatigue can exclude some players. | Few motor demands, but menus, unlock conditions or unclear destinations can still create friction. |
| What does a large world require? | Fast, dependable movement and strong landmarks to prevent travel from feeling slow. | Clear unlock rules and a destination network that does not trivialize the map. |
How to decide which system is better in a particular game
Ask whether the route produces new value
Look at what happens while you travel. Are there dynamic encounters, optional activities, changing weather, new vistas or resources that make a familiar path worth taking? Do movement choices affect stealth, combat or puzzle solving? If the answer is yes, traversal is doing meaningful work. If the path contains only empty distance, a shortcut is likely the better option.
Check how often the game repeats the same trip
A single long journey can establish scale. Repeating that journey after every quest is a different design problem. Track how many times the game sends you between the same hubs and whether anything changes on the return. Frequent, unchanged backtracking is the strongest case for fast travel.
Evaluate control quality, not just speed
- Can you start, stop and redirect movement without fighting the camera?
- Does the system provide reliable landing, collision and recovery behavior?
- Can you maintain momentum without memorizing a long sequence of inputs?
- Are there alternate controls or assistance options?
- Does movement work across the world’s major terrain types?
If traversal fails these tests, a fast-travel option is not a design failure; it is a necessary pressure release.
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A game about solitude, geography or survival may benefit from making every crossing count. A game centered on dense quests, character arcs or rapid experimentation may need to minimize downtime. The right question is not “Which mechanic is objectively superior?” but “What experience should the distance create here?”
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Make traversal the attractive default
Players should be able to travel manually because it is enjoyable, not because the game withholds relief. Give movement a short learning curve, responsive controls and routes that reward curiosity. Place useful discoveries where a player can notice them while moving, rather than hiding every reward behind a map icon.
Unlock fast travel through understanding
Requiring a player to visit a location before fast travel becomes available preserves an initial discovery journey. A network of stations, shrines or settlements can then represent knowledge of the world: once a place is understood, returning to it no longer needs to consume the same amount of time. The game should explain unlock conditions clearly and avoid making players search blindly for the one menu or landmark that enables a shortcut.
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Keep both options context-sensitive
Fast travel can be disabled during combat, weather events or quests where the journey is the point. Outside those situations, it should be easy to access from a predictable interface. Traversal can remain useful after fast travel unlocks by offering better views, optional encounters, resource gathering or a faster arrival when the player has mastered the route.
Use presentation to preserve continuity
Short travel scenes, ambient audio, transit infrastructure or a view of the destination can make a shortcut feel like part of the setting. The presentation should be brief enough that convenience remains convenient. A long unskippable sequence simply replaces one kind of downtime with another.
Common failure modes and how to fix them
Traversal is fast but not fun
Symptoms include constant collisions, awkward camera swings, slow acceleration and routes that all feel identical. Improve input buffering, camera behavior, landing forgiveness and route variety before increasing top speed. A smaller set of reliable moves is usually better than a large set that rarely connects cleanly.
Fast travel trivializes the world
If players can jump to every objective immediately, geography, hazards and environmental storytelling may stop mattering. Limit destinations to places the player has reached, require an in-world network or add a meaningful but non-punitive cost. The goal is to remove repetition, not erase the map’s structure.
The map becomes a checklist
Overloaded icons can turn exploration into selecting the nearest marker. Let traversal reveal landmarks organically, use layered information and allow players to hide categories of icons. Navigation aids should answer “Where am I and what is that?” without dictating every destination.
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No-fast-travel exploration becomes exhausting
Long distances need rest points, readable landmarks and movement that remains responsive after hours of play. If a route contains no new decision, add a shortcut, a changing event or a destination-side activity. Immersion is weakened when the player’s main emotion is impatience.
Accessibility is treated as an afterthought
Provide remapping, hold-versus-toggle options, reduced-motion settings where appropriate, camera sensitivity controls and alternatives to precision traversal. Fast travel should not be the only way for a player with motor or visual limitations to avoid exhausting movement sequences.
What the available evidence can and cannot prove
Developer accounts show how particular teams used these systems, not which mechanic wins for every player. The 2024 GDC session on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 documents the evolution of Web Wings and other traversal systems for higher speeds. It supports the view that movement is an intentional core system, but it does not measure player preference across open-world games.
Likewise, the official PlayStation page for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 confirms the PS5 game and its web-based movement features; it is not a comparative usability study. No directly comparable statistic establishes that traversal or fast travel produces better exploration overall. There is no defensible percentage, preference ranking or causal effect to report from these sources.
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Verdict: design for both kinds of explorer
Traversal is the better tool for turning distance into play. It rewards curiosity, builds spatial understanding and gives skilled players a satisfying way to express themselves. Fast travel is the better tool for respecting time, preventing repetitive backtracking and keeping progression on pace. Treating either one as universally correct produces brittle design.
For most large open worlds, the practical answer is a hybrid: make manual movement enjoyable and informative, then offer fast travel after the player has discovered locations and whenever a repeated route stops providing value. Games that remove fast travel can succeed, as The Pathless demonstrates, but only when their movement and navigation systems are strong enough to replace the convenience they removed.
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