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Ready for the next adventure within the new parkour game? Meet you across the way of the landscape in roughly… Ten minutes of travel? Maybe fifteen? Truthfully, the exact time needed to get there on foot or by car, as Dying Light: The Beast seems to despise ease and desires the main character to suffer beyond his current hardships.

The omission of fast travel in this first-person adventure, the latest entry within an enduring franchise of first-person zombie-killing adventures, is undoubtedly intended to encourage exploration, but all it does for me is encourage frustration. Despite meticulously examining the justifications for which this expansive undead adventure does not need to include quick transport, all of them disappoint — just like Kyle Crane, when I rush him off a structure quickly.

Why the Absence of Instant Movement Falls Short

For example, you might argue that this game’s free-running is fantastic, and I’d wholeheartedly agree, but that doesn’t mean I desire to sprint, leap, and scale constantly. True, this adventure offers cars I can use, but vehicles, road access, and fuel supplies are scarce. And I accept that encountering fresh areas is what makes an expansive game interesting, however, once you’ve traversed a location multiple times, there are few things to find.

After my first visit to the city’s historic district, I got the feeling that this game was intentionally extending my travel time by dispersing objective locations inside identical missions.

As soon as one of the side quests guided me to a dark zone in the historic zone, I checked my map, sought out the closest vehicle, found it, drove toward Old Town, exhausted my gasoline, opened my map again, ran the rest of the way, and, finally, had a great encounter with the dark zone’s zombies — just to discover that the subsequent mission goal sent me back to where I began, over there of the game world.

The Reasoning supporting Fast Travel

I have to admit that the title lacks the biggest world ever featured in an open-world game, but that is even more reason to advocate for instant movement; if the lack of it bothers me on a smaller map, it would surely irritate me on a larger one.

Of course, it would assist to organize mission goals in a specific sequence, but can we honestly say concerning “fostering adventure” if I feel compelled to shorten my journey? It appears rather that I’d be “minimizing annoyance” to the greatest extent. Furthermore, if I feel invested in a plot and want to know the subsequent events (which is a good thing, developers!), I do not want to finish other quest objectives initially.

Workable Alternatives for Instant Movement

There is just one argument I can think of in favor of preventing fast travel: You miss out on a simple escape path. And I must confess, I do not desire to miss out on the brief panic I encounter each time darkness comes – but undoubtedly there are solutions for that. To illustrate, instant movement from hazardous areas can be restricted, or fast travel points could be placed outside safe zones, forcing you to make a short run through the night prior to arriving at safety. Possibly more suitably, this title could allow instant movement via instant movement points solely, thereby you minimize journey duration without the chance of immediate transport.

• Quick transport could be confined to automobile spots, for example,
• involve game funds,
• or get disrupted by random encounters (the possibility to get assaulted by sudden monsters).

Certainly, it’s only sensible to enable new quick transport spots subsequent to discovering their vicinity.

The Best Reason supporting Quick Transport

Maybe the most convincing point advocating for instant movement, though, is freedom: Even with a quick transport mechanism available, users who choose to travel solely by running and driving would still have that choice, whereas users with reduced availability to game, or with less thirst for driving and parkour, could spend that time on different game tasks. That, in my opinion, is the genuine experience of liberty one should expect in a sandbox title.