Sometimes I love fast travel, sometimes I don’t
Man, the whole “fast travel” discussion is super interesting, and goes back to….when it was invented ages ago.
I’d have this debate all the time. As a kid, it was super common for folks to take the high road. “I don’t use fast travel.” Sure! I respect the hell out of it. Some open worlds are more interesting than others, and coming across a super rare item before the dawn of widespread easy-access guides was a treat. Now, folks can just grab a mod and get the exact X and Y coordinates of the treasured “Gold Sword+1” carefully hidden away by an overzealous developer. It’s a completely different world.
Some of us are also all grown up! Not everyone has the time to eschew fast travel. They’d never finish anything! Nonetheless there are some games that I do play the old school way, and here’s a perfect example: SmokeStackLight1ng’s recent “how it’s going” video for Zelda: Breath of the Wild. My favorite part? Probably the Yakety Sax music coupled with the random laser blasts from Guardians. SmokeStackLight1ng says they’re roughly 35 hours in so far using this method, and regrets not remembering “that five-speed horses exist” until far too late into their run. Don’t make the same mistake!
In all seriousness Zelda: Breath of the Wild is kind of the perfect “no fast travel” game. There’s so much to explore, and each shrine you randomly stumble upon will help you out, especially if you’re playing on a higher difficulty. In fact the first time I played it, I had ample time to test it out and finish it before my review, and took a similar approach. It was pretty much the only thing I needed to focus on at the time, and I had zero distractions and no guides available. It was just me and the open road. And the regret that I didn’t know some tips ahead of time to make everything go a little faster!
