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Shills and sellouts. Literally talking about how flawed the game industry is while shilling one of the most soulless, boring cash grabs out there. Really can't figure out how to muster income without selling your dignity. Kind of hard to take your channel seriously on its points when you do this.
Space traversal is great in Outer Wilds' little pocket universe, where orbital mechanics are greatly exaggerated and you can't rely on your autopilot to not hurl you into the sun. It's definitely chill with a lot of time holding forwards, but you are also checking your speed values so you don't accelerate past your target and adjusting your thruster directions like any other platformer with mid-air input (and the ship controls transfer nearly one-to-one with your on-foot jetpack controls).
Other examples of engaging space travel are Kerbal Space Program and Children of a Dead Earth. (Although the travel gameplay is actually planning, while the travel time is fast forwarded through.) Bad match for Starfield though. Careful delta v conservation through well planned burns isn't something for a broad audience.
Also FTL Also, the whole idea that space travel is lame cuz there's nothing in space is void when you consider you can make an entire game out of controlling your ship, having to manage a bunch of different resources that interact with each other, repair stuff mid flight as it breaks as well as calculate your trajectory would make for a gameplay loop on its own.
The reason it works in Outer Wilds is because it takes less than a minute to get anywhere in the solar system. Dealing with realistic space distances means either spending way too much time travelling through the void or you're moving too fast to make any meaningful decisions along the way.
Indeed, plotting real space travel is often very interesting. Sometimes the quickest route can involve going in the opposite direction to slingshot around a totally different planet and get enough of a speed boost.
Pretty much sums up the problem with the indies vs AAA. Indies can't have huge scope or budgets so they have to do a lot with a little. AAA games have huge scope and budgets but that often leads to bloated games with tons of recycled content.
The Jak hoverboard (and subsequently the rovers) were always the most fun ways to traverse the game. Even Jak and Daxter had an interesting traversal scheme of rolling jumps and dash punches and high jumps plus hovering spin kicks. If Horizon had implemented a hoverboard it would have helped that game's downtime a lot.
Jak 3's "cheat" with the megaspeed jetboard in the desert was incredible. In my hero mode playthroughs, if a car wasn't mandatory, supersonic jetboard it is!
Funnily enough, Starfield has a possible solution for this with jet packs. It can easily make entire gameplay loops out of that, if my first battle with a Terramorph was anything to go by.
@@meapickle Steamworld Dig 2 has both of them and they're both important for traversal. With enough skills and some upgrades one can pull off some pretty amazing looking shots.
I'm glad Yahtzee brought up that BG3's traversal being boring isn't a big sticker because it's more about the things you run into on your way to where you're going
I haven't played BG3 (I'm not a fan of games where I have to worry about more than just my one character and have to manage a party), but I had the same thought about other open world games where slower exploration is more rewarding. I've really dropped off playing Elden Ring, but controlling Torrent was always a pain for me. I'd mainly use him to just nope away from areas where I was really underleveled or when I just wanted to grab a bunch of sites of grace to aid in slower exploration later on. I don't know how much stuff I'd just breeze by because of how fast he could be, but at the same time going on foot got a bit old rather quickly.
Yeah, I was going to leave a comment saying that I don't think more engaging traversal would actually work well in BG3 specifically but thankfully I didn't post before watching the whole video and he got around to using it as an example for why this isn't universal.
This I think is the specific reason why I think Starfield is so bad. It totally lost the sense of wandering and finding things that Skyrim and Fallout have. You never find things in Starfield unless you deliberately make the choice to go to them. Or they're part of an elaborate and forced progression through a quest.
You can argue the same thing for open worlds that are actually more fleshed out than others. The sheer amount of things along with the potential in your mind is part of the traversal experience.
@@KrisBailey they literally wrote "you [Yahtzee] start talking about how games have weak gameplay loops, and then you [Yahtzee] pause it and push Raid shadow legends?" I'm informing this person that Yahtzee doesn't get a say in the ads, and someone needs to pay for this content.
That's what I love about Death Stranding. It's a walking simulator, with emphasis on "simulator". You're constantly monitoring the terrain, incline, weight distribution, and your center of mass. Walking becomes such an involved mechanic that getting vehicles is all the sweeter. It's a rare example of fun traversal that isn't fast or acrobatic.
You seem to get the point across that a lot of people miss about DT as a “walking simulator” - it’s mindFULL, not mindLESS. Makes the game oddly absorbing.
@@TomBombadil515 all I had to do was run on all the player made structures. it was super easy barely an inconvenience. Then I was told I should pick up things and bring them to each station to level them up and unlock an item...so I quit. Game sure looked cool, but Im glad I didn't pay for it
Armored Core 6 is very gratifying in movement and game feel. It feels like you're in an action movie without having to take away control from the player like cinematic games do. Instead the risk of failure is always there and you get to wreck mobs with style.
I was looking for someone else to bring up AC6's movement and game feel. I absolutely love it. I just finished my first run finally and am about to start my second run (needed a bit of a breather after that particular final boss) and I've not been so addicted to a game in a very long time now. I love how important the legs are and how much they change the whole feel of the game. I've tried the fast wheelchair-based tank treads and both types of the tetrapod legs, and I really didn't get along with either (the tetrapod legs damn well infuriated me and I kept falling off stuff because of the tank treads). Bipedals are okay, but my love is for the reverse joints. The lightweight Kasuar reverse joints are my default legs that I build my energy weapon focused AC around. Spring Chicken legs for when I want or needed to use heavier weapons. I just gravitated toward that build automatically because of how it clicked for me. I've looked up nothing about the game beyond seeing which decision in chapter 5 would lead to which ending. I'm going for all 3 endings, of course, but I opted for Fires of Raven first.
Yeah, it also does a much better job of this than other FromSoftware games (barring Sekiro with its constant grappling around and stealth, maybe). Though I give the other games a pass, since giving the chosen undead in Dark Souls a motorbike wouldn't make much sense, and things like wall running or advanced platforming mechanics would probably have taken a lot out of the gritty tone and difficulty of exploration from those kinds of games. Not every game needs to have advanced traversal mechanics if it clashes with the tone or other parts of the game. But if you aren't going to make it fun to get from point A to point B due to the movement, you need to make it fun due to other reasons. Make it fun because there are lots of things you can encounter and find along your path. Make it fun because you have to actually path-find and use your brain to figure out where to go efficiently (like in Death Stranding, controversial as it is to some), so getting to your destination - even slowly - feels worthwhile. Don't just make an open sand-box game like Starfield with procedurally generated landscapes, then make us hike around them boringly for ages.
the other thing that helps AC6 is the fact that it isn’t an open world game. you pick a mission, which spawns you in near the action and almost completely eliminates any commuting. there is still some commuting, but usually that gets balanced out by the fact that you’re traversing through a hail of artillery fire to explode things or a bit of dialogue from the NPCs to tide you over while you head toward a location with more things to explode.
I have found myself desperately wanting more prototype/infamous style games where traversal is super fun but the rest of the game action packed and full of good gameplay. Really glad Yahtzee brought those up.
@@zellleonheart7355 Wonder if there's been any other games with game-play akin to it's movement / fighting mechanic style released since then that I've missed o.O >? Aside from Infamous series.
You guys could check out a game called Undefeated. It's a simple, demo game that has superman flight. It's free on steam. It's also getting a sequel from the looks it.
Play Warframe. It's got tons of cool traversal mechanics from the first moment, unlocks more over time, has good combat on top of that, and it's free. I've been waiting for Yahtzee to acknowledge it for years now, because it's got enough things he loves and things he hates I don't know how he'll jump on it, but it should for make for an interesting review.
It always amuses me how Yahtzee never reads the ads. He just can't be bothered. Nick will handle it. (Whoops. Meant Jack. Damn one syllable -CK names.)
Yahtzee is clearly very passionate about quality games, and Raid is not a quality game. He'd probably feel like he's betraying his own values and beliefs if he did a Raid ad read.
I would say it needs to be entertaining, not necessarily fun. being fun implies a lot of interactivity, but a traversal that feels satisfying and immersive is also good. sometimes all you need is a good atmosphere and a nice view to make traversal worth it, and adding interactivity and impediments can actually be detrimental in this case.
You know, I think this might be why Sonic Frontiers is the first "open world" game of sorts for me to seriously enjoy. It's just fun to boost around the place with the jukebox of classic sonic music going on.
SAME! It's the best that Sonic has controlled in a while, and a great story to go with it more than makes up for the Starfall Islands' lack of... er, everything else.
Yeah, they've said in interviews that one of thier primary focuses was making sure that travelling around was fun in its own right. With how much time you spend doing it (especially if you get lost in the desert like some of my friends), it was important to make sure that it was FUN. weird how much these travel and exploration games tend to ignore the thing you do most.
Especially now with the spin dash being brought back in. There was this one point on either Ouranos or Rhea on one of the more cliffy parts of the map, and just by spindashing on each of those inclines I found myself zooming over this whole series of plateau’s and it felt incredible
Sonic's *entire premise* is on traversal, both to it's compliment and it's detriment. It's really nailed half the formula perfectly, NOW he just has to learn how to FIGHT. How about all of those marvelously memorable boss battles like... well, there's Big Arm, but let's face it, it's 99% because of the music - that track is such a banger. Okay, they've got two of three things down. Sonic needs a way to fight.
Just a shame it had the MGSV and DW9 problem of there being nothing IN the open world. Just copy pasting the same like 3 busywork activities to fill it up.
You see, this is why I loved the Mako in the first Mass Effect and never understood why everyone complained about it. Even if all the non-critical planets were generic and samey, it was damn fun to drive the damn thing around.
In you're driving on relatively flat terrain, then sure. But goddamn some of those maps were mountainous and if you wanted to get all the collectables, you'll be spending a significant amount of time painfully inching up vertical slopes.
@@Canadamus_Prime I think rather the design of the slopes actually. Placing a collectible atop a mountain is fine as long as you give the player the tools to get up there.
In TOTK, the first thing I built was a rocket, strapped to the flat cart, with a steering wheel, and a korok. I couldn't steer and we hit a wall, everything fell apart, I ragdolled, korok fell into a chasm. 🤣 I really got a kick out of it.
I was expecting to Mirror’s Edge be at least mentioned in this subject. Absolutely awesome game where traversal mechanics are the core gameplay element :)
Yes, but the first one is essentially a linear platformer so it wouldn't apply to this particular discussion regardless of how good it is. Catalyst on the other hand is open world and a good example of how to do traversal fun, although the entire game is build around said traversal so I'm unsure of how applicable it would be to something like an RPG with semi-randomly generated worlds. Basically Mirror's Edge approach to parkour is too involved and custom made to be plopped into a game that isn't specifically built from the ground up for it. It's similar to how you need an abundance of mountains and tall buildings that create a map with lots of verticality or Just Cause's traversal simply won't work.
I just CTRL+F'd to see if someone had mentioned this game in the comments. It didn't entirely succeed at what it tried to do, but I agree it would've at least been worth mentioning.
Tribes 1 skiing was literally a glitch in the physics system that fundamentally changed the game. I played before and after skiing in tribes became big and it was such a wierd change. But even without it the jetpack was, unless you had the heavy armor, a lot of fun. Air duels were a thing.
omg fucking Tribes... Only ever managed to catch Tribes:Ascend on it's deathbed, but what I did play of it was amazing. With everyone going on and on about movement shooters, why has no one done skiing again? Or is everyone's idea of a "movement shooter" constantly sliding and jumping all over the place, not necessarily "moving", just trying to disorient your opponent?
As a speed run enthusiast, there's a reason the games that keep me coming back to watch every time they have a slot at a GDQ are games like Mario (2d or 3d, doesn't matter), Ratchet and Clank, and Celeste. Those games put a big emphasis on movement and getting around their levels, which makes them not only very fun to play, but also fun to watch.
Titanfall 2 is the only game I actually run, because the movement is just so good. Super Fastball is one of the most visually stunning skips/glitches I've ever seen.
@@T4gProd I haven't seen a run of that game yet, but I did recently get the game myself. The fact that it has a cool speedrun does not surprise me in the least.
You just made me realize how much emphasis the recent Zelda games have put on traversal. Jogging, climbing, gliding, horseback riding, skydiving, shield surfing, dragon riding, rocket shields, time stop/reverse abuse, all of the different crazy vehicles you can build, there seems to be plenty of interesting ways to get from A to B.
Yeah, and similar to the note about how BG3's traversal is linked to discovery at most times, BotW/TotK are very much the same - there are waypoints to follow, but most of the time you are wondering "what's over that hill?" or "what cool vista can I get from the top of the Dueling Peaks?"
@@Airlord3670a big part of what botw made so great was doing a deed in the game felt rewarding itself. Apparently the devs even put mediocre loot in challenging locations to short circuit that deed-dopamine cycle that gamers are so used to. Death stranding another game with very little similarity with botw seemed to have delved into similar concept of making the mundane feel special
The irony of talking about the importance gameplay loops only to be interrupted by an ad for raid is so perfect it almost feels like it's mocking the very thing being promoted.
This is why I like death stranding soo much, the act of just walking has complexities that multiply depending on cargo, timers, location, equipment. I never liked trucking games but death strandings hostile roads made trucking fun.
I liked the traversal in Prey, because you really look differently at clutter once it has bitten off your face a couple times. It made revisiting locations actually interesting.
One could argue that having road projects completed would diminish from that aspect, but I found it to be so satisfying to be able to soar over the terrain that had given you so much trouble before now using a truck carrying a thousand kilo's worth of delivery.
@@bramvanduijn8086 There was also the zero-G sections (though some did drag on a bit) and the connecting paths so that backtracking was minimised once you actually had to seriously start doing it. Not to mention the goo-gun let you go up and down stuff more or less at will, combined with the vents/etc you explore through.
@@Killicon93 yes, its the right way to do it, dificult traversal is fun the first couple of times, but it can get frustrating if you need to keep repeating it over and over. so what they did was let you use your first couple runs to build the infrastructure to make the next traversals easier.
That's why I always liked the Acrobatics and Athletics skills in Oblivion. Even if they were a small thing, it gave me a reason to walk and jump around exploring. I didn't have the same fun exploring Skyrim as I did Oblivion, and I think the lack of Acrobatics was a part of that. in Fallout, I could at least have the radio stations playing as I wandered the Wastelands, heading toward whatever point of interest I could see nearby(or on my radar). So far, Starfield feels like its hindering traversal, in that I need to keep flying to new planets and many of the locations I've found haven't had anything worth exploring for. It feels very random in its generation of the world, and it breaks immersion for me.
Funnily enough, I feel like BotW both absolutely nailed traversal (the climbing and paraglider make getting around a delight, at least for a while), and simultaneously absolutely cocked it up (by having so many warp points after a while that it's not really efficient to trek everywhere, you can essentially just plop yourself down increasingly closer to your desired destination). Horses in particular are in theory a delightful method of traversal, especially with their pathfinding ability, but I never found them to be more useful or satisfying than climbing, flying, and warping everywhere. And TotK only makes that stumble over its own feet worse- the game incentivizes building vehicles at every opportunity, and in fairness the flying ones are generally fun for a while, but I just never found the boats or cars very engaging or efficient to use.
I think space travel was made surprisingly fun in Outer Wilds. Having to account for gravity and momentum made for a lot of minute adjustments if you wanted to go somewhere without completely destroying your ship (assuming you don't just opt for the autopilot mode)
Even after i finished the game, i still wanted to keep playing it because just getting from point A to point B was so fun. Now that's a good traversal system.
@@galenwilds3273 Cool fact. You can go as fast as you want towards most of the planets if you aim for their edge/horizon as the atmosphere's friction will slow you down.
To be honest, it's pretty engaging in Elite: Dangeous too. But the gold standard for space traversal is definitely Kerbal Space Program. Actual space travel is the furthest thing from "point at something and push forward"; something you realize as soon as you try (and fail) to get into orbit in Kerbal.
For all the faults of the Mako sections in ME1 ...it was usually pretty fun to drive in and of itself. It was there was nothing really worth while to do on the planets but check out the 3-4 blips. Some of those planets were generated like ass too with too many sheer vertical cliffs. There's just something appealing about tear assing across a planet in a tank that handles like 4 rickety shoppingcarts held together with bungee cords though.
An under appreciated part of traversal is decisions that could be wrong. The reason I find dungeon crawlers to be fun is because there is one objective, but multiple paths and some of them will get you closer to your goal and some will get you farther while your managing resources.
They couldve done space traversal right with gravity and orbital mechanics like what elite and outer wilds did. Fly too near a planet and youre at risk of crashing into it or getting a speed boost or completely changing your direction in a snap. They also have an influence on "holding forwards" as well, as you do need adjustments as you constantly get pulled off course. Another fun and simple traversal technique was in middile earth shadow of mordor, where timing jumps correctly over obstacles rewards you with a speed boost
traversal is one of the reasons why I kinda like forspoken. it sure as hell isn't worth $70 but something about timing your jumps to make yourself run faster is just relaxing... more effort than just holding the sprint button but not too much effort that it gets frustrating
It doesn't quite fit, but this is what I like about Warframe's movement system over any other third person shooter. And is probably one of the best elements about Titanfall 2, where the simple act of "getting from point A to B" can actually be quite the challenge in and of itself.
What comes to mind for me suddenly with traversal mechanics is Subnautica, where you start out just, well, swimming, but upgrading your movement is pretty much the entire game- and the vehicles handle differently, the Seamoth being basically an upgrade to your swimming, but then the Cyclops is a full on vehicle with a diegetic interface that requires attention, and makes you feel like you're in a multi-ton truck-sized submarine. And those tie in majorly with the progression, as getting better ways of getting around is a pretty good measurement of your progress and ability to explore and unlock new things.
Outer Wilds made space traversal interesting, but also largely optional. However, it does this by removing most of the automation in getting around and telling you to manage your speed/accel/inertia manually.
I'd argue that it doesn't make it optional. There's a considerable number of points in that game that demand a moderately high level of mastery of both forms of flight.
I think part of it is that a fun and interesting traversal mechanic injects fun energy into a game. And AAA games tend to avoid fun energy like the plague these days, because they’e “too serious” for any of that shit.
Only notable exceptions to that are like the Spider-Man games and Sonic Frontiers funny enough. The former bc the web swinging is meant to deliberately invoke thrill, and the latter because crazy boosting and spin jumping and flinging yourself off rails are Sonic’s general movement verbs
In AAA, creativity and fun depends on how the game designers can work around the limits placed by the executives to retain any semblance of fun for what's usually a 777 slot machine. But because game adjustments and miscellaneous mechanics need to be okd by the higher-ups, most just copy whatever's popular and shoehorn it in.
I know the context is different since it's mission-based and not fully open world, but I absolutely adore Armored Core VI for how we move in it. The importance of the legs can't be overstated. I've tried out tank treads (the fast, wheelchair ones) and both types of the tetrapod legs, and I had issues with both. Bipedals are okay, but I clicked right away with the Kasuar lightweight reverse joint legs and any time I had to switch to different legs because of a mission or a fight I did a bit of complaining. Zooming around and fighting at such a fast pace is an absolutely addicting experience. Yes, you have objectives to complete in each mission, but it's on you for how you do them and most areas are big enough to do some exploring for secret parts, weapons, and lore items. I've just finished my first run (went for the Fires of Raven ending first) and I cannot wait to dive back in for my second run. The movement and fighting and everything makes this about the most addicting game I've played in a very, very long time now. I've never played an AC game before this one, but now I'm considering playing at least AC4 and AC4A somehow.
i think kerbal has interesting space traversal that is realistic, granted you have a massive fast forward button and it is also very complicated to the point that a good portion of players never even make orbit (furthest ive got was the mun) but it is at the very least interesting
I would like to add too even when games have an optional travel mechanic such as the hoverboard from Jak 2 or the jetpack from NMS the clunkiness of it can actually make it better because it's sort of like a little minigame in trying to master it and time it, right what with the terrain and map. So the travel mechanic doesn't even have to be THAT polished just there and the player could fill it in themselves.
Good traversal is about utilizing all dimensions. There are 4 dimensions: x, y, z and time. For all it's greatness Skyrim is 2 dimensional traversal with a 3D skybox.
SF Planetary missions are mostly, aim yourself at mission objective - press autorun - go for a drink. Meanwhile in NMS you can actually fly your ship across the entire planet and spot objectives from air if you don't feel like walking.
Say what he will about the two most recent God of War games, but I think Yahtzee would probably admit they're quite fun to travel around even if half the time it's pushing forward. The other half of the time you're going up sheer walls, solving puzzles to move forward and sliding down ropes. Other games I think do traversal quite well are Yoku's Island Express, a game I just recently beat, and Wario Land 3 my top game of all time.
GoW sounds like the Tomb Raider/Uncharted style of game and while the traversal is kind of interesting it's a set piece more than the intrinsic mechanics given to you to do cool stuff. Good traversal mechanics involve emergent gameplay. Otherwise it's just set pieces.
Dear god please quit stopping the essay in its tracks for the ad. It just doesn't work with Yahtzee's presentation style. Is having the ad at the start too much to ask?
7:53 That’s one of the few things that Mass Effect: Andromeda did right with the space exploration. The Nomad covers a lot of ground and is a hell of an improvement from the Mako. Granted, Starfield would need to allow ship builds which include a vehicle bay in addition to a personnel landing bay.
Zelda TOTK is another great traversal game, if nothing else because it gives you options. You can horsehide, walk, glide, build a car, build a plane, or just go to tall place and jump down.
@@SimuLord I'll never forget the time I was turned away from a horse stable for trying to check in a bear I had rode in on. Or the goat. Or the Spirit of the Mountain that I found and had to look up what he was because everyone in the game seemed so scared.
Indeed, TOTK and BotW are great traversal games. That said, I hope that the next Zelda has a smaller world so that there is more variety in each location.
@@matthewmuir8884totally. If it were up to me, I’d keep the sky and the depths but an overworld 1/3rd the size. Use that scale to make the other two parts more substantial. Oh and somewhere else, biggest issue in TOTK is that it’s in hyrule again
You're fighting an uphill battle trying to make traversal in open-world games interesting. Unless it's a platformer, which frankly still fail to have interesting traversal a lot of the time, you're going to spend an impossible amount of dev time on something that only improves the monotony of the experience, instead of fully alleviating it. At the end of the day, if you want to have fun traversal, you need something that open-world games are never going to have: level design. Perhaps in another 20 years of empty drab landscapes full of nothing but the odd crafting material, gamers will finally realize that open-worlds are inherently boring, and we only ever had a fascination with them in the first place due to novelty bias. Then we might even be able to make fun games again.
While not in traversal, I do actually think BG3 does have a good primary gameplay loop. But maybe that's because I already love messing with d&d mechanics
Frog detective 1 and 2 had pretty small maps. The third game had a bug map so they added a scooter which you could do tony hawk style jumps with and you could platform on the roofs and find secrets and in the switch version they are adding a whole skate park.
The positing of scateboarding craters made me think of Tribes, which would indeed be a fun traversal system. Also on the overall topic, Sunset Overdrive is one that comes strongly to mind for enjoyable traversal. The game has to remind you there's fast travel, and I wish there was a button for you the player to tell your character "Thanks but no thanks".
I swear, if Sunset Overdrive was actually on Playstation, i would of likely picked it up in a heartbeat, rip that its still limited to microsoft/Xbox platforms even after 9 years. Because its certainly one of those games that even after all these years i would likely pick it up full price still. Since like certain legacy collection bundles, its a title that takes the collectible formula that Assassin`s creed type games over-popularized and makes it enjoyable with its witty design and just oozing that Rachet & Clank style of enjoyment. Welp, i still got about 1-2 weeks till some new fun stuff comes out so i`ll just have to find some decent discount game to tide me over, that aint some rogue-like burn out or overly lenghty title that usually leads into exploiting the game to `level grind.`
Travel in space should be a gold mine. Assign a destination, and auto travel towards it. Walk around your ship and do activities. Crafting, organizing inventory, tend to plants/animals. Even repairs could be interesting. Include a chance for random events to occur. Pirate attacks, fires due to lack of maintenance, little alien creature that snuck aboard.
My favourite game to traverse around as of late has been Satisfactory. Combining super-fast slide jumps with zipline swings and jetpack taps feels exceptionally smooth... or sends you hurtling off a cliff to make love to a rocky shore. Feels awesome.
An ad that was a full 1/8th of the length of the video and chucked in with as little grace as possible. And it was a fucking Raid shadow legends ad to boot. Classy.
I enjoyed riding around the countryside on my horse in Red Dead Redemption. In The Witcher 3, riding around the countryside on my horse made me curse like a sailor and beg for fast travel. It's fascinating how key traversal is to moment-to-moment enjoyment of many games designs, and confounding how forgotten it is in so many big budget games these days.
This is why I'm super excited for Marvel's Spider-Man 2. The first game's traversal was great, almost perfect. Miles Morales was more of it, but it added more enthusiastic animations. The second game has sped the swinging up, added new traversal things with the ability to glide, slingshot and increasingly better animations. The missions might be more fighting goons, but at the end of the day, the traversal to get to those challenges makes it all the more bearable to get 100% completion. (Alongside the incredible looking additions to combat)
Wow, interrupting a video mid-sentence to hock a crappy mobile game? That was the worst thing I've ever seen and I expected a bit more from Yahtzee. I'll keep this video in mind the next time he goes on a rant about aggressive advertising in games.
I don't expect that Yahtzee had much of a say over where the editors decided to stick the ad. While he does the visuals for Zero Punctuation, for Extra Punctuation he mainly does the scripting and voiceover, and leaves things like visuals (and, I presume, sponsorship spots) up to others at The Escapist.
He does not edit extra puntuation, he writes the scripts and does recording but the editing itself is done by someone else, thats how he can work on both ZP and EP without passing out
Traversal doesn't even have to get creative to be a fun part of the experience Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is one of my personal favorite games to go form place to place in, and all they did was jack up the run speed so you'd zoom across the map
This is why Dishonored is good. The movement and attack powers feel great by themselves, but combining them creatively has such a high style ceiling, you get shit like StealthgamerBR's videos, which are just jawdropping.
When i think about fun traversal in the AAA space i the only fun traversal for me has been the insomniac spider-man games and even ratchet and clank with the hover boots. I feel like insomniac get it right mostly. Even sunset overdrive had fun traversal somewhat. I hope the new abilities in mario wonder make getting from A to B super fun
Sunset Overdrive had a pretty decent system with the grinding and bouncing on pretty much anything, it also rewards the player by giving a multiplier that increases the amount of currency you get from enemies and amping up the music in the process.
Question: Would Freelancer's (I know I'm old) Space traversal with the jump gates and trade routes that you're constantly docking with be qualified to be called "interesting traversal"? I always challenge myself to be as close to the thing as possible when docking in order to not waste time....
I would classify it as "could be worse". Jump gates are an immersive way to region lock, and the trade route piracy was a cool enough touch to make the trade routes not entirely boring, but I wish it was worked out better. Was it even practically possible to be the kind of pirate that interrupts trade routes? I can't remember trying that. They were close to getting why traversal isn't fun, but they didn't reach to the point where they found a way to make it truly fun.
@@bramvanduijn8086well, in the Discovery MMORPG mod thing you certainly could pirate stuff if you wanted.... I porbably just enjoy the whole quick docking stuff too much in that case....
All I got from this is that Yahtzee thinks all the Baldur's Gate 3 characters should have had skateboards and basically Tony Hawked their way through the game. And if that doesn't get him hired by Larian, I don't know what will.
Off topic from the open world theme, but Celeste is what came to mind for me early in the video. It really feels like the devs focused hard on making a character that feels insanely fun to control, making the primary loop constantly engaging, then built everything else around that. Spyro the Dragon was famously developed on those principals, and is still so playable all these years later.
Personally I think Dying Light is a fantastic example of this as was Mirror's Edge: Catalyst. When I first heard people talk about Dying Light I thought the parkour couldn't be that interesting and on a technical level it isn't, it's done well enough but it's not trying to be the original Mirror's Edge or anything. But by creating a world that's dangerous to traverse and starting the players off so weak, traversal becomes incredibly important because if it goes awry you might actually put yourself in situations that you can't easily escape. Mix that with the fact that there's zombies everywhere and you can't fast travel and suddenly a game about melee combat in an open world becomes a game where the repetitive traversal experience becomes this progression you feel and enjoy. ME: Catalyst got this vibe down too but with less danger from enemies and more danger from reckless falls. It also suffered from less freedom of direction, but routes become something you familiarize and the more I've replayed the game the more I have found some unique routes.
Seen it plenty of times but i think the reason that works is your effectively `building` your path instead of traversing giant blank spaces. With having the addition of certain classes getting different ways to traverse between effectively digging thru rock, hook-shot (think it was the scouts?) traversal and even laying down `pipes` to grind(which doubles as a back/forth from objectives). Which since these are instanced short-term runs they understand to make it fast and quick to get around then turn what would be a 5 minute or less mission into a 30+ minute slog because of large amounts of travel with no means to speed up. This is why i got sick of large open map areas in many types of games, Dragon Quest Monsters: Dark Prince`s demo giving me a fine remembrance on very chunky sized maps on a game that is suppose to be about monster catching, not some shove in attempt you would see normally in an adventure game. If a game is not gonna give additional ways to travel while having these giant maps then it defeats the purpose of having the giant maps that are devoid of reasons WHY you want the large maps. Atleast `skating` games get the excuse of a large map because they populate it with a variety of objects to do various tricks and opportunities to pull off amazing stunts like jumping off a ramp, landing on a hanging pipe that spirals upwards and then jumping off to grind on a helicopter and finish landing on a nearby roof.
Just to add onto that, im currently trying to figure a title to `pick up` to pass the time for a week, shame some of the titles i had on a wish list either are not on discount or sadly hit my `burn out annoyances`, such as wanting to get something simple, won`t be a ridiculous long-term title, aka giant open maps for exploration and not gonna turn into some month long title i slough thru. Especially since i got three certain titles, one of them that fits the beeg grind method and dont want to be bouncing off from an action rpg title and be fatigued from the genre when i get FATE//Samurai remnant. I feel regardless if its 2D, 3D or a rogue-like when you too much traversal then it ruins the experience, hence a desire of progressive improvements on all parts then just simply combat. I mean, even if you have a giant open map, if your constantly getting into fights despite being so over-leveled you should be able to dash past them to insta kill or knock them aside, then whats the point of said open map to begin with. This is why Pokemon Violet annoyed the heck out of me where unlike Legends Arceus your constantly going into a `battle transition, where Arceus was alot quicker and you had the control to start the fight or if you just wanna run past the enemy. Funny how Star Ocean, the Divine Force, one of the older demos i kept prodding despite being a dated title having those `expansive areas` resolved those annoyances with a instant transition in/out of combat and way to `detect` loot out of view and so on. Which i say is one of the high lights any beeg open world games should have, have things so seemless that even if its not an action game specifically, it helps to shred away from lousy design when one has to do large amounts of `traversal` in a game. Prob also helped that DUMA system that let you do large ground to air dashes and hover in the air to avoid fights and get around the place was also nice and its a shame CERTAIN open world type games dont employ said features enough. @@flatline42
Nick, we get that ads are a necessary parts of youtube these days, but if you cant just have them at the very start of the video then rope in Yahtzhee himself so he can pace his scripts around them. Either intergrate them in such a way that they dont mess with the pace of Yahtzhees scripts and delivery or make sure he is able to account for the ad when writing.
HYPER DEMON comes to mind as one of the best examples of skill based traversal imo. Discovering the different ways you can use the 2 actions to perform insane acrobatics over void demons is incredibly satisfying, if you can get the hang of it.
Yahtzee's a slave to primary gameplay loops the same way Michael Bay or Zack Snyder are to cool shots. Not that fun traversal mechanics in Starfield or BG3 would be bad but they're tangential to the appeal of RPGs. If we must talk about loops, the "primary loop" of RPGs is embodying a character - immersion, if you like; immersion in the _character_ (not the situation like in horror or survival games). And the character's look, gear, animations (and yes, maybe traversal mechanics) matter to that just as much as moment-to-moment gameplay. I mean, what's the "primary loop" of a tabletop RPG? Rolling dice? No, it's getting into the head of your character, imagining what they would say and do. What's the primary loop of reading a book? Reading words? No, it's imagining the scene. Obviously games visually represent a lot of that for you but in RPGs at least there's more going on than exists on screen or even in the game's mechanics. They don't need to constantly distract you from imagining anymore than you need a Rubik's cube to distract you while reading a book. EDIT: Yes I know Yahtzee kind of says this later when he says context can fill in for a lack of gameplay challenge but to me that's kind of admitting the limits of his "focus on the primary gameplay loop" mantra.
Probably since it requires a lot of grinding to really open up the abilities to make little vehicles to more than a fun gimmick to use for a bit before it recharges, and the Depths (where it gets the most mileage) fucks over air vehicles by its very nature of being unable to cross the whole map at once and being mostly optional.
Not in the slightest! Building vehicles in TOTK is fun, but actually piloting one (along with walking, climbing, gliding and horse riding) consists of pushing forward and waiting. Sometimes you chug a battery/stamina potion, or spam a boost ability if present, but that doesn't happen often enough to be a consistent skill challenge. Travel in TOTK is fun because of exploration, but once you need to go somewhere you've already been, it's fast-travel time.
The hoverboards, right? I swear every single time I tried to use my hoverboard in Warframe it was greyed out. Like you could literally only use it WITHIN ZE DESIGNATED AREA and the only one I ever found was the big open area in Fortuna or whatever it was called
@@VanessaMagick You can use them in the open world areas on Earth, Venus, and Deimos. There's also one Warframe, Yarelli, who can summon one at any time, so if you're going into a mission where you know you need to move fast, like a Rescue, she's great.
This is a good point, if you can't make traversal fun i just say Opt for travel being menu based with a cute animation for loading time. Cuz whats the point of traveling if that isn't fun in itself or some sort of side activity?
Yahtzee makes a good point for Starfield's traversal. Im enjoying that game overall, but holy shit did they miss the mark on traversal. Im seeing a lot of comments here about Outer Wilds having things like gravity, etc, being concerns for travel. I know space is supposed to be empty, but they really could have tried to come up with more ways to spice up space travel. Solar storms, passing comets, cosmic radiation, black holes, gravity wells, meteor showers, gorgeous scenery, goddam *anything*. Also, i dont see what the problem would be to have a private Mars rover that you can summon wherever like Geralt with Roach in Witcher 3. They could have even made it destructible, something you have to manage carefully so you dont bust it up and have to pay for repairs or a replacement. That would add to the traversal, i think.
I'm dealing with this exact problem with Nier Automata right now. The game is predicated on how cool its story is, and sometimes the combat can be fun. However, I ran into some seriously stupid pathfinding while dealing with sidequesty bull****. There was this quest where some weird machines have this creepy cult following for some other thing named Jean Paul. The quest has you spend half an hour running across a forest, a sewer, an amusement part, city ruins, and a goddamn desert (all things you go to for main plot by the way). I go through that, only to get back to the guy, only for the game to go, "HEY, DO IT AGAIN!" So, I spent another half an hour doing the same thing I just did. I only found out by reading up later that the sorely needed fast travel only unlocks in the exact NEXT main plot point after the sidequest takes place. So, why wasn't fast travel, or some faster mode of transportation a pre-requisite? The game even has these flight units in cutscenes. You're telling me I can't just call up the Bunker and grab those for a fee, if I didn't want to walk or fast travel? Other RPGs had the ability to fast travel from pretty much the start (or weren't so heavy with the backtracking). God knows Nier wasn't the first game to probably pull the, "walk these giant maps you turd" Fast travel, means of cutting or making travel time more interesting or, godforbid SMALLER maps would be a huge help.
Escapist replied on another video that Yahtzee isn't going to do an AC6 ZP, because he tried the game and didn't really like it. I guess he didn't play enough of it to be able to do a ZP at all. I think they said it just wasn't his sort of game. I, myself, adore the game and am fully addicted to it and I haven't been so sucked into a game in a long time now. Much as I love Bloodborne and DS3, AC6 scratches an itch I didn't know I had and it's so much easier to spend hours playing missions; whereas in Bloodborne, DS3, and Elden Ring I needed regular breaks even after just an hour or so of playing. I'm about to start my 2nd run now, but I needed a breather after that particular final boss for the ending I went for first.
@@SolaScientia I was on a new playthrough of Bloodbourne and started the Demons Souls remake just before AC6 came out. Since, I've beaten AC6 twice and am already on chapter 3 on my 3rd playthrough. Its so addicting I had no idea a game could be made like this anymore. I'm looking forward to baluders gate though as its just sitting on my ps5 waiting lol
@@TheRealSonicBeats I adore AC6 so much. I'm on the attack the dam mission of chapter 1 and I'm choosing to go against Volta and Iguazu. It's so tough now. Damn Volta keeps stunlocking me. It's still so much fun though.
@@SolaScientia The fact that you get unique missions and unique objectives on different playthroughs was so fun honestly. Makes trophy hunting extremely rewarding
@@TheRealSonicBeats I finally defeated Volta and Iguazu and it was a pain in the ass to do. Well worth it for the new missions I've gotten to unlock, but I think on my 3rd run I might not bother betraying them since I know it doesn't affect the ending at all. I went for Fires of Raven as my first ending, so I'm going for Liberator of Rubicon now. Then obviously Alea Iacta Est on the 3rd run.
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I'm glad you picked the most shitty overused sponsor on youtube because I've got no qualms skipping it
Shills and sellouts. Literally talking about how flawed the game industry is while shilling one of the most soulless, boring cash grabs out there. Really can't figure out how to muster income without selling your dignity.
Kind of hard to take your channel seriously on its points when you do this.
@ Honestly kinda impressed, spam bots start speaking elvish to get around spam detection lol
No Jack! Bad Jack!
Get that bread Escapist. Its okay
Don't worry guys, I'm sure Nick will figure out where the ads should go one of these days.
Like in the bin
It's not always upto Nick where the ad goes. He told us about it in advance on the Discord server.
Today is not that day and tomorrow won’t be either
He added punctuation to a Zero Punctuation video. Unforgivable.
@@iExplodernah this extra punctuation, man's did exactly what was needed
Space traversal is great in Outer Wilds' little pocket universe, where orbital mechanics are greatly exaggerated and you can't rely on your autopilot to not hurl you into the sun. It's definitely chill with a lot of time holding forwards, but you are also checking your speed values so you don't accelerate past your target and adjusting your thruster directions like any other platformer with mid-air input (and the ship controls transfer nearly one-to-one with your on-foot jetpack controls).
Other examples of engaging space travel are Kerbal Space Program and Children of a Dead Earth. (Although the travel gameplay is actually planning, while the travel time is fast forwarded through.)
Bad match for Starfield though. Careful delta v conservation through well planned burns isn't something for a broad audience.
Also FTL
Also, the whole idea that space travel is lame cuz there's nothing in space is void when you consider you can make an entire game out of controlling your ship, having to manage a bunch of different resources that interact with each other, repair stuff mid flight as it breaks as well as calculate your trajectory would make for a gameplay loop on its own.
The reason it works in Outer Wilds is because it takes less than a minute to get anywhere in the solar system. Dealing with realistic space distances means either spending way too much time travelling through the void or you're moving too fast to make any meaningful decisions along the way.
Indeed, plotting real space travel is often very interesting. Sometimes the quickest route can involve going in the opposite direction to slingshot around a totally different planet and get enough of a speed boost.
Pretty much sums up the problem with the indies vs AAA. Indies can't have huge scope or budgets so they have to do a lot with a little. AAA games have huge scope and budgets but that often leads to bloated games with tons of recycled content.
Put the ad at the beginning or end, mid conversation is really jarring and hurts the video's quality
If more games included the Jak 2 hoverboard that you could whip out and do tricks with at any time, the commutes would feel a lot more fun.
The Jak hoverboard (and subsequently the rovers) were always the most fun ways to traverse the game. Even Jak and Daxter had an interesting traversal scheme of rolling jumps and dash punches and high jumps plus hovering spin kicks. If Horizon had implemented a hoverboard it would have helped that game's downtime a lot.
I've been hearing a lot about Jak recently, after it was basically forgotten for a decade. I guess the nostalgia wave finally hit it.
Jak 3's "cheat" with the megaspeed jetboard in the desert was incredible. In my hero mode playthroughs, if a car wasn't mandatory, supersonic jetboard it is!
astroneer has a great version that combines with jetpacks to turn literally any biome / landscape into a skatepark
Ah, the Jak trilogy. Good times.
Funnily enough, Starfield has a possible solution for this with jet packs. It can easily make entire gameplay loops out of that, if my first battle with a Terramorph was anything to go by.
And funnily enough, they could've stolen that from NMS as well.
How in fuck is tribes the only game that's ever made a jetpack a big deal
Jet packs AND grappling hooks. The amount of fun u can have with slingshot physics
@@meapickle Steamworld Dig 2 has both of them and they're both important for traversal. With enough skills and some upgrades one can pull off some pretty amazing looking shots.
Zero G battles are a giggle too
I'm glad Yahtzee brought up that BG3's traversal being boring isn't a big sticker because it's more about the things you run into on your way to where you're going
I haven't played BG3 (I'm not a fan of games where I have to worry about more than just my one character and have to manage a party), but I had the same thought about other open world games where slower exploration is more rewarding. I've really dropped off playing Elden Ring, but controlling Torrent was always a pain for me. I'd mainly use him to just nope away from areas where I was really underleveled or when I just wanted to grab a bunch of sites of grace to aid in slower exploration later on. I don't know how much stuff I'd just breeze by because of how fast he could be, but at the same time going on foot got a bit old rather quickly.
@@SolaScientia Why on Earth wouldn't you use Torrent to get around? That must have taken forever.
Yeah, I was going to leave a comment saying that I don't think more engaging traversal would actually work well in BG3 specifically but thankfully I didn't post before watching the whole video and he got around to using it as an example for why this isn't universal.
This I think is the specific reason why I think Starfield is so bad. It totally lost the sense of wandering and finding things that Skyrim and Fallout have. You never find things in Starfield unless you deliberately make the choice to go to them. Or they're part of an elaborate and forced progression through a quest.
You can argue the same thing for open worlds that are actually more fleshed out than others. The sheer amount of things along with the potential in your mind is part of the traversal experience.
Lmao man... you start talking about how games have weak gameplay loops, and then you pause it and push Raid shadow legends?
It's not his decision what companies decide to advertise on The Escapist's RUclips channel.
@@KrisBailey they literally wrote "you [Yahtzee] start talking about how games have weak gameplay loops, and then you [Yahtzee] pause it and push Raid shadow legends?"
I'm informing this person that Yahtzee doesn't get a say in the ads, and someone needs to pay for this content.
@@KrisBailey the channel isn't the one reviewing the game or making remarks about weak gameplay loops, they're clearly talking about Yahtzee.
2:48 to skip the ad
That's what I love about Death Stranding. It's a walking simulator, with emphasis on "simulator". You're constantly monitoring the terrain, incline, weight distribution, and your center of mass. Walking becomes such an involved mechanic that getting vehicles is all the sweeter. It's a rare example of fun traversal that isn't fast or acrobatic.
It's definitely the first Strand-type game
You seem to get the point across that a lot of people miss about DT as a “walking simulator” - it’s mindFULL, not mindLESS. Makes the game oddly absorbing.
Unfortunately it gets bogged down in all that horror wank and the annoying story.
@@TomBombadil515 all I had to do was run on all the player made structures. it was super easy barely an inconvenience. Then I was told I should pick up things and bring them to each station to level them up and unlock an item...so I quit. Game sure looked cool, but Im glad I didn't pay for it
Yahtzee, my dislike is not aimed at you, I loved your piece today. But the ad was sooooo annoying, I had no choice.
As soon as I heard the word "raid", I just mashed the right arrow key until I heard Yahtzee's voice again. Made the experience a lot better. :P
Go meta! Your goal is to traverse the watching of the video without producing a bore splat from an ad! 🥷
Armored Core 6 is very gratifying in movement and game feel. It feels like you're in an action movie without having to take away control from the player like cinematic games do. Instead the risk of failure is always there and you get to wreck mobs with style.
I was looking for someone else to bring up AC6's movement and game feel. I absolutely love it. I just finished my first run finally and am about to start my second run (needed a bit of a breather after that particular final boss) and I've not been so addicted to a game in a very long time now. I love how important the legs are and how much they change the whole feel of the game. I've tried the fast wheelchair-based tank treads and both types of the tetrapod legs, and I really didn't get along with either (the tetrapod legs damn well infuriated me and I kept falling off stuff because of the tank treads). Bipedals are okay, but my love is for the reverse joints. The lightweight Kasuar reverse joints are my default legs that I build my energy weapon focused AC around. Spring Chicken legs for when I want or needed to use heavier weapons. I just gravitated toward that build automatically because of how it clicked for me. I've looked up nothing about the game beyond seeing which decision in chapter 5 would lead to which ending. I'm going for all 3 endings, of course, but I opted for Fires of Raven first.
Armored Core 6's gameplay and traversal is 10/10, traversal especially.
Yeah, it also does a much better job of this than other FromSoftware games (barring Sekiro with its constant grappling around and stealth, maybe).
Though I give the other games a pass, since giving the chosen undead in Dark Souls a motorbike wouldn't make much sense, and things like wall running or advanced platforming mechanics would probably have taken a lot out of the gritty tone and difficulty of exploration from those kinds of games.
Not every game needs to have advanced traversal mechanics if it clashes with the tone or other parts of the game. But if you aren't going to make it fun to get from point A to point B due to the movement, you need to make it fun due to other reasons. Make it fun because there are lots of things you can encounter and find along your path. Make it fun because you have to actually path-find and use your brain to figure out where to go efficiently (like in Death Stranding, controversial as it is to some), so getting to your destination - even slowly - feels worthwhile.
Don't just make an open sand-box game like Starfield with procedurally generated landscapes, then make us hike around them boringly for ages.
Jacob Gellar summed it up best on the minn maxx podcast, "Did you guys feel cool immediately? Because I felt cool immediately"
the other thing that helps AC6 is the fact that it isn’t an open world game. you pick a mission, which spawns you in near the action and almost completely eliminates any commuting. there is still some commuting, but usually that gets balanced out by the fact that you’re traversing through a hail of artillery fire to explode things or a bit of dialogue from the NPCs to tide you over while you head toward a location with more things to explode.
I have found myself desperately wanting more prototype/infamous style games where traversal is super fun but the rest of the game action packed and full of good gameplay. Really glad Yahtzee brought those up.
Prototype was such a hype way of booking around the city ^^
Would love a new prototype game with modern tech
@@zellleonheart7355 Wonder if there's been any other games with game-play akin to it's movement / fighting mechanic style released since then that I've missed o.O >?
Aside from Infamous series.
You guys could check out a game called Undefeated. It's a simple, demo game that has superman flight. It's free on steam.
It's also getting a sequel from the looks it.
Play Warframe. It's got tons of cool traversal mechanics from the first moment, unlocks more over time, has good combat on top of that, and it's free. I've been waiting for Yahtzee to acknowledge it for years now, because it's got enough things he loves and things he hates I don't know how he'll jump on it, but it should for make for an interesting review.
It always amuses me how Yahtzee never reads the ads. He just can't be bothered. Nick will handle it.
(Whoops. Meant Jack. Damn one syllable -CK names.)
I only noticed it this time, and I was like "did Yahtzee just straight up refuse to do an ad read for Raid?"
Can you really expect him to do an ad read for Raid?
Can't be bothered? I think Yahtzee would have choked on his own bile reading a Raid ad. Also, it was Jack that did it - not Nick.
@@thimization I recall him mentioning it
Yahtzee is clearly very passionate about quality games, and Raid is not a quality game. He'd probably feel like he's betraying his own values and beliefs if he did a Raid ad read.
Asking Bethesda to implement interesting gameplay mechanics into their games is like asking a cat to fly
I don't think that Raid ad could have been more intrusive.
it’s in their standard contract to interrupt the video like that. the jontron collab part of the ad is what pissed me off more, honestly.
@@masonasaro2118 Did that happen? I skipped it.
Seeing as how traversal can be one of the biggest time sinks, I agree that it should be fun.
I would say it needs to be entertaining, not necessarily fun. being fun implies a lot of interactivity, but a traversal that feels satisfying and immersive is also good. sometimes all you need is a good atmosphere and a nice view to make traversal worth it, and adding interactivity and impediments can actually be detrimental in this case.
Thanks Jack, save the others from having to read ads.
Totally zoned out on the ad.
I used fast forward.
I cried and huddled in the fetal position.
Someone has to take a bullet.
You know, I think this might be why Sonic Frontiers is the first "open world" game of sorts for me to seriously enjoy. It's just fun to boost around the place with the jukebox of classic sonic music going on.
SAME! It's the best that Sonic has controlled in a while, and a great story to go with it more than makes up for the Starfall Islands' lack of... er, everything else.
Yeah, they've said in interviews that one of thier primary focuses was making sure that travelling around was fun in its own right. With how much time you spend doing it (especially if you get lost in the desert like some of my friends), it was important to make sure that it was FUN. weird how much these travel and exploration games tend to ignore the thing you do most.
Especially now with the spin dash being brought back in. There was this one point on either Ouranos or Rhea on one of the more cliffy parts of the map, and just by spindashing on each of those inclines I found myself zooming over this whole series of plateau’s and it felt incredible
Sonic's *entire premise* is on traversal, both to it's compliment and it's detriment. It's really nailed half the formula perfectly, NOW he just has to learn how to FIGHT. How about all of those marvelously memorable boss battles like... well, there's Big Arm, but let's face it, it's 99% because of the music - that track is such a banger. Okay, they've got two of three things down.
Sonic needs a way to fight.
Just a shame it had the MGSV and DW9 problem of there being nothing IN the open world. Just copy pasting the same like 3 busywork activities to fill it up.
You see, this is why I loved the Mako in the first Mass Effect and never understood why everyone complained about it. Even if all the non-critical planets were generic and samey, it was damn fun to drive the damn thing around.
In you're driving on relatively flat terrain, then sure. But goddamn some of those maps were mountainous and if you wanted to get all the collectables, you'll be spending a significant amount of time painfully inching up vertical slopes.
@@richardhollis3783 then the complaints should have been about the placement of the collectibles.
@@richardhollis3783 I only had that issue if I drove straight at the collectable. The map gave enough detail for me to find easier routes.
@@Canadamus_Prime I think rather the design of the slopes actually. Placing a collectible atop a mountain is fine as long as you give the player the tools to get up there.
@@TheTriforceDragon in any case the complaints shouldn't have been about the vehicle and Bioware shouldn't have taken it away.
In TOTK, the first thing I built was a rocket, strapped to the flat cart, with a steering wheel, and a korok. I couldn't steer and we hit a wall, everything fell apart, I ragdolled, korok fell into a chasm. 🤣 I really got a kick out of it.
I was expecting to Mirror’s Edge be at least mentioned in this subject. Absolutely awesome game where traversal mechanics are the core gameplay element :)
Yahtzee hates first person parkour gameplay, and didn't like Mirror's Edge for that reason
Yes, but the first one is essentially a linear platformer so it wouldn't apply to this particular discussion regardless of how good it is. Catalyst on the other hand is open world and a good example of how to do traversal fun, although the entire game is build around said traversal so I'm unsure of how applicable it would be to something like an RPG with semi-randomly generated worlds. Basically Mirror's Edge approach to parkour is too involved and custom made to be plopped into a game that isn't specifically built from the ground up for it.
It's similar to how you need an abundance of mountains and tall buildings that create a map with lots of verticality or Just Cause's traversal simply won't work.
@@TheIyiytShow Neon White (mentioned in this video) was literally GOTY 2022
@@denny141196NW doesn't require the awkward specificity that plagues ME.
I just CTRL+F'd to see if someone had mentioned this game in the comments. It didn't entirely succeed at what it tried to do, but I agree it would've at least been worth mentioning.
I'm surprised we haven't seen more of the jetpack-and-gravity-skis combo from the old Tribes games, the movement in those was so much fun
Tribes 1 skiing was literally a glitch in the physics system that fundamentally changed the game. I played before and after skiing in tribes became big and it was such a wierd change. But even without it the jetpack was, unless you had the heavy armor, a lot of fun. Air duels were a thing.
omg fucking Tribes...
Only ever managed to catch Tribes:Ascend on it's deathbed, but what I did play of it was amazing. With everyone going on and on about movement shooters, why has no one done skiing again? Or is everyone's idea of a "movement shooter" constantly sliding and jumping all over the place, not necessarily "moving", just trying to disorient your opponent?
As a speed run enthusiast, there's a reason the games that keep me coming back to watch every time they have a slot at a GDQ are games like Mario (2d or 3d, doesn't matter), Ratchet and Clank, and Celeste. Those games put a big emphasis on movement and getting around their levels, which makes them not only very fun to play, but also fun to watch.
Titanfall 2 is the only game I actually run, because the movement is just so good. Super Fastball is one of the most visually stunning skips/glitches I've ever seen.
@@T4gProd I haven't seen a run of that game yet, but I did recently get the game myself. The fact that it has a cool speedrun does not surprise me in the least.
@@Spifyninja It's a great run! Tomatoanus has a great video explaining every second of it.
Wow, stopping a video one minute in for an ad REALLY makes me want to play Raid Shadow Legends
You just made me realize how much emphasis the recent Zelda games have put on traversal. Jogging, climbing, gliding, horseback riding, skydiving, shield surfing, dragon riding, rocket shields, time stop/reverse abuse, all of the different crazy vehicles you can build, there seems to be plenty of interesting ways to get from A to B.
I've got to be honest, I giggled like a schoolkid when I realised that fusing a minecart to your shield turned it into a skateboard.
Yeah, and similar to the note about how BG3's traversal is linked to discovery at most times, BotW/TotK are very much the same - there are waypoints to follow, but most of the time you are wondering "what's over that hill?" or "what cool vista can I get from the top of the Dueling Peaks?"
@@RoccondilYou know what's over that hill. Nothing or the same boring korok puzzle
More and more I’m finding the answer is “big scary monster” or “suspiciously mobile patch of gloom”…
@@Airlord3670a big part of what botw made so great was doing a deed in the game felt rewarding itself. Apparently the devs even put mediocre loot in challenging locations to short circuit that deed-dopamine cycle that gamers are so used to. Death stranding another game with very little similarity with botw seemed to have delved into similar concept of making the mundane feel special
The irony of talking about the importance gameplay loops only to be interrupted by an ad for raid is so perfect it almost feels like it's mocking the very thing being promoted.
This is why I like death stranding soo much, the act of just walking has complexities that multiply depending on cargo, timers, location, equipment. I never liked trucking games but death strandings hostile roads made trucking fun.
I liked the traversal in Prey, because you really look differently at clutter once it has bitten off your face a couple times. It made revisiting locations actually interesting.
One could argue that having road projects completed would diminish from that aspect, but I found it to be so satisfying to be able to soar over the terrain that had given you so much trouble before now using a truck carrying a thousand kilo's worth of delivery.
@@bramvanduijn8086 There was also the zero-G sections (though some did drag on a bit) and the connecting paths so that backtracking was minimised once you actually had to seriously start doing it.
Not to mention the goo-gun let you go up and down stuff more or less at will, combined with the vents/etc you explore through.
@@Killicon93 yes, its the right way to do it, dificult traversal is fun the first couple of times, but it can get frustrating if you need to keep repeating it over and over. so what they did was let you use your first couple runs to build the infrastructure to make the next traversals easier.
If only it didn't ruin it all with the bad horror and annoying story.
I can hear poor Jack dying inside as he reads the advertisement text. I feel for him.
That's why I always liked the Acrobatics and Athletics skills in Oblivion. Even if they were a small thing, it gave me a reason to walk and jump around exploring. I didn't have the same fun exploring Skyrim as I did Oblivion, and I think the lack of Acrobatics was a part of that. in Fallout, I could at least have the radio stations playing as I wandered the Wastelands, heading toward whatever point of interest I could see nearby(or on my radar). So far, Starfield feels like its hindering traversal, in that I need to keep flying to new planets and many of the locations I've found haven't had anything worth exploring for. It feels very random in its generation of the world, and it breaks immersion for me.
When even Yahtzee thinks a a group vehicle should be added to the game, that's how you know you messed up.
I know you're trying to work out which ad format works best, but my word, that one was disruptive.
Jack leaping in with the raid ad like a photobomber. But it’s Jack, it’s okay
raid garbage legends
Funnily enough, I feel like BotW both absolutely nailed traversal (the climbing and paraglider make getting around a delight, at least for a while), and simultaneously absolutely cocked it up (by having so many warp points after a while that it's not really efficient to trek everywhere, you can essentially just plop yourself down increasingly closer to your desired destination). Horses in particular are in theory a delightful method of traversal, especially with their pathfinding ability, but I never found them to be more useful or satisfying than climbing, flying, and warping everywhere.
And TotK only makes that stumble over its own feet worse- the game incentivizes building vehicles at every opportunity, and in fairness the flying ones are generally fun for a while, but I just never found the boats or cars very engaging or efficient to use.
I think space travel was made surprisingly fun in Outer Wilds. Having to account for gravity and momentum made for a lot of minute adjustments if you wanted to go somewhere without completely destroying your ship (assuming you don't just opt for the autopilot mode)
Even after i finished the game, i still wanted to keep playing it because just getting from point A to point B was so fun. Now that's a good traversal system.
@@galenwilds3273 Cool fact. You can go as fast as you want towards most of the planets if you aim for their edge/horizon as the atmosphere's friction will slow you down.
My goodness, that one achievement when you had to land on the sun station by hand. Exhilarating.
To be honest, it's pretty engaging in Elite: Dangeous too. But the gold standard for space traversal is definitely Kerbal Space Program. Actual space travel is the furthest thing from "point at something and push forward"; something you realize as soon as you try (and fail) to get into orbit in Kerbal.
@@ormhaxanhow TF do u do that man? The sun's gravity foils my attempts every time
For all the faults of the Mako sections in ME1 ...it was usually pretty fun to drive in and of itself. It was there was nothing really worth while to do on the planets but check out the 3-4 blips. Some of those planets were generated like ass too with too many sheer vertical cliffs. There's just something appealing about tear assing across a planet in a tank that handles like 4 rickety shoppingcarts held together with bungee cords though.
An under appreciated part of traversal is decisions that could be wrong. The reason I find dungeon crawlers to be fun is because there is one objective, but multiple paths and some of them will get you closer to your goal and some will get you farther while your managing resources.
They couldve done space traversal right with gravity and orbital mechanics like what elite and outer wilds did. Fly too near a planet and youre at risk of crashing into it or getting a speed boost or completely changing your direction in a snap. They also have an influence on "holding forwards" as well, as you do need adjustments as you constantly get pulled off course.
Another fun and simple traversal technique was in middile earth shadow of mordor, where timing jumps correctly over obstacles rewards you with a speed boost
Yeah, the hard part about space travel is making sure you slow down before you slam into your destination at mach 12.
KSP style manouver nodes and time compression
traversal is one of the reasons why I kinda like forspoken. it sure as hell isn't worth $70 but something about timing your jumps to make yourself run faster is just relaxing...
more effort than just holding the sprint button but not too much effort that it gets frustrating
OMG, thank you for mentioning skyroads! It was occupying an obscure corner of my brain niggling away and now I finally know the game name.
It doesn't quite fit, but this is what I like about Warframe's movement system over any other third person shooter. And is probably one of the best elements about Titanfall 2, where the simple act of "getting from point A to B" can actually be quite the challenge in and of itself.
What comes to mind for me suddenly with traversal mechanics is Subnautica, where you start out just, well, swimming, but upgrading your movement is pretty much the entire game- and the vehicles handle differently, the Seamoth being basically an upgrade to your swimming, but then the Cyclops is a full on vehicle with a diegetic interface that requires attention, and makes you feel like you're in a multi-ton truck-sized submarine. And those tie in majorly with the progression, as getting better ways of getting around is a pretty good measurement of your progress and ability to explore and unlock new things.
Outer Wilds made space traversal interesting, but also largely optional. However, it does this by removing most of the automation in getting around and telling you to manage your speed/accel/inertia manually.
I'd argue that it doesn't make it optional. There's a considerable number of points in that game that demand a moderately high level of mastery of both forms of flight.
Fair point@@orijimi
I think part of it is that a fun and interesting traversal mechanic injects fun energy into a game. And AAA games tend to avoid fun energy like the plague these days, because they’e “too serious” for any of that shit.
Only notable exceptions to that are like the Spider-Man games and Sonic Frontiers funny enough. The former bc the web swinging is meant to deliberately invoke thrill, and the latter because crazy boosting and spin jumping and flinging yourself off rails are Sonic’s general movement verbs
Ironic, isn't it?!
In AAA, creativity and fun depends on how the game designers can work around the limits placed by the executives to retain any semblance of fun for what's usually a 777 slot machine. But because game adjustments and miscellaneous mechanics need to be okd by the higher-ups, most just copy whatever's popular and shoehorn it in.
I know the context is different since it's mission-based and not fully open world, but I absolutely adore Armored Core VI for how we move in it. The importance of the legs can't be overstated. I've tried out tank treads (the fast, wheelchair ones) and both types of the tetrapod legs, and I had issues with both. Bipedals are okay, but I clicked right away with the Kasuar lightweight reverse joint legs and any time I had to switch to different legs because of a mission or a fight I did a bit of complaining. Zooming around and fighting at such a fast pace is an absolutely addicting experience. Yes, you have objectives to complete in each mission, but it's on you for how you do them and most areas are big enough to do some exploring for secret parts, weapons, and lore items. I've just finished my first run (went for the Fires of Raven ending first) and I cannot wait to dive back in for my second run. The movement and fighting and everything makes this about the most addicting game I've played in a very, very long time now. I've never played an AC game before this one, but now I'm considering playing at least AC4 and AC4A somehow.
i think kerbal has interesting space traversal that is realistic, granted you have a massive fast forward button and it is also very complicated to the point that a good portion of players never even make orbit (furthest ive got was the mun) but it is at the very least interesting
I would like to add too even when games have an optional travel mechanic such as the hoverboard from Jak 2 or the jetpack from NMS the clunkiness of it can actually make it better because it's sort of like a little minigame in trying to master it and time it, right what with the terrain and map. So the travel mechanic doesn't even have to be THAT polished just there and the player could fill it in themselves.
Good traversal is about utilizing all dimensions. There are 4 dimensions: x, y, z and time. For all it's greatness Skyrim is 2 dimensional traversal with a 3D skybox.
I'm sorry you got sponsored by Raid.
SF Planetary missions are mostly, aim yourself at mission objective - press autorun - go for a drink.
Meanwhile in NMS you can actually fly your ship across the entire planet and spot objectives from air if you don't feel like walking.
Say what he will about the two most recent God of War games, but I think Yahtzee would probably admit they're quite fun to travel around even if half the time it's pushing forward. The other half of the time you're going up sheer walls, solving puzzles to move forward and sliding down ropes. Other games I think do traversal quite well are Yoku's Island Express, a game I just recently beat, and Wario Land 3 my top game of all time.
Yoku''s Island Express was very fun! I bought it for the interesting premise (pinball metroidvania is a great idea) and they really delivered.
GoW sounds like the Tomb Raider/Uncharted style of game and while the traversal is kind of interesting it's a set piece more than the intrinsic mechanics given to you to do cool stuff. Good traversal mechanics involve emergent gameplay. Otherwise it's just set pieces.
What about Death Stranding, where the entire game is about traversing in the most efficient way possible?
Dear god please quit stopping the essay in its tracks for the ad. It just doesn't work with Yahtzee's presentation style. Is having the ad at the start too much to ask?
7:53 That’s one of the few things that Mass Effect: Andromeda did right with the space exploration. The Nomad covers a lot of ground and is a hell of an improvement from the Mako.
Granted, Starfield would need to allow ship builds which include a vehicle bay in addition to a personnel landing bay.
Zelda TOTK is another great traversal game, if nothing else because it gives you options. You can horsehide, walk, glide, build a car, build a plane, or just go to tall place and jump down.
@@SimuLord I'll never forget the time I was turned away from a horse stable for trying to check in a bear I had rode in on.
Or the goat.
Or the Spirit of the Mountain that I found and had to look up what he was because everyone in the game seemed so scared.
Or just abuse the omnipresent fast travel and skip all of it.
Indeed, TOTK and BotW are great traversal games. That said, I hope that the next Zelda has a smaller world so that there is more variety in each location.
@@matthewmuir8884totally. If it were up to me, I’d keep the sky and the depths but an overworld 1/3rd the size. Use that scale to make the other two parts more substantial.
Oh and somewhere else, biggest issue in TOTK is that it’s in hyrule again
A very prestigious institution. @@SimuLord
Funny that Yahtzee didn't mention Zelda. TOTK has extremely fun traversal from all the tools and zonai shenanigans Link has.
ToTK had good traversal. And you can choose if you want horse, foot, flying death machine, etc
You're fighting an uphill battle trying to make traversal in open-world games interesting. Unless it's a platformer, which frankly still fail to have interesting traversal a lot of the time, you're going to spend an impossible amount of dev time on something that only improves the monotony of the experience, instead of fully alleviating it. At the end of the day, if you want to have fun traversal, you need something that open-world games are never going to have: level design. Perhaps in another 20 years of empty drab landscapes full of nothing but the odd crafting material, gamers will finally realize that open-worlds are inherently boring, and we only ever had a fascination with them in the first place due to novelty bias. Then we might even be able to make fun games again.
While not in traversal, I do actually think BG3 does have a good primary gameplay loop. But maybe that's because I already love messing with d&d mechanics
Frog detective 1 and 2 had pretty small maps. The third game had a bug map so they added a scooter which you could do tony hawk style jumps with and you could platform on the roofs and find secrets and in the switch version they are adding a whole skate park.
The positing of scateboarding craters made me think of Tribes, which would indeed be a fun traversal system.
Also on the overall topic, Sunset Overdrive is one that comes strongly to mind for enjoyable traversal. The game has to remind you there's fast travel, and I wish there was a button for you the player to tell your character "Thanks but no thanks".
I swear, if Sunset Overdrive was actually on Playstation, i would of likely picked it up in a heartbeat, rip that its still limited to microsoft/Xbox platforms even after 9 years. Because its certainly one of those games that even after all these years i would likely pick it up full price still. Since like certain legacy collection bundles, its a title that takes the collectible formula that Assassin`s creed type games over-popularized and makes it enjoyable with its witty design and just oozing that Rachet & Clank style of enjoyment.
Welp, i still got about 1-2 weeks till some new fun stuff comes out so i`ll just have to find some decent discount game to tide me over, that aint some rogue-like burn out or overly lenghty title that usually leads into exploiting the game to `level grind.`
*Marty Sliva has entered the chat*
We received the gift of Death Stranding and we SQUANDERED IT!
Travel in space should be a gold mine. Assign a destination, and auto travel towards it. Walk around your ship and do activities. Crafting, organizing inventory, tend to plants/animals. Even repairs could be interesting. Include a chance for random events to occur. Pirate attacks, fires due to lack of maintenance, little alien creature that snuck aboard.
Issue is that it could get repetitive. You are not solving the main issue which is traversal, but only putting another issue on top of it
My favourite game to traverse around as of late has been Satisfactory. Combining super-fast slide jumps with zipline swings and jetpack taps feels exceptionally smooth... or sends you hurtling off a cliff to make love to a rocky shore. Feels awesome.
Hey yay know how already good games could improve?
Well I'll tell you, right after this ad for a predatory scam.
An ad that was a full 1/8th of the length of the video and chucked in with as little grace as possible. And it was a fucking Raid shadow legends ad to boot. Classy.
I enjoyed riding around the countryside on my horse in Red Dead Redemption. In The Witcher 3, riding around the countryside on my horse made me curse like a sailor and beg for fast travel. It's fascinating how key traversal is to moment-to-moment enjoyment of many games designs, and confounding how forgotten it is in so many big budget games these days.
It sucks in cp2077 as well the cars drive like shit. Atleast they had the decency to have all the fast travel options open from the beginning
This is why I'm super excited for Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
The first game's traversal was great, almost perfect. Miles Morales was more of it, but it added more enthusiastic animations.
The second game has sped the swinging up, added new traversal things with the ability to glide, slingshot and increasingly better animations.
The missions might be more fighting goons, but at the end of the day, the traversal to get to those challenges makes it all the more bearable to get 100% completion. (Alongside the incredible looking additions to combat)
Wow, interrupting a video mid-sentence to hock a crappy mobile game? That was the worst thing I've ever seen and I expected a bit more from Yahtzee. I'll keep this video in mind the next time he goes on a rant about aggressive advertising in games.
I don't expect that Yahtzee had much of a say over where the editors decided to stick the ad. While he does the visuals for Zero Punctuation, for Extra Punctuation he mainly does the scripting and voiceover, and leaves things like visuals (and, I presume, sponsorship spots) up to others at The Escapist.
He does not edit extra puntuation, he writes the scripts and does recording but the editing itself is done by someone else, thats how he can work on both ZP and EP without passing out
Its worth noting that Yahtzee has no say in when or what ads play in his videos.
He's part of the escapist brand and they decide when the ad plays.
Comparing ads in games to an ad on a RUclips video?
@@TheSeriousPain yessir
8:03
I think you just accidentally invented the Jak II hoverboard.
I enjoy these extra punctuation videos a ton :)
Same
Traversal doesn't even have to get creative to be a fun part of the experience
Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is one of my personal favorite games to go form place to place in, and all they did was jack up the run speed so you'd zoom across the map
Traversal is almost always a primary gameplay loop. It is, in all likelihood, the thing you will be doing for the majority of the game.
This is why Dishonored is good. The movement and attack powers feel great by themselves, but combining them creatively has such a high style ceiling, you get shit like StealthgamerBR's videos, which are just jawdropping.
When i think about fun traversal in the AAA space i the only fun traversal for me has been the insomniac spider-man games and even ratchet and clank with the hover boots. I feel like insomniac get it right mostly. Even sunset overdrive had fun traversal somewhat. I hope the new abilities in mario wonder make getting from A to B super fun
Sunset Overdrive had a pretty decent system with the grinding and bouncing on pretty much anything, it also rewards the player by giving a multiplier that increases the amount of currency you get from enemies and amping up the music in the process.
perhaps that's why games like metroid or dark souls are so gripping because even at the peak of character power the traversal still poses a threat
DON'T DO AD AMBUSHES
I’m glad Yahtzee’s voice wasn’t sullied with a Raid ad, at least.
Question: Would Freelancer's (I know I'm old) Space traversal with the jump gates and trade routes that you're constantly docking with be qualified to be called "interesting traversal"? I always challenge myself to be as close to the thing as possible when docking in order to not waste time....
I would classify it as "could be worse". Jump gates are an immersive way to region lock, and the trade route piracy was a cool enough touch to make the trade routes not entirely boring, but I wish it was worked out better. Was it even practically possible to be the kind of pirate that interrupts trade routes? I can't remember trying that. They were close to getting why traversal isn't fun, but they didn't reach to the point where they found a way to make it truly fun.
@@bramvanduijn8086well, in the Discovery MMORPG mod thing you certainly could pirate stuff if you wanted....
I porbably just enjoy the whole quick docking stuff too much in that case....
All I got from this is that Yahtzee thinks all the Baldur's Gate 3 characters should have had skateboards and basically Tony Hawked their way through the game. And if that doesn't get him hired by Larian, I don't know what will.
I love how Yahtzee has not once done an ad read. I feel like he's too cranky to do that😂.
Never change, old man.
"Cool new skin designed by Jontron himself" is probably not the amazing sales pitch they thought it would be 0.0
yeah. and that’s coming from a guy who still watches his videos. like, i know now that he’s a piece of shit, but i still find his videos funny.
Raid Shadow Legends, really?
You ok Escapist?
Maybe don't take sponsorships from a dressed up gambling application that markets itself to children.
Off topic from the open world theme, but Celeste is what came to mind for me early in the video. It really feels like the devs focused hard on making a character that feels insanely fun to control, making the primary loop constantly engaging, then built everything else around that.
Spyro the Dragon was famously developed on those principals, and is still so playable all these years later.
I literally never beat any part of the story of Spiderman 2 for PS2, but as a kid I played it for hundreds of hours.
suprised no one´s mentioned the game yet, its been like 5 minutes lol
Personally I think Dying Light is a fantastic example of this as was Mirror's Edge: Catalyst. When I first heard people talk about Dying Light I thought the parkour couldn't be that interesting and on a technical level it isn't, it's done well enough but it's not trying to be the original Mirror's Edge or anything. But by creating a world that's dangerous to traverse and starting the players off so weak, traversal becomes incredibly important because if it goes awry you might actually put yourself in situations that you can't easily escape. Mix that with the fact that there's zombies everywhere and you can't fast travel and suddenly a game about melee combat in an open world becomes a game where the repetitive traversal experience becomes this progression you feel and enjoy.
ME: Catalyst got this vibe down too but with less danger from enemies and more danger from reckless falls. It also suffered from less freedom of direction, but routes become something you familiarize and the more I've replayed the game the more I have found some unique routes.
I'd say Deep Rock Galactic is a good example of asymmetrical, team-based traversal, but it can take some getting used to.
Seen it plenty of times but i think the reason that works is your effectively `building` your path instead of traversing giant blank spaces. With having the addition of certain classes getting different ways to traverse between effectively digging thru rock, hook-shot (think it was the scouts?) traversal and even laying down `pipes` to grind(which doubles as a back/forth from objectives). Which since these are instanced short-term runs they understand to make it fast and quick to get around then turn what would be a 5 minute or less mission into a 30+ minute slog because of large amounts of travel with no means to speed up.
This is why i got sick of large open map areas in many types of games, Dragon Quest Monsters: Dark Prince`s demo giving me a fine remembrance on very chunky sized maps on a game that is suppose to be about monster catching, not some shove in attempt you would see normally in an adventure game. If a game is not gonna give additional ways to travel while having these giant maps then it defeats the purpose of having the giant maps that are devoid of reasons WHY you want the large maps.
Atleast `skating` games get the excuse of a large map because they populate it with a variety of objects to do various tricks and opportunities to pull off amazing stunts like jumping off a ramp, landing on a hanging pipe that spirals upwards and then jumping off to grind on a helicopter and finish landing on a nearby roof.
@@BladeSerphYeah I think that the best traversal games expect emergent gameplay to come about just from getting around, and that's what makes it fun.
Just to add onto that, im currently trying to figure a title to `pick up` to pass the time for a week, shame some of the titles i had on a wish list either are not on discount or sadly hit my `burn out annoyances`, such as wanting to get something simple, won`t be a ridiculous long-term title, aka giant open maps for exploration and not gonna turn into some month long title i slough thru.
Especially since i got three certain titles, one of them that fits the beeg grind method and dont want to be bouncing off from an action rpg title and be fatigued from the genre when i get FATE//Samurai remnant.
I feel regardless if its 2D, 3D or a rogue-like when you too much traversal then it ruins the experience, hence a desire of progressive improvements on all parts then just simply combat.
I mean, even if you have a giant open map, if your constantly getting into fights despite being so over-leveled you should be able to dash past them to insta kill or knock them aside, then whats the point of said open map to begin with.
This is why Pokemon Violet annoyed the heck out of me where unlike Legends Arceus your constantly going into a `battle transition, where Arceus was alot quicker and you had the control to start the fight or if you just wanna run past the enemy.
Funny how Star Ocean, the Divine Force, one of the older demos i kept prodding despite being a dated title having those `expansive areas` resolved those annoyances with a instant transition in/out of combat and way to `detect` loot out of view and so on.
Which i say is one of the high lights any beeg open world games should have, have things so seemless that even if its not an action game specifically, it helps to shred away from lousy design when one has to do large amounts of `traversal` in a game.
Prob also helped that DUMA system that let you do large ground to air dashes and hover in the air to avoid fights and get around the place was also nice and its a shame CERTAIN open world type games dont employ said features enough. @@flatline42
Nick, we get that ads are a necessary parts of youtube these days, but if you cant just have them at the very start of the video then rope in Yahtzhee himself so he can pace his scripts around them.
Either intergrate them in such a way that they dont mess with the pace of Yahtzhees scripts and delivery or make sure he is able to account for the ad when writing.
HYPER DEMON comes to mind as one of the best examples of skill based traversal imo. Discovering the different ways you can use the 2 actions to perform insane acrobatics over void demons is incredibly satisfying, if you can get the hang of it.
Yahtzee's a slave to primary gameplay loops the same way Michael Bay or Zack Snyder are to cool shots. Not that fun traversal mechanics in Starfield or BG3 would be bad but they're tangential to the appeal of RPGs. If we must talk about loops, the "primary loop" of RPGs is embodying a character - immersion, if you like; immersion in the _character_ (not the situation like in horror or survival games). And the character's look, gear, animations (and yes, maybe traversal mechanics) matter to that just as much as moment-to-moment gameplay.
I mean, what's the "primary loop" of a tabletop RPG? Rolling dice? No, it's getting into the head of your character, imagining what they would say and do. What's the primary loop of reading a book? Reading words? No, it's imagining the scene. Obviously games visually represent a lot of that for you but in RPGs at least there's more going on than exists on screen or even in the game's mechanics. They don't need to constantly distract you from imagining anymore than you need a Rubik's cube to distract you while reading a book.
EDIT: Yes I know Yahtzee kind of says this later when he says context can fill in for a lack of gameplay challenge but to me that's kind of admitting the limits of his "focus on the primary gameplay loop" mantra.
TOTK deserves a medal for fun modern traversal! Im shocked it went unmentioned.
Probably since it requires a lot of grinding to really open up the abilities to make little vehicles to more than a fun gimmick to use for a bit before it recharges, and the Depths (where it gets the most mileage) fucks over air vehicles by its very nature of being unable to cross the whole map at once and being mostly optional.
Not in the slightest! Building vehicles in TOTK is fun, but actually piloting one (along with walking, climbing, gliding and horse riding) consists of pushing forward and waiting. Sometimes you chug a battery/stamina potion, or spam a boost ability if present, but that doesn't happen often enough to be a consistent skill challenge.
Travel in TOTK is fun because of exploration, but once you need to go somewhere you've already been, it's fast-travel time.
Huh. He just described the K-drives in Warframe perfectly, right down to the Warframe-shaped craters I left all over Orb Vallis.
The hoverboards, right? I swear every single time I tried to use my hoverboard in Warframe it was greyed out. Like you could literally only use it WITHIN ZE DESIGNATED AREA and the only one I ever found was the big open area in Fortuna or whatever it was called
@@VanessaMagick You can use them in the open world areas on Earth, Venus, and Deimos. There's also one Warframe, Yarelli, who can summon one at any time, so if you're going into a mission where you know you need to move fast, like a Rescue, she's great.
This is a good point, if you can't make traversal fun i just say Opt for travel being menu based with a cute animation for loading time. Cuz whats the point of traveling if that isn't fun in itself or some sort of side activity?
Yahtzee makes a good point for Starfield's traversal. Im enjoying that game overall, but holy shit did they miss the mark on traversal. Im seeing a lot of comments here about Outer Wilds having things like gravity, etc, being concerns for travel. I know space is supposed to be empty, but they really could have tried to come up with more ways to spice up space travel. Solar storms, passing comets, cosmic radiation, black holes, gravity wells, meteor showers, gorgeous scenery, goddam *anything*. Also, i dont see what the problem would be to have a private Mars rover that you can summon wherever like Geralt with Roach in Witcher 3. They could have even made it destructible, something you have to manage carefully so you dont bust it up and have to pay for repairs or a replacement. That would add to the traversal, i think.
I have a lot of nostalgic memories about Skyroads. Such a great game.
I liked Stun Runner in the arcade. Nobody's named Yahtz's mystery Amiga game yet??
Surprised and happy to see it mentioned. Still play it from time to time. Some great music.
I'm dealing with this exact problem with Nier Automata right now. The game is predicated on how cool its story is, and sometimes the combat can be fun. However, I ran into some seriously stupid pathfinding while dealing with sidequesty bull****. There was this quest where some weird machines have this creepy cult following for some other thing named Jean Paul. The quest has you spend half an hour running across a forest, a sewer, an amusement part, city ruins, and a goddamn desert (all things you go to for main plot by the way). I go through that, only to get back to the guy, only for the game to go, "HEY, DO IT AGAIN!" So, I spent another half an hour doing the same thing I just did.
I only found out by reading up later that the sorely needed fast travel only unlocks in the exact NEXT main plot point after the sidequest takes place.
So, why wasn't fast travel, or some faster mode of transportation a pre-requisite? The game even has these flight units in cutscenes. You're telling me I can't just call up the Bunker and grab those for a fee, if I didn't want to walk or fast travel? Other RPGs had the ability to fast travel from pretty much the start (or weren't so heavy with the backtracking). God knows Nier wasn't the first game to probably pull the, "walk these giant maps you turd"
Fast travel, means of cutting or making travel time more interesting or, godforbid SMALLER maps would be a huge help.
36 seconds? wow I was fast lmao I'm still waiting on an AC6 ZP
Escapist replied on another video that Yahtzee isn't going to do an AC6 ZP, because he tried the game and didn't really like it. I guess he didn't play enough of it to be able to do a ZP at all. I think they said it just wasn't his sort of game.
I, myself, adore the game and am fully addicted to it and I haven't been so sucked into a game in a long time now. Much as I love Bloodborne and DS3, AC6 scratches an itch I didn't know I had and it's so much easier to spend hours playing missions; whereas in Bloodborne, DS3, and Elden Ring I needed regular breaks even after just an hour or so of playing. I'm about to start my 2nd run now, but I needed a breather after that particular final boss for the ending I went for first.
@@SolaScientia I was on a new playthrough of Bloodbourne and started the Demons Souls remake just before AC6 came out.
Since, I've beaten AC6 twice and am already on chapter 3 on my 3rd playthrough. Its so addicting I had no idea a game could be made like this anymore.
I'm looking forward to baluders gate though as its just sitting on my ps5 waiting lol
@@TheRealSonicBeats I adore AC6 so much. I'm on the attack the dam mission of chapter 1 and I'm choosing to go against Volta and Iguazu. It's so tough now. Damn Volta keeps stunlocking me. It's still so much fun though.
@@SolaScientia The fact that you get unique missions and unique objectives on different playthroughs was so fun honestly. Makes trophy hunting extremely rewarding
@@TheRealSonicBeats I finally defeated Volta and Iguazu and it was a pain in the ass to do. Well worth it for the new missions I've gotten to unlock, but I think on my 3rd run I might not bother betraying them since I know it doesn't affect the ending at all. I went for Fires of Raven as my first ending, so I'm going for Liberator of Rubicon now. Then obviously Alea Iacta Est on the 3rd run.