» Fri May 27, 2011 7:21 am
Here's an idea. I'd love it if the game included Morrowind-style transportation services AND an advanced form of Daggerfall's fast travel system. There'd be ways of getting around: walking and horse (both by marked routes) carriage services, alpine cable car, riverboats, coastal boats, and so on. You could use these services like in Morrowind, OR you could queue up fast travel. Fast travel would skip the details by doing the calculations for you. It'd even show a sort of "Google Maps" style directions showing you, if you care to know, exactly how your character is getting from point A to point B.
So say you've emerged from the dungeon and you just want to get back to the city the quest giver is in, without having to walk all the way to the nearest transport service. You'd fire up fast travel. The game would then calculate the most efficient route that minimized the amount of unguided walking (meaning it wouldn't necessarily be the fastest route, but would rather stick to main roads, documented travel services, etc.). Hit "GO" and it then does an Indiana Jones style quick narration over your trip, showing walking shoes over part of the map, carriage over another, alpine cable car over another, sudden jumps due to mages guild guide, bringing you out of this at the location you wanted to reach.
Note that I said the system would, so far as possible, stick to the beaten path. If you needed to get somewhere FAST (in game time, not real life time) by way of an unmarked shortcut, a dangerous pass, or some other "less traveled" route, you'd have to hoof it in-game. You could even fast-travel to the nearest point to the shortcut, but you'd have to travel the shortcut in real time. This way, while you could normally use fast-travel to get pretty much anywhere, you could still have the occasional quest that says "We need to get to town X in two days!" "We'd never make it in time!" "Ah, but I know a shortcut. It's... a little dangerous, but if we take that route, we can get there with time to spare." Let the journey itself be the adventure, from time to time.
As to those of you who wonder what the problem is because Oblivion's system was always optional, it isn't what's in the game, it's what's NOT in the game. We want to see travel services in the game. We want the option of talking to the ticket-booth, paying the fare, and taking a ride. The presence of fast travel is not, per se, the problem. It is the ABSENCE of the things fast-travel glosses over. The idea above preserves both functions.