Dragon’s Dogma 2’s fast travel system is a pain in the ass, and depending on who you ask and even when you ask it, this is a good, bad, fine, annoying, interesting, frustrating, clever thing. But as part of a recent free update that has arrived in the leadup to the game’s Dark Arisen expansion, it is now less of a pain in the ass. And for the expansion’s producer Naoto Oyama and director Kenta Kinoshita, it’s about giving people more choices.

For some context, in the original release of Dragon’s Dogma 2, to fast travel you had to head to use ferrystones, an item not easy to come by, which would take you to portcrystals, which in turn could only be found in certain cities (and you could place a very limited number wherever you want). There were other ways to get around, but they were risky, and controversially, the game also had microtransactions that let you pay real-world money for portcrystals (which again, the total amount you could use was limited even in this case). Though, these microtransactions have now been removed.

Controversy aside, this approach to fast travel is obviously one that is difficult to quite literally navigate, something Kinoshita recognised in an interview with Eurogamer. “I think there’s a lot of strategising that was made possible by the original game design of Dragon’s Dogma,” he said. “It’s got a certain ‘hardcore nature’ where the game design forces you to think about things you might not think about in every game, or even every open-world RPG. The fact you then need to develop a strategy for how to exist in this world, and then make difficult choices about how and when you adapt that strategy – that’s something people love about this series.”

For Kinoshita, it’s not about making changes that may “ruin” this part of Dragon’s Dogma. “But at the same time I want to give players more choices, which means they have more strategic opportunities,” he says, then referencing the eternal ferrystone, a newly added item that allows for infinite fast travel. He also notes that “this is a good example,” of an issue “often raised” with him.”

Kinoshita continued, “I feel that we’re not forcing anyone to fast travel anywhere; we’re just giving those who wish to take that option an alternative – even if they don’t use it every time. I’m sure every player has times when retracing the path from the main town back to where they’re going, yet again, where they will feel the game is getting repetitive. And everyone has real-world time constraints, so they don’t want every session to feel that lengthy. Sometimes you just need to get where you’re going. That option is there for you now.”

I wonder if this is something the base game’s director, Hideaki Itsuno, who left Capcom following the game’s release, would agree with given his previous comments on fast travel in games (as a reminder, his take is that travel is “only an issue because your game is boring,” and the solution is to just “make travel fun”). I’m also not confident in this being a necessary change. Friction is good! Design by community feedback, however, isn’t always. Ah well, guess I’ll just ignore the eternal ferrystone.