10 Awesome Mechanics That Make ALL Video Games Better

With open worlds being more prevalent than ever in the gaming sphere, it's never been more important for games to include fast travel systems which allow players to speedily venture back to locales they've previously visited.

This can of course be done many different ways with varying degrees of granularity - some fast travel systems will only let you hop between delineated hub areas, while others will let you drop a pin anywhere on the map and instantaneously teleport there.

But the total absence of fast travel feels majorly archaic in any contemporary game with a huge map, as it'll most often force players to spend an obscene amount of time backtracking across the same damn patch of land.

Exploration is of course the primary appeal of any open world title, but there comes a time when you just want to get to where you've been before without having to go through the tiresome traversal rigmarole all over again.

In a 50-hour RPG, for instance, is it really asking all that much to cut out some of the boring travelling? With game worlds being as mind-meltingly huge as they are these days, fast travel is an absolute must.

Any developer that excludes the feature, gates it behind major in-game progress, or makes it unnecessarily awkward (looking at you, Horizon) is honestly just being a stubborn party pooper. Let people play how they want to play, dammit.