Summary
Fast travel is one of gaming’s great modern luxuries, allowing you to cut down on tedious treks across maps and get right to the heart of the action. It’s a feature many games make excellent use of, but in recent years, developers have been shifting towards the idea that while fast travel should be included in their games, but shouldn’t necessarily be a feature used often. Or perhaps even ever.
Some games have satisfying traversal, or a world so rich and immersive you can’t bear to miss a chance to take in the scenery. We decided to take our time and walk you through some games that are simply better if you don’t fast travel, or at least do so sparingly.
Updated on July 03, 2025:We’ve updated this list to include a video version, just in case you wanted to take a closer look at some of the wonderful gaming worlds that deserve your full, non-fast-travelling attention.
Red Dead Redemption 2is highly praised, and sometimes criticized, for doing everything it can to immerse the player in its world. Deliberately paced controls and game systems which sometimes border on being a life-sim, you’ll never feel more like a true cowboy than in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Part of that includes riding your trusty steed across the map. Yes, fast travel is available, but there’s almost no benefit to using it outside of saving yourself time. By crossing the map yourself, you may take in the scenery and encounter all sorts of events happening in the world. Also, you can literally ride off into the sunset. Why would you not?
As an MMO,Guild Wars 2has a truly massive world for players to explore. That makes fast travel a truly welcome feature, with a cost of in-game currency to teleport across the world. Lots of MMOs have this in-game price tag to their fast travel.Final Fantasy 14does it too.
What makes Guild Wars 2 different is that the game’s premium currency, which can be used to buy things like extra character slots or new outfits for your character, can be bought with the in-game currency. That means, yes, you can fast travel. But wouldn’t you rather tighten those purse strings and use your mount, saving your gold for something special?
Death Strandingis a very particular game, andHideo Kojima has no plans to stopmaking his unique brand of entertainment. With a heavy focus on traversal that some adore and some find tedious, fast travel would seem like a way to expedite things for players who are focused more on the story.
Fast travel in Death Stranding isn’t especially convenient though. You can’t use it to move items, something which is at the core of the game, so it can really only be used to change where you begin your next trek from. Sometimes it’s better to surrender to a game’s conceit and accept that there’s just a certain way it wants to be played.
Cyberpunk 2077had a well-documentedrocky development processand failure of a launch, but is now one of the best games on multiple platforms thanks to continued work by the developers. Although it was missing many features at launch it did have fast travel, and a serviceable one at that.
What you’ll find as you play Cyberpunk 2077 is that the fast travel only takes away from your experience. Cruising through Night City with Samurai blasting on the radio helps you feel like the city is a real place. You might prefer zipping straight to your destination, but there’s no substitute for true immersion.
No series has an environment as packed as the ones on offer inLike A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Every nook and cranny of the cities in both Hawaii and Japan is filled with items to find, interesting characters to meet, tough enemies to combat, and strangers eager to offer you a Honk-Honk.
Fast travel is an option; you can always hop in a taxi and zip across the city, but you’ll be missing out on so much. Party members have conversations while you walk, Hawaii is a treat to look at and you’ll miss out on valuable experience from beating up random goons.
Horizon Zero Dawnfeatured a superb open world that was fun to traverse, but things were entirely upgraded when it came to the sequel,Horizon Forbidden West. The world is filled with more diverse biomes, rich with colour, and populated by a greater variety of machines.
The joy comes from using the Override skill to turn some of the robot animals into your personal mount, letting you travel the map with both greater speed and style. Towards the end of the story, you’ll even unlock the ability to use flying mounts, after which no other method of travel measures up.
When it comes to mounts in games, Roach isn’t exactly the most reliable. Even so,The Witcher 3is a game best experienced without fast travel. Not only is the game beautiful to look at but the best quests and stories in the game often lie off the beaten path.
Fast travel isn’t even the most convenient either. You can only travel from set locations in the game to other set locations, all marked by a signpost. It’s often simply faster to head straight for your destination rather than detour to a signpost. Unless you’re in Skellige, fast travel becomes a lot more appealing when you need to get from one island to another.
Some sequels are lucky if they match the magic of the previous game, but withThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the rarest of gaming miracles happened. A sequel that is an improvement in almost every measurable sense.
Exploring the game is not only a lot of fun, it’s also rewarding. There’s always something new to find, with exciting ways to traverse the world and find them. You probably have your own favourite way of getting around, but a special mention has to be given tothe joy of shield surfing.
Any of the three games from this series could be considered here, butSpider-Man 2most of all. The web swinging from the first two games returns and is just as much fun as ever, but the addition of the web wings makes navigating New York more fun than ever before.
The fast travel here is actually excellent; it’s lightning-fast and precise. But so much of the joy of playing as Spider-Man is getting to web swing, so why would you ever use it?
