Morrowind is the gold standard imo. There’s like 8 forms of fast travel and they all work differently. 3 of them are spells that can be used to travel FROM anywhere you are. None of them give you total access to travel TO anywhere. But you can get anywhere you need to go fairly easily.
Morrowind is awesome, all those methods of fast travel and yet you’re still able to just swim (or water walk, or fly) to Solstheim (new area (island) added through DLC).
And counterintuitively, having to consult a physical map instead of an in-game map only improved the immersion.
Or using road signs to find your way. Then freaking out when a fork in the road doesn’t have a sign.
The short answer is: immersion.
From the article:
Travel is boring? That’s not true. It’s only an issue because your game is boring. All you have to do is make travel fun
If I can get taken across the map in some kind of world-appropriate vehicle, and I get to remain immersed in my character while doing that (=minimal menus), and especially if I can do something else while otherwise enjoying the travel (e.g. reading an in-game newspaper like Red Dead), then I have little need for fast travel. I’d argue it should be available, but give me the option to remain immersed and enjoy my time across the map.
Cyberpunk 2077 would have been just that much better if the metro system had been working at launch. Let me sit and rest and enjoy all those beautiful vistas.
Starfield wouldn’t suck nearly as much if the whole game wasn’t built around fast travel. I end up with no connection to my ship at all, because I don’t really ever feel like I’ve taken it anywhere.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey was terrible with this. The game was artificially extended by all the back and forth running you had to do. I’ve used travelgating to describe this before. The first Dragon’s Dogma was pretty okay without fast travel because you really never went back to old locations. It was a huge slog if you had to, though, and that wasn’t always the most fun, especially having to constantly fight the same battles over and over again.
