Re: Euro Truck Simulator 2 Quick Travel
Sofie Kovalcheck
A creature, item or ability in a video game which enables fast travel between a set of fixed points in an open-world setting. In a lot of games, these points are marked by a special monument or landmark to designate them as such. This cuts down on potentially annoying backtracking and allows the player to save time getting back to areas of interest. In some cases, using the Warp Whistle is the only way to reach certain areas.
Travel can be limited to between these set of fixed points, or to those points from anywhere in the game world. In most cases, destinations only become unlocked after the player visits them the old-fashioned way first. This limitation is sometimes justified by having you do something like opening a portal or activating a teleport machine when you get there, allowing you to get back there easily. Most of the time, however, it's never explained why the traveling method only works if you have been there already. It's often explained from a gameplay standpoint, since if you could teleport to anywhere in the world from the beginning of the game, you would never have to overcome any of the obstacles the game designers put between you and your destination and the REAL reason for the Warp Whistle is so you don't have to do it again every time you want to visit an area.
Compare and contrast Global Airship. While the Global Airship has wide-ranging freedom of movement, the Warp Whistle has very fixed destinations, more of which become unlocked in play, but it is generally available at an early point. You can generally only warp back to areas you've been to or, in the case of Crow's Nest Cartography, specific towers you've climbed. A helpful real-life comparison: The airship is a private helicopter, and the Warp Whistle is a subway pass.
If the Warp Whistle is available as an item, it may be restricted to usage in "overworld" locations only (outdoor settings like towns or the world map), and fail to work if the player attempts to use it in an enclosed area such as a cave or dungeon. Its in-dungeon counterpart would be the Escape Rope, whose function is limited to teleporting the player out of the dungeon in question (after which, the player may use the Warp Whistle properly).
Often overlaps with Point-and-Click Map, in that a Warp Whistle may call up such map (instead of showing a list of known locations) but is not always required to access it. Often veers into Acceptable Breaks from Reality depending on context - some games justify the "Warp whistle" mechanic while others just ignore it for the sake of making it an anti-frustration feature.
Adventure Games
- Chicory: A Colorful Tale: Once you get a transit pass, you can fast travel to any transit bench on the map.
- Multiple examples appear in the King's Quest series.
- In King's Quest III, the hero can find a magic map that can warp him to any screen in the first kingdom the game comprises. It does not spare him from the treacherous walk back up the wizard's house (something the fan adaptations notably dispensed with).
- In King's Quest VI, Alexander receives a magic map which allows him to teleport between the Green Isles. It only works when used at the shore.
- In King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, Valanice gets a magic flute that can summon lord Tsepish's horse Necromancer, which can take her from anywhere in the game to Etheria, from where she can travel to any of the game's major locations (choosing between four fixed points).
- Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail! allows Larry to simply pick a point on the map and skip all the tedious walking between.
- Maptroid: Once you find a scroll with "TP", you can press 3 to teleport to the ship instantly.
- The Simon the Sorcerer games, especially in the first and the third. The first features a magic map in your inventory that, when used at any place of the world, allows you to instantly appear in a few specific parts of the world (useful especially to travel around the maze-like forest). The third features two sets of scattered magic phonebooths, one around the countryside and other inside the city, and entering any of them allows you to appear at any booth belonging to the same set. Later on the same game, you get a rainbird that, when summoned, rides you from anywhere in the world to anywhere where there's a platform with a picture of a bird (they're scattered around the countryside and the city, and a few in areas not reachable by other way).
First-Person Shooter
- In Far Cry 3 you can fast-travel to any liberated oupost or radio tower. Its DLC, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, allows you to fast-travel to any liberated Garrison.
- The latter two titles in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy have these. In Clear Sky, they take the form of guides that you can pay to take you to various places. Unfortunately, not every guide knows how to get to every place, so while jumping back to the starting area is usually simple, getting back to the area you jumped from can be very similar to figuring out a bus system, and the fees add up quickly. In Call of Pripyat, you can tag along with other Stalkers to get to various places around each map zone for a relatively low cost, but moving between the maps requires paying a (initially significant, but a relatively simple early mission can lower it) fee to a guide to take you to the other map. One of the beauties of Call of Pripyat's guides is that while there is always one hanging out in the mission hub, there are often other Stalkers willing to take you places walking around the open world, meaning that it's entirely possible to come out of a gunfight bleeding and low on ammo only to find a couple of guys who will not only sell you some medical supplies but take you someplace to get patched up and restock for a very low price.
Hack and Slash
- In Dark Devotion, the Porous Gemstone opens a portal which will take you back to the Filthblood Shelter. The Shelter, in turn, has a magical gateway which returns you to the last teleportation altar you activated.
- Diablo:
- Diablo II has a "waypoint" in nearly every zone (including towns and enemy lairs), which can instantly teleport the player to any other waypoint in the game. However, as the zones are sorted according to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, only two waypoints are typically used: one in the town, the other in the most advanced zone so far. Diablo III continues this, except you can no longer travel by waypoint back to previous acts.
- The games also made use of Town Portal, though as the name implied, the scrolls primarily sent you back to town (which you would need to do often in order to sell off your old or excess gear, repair the gear you were using, and resupply on essentials such as potions, ammunition and Scrolls of Identify or Town Portal. Diablo III does away with the scrolls and simply has Identify as a command for rare and legendary items (and as of Reaper of Souls, only legendaries get this treatment), and Town Portal becomes a spell that any character can cast, which takes a while to cast and returns you immediately to town, cutting down on the "leave a portal open behind you" tactics that were prevalent in the first two games.
- In Dragon's Dogma, the player uses Ferrystones to travel anywhere with Portcrystals. Gran Soren, Cassardis and (with the Dark Arisen expansion) Bitterblack Isle are the only places with permanent Portcrystals. Everywhere else, you must place a Portcrystal to be able to warp there.
- Dragon's Dogma II also uses Ferrystones and Portcrystals, but they are exceptionally rare and costly. A more economic means of fast travel is present with Oxcarts, with the caveat that they can only travel between two destinations each, and can fall under attack from bandits or monsters.
Puzzle Games
- The first game in the Dark Parables series has a very restricted one of these. A "mysterious arcane symbol" is drawn on the ground in one section of the castle courtyard; later, activating an identical symbol in the alchemist's tower of the castle proper enables the player character to warp at will between those two spots.
- Patrick's Parabox: There is a tile in the upper-left corner of every hub that lets you travel between any you have already unlocked without walking all the way back.
- Pquerette Down the Bunburrows: Some levels contain an elevator, allowing Pquerette to return to them from the surface. She can also return to the surface at any time after a certain point.
- Taiji features monoliths that you can warp between - however, you'll need to know the right codes to input into a 3x3 puzzle panel.
- Tower of the Sorcerer has a rare sighting of this trope in a tower: the Orb of Flying, allowing you to visit any floor you've previously been to, except floor 43 and floor 0.
Racing Games
- Forza Horizon, in addition to Outposts you can fast-travel to for a small fee, has an unlockable ability to fast-travel to any marked location, but in the first game, you have to pay a microtransaction to unlock it, unlike the second game where it is "purchased" with Skill Points.
- The helicopter in FUEL airlifts you to heliports in any unlocked zones.
Roguelike
- Cadence of Hyrule: Touching a Sheikah Statue will activate it so it not only becomes a selectable warp point (upon playing the Lute), but also allows the player to choose a freed character.
- In For the King, each region on the world map contains one Alluring Pool, and once you've discovered the location of at least two, you can teleport from any pool to any other pool you know the location of.
- NetHack has a powerful amulet (Not The Amulet, which is the goal of the game: The second best) known as the Eye of the Aethiopica, which has, among other things, the power to instantly warp the player to other dungeon branches. It can only be used every so often, though. It also contains a Magic Whistle, which warps your pet to your side, provided you and the pet are on the same floor of the dungeon.
- ToeJam & Earl can use the "Unfall" present to warp up one level if they're playing solo, or they can use the "Togetherness" present when playing together to warp the user to the other's location.