Movement is Gameplay Too

Wanna know something I really hate? Commuting to work. I live in Los Angeles and so, Divine Decree (see: the Automobile Industry) has decided the only effective way I can get to work is by driving. Now, I’ve found ways to make this tolerable (Shoutout Actual Plays for giving me something long to listen to) but at its base, driving kinda sucks. It’s boring, can be really tedious, and is a bit of a drain on my entire existence. Which is why learning that someone could be at all positive about their commute, in Los Angeles no less, was shocking. Enter Bluesky and Katie Tightpussy. 

If you are unfamiliar with Katie Tightpussy, she is a lovely shitposter found on Bluesky. Should you scroll on her feed for more than roughly .3 seconds, you will quickly find posts extolling the virtues of E-bikes and railing against car centric city design. She may be one of the only people I’ve ever seen who has said anything about enjoying the commute to work. Specifically, she talks about how much she enjoys riding her bike, despite the best efforts of the drivers of LA to spread chaos and destruction amongst the city in order to get through that traffic light 2 seconds quicker. 

Of course, those are all real life problems, and I’m here to talk about video games, so what gives? Well, you see, Katie finding a way to make her commute active, enjoyable, and beneficial to her (despite the most annoying wellness people you know saying it, exercise really does make you feel better) reminded me of a certain game that I love that takes place in a very different city: Marvel’s Spider-Man by Insomniac Games. For those unfamiliar, Marvel’s Spider-Man is an open world game set in Manhattan, where you get to play as the titular web slinger swinging around New York, fighting criminals and trying to make the world a better place. 

Its style of open world is fairly common among games nowadays, placing you on a world map with various points of interest for you to explore and interact with, ranging from enemy strongholds to infiltrate, collectibles to find, and puzzles to solve. There are benefits and drawbacks to this style of game, and maybe one day I’ll dive into my personal gripes with the format, but overall I tend to enjoy it. One thing that Spider-Man truly nails though, is moving through the map. 

To put it simply, swinging through Manhattan fucking rips. It’s incredibly fun, and I found myself rarely utilizing the fast travel mechanic (as funny as it was to see Spider-Man on the subway.) Part of the reason that it is so fun is because it’s active. You’re constantly looking for grapple points, places to shoot towards and then leap off of, things you can vault through and parkour around, and it’s incredible. It engages you, it’s fun, and it moves you through the map quickly. I was never overwhelmed by the size of Manhattan because getting around was a delight, not a chore.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of games that…don’t do this. I recently played Ghost of Tsushima for the first time, and while I did really enjoy it, moving around Tsushima was not exactly a high point. I loved my horse Kage, he was a great guy, but movement across the map is essentially picking a direction, holding the run button, and waiting. The forests of Tsushima are beautiful and the game is gorgeous to look at, but there’s only so long I can look at trees before I eventually get a bit bored. Even in a map full of little activities to do, you still spend so much time just. Riding a horse. 

Ghost of Tsushima is hardly alone in this. Look at any Assassins’ Creed game since Syndicate and you’ll find the same thing. Get around the Hinterlands or Emerald Graves in Dragon Age: Inquisition and tell me you’re having a good time. Even with the fabled Nuggalope, it’s still boring as all hell (Inquisition isn’t technically an open world, but its individual maps behave in a similar manner). These games view movement simply as the means by which you get to the real gameplay, be that combat, stealth mechanics, puzzle solving, or whatever else. I propose the idea that…and hear me out…movement is gameplay too. 

I want to stress that I have enjoyed all the games I’ve mentioned here. I’ve played Inquisition fully through twice. I 100% completed the map in both Tsushima  and AC: Origins. These aren’t bad games by any stretch. But for so much of the time spent in them, I feel like I’m not playing the game. Instead, I’m just…waiting to get to actually play. When I play a game, I want to feel like I’m engaging with the game the entire time. I want to appreciate the beautiful world the designers have made, and for me, the best way to do that is to make moving through that world fun. It’s one thing to not focus on movement that much in games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus where extensive exploration is not a main selling point. Every Open World game loves to talk about its immersive world and discovering the rich tapestry of Egypt/Greece/The British Isles/Tsushima/Hokkaido and then it forgets that movement and traversal are key parts of that discovery. 

It’s not just Spider-Man that has cracked this code though. The Arkham games make gliding and grappling through Gotham City absolutely delightful. You ever divebomb to 40 feet above the ground before swooping up into the sky? It rocks. Even Assassin’s Creed has succeeded here! Sailing a pirate ship through the Caribbean in Black Flag while Sean Dagher sings sea shanties is awesome! I would literally call Syndicate Grand Theft Carriage while I played it because I had so much fun tearing through London. If you want a more recent example, look at Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Jumping from tree to tree, diving off a cliff only to get caught by an Ikran, gliding through the air, it’s a blast. Or just hop on Tears of the Kingdom and build a rocket powered jank plane for shits and giggles. Every one of these games recognizes how much time you’re spending moving around and makes sure that doing so is fun. They ask you to be engaged with the movement, to feel like you’re a part of the world, not just a passenger from isolated spot to isolated spot. I will forgive a lot in a game if it just remembers to make movement fun.

So much of our lives, in games and out of games, is spent traveling through the world from place to place. It’s so easy to start seeing that travel time as a sort of negative space or loading screen. We accept that this part of life is just supposed to be kind of boring and crap, and we adjust our expectations accordingly. But what if it wasn’t? What if even our time spent traveling could be engaging, and make us feel like we were a part of the world we inhabit, and not just shuttling ourselves through it. It would sure as hell make games more fun, I’ll tell you that much. 

…Maybe I should get an E-Bike.