ArcheAge – Transportation

One of the things Ian Bogost says video games can do is provide the experience of a journey. With transportation options like cars and planes, distances become trivial and the ride itself to a new location is not as emphasized as it used to be. Games, however, can recreate the feeling of traveling a long way, along with the feelings of exploration and familiarity that one gains as they travel through the same areas over multiple trips. The game ArcheAge, an unreleased Korean MMORPG, has a large explorable world, but tries to avoid fast travel mechanics that can be found in other games, such as portals or simply mysteriously teleporting to places. Instead, players are provided with a variety of modes of transportation, as can be seen in this video. Players can not only ride on animals, but also ride carriages and blimps that come at scheduled intervals. Players can also create boats and then sail them in the ocean to reach other islands, and finally there are also hang gliders that can be used for soaring around. All of these options combined with the scale of the world provide that feeling of embarking on a journey, in ways familiar to us like carriages (well, buses in modern day I suppose) but also in ways that can not be easily experienced in real life, such as hang gliding, blimps, and sailing your own boat.

 

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