Back when Dragon’s Dogma 2 released, getting somewhere was a hassle. I, myself, had one of my journeys utterly dismantled when my ox cart was ambushed, destroyed by my own pawn’s ill-advised spell, and summarily attacked by a gryphon that stole me miles away from my original location.
That was somewhat addressed in a June patch that added the Eternal Ferrystone, which lets you teleport to one of your assigned Portcrystals from the map and, as the name suggests, didn’t run out. It’s counter to the deliberately thorny design of Dragon’s Dogma 2 which, in my humble opinion, makes it appealing.
Still—it was enough of a pain point that Capcom saw fit to address it. And per an interview with Eurogamer, director Kenta Kinoshita maintains that its presence doesn’t impact that original vision because, well, you don’t gotta use it:
“I feel that we’re not forcing anyone to fast travel anywhere; we’re just giving those who wish to take that option an alternative—even if they don’t use it every time. I’m sure every player has times when retracing the path from the main town back to where they’re going, yet again, where they will feel the game is getting repetitive. And everyone has real-world time constraints, so they don’t want every session to feel that lengthy. Sometimes you just need to get where you’re going. That option is there for you now.”