"“Teleportation” to the next area and how it undermines map design"

I was just watching this amazing analysis of ORAS (be warned it’s 7 hours long) and wanted to bring up a really good point that the creator brought up.Several times during the game, May or Wally offers (or forces) you to come with them and teleports you to the next part of your journey. This occurs when going from Meteor Falls back to Mauville, Lavaridge Town back to Mauville and Petalburg City back to Mauville. This seems like a way to streamline the journey of backtracking and is GameFreak’s way of modernizing some archaic map design philosophies right? Wrong.What the creator brought up is how this “teleportation” undermines a lot of the cleverness in how Hoenn is built. Let me summarize his points:When going back from Meteor Falls to Mauville, players are supposed to travel down Route 115 to Rustboro and then through the Rusturf Tunnel to get back. This shortcut was purposefully created by Gamefreak to make the “backtracking” easier. Actually, this shouldn’t even be considered backtracking because Route 115 is an entirely new route, and this path allows players to experience the revelation that they can actually break the rocks in Rusturf Tunnel now if they hadn’t done so before. It’s a cool piece of map design that gets completely swept under the rug in ORAS.When going from Lavaridge to Mauville, players are supposed to have to take Route 111 back. This lets them pass by the desert, which they can now explore since they have the Go-Goggles. By teleporting players to Mauville, they will likely never go back to Route 111 and never explore the desert.Traveling from Petalburg to Mauville is pretty cumbersome, sure. But what’s important is that players now have access to the Surf HM. This backtracking was purposeful by Gamefreak to give players the realization that they can now surf through routes 105-109 to get back rather than have to go back with Mr. Briney. This opens up a bunch of new content, including the Sea Mauville, and is an organic way to get players to explore. Not only that, but players who don’t want to do so much exploration can instead use Surf north of Oldale town as a much quicker shortcut to Mauville. Both of these methods end up putting you next to the trick house, which also serves as a reminder that you can progress further there. However, in ORAS Wally automatically teleports you to Mauville without your permission. And since you really have no reason to go back, players will most likely never explore routes 105-109 and find the shortcut from Oldale Town.I don’t recall other specific examples of this in other games, but I don’t think “teleportation” syndrome is unique to ORAS. And I think it’s a shame because it undermines a lot of clever techniques that were woven into the map design to nudge players towards organic exploration and discovery. via /r/pokemon http://bit.ly/2Pj5FAo