I'm not seeing enough movement!

I'm walking here!

I would argue that the ability to move is a rather integral part of our function as human beings, heck, as animate beings. (I don't think anyone is going to fight me too hard on that front.) It allows us to transport the rest of our fleshy sacks to the places we need to go. (God, I'm literally describing the utility of movement.) but despite the fact that everyone is familiar with methods of movement, or perhaps because of it, representing transit in media can be difficult. Simply writing the sentence "I walked down the road", conveys the result but not the action. You know what I did but you have no idea how long that road was, how long it took me to go down it or if I walked in the street or on the pavement. Movies often have people move from location during cuts rather than show you their journey through traffic (Unless your director is James Nguyen). You do still get some great, ponderous shots of people journeys like the sweep across the desert in 'Gallipoli' but those are usually to establish the desolation of a scene or allow the audience to admire the shot.

"But we don't need to every step in the characters day." You are rightly thinking. And of course we don't, if it irrelevant to the story being told, it doesn't need to be there. I'm sure there is some art-house film that dedicated itself to capturing the struggle of the average transit to work, but you won't be seeing that crossing over to the mainstream anytime soon. We don't have time for that, our time on this earth is limited, is it not? So why am I even bringing up this inane line of thought? because in many video games the protagonist's mode of transport is a carefully considered concept. How fast will they walk? Can they run? Should we add vehicles? Can we add Vehicles? What about planes? Therefore I thought it might be fun to break down the main modes of transport as the are represented gaming and talk about the struggles that developers have to keep in mind in order to realize them.

Firstly, we have the most common form of transport available; Ambulatory movement. Humans and animals have been putting one foot in front of the other in order to propel themselves for millennia, so you'd think that bringing such a concept to video games would be a 'walk-in-the-park' (See what I did there? I'm not proud, either.) but you would be wrong. Walking is an unavoidable part of many games so it is imperative that developers makes sure that it feels right. We humans may not mind walking down the street to the shop but try walking in GTA and see how long it is before you want to gouge out someone's eyes. Therefore developers need to think about the speed the player moves, ensuring it is both believable and fun; the weight of the movement, making players feel grounded in their world but not rigid; and the consequence of walking, how much will the camera bob and sway. etc.

There are too many games to count that feature some form of walking and running, but I think it is the likes of the openworld Rockstar games that consistently nail this aspect. Rockstar have been creating third person action openworld games for decades and therefore it should surprise no one that they are good at doing it. As their games have progressed, Rockstar have managed to improve upon the weight of the character immensely. Compare the floaty nature of GTA 3's Claude with Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur and there are several solar systems worth of difference. It is part of their dedication to the construction of a believable gameworld to ensure the player feels rooted in it, movement is the glue that fixes all of that together and Rockstar practically own the patent for that stuff.

Next we have another popular mode of transport, vehicles. According to figures from the US department of energy, at least 16.5% of the world's population know how to drive a car. (Or at least have a licence, there's no current way to account for mental acuity.) this means that just about everyone in the world has at least seen an automobile. Humans have been hitting the roads in motorized vehicles since the 1800's and we'll likely continue to do so until the things start flying.

Obviously, many games have a handle on driving mechanics too, but few games handle them well. Saints Row and GTA have a vast selection of fun-to-drive vehicles in their repertoire but they don't handle particularly realistically. Play an actual racing Sim (Or just drive a real car like a weirdo) and you will notice how heavy and cumbersome those steel beasts can be. This is because video games often find themselves torn between the realistic versus the fun. If Grand Theft Auto's cars weighed anything like they should (Which you can achieve by messing with some gamecode.) suddenly you won't be able to pull of the ridiculous jumps and flips that people love to do. If Saints Row's cars were as flimsy as real cars, then every car you own would burst into flames within a minute. Creative liberties are taken for the good of the overall product.

Here's a fact you likely knew, 71% of the planet is covered in water. That means it was inevitable that mankind would figure out some way to traverse the thing, they had to get around to it eventually. Swimming is now a popular activity amongst people who are not me, and they've even gone and turned it into an Olympic sport. Personally, I can't think of a single thing that would encourage me to cross a body of water, but then I'm an introvert shut-in who hisses at the daylight, so I'm basically a vampire. (There's a thing about vampires and running water, isn't there?)

For whatever reason, Video games have always had a tough time whenever it has come to depicting
swimming. It has always been associated with the dreaded 'underwater level' and so it was a longtime until anyone managed to perfect underwater movement. (Rockstar still aren't there yet.) When it comes to recent games, I would say that the ideal example for underwater transit would be in Subnautica, but then again that is out of necessity. The entire premise of Subnautica is about being stranded on an ocean planet, so they needed to make the swimming feel weightless and effortless. Practised swimmers may point out that real swimming is actually neither effortless not weightless, but I merely direct them back to my 'realism versus fun' point from earlier.

But swimming isn't the only way that humanity has devised for travelling over bodies of water. Recently, we've come up with the idea of strapping people inside of metal death machines and launching them into the air. (Yeah, I'm not a big fan of planes.) Orville and Wilbur Wright famously established the path to air travel at the turn of the 20th century with their Wright Flyer. Nowadays commercial flights are a part of everyday life, and we're stuck with it until 2077 when aerodynes will become a thing. (I'm already saving up for mine.)

Flying has found a home in many video games. It's hard to mess up, really. Air resistance is more of  a bother for actual pilots and technicians; when you are merely simulating flight, things become a whole lot easier. There are great flight-capable vehicles all over gaming such as; Star Wars' starfighters, Far Cry's handgliders, GTA's planes and Just Causes' Grapple hook. (Yeah, Rico's hook is only 'technically' flying but I'm including it anyway.) Some games avoid implementing flying for presentational reasons. Despite featuring dozens of winged lizards, Skyrim had no flying mounts when it launched in 2011. This was explained by the assertion that if people could fly, they would spend their time looking through the land and not at it. Skyrim revolved around making players feel like a part of the world around them and therefore it was in Bethesda's best interests to saddle the player with more conventional means of transport. Then Bethesda released 'Dragonborn' and revealed that the real reason that they didn't add dragon-riding earlier was because the mechanic sucked.

The video gaming medium has a lot of issues unique to it, and solving the presentation of movement is one of the key ones. Fidelity in gaming comes to odds with creativity and fun all to often, making the establishment of a believable environment difficult. So much consideration goes into every single step that you take ingame, ultimately to ensure that you never notice that hard work. To most it is one of those irrelevant background details that never enters their sphere of conscious thought, but to me it is the foundation of solid gameplay. (the 'legs' if you will.)