Traveling on the Train

[ShellShocker]

Okay, so in Phantom Hourglass on the ship, we got to move around the sea anywhere on water when we wanted using the stylus to draw our way around water. Cool.

Anyway, as seen in one of the trailers, this image appears on the top:
http://i27.tinypic.com/27ynabm.png
I know, it has horrible quality. Anyway, if you look at the right side, you can see Link's head, symbolizing where he is, and then brown tracks around the place. By this, I presume that you must always follow the roads.

This is quite annoying, and limits you when traveling. I know it'd be ridiculous if you could just go anywhere, because you'd need a track. But I dislike being limited to that. Do you guys like the idea of only traveling on tracks, or would you want to be able to move around freely?

[Kitsu]

Honestly, I absolutely hate the idea of being constricted to tracks. I mean, I thought that sailing in Phantom Hourglass was horrible enough (having to draw paths, straight-forward paths to get places [minus travelling to the Ghost Ship, I thought that was a little better than the rest].)

Personally, I would like to have the option of travelling (almost) anywhere, that is, exploring the explorable land by train, as well as getting off and travelling on foot to other places such as hidden caves and such. But from the looks of it, it will be more direct, point A to point B paths.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what the travel is like in this game, but I am a tad concerned that it will follow in the footsteps of Phantom Hourglass, or even be more constricted travel-wise.

[Durion]

I prefer the idea of not being able to travel everywhere by train, Travelling by boat anywhere was understand able seeing as all you need is water and an engine in that game to move your boat, But being able to go anywhere by Track O.o....In my opinion it would take away from the magic of travelling on a train.

Although I do understand what someone has said, It does seem to much of a A-B path, It does have variation in the route you can take but it just seems to straight forward.

[startimer]

i don't think using the train will be completely mandatory. It might just be a quicker way of getting around, like Epona. At least, I hope so...

[fiercedeity619]

i think that the train is pretty cool to use even on tracks. like darklink said there is a lot of track in the screen so your not totally limited. and like startimer said it might not be mandatory (altough a pain in the butt if you mean to walk)

[Master Kokiri 9]

I simply think that maybe that the tracks might just be a work in progress to revolutionize transportation in new hyrule (thats what i call it until proven otherwise) and that simply all the places for you to go are on the tracks and simply you find the quickest route or slowest route if you like detours.

[Twili Kid]

Hopefuly the us eof the train won't be mandatory. I just seems like it should be like a portal thing from one big peice of land to the other and whenever ever you can use the train its just connecting those places. I just hope it would be something like that.

[Axle the Beast]

The travel actually looks a lot more interesting to me than Phantom Hourglass' method. It's different, but not necessarily bad.

My theory:

I suspect that we'll have these networks of train tracks. More tracks will appear as the game progresses or certain conditions have been met. Each track travels through a certain area, obviously. What I believe will happen is these areas will be unique. Some areas might be straight shots, others might have rupees or be blocked by the animals seen in the trailer. Others might be littered with enemies or even bosses like the Gohma creature shown. This would make some tracks more dangerous than others and a more roundabout path might be more viable that a straight one when heading to a destination.

I suspect that when getting off the train at certain points, it will be an open area, but not a world map. Like we might have a forest, or a mountain. Lake, castle... etc. And in some of these areas we will have dungeons. And some tracks might even lead to unknown locations, opening up exploration.

Another possibility is that the world can be freely roamed, but the train can be called from stations or something, but I find that pretty unlikely from what we've seen in trailers.

If it functions like my theory, then I feel it should be pretty fun. We'll have to see.

[Len]

not sure.... its supose that the train move on rails, i do agreed the idea of moving freely but...

i say:

the train looks sustentable to the fields (of course, we need rails to make a train go to a dessired direction, when do trains have a steering wheel or something like that?, the rails has a system called "railswitching" if im not wtrong, this system is used to switch between existing rails trought lands, thats what trains uses to switch to another direction in the game... moving freely though the land?, well what about crossing the rivers?, and the open water space to another land?, we could need at least a bridge or something, and the mountains?, we need tunnels (a train cannot go trought water....i mean if THERE IS water in the game).

...i agree with this (^i know that im prooving myself wrong with this^) yes, moving freely could be a great idea, but we could need some advantaged system that could help us cross obstacles...i don,t know: maybe creating railings using the stylus (yeah this makes me eat my own words from: we need this to cross this and we need that to cross that) yes we could use the stylus to create railings that would help us cross the rivers, go climb over the mountains and cross the open seas (if there is)

we need to wait...nintendo never rests from amaze us (well... they not allways amaze us...really) horray!, my firts LARGE POST, i was about to write more but.... i think that this is enoght... i can say that: i did post something dumb do i?, please i pray for my rep points!, do not kill "em! please, one more less and im over!!! (i have allready gone to red, i have struggled to get back to green so please)

[Twilight Prince]

I would rather move by foot, then be limited by tracks, but what I hope they do is give you the power to lay track in certain areas so that if and when you need to travel their, you can get their quick and with minor issues. However, if they have a preselected track that you have to unlock then it will create difficulties while traveling, so personally I hope they give us the option to lay, and move our own track.

[Zarom]

I think the whole idea of traveling by train will be really fun. Hovewer, I do like more when we're able to travel anywhere we want. I think that it will be like traveling by train instead of Epona or by boat. And like others said, there is lots of trails.

[Werewolfy]

I think it could work, if Nintendo choose to let it work. I mean, it limits exploration somewhat, but at the same time, it might be able to minimize the time it takes to get from one place to another. I say this becuase we no longer have islands to worry about going around. On the other hand, we also have to follow the tracks, rather than making a straight line to the destination.

[Odin]

no, if you think logically it might consider gamers to goin on public transport more often than Phantom Hourglass is did. what's next a bus and go through detours of congestion. lol.

[Axle the Beast]

One thing I thought of since my last post...

While the movement seems more constricted and linear, I still think it's an improvement over Phantom Hourglass. In that, you could go wherever. Correct me if I'm wrong (I haven't played PH) but wasn't there little to no point? At least in Spirit Tracks there won't be this pointless roaming, and the travel will be less painful.

I prefer the free-roaming too, overall, but this will probably be better than what was done in PH.

And besides, some variety could be nice. Even if normally we like to roam free, having a linear method of travel sometimes isn't necessarily all bad. :)

[zeldatwilight]

I dont think that having tracks is a bad idea. Sure you are completely limited to explorations, but they guide you as to were to go in the game. We really cant answer this till we see how Spirit Tracks is exactly.