You walk up to an NPC, open a menu, close it, realize you’re at the wrong person, and jog across a hub to try again.
At some point, every game asks you to stop playing.
Not because you’re done — but because you need to upgrade something, buy something, or talk to the correct person first. And depending on the game, that moment might take two clicks… or a scenic jog past six NPCs you definitely didn’t need.
That choice — where progression lives — quietly shapes how a game feels long after the novelty wears off.
When Preparation Becomes a Place
In fully navigable hubs, progression systems are tied directly to place. Players walk to a blacksmith, learn the layout of a town, and build spatial memory over time. The friction is obvious — extra steps, extra time — but so is the payoff. These spaces reinforce the fiction of the world as something lived in rather than accessed.
Games like Monster Hunter World or large MMOs lean into this intentionally. The hub isn’t just a connector between activities; it’s part of the texture of play. Over time, movement through these spaces becomes familiar, even comforting. The player isn’t just preparing — they’re inhabiting.
It’s also undeniably slower.
Early on, that friction teaches the player how the world works. Later, it becomes something you simply re-pay — every session, every visit, every “wait, wrong person.”
Whether that cost feels meaningful depends on what the game is asking the player to value: presence, or momentum.
When Preparation Becomes a Menu
Menus make a different promise. You don’t need to remember where things are — just what you want to do.
They’re fast. They’re clear. They’re great for iteration. When systems are complex or frequently adjusted, abstraction is often the most respectful thing you can do for the player’s time.
The tradeoff is obvious. Menus are efficient, but they’re also detached. Without care, they feel transactional — like the world politely stepped aside while you handled paperwork.
That doesn’t make them bad. It simply shifts immersion away from place and toward mastery. The fantasy becomes about control and optimization rather than habitation.
The Space In Between
Some games refuse to choose.
They show you the space — lighting, depth, ambient motion, heavy audio — without asking you to move through it. Interaction stays menu-driven, but the world never fully disappears.
You’re “there,” even if you’re not walking.
This approach treats space as context, not obstacle. You feel grounded without paying a navigation tax every time you need to tweak a build. The hub becomes a frame, not a maze.
ARC Raiders is a good example of this approach. The home base of Speranza is visually and sonically present, grounding the player in the fiction, even as they navigate through hover states and layered menus. The player is situated, not embodied. You feel where you are, without paying the cost of locomotion.
This is a deliberate allocation of presence. The game preserves efficiency during preparation while reserving full physical immersion for moments of risk — when the player goes topside and the world demands attention.
Hybrid Rituals
Other games blend embodiment and abstraction in smaller ways. Back 4 Blood places players in a physical camp, asks them to walk to NPCs to prepare, and reinforces tone through space and sound. But when precision matters — editing decks, tuning weapons — the system collapses into clean menus. A firing range externalizes learning, keeping experimentation fast and low-risk.
The physical space frames intent; the menu executes it. The player performs a ritual of preparation without being slowed by it.
Ritual vs Execution
Some games split the difference even further.
They ask you to perform a ritual of preparation — walking to a person, standing in a space, hearing the world breathe — and then collapse into menus when precision matters. Setup feels grounded. Execution stays clean.
The result is a rhythm:
- Presence to set the tone
- Abstraction to do the work
- Back to the world when the stakes return
It’s not indecision. It’s sequencing.
Strengths, Weaknesses, and What You’re Really Optimizing
None of these approaches are inherently right or wrong. They just optimize for different things.
Open hubs spend time to buy atmosphere. Menus trade atmosphere for clarity. Hybrids try to carry tone without imposing friction.
The mistake isn’t choosing one — it’s choosing without intent.
What I Learned (So I Don’t Do This on Accident)
- Open worlds, menus, and hybrids aren’t philosophies — they’re tools. Use them on purpose.
- Making players walk isn’t immersive by default. Movement has to teach something or set tone.
- Once that lesson is learned, repeated friction needs a reason — or it becomes a commute.
- Menus don’t break immersion. Sloppy, contextless menus do.
- A good menu with strong audio and visuals can sell place better than an empty hub.
- Friction is a budget. Spend it where presence matters. Save it where clarity matters more.
- Players don’t hate effort. They hate effort that feels pointless.
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