But some people not only do not mind that, but prefer it. For example, when I played Skyrim back in the day, I walked nearly everywhere, as in walking across the countryside from one city to the next. The only time I would run is when I was in battle, or when it was appropriate from a role-playing perspective, and after battle I would rest in accordance with how many injuries I incurred. I also installed a mod that made days last longer to compensate for the slower movement pace.
So yes, it would take me a long time, hours (of literal time, not game time) honestly, to get from one place to another sometimes, but that’s the way I like it—it’s not only for the “realism” of not sprinting eighty miles whilst periodically stopping to furiously fight to the death, then pick up and sprint immediately thereafter in all 180 pounds of solid metal armour, that kind of play style just isn’t even remotely fun for me—it is for the pace of the story, as you say, it slows down when you aren’t running like a machine everywhere. If it takes a few days of game time to accomplish a quest, that feels more realistic to me than roaring off to the magical artefact and returning before the NPC has had time to finish his mutton (and bonus points for the games that don’t have the NPC gorging himself on mutton for five days until you get back, ha).
An option would be nice, preferably something you can toggle easily so that one can have the party run when that is an appropriate reaction to the situation. Maybe it has it, I’m on a Mac right now and am waiting for the new Mac build to download (yay!) and haven’t played the PC version since the second backer beta.
Wow, I thought I was the only one doing this sort of stuff. Good to know I'm not.
Even more so, when games have no way to walk, it sometimes drives me mad like it did with "James Bond: Nightfire". It has those stealth infiltration moments and you can't just walk slowly across a hallway, this just drove me mad. And in fact I hate to "abuse" the crouch for it, because I feel like a moron doing so.
I don't just play to "beat" games real quick, I don't care about score and points, all I want is to dive into it and be fully there and realistic features help me to sink in, therefore I love to explore an unknown place by walking around, because that is what I'd do if I was really there and authentic behaviour is what helps me to suspend the disbelief and enjoy the game for more than just high performance.
I am always surprised how many gamers and developers don't seem to have an understanding for these things.
Most of my favourite games in fact are played by using slow movement a lot, such as Thief and Rainbow Six (the originals, of course).