Grapple & Tether Traversal

System fires a line at nearby geometry, constrains the character to an arc or a pull toward the anchor, and hands back the resulting velocity on release. Skill lives in timing: when to attach, how long to hold, when to let go into a jump. Because the line needs real surfaces, the world must be authored with anchors, and the camera has to keep up with speeds well past running pace.

Treyarch's Spider-Man 2 in 2004 attached webs to actual buildings rather than to the sky, which had been the norm, and modelled the swing as a pendulum that conserves momentum. Choice was a fidelity decision that became a design one: once the line has to hit something, the city turns into a physical structure to be read at speed. Traversal stopped being the trip between missions and became the game.

Momentum traversal solved a problem open worlds create, which is that large maps are tedious to cross, and it did so without fast travel. Cost is design discipline, since anchors, camera and collision all have to hold together at high speed, and a tether trivialises level design meant for walking. Games that adopt it usually rebuild their spaces around the vertical, or restrict where the hook will bite.