⚠️ Pre-launch article — based on beta and official previews. Updated regularly as new information is released.
Why Traversal Matters in Ananta
Most open-world games treat movement as a means to an end — you get from point A to point B. Ananta is designed differently. Nova City is a vertical, densely layered urban environment, and the traversal system is built to make getting there feel as good as arriving.
Understanding the traversal system isn’t just about moving faster. It affects how quickly you reach exploration rewards, how you reposition in combat, and how much you enjoy the hundred hours you’ll spend in this city.
The Parkour System Explained
Ananta’s parkour is a chained movement system. Individual mechanics are simple, but fluidity comes from linking them together in sequence without breaking momentum.
Sprint is your foundation. Holding sprint builds speed, and that speed feeds into other mechanics — a dash off a ledge carries farther, a wall run starts higher. Get into the habit of sprinting as your default state rather than walking.
Wall-running activates on certain vertical surfaces. You approach a wall at sprint speed, press into it, and your character runs along it for a brief window before the game pulls you back. Timing a jump mid-wall-run sends you diagonally upward, which is the primary way to scale the city’s vertical faces.
Ledge grabs and mantling are largely automatic. When you jump toward an edge you can’t clear, the game grabs the lip and lets you pull up. You can chain this with wall-run exits to reach surprisingly high areas.
Rail grinding was confirmed in beta footage. Rails and elevated infrastructure throughout Nova City can be ground along, giving you a high-speed travel path through the mid-level of the city. Finding the rail network in each district is one of the best ways to unlock fast traversal routes early.
Swimming — Confirmed as a traversal option. Nova City’s waterways are fully navigable.
Gliding handles descent. Once you’re airborne from a high point, a glide input lets you control your fall rather than drop straight. You trade altitude for horizontal distance, and you can steer while gliding. This turns every tall building into a potential launchpad for cross-city travel.
One notable quality-of-life feature: there is no stamina bar. Parkour, sprinting, and traversal actions are not limited by a stamina resource — you can chain movement freely without managing an energy meter.
Swinging — Confirmed in official materials. A swinging mechanic lets you traverse the city using anchor points, covering horizontal distances quickly and with style.
Vehicles: Another Way to Move
Beyond parkour, Ananta offers a full vehicle system for navigating Nova City. Confirmed vehicles include:
- Public transport — Subways and buses for city-wide travel
- Cars and taxis — Street-level driving across Nova City
- Helicopters — Aerial transport for reaching elevated areas or crossing large distances quickly
Vehicles are used both for exploration and to complete specific missions throughout the game.
Character-Unique Traversal Abilities
Beyond the universal parkour toolkit, individual characters in Ananta bring their own traversal skills. This is one of the reasons to maintain a diverse roster — not just for combat, but for how it changes the way you move.
From what’s been shown in previews and beta:
- Some characters have high-jump or double-jump variants that extend vertical reach significantly beyond the wall-run baseline.
- Others have dash-blink abilities — short-range teleports that work both in and out of combat. In exploration, these let you cross gaps that parkour alone can’t bridge.
- A few characters appear to have passive movement speed increases or momentum retention bonuses that make ground traversal noticeably faster.
The full roster of traversal abilities won’t be clear until launch, but the implication is that some areas of Nova City may be more efficiently reached with specific characters — which adds a layer of traversal meta alongside the combat meta.
Moving Efficiently Through Nova City
Efficient city traversal comes down to a few habits:
Stay high. Ground-level pathing in Nova City is slower because you’re working around obstacles, traffic flow, and terrain. Get up on the mid-level rooftops and rail networks as fast as possible and stay there. You’ll move significantly faster.
Learn the rail network per district. Each district of Nova City has elevated rail infrastructure. Grinding these rails is faster than sprinting at ground level by a wide margin. As you explore each new district, spend time mapping the rails before focusing on objectives.
Use glide for mid-distance travel. Rather than dropping from a height and sprinting, drop from a height and glide — you cover ground in the air for free. In hilly or multi-level districts, you can chain rooftop-to-glide repeatedly across large distances quickly.
Chain wall-runs with jumps, not dashes. Dashes reset your momentum slightly; wall-run jumps maintain it. When you’re in a flow state moving vertically, stay in wall-run-and-jump chains rather than breaking out to dash.
Abuse sprint before a jump. A running jump covers dramatically more distance than a standing jump. Always be sprinting before any major gap cross or height attempt.
Tips for Exploration and Speed
Explore vertically, not just horizontally. Ananta’s map is designed to have secrets at multiple height levels. Looking up is as important as looking around. Hidden chests, collectibles, and lore are planted on rooftops, inside building structures, and on elevated platforms that aren’t visible from street level.
Unlock fast travel points early. Nova City will have fast travel waypoints — teleporters or landmark nodes — that let you skip cross-city traversal when you need to. Activating them as you explore is a low-cost habit that pays dividends later.
Let traversal teach you the map. There’s no better way to internalize Nova City’s layout than just moving through it. Your first twenty hours of exploration will build spatial memory that makes everything faster later. Resist the urge to warp everywhere early on — learn the city first.
Don’t fight traversal, flow with it. The parkour system has a preferred cadence. When you’re fighting it — struggling up walls, mistiming ledge grabs — you’re working against the system’s design. If movement feels clunky, slow down, restart the chain, and build back up. Fighting through bad momentum is slower than resetting and going again clean.
Nova City is built to be explored. Master the movement, and the city opens up in ways the minimap doesn’t show.
For combat movement, see our Combat Guide. For the city itself, see Nova City Guide.