I hate the term Backtracking.
I can't stop people for using it. I can't even blame them for using it. It's an insidious term, coined by my generation, in the early days of gaming. Because of its age, it's almost inescapable. With its age, it also carries a lot of baggage... Assumptions from an older time. These assumptions weren't ever correct, but they've grown increasingly more misguided as time has passed.
Backtracking is a term that's almost always said with contempt. Even when people attempt to use it neutrally, that disdain still lingers. Backtracking is hated because it doesn't conform to the core values of gaming from 20+ years ago.
That games are linear. That they are content. That this content can be spent. That spent content is boring. That it's padding, the artificially extend a game without giving us something exciting a new. That backtracking is like leftovers in the fridge. Unwanted, stale, and cold.
This is, of course, reductive. Both of gaming, and of leftovers.(Like backtracking, leftovers is one of those things you should learn to love once you stop being a child)
Context changes around us, all the time. Even if a piece of media is static, the parts of us we bring to it are always different. A repeat playthrough is a continuing, developing conversation.
This directly plays into how old games are designed('IT WAS To MUNCH QUARTERS!!!' is such a braindead take like obviously making money was THE priority but you also have to make a game compelling at the same. Old games found successful design patterns that matched their business model). You replay segments and you get better at them. Your relationship with stages, enemies, and mechanics change. Platformer levels go by faster, Shmup play starts focusing on score rather than survival. Our understanding of a story grows.
None of this is backtracking, though.
Because in backtracking, the change in context isn't just within you, but also in the game itself. Your characters power, your goals, the direction you're going in all can change. Stages that feel a way going down suddenly feel different going up. Enemies that were once challenges now melt, turning an area into more of a movement challenge. Areas that were once challenges in and of themselves become highways for transversal. You return to old areas in weirdly emotional ways, sometimes invoking feelings of nostalgia(And not that super fake 90s videogame fan nostaglia, like the actual emotion) in mere hours. Is any of this something as mudanely describable as backtracking?
I hate the term Backtracking not because I love what it describes, but because what it describes is incoherent and almost non-existent. Even in games where you literally back track, the term's venom lacks any real potency. Is the somber, cold walk back to the car, in silence, surrounded by corpses in Hotline Miami really a boring retread of spent assets? Can you say that to me with a straight face?
I'm not sure if the term has any value or real use. I never use it under my own volition. There are more precise words that have less baggage to choose from. The term at best is barely sufficient for communicating a point, and at worst is actively misleading.
To use commonly cited example... Is the problem of the artifact hunt in Metroid Prime that it's backtracking? Or is it mostly just boring, busywork? The Windwaker triforce hunt feels very similar, but one that actually leads to more exploration of new, if low quality content.
These two games share a lot in common in terms of their end-games, but the artificial distinction of backtracking separates them. Even though it's not the actual problem in Prime, exploration takes the fall for the crime. We blame backtracking, rather than the fact that the artificial hunt simply isn't that compelling.
While considering writing about this topic, I happened to play the UFO 50 game, Porgy. Porgy is a submarine exploration game that involves a lot of managing fuel and walking the tight rope of safety vs over-extending yourself. A lot of time is sent retreading areas. Almost half the game will be spent returning to base.
I loved Porgy, but it can be pretty brutal in its pacing. But the problem isn't the "backtracking". It's the punishing (in terms of time) nature of failure. Porgy can be stingy in the early game, and while I think this, I also think that over correcting could risk that special feeling the game gets. Of tense, scary, slow exploration. It is the contrast to lows that make highs high. The relief when you finally find something deep in the ocean, followed by the fear that you have to get this back. The consequences don't matter if death is trivial, or if the margins are too generous.
There are many details of the game that could be tuned about the game, but the fundamental loop, the backtracking, is essential to Porgy. Yet if someone where to complain about the game, the "constant backtracking" would be the supposed culprit. You can't actually talk about addressing some of the flaws with this game without understanding the emotional and tonal goals of its mechanics!
I have a vivid memory from like exactly 20 years ago, taking a trip to Florida to visit my friend Ben(Voice Actor for the 'Hokuto shink-ken: Spinning Pile Driver' line in IWBTG) at his college apartment. Ben's only 3 years older than me, but knowing him since I was a teenager made the gap feel way bigger, even into my early 20s. He used to seem so much older and wiser. Things he'd say to me back then would stick with me. That night, he was making me watch Das Boot.
"Submarine movies all need a part that's boring. If the movie doesn't have boredom, it doesn't understand the essence of being on a submarine. Being on a submarine is boring. It's waiting. That's where the tension comes from.
If you don't have that, it's not a submarine movie. It's an action movie on a submarine."
It's so easy, due to the language we use to describe videogames, to make out important, intentional design elements to be problems, even though they are essential to the experience they're trying to build. Backtracking, as a term, leads us to resenting key parts of digital worlds and the design language we can exploit within them. It misdirects us from real, thoughtful design critiques, and vilifies some of the best experiences gaming can offer.
Ultimately, most people are just trying to communicate with the tools they have. What other word do most people think they can use? Backtracking is so normalized. Most people wouldn't think the term could have any issues. It, and all it's baggage, are taken as a given. Others don't see the baggage as a bug, but as a feature.
Doing more research for this, I found an article talking about games that did backtracking well, vs games that did it poorly. On the list, sat Hollow Knight. One of the most incredible modern metroidvanias, which balances getting lost with ease of movement. A game that carefully links together several forms of diegetic fast travel. A game that balances the needs of mood, exploration, and practicality together almost perfectly... A clear #1(They gave it to fucking DREAD) for the good side of this list.
At a certain point you need to admit you don't want to play a game where you explore. You want to be told you're exploring... which would be fine, if you didn't try and drag everyone and every game down with you. Some of us enjoy the hike back down the mountain too.