There are actually very good executions of “yellow paint” guiding
Stray is a good example
If people stop being stupid the yellow paint stops
Same reason why explosive Barrels are always red
Some devs tried to change the color and nobody gave the barrels a second thought
I’m a fan of the yellow paint or otherwise highlighting of things I can do things to/with over having everything look the same and being required to click everywhere, all the time in order to know what I can, and cannot, interact with.
Playing the original Hitman vs the newest Hitman is such a drastic change not just because of the graphics, but because of little design elements like that. Makes it way easier to plan what you’re gonna do when you know for sure what you can work with.
It also means you’re less likely to miss something in a place you’ve been in and having to come back.
I prefer it when things have no indicator other than being kinda prominent, but I can press a button to enter a mode that points things out.
I remember in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, a tip was to look at link’s eyes if you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, as he was designed to look at things that are important
Yo that’s awesome!
I’m so glad Ass Creed is top comment to this, because those games get a lot of shit, but the traversal is absolutely too notch. “See that mountain? You can climb it” should totally be their line, these days. It’s become slightly boring though. Because no challenge.
The first person version is still fun though. Frontiers of Pandora has fantastic traversal, with crazy jumping and catching ledges and shit, but still not actual climbing. And not a drop of yellow paint anywhere.
yeah you either yellow paint things i can climb or fucking let me climb everything that looks climbable a la Assassin’s Creed.
Anyone against highlighting interactables and enemies wasn’t around for games in the 80s-90s. Fucking, why were interactable items and fixtures so common and so goddamn bland?
I can remember a time or two when I was lost because I didn’t know what to click on, but it usually seemed easy because interactable stuff usually stood out in some way.
Most early 3d and sort of ps2 era games didn’t have leisure to put too much extra elements into environment, most of what you saw was interactable, so highlighting wasn’t all that needed. Sure there were games badly designed and unintuitive, but it’s still weird to me how highlighting became a norm / necessity.
nothing like playing leisure suit Larry 2 and finding out you have to replay the last 4 hours even though you saved because you didn’t type look in trash can while standing next to the trash can on the first screen of the game
Sorry, you didn’t flip the hourglass in Morg’s Inn before the end of Chapter 5 so you’re stuck with the 3 terrible ending sequence options. We only put a vague hint about it on page 63 in the instruction booklet.
Which Sierra game is this?
That’s just not true. I imagine a lot of the kickback is coming from those of us who grew up playing those games, because when done right, there was a deeper sense of exploration and a more active role in decision making.
What’s wrong with the sparkly effect from e.g. Resident Evil 4? The yellow paint is already immersion breaking.
I’m a fan of outlines, myself. There’s no such thing as a correct answer here. Yellow paint, sparklies, circling white lines, glowing, pulsing, rainbow stickers, whatever. As long as it isn’t as odd as god of war where runes emphasize all wilderness climbing walls, my suspension of disbelief is unfazed. Took me a while to figure out that you can climb them. I just thought they were decorative for like 5 confusing minutes.
I just think the yellow paint is so overdone, it kinda pulls me more out of the experience than other “unrealistic” shimmers. It’s a bit like the uncanny valley effect.
i think it might be a problem with the design of the rest of the game, maybe too many distracting elements necessitate the yellow paint. in real life i can function without yellow paint. i used to be fine without it in games, especially hitman contracts for example. it could be due to graphical fidelity, which seems one of the reasons battlebit made such a surprise success in the military shooters. in modern games with too many 3d rendered objects you can’t see clearly what’s going on - in real-life you at least have depth information to distinguish things, it’s not all in the same plane in front of you.
however, i found the old hitmans so much more immersive. i really disliked feeling guided around as if it was a theme park in the latest ones
In real life, you can also interact with everything you see. In a game where everything can be interacted with, I can agree that it would be distracting. But in like 90% of them, there is only a very specific amount of interactable objects, so it’s nice to know which are which.
Also in real life yellow paint means you’re not permitted to interact with it and to please be aware of its presence. It’s the “hey listen! Don’t hit this with a forklift dipshit” signal
however, i found the old hitmans so much more immersive. i really disliked feeling guided around as if it was a theme park in the latest ones
Have you disabled all help, hints and the minimap in the options? I disabled absolutely everything in the new games and liked it very much. Then the game does not give you any kind of hints or HUD help, only what you can see with your own eyes in the game.
in real life things don’t have to be programmed for you to be able to interact with them. in games they do. and most things will be non-interactive set dressing.
the reason old games didn’t need this is because they only had environment + interactive objects and characters. no decoration. “realistic” games today couldn’t get away with empty buildings and rooms with no objects except health packs and ammo.
If they stopped making everything the same bland color palette, I wouldn’t want the yellow paint. There are other options, but this is the compromise I guess we came to
The explanation they gave at the end of God of War was pretty awesome.
What was it? I didn’t play the game.
It was due to devs hating the player with every ounce of their being. They originally had sharp flashes of red and blue lights every time Kratos solved a puzzle but Sony made them remove it.
he is called the peer
he hunts my dreems with his P
