Video games look great now, but by great, I mean photorealistic and detailed, because we measure things ‘getting better’ through a very technical lens, rather than an artistic one. All current-gen visual improvements are tied to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:hyper-realistic lighting and models so detailed you can see the pores in their skin. So while games technically look better, they're getting harder to play in turn.To address this and immerse us in virtual worlds with the correct pathfinding, developers splatter paint on everything, but then gamers get mad. Take away the paint and gamers also get mad, because they can’t find anything. It’s an unwinnable situation. The only solution seems to be putting a yellow ‘X’ on all the smashable objects, as we’ve seen in the upcoming 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil 4 Remake, and then stomaching the inevitable online discourse as one tweet goes viral, stirring up a tired conversation we’ve had countless times before.This never used to be a problem because interactable objects were dynamically lit rather than pre-rendered, and thus appeared brighter and easier to spot. Everything you could smash, interact with, or use was obvious because environments were simple, so there was no need for special markers or techniques as with modern games. We still expect developers to follow this old design philosophy, but playtesting shows time and time again that people get lost, confused, and frustrated. Do you deal with the paint, or deal with missing oodles of ammo and finding yourself facing the Verdugo with nothing but your wits? I’ll take four cans of luminescent yellow, cheers.
There’s another old design philosophy that has been lost as games strive to become more cinematic and immersive, and that’s obvious loot that doesn’t shy away from being a game. It wasn't necessary but games did it because being as obvious as possible with the fundamentals meant everyone had a better time. As realistic and gritty as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is, it still has giant red floating hearts, and while 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Doom is baked in horror, the original ‘90s games has contrasting blue vials all over the grey floor—you’d be hard-pressed to miss health pickups.168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ratchet & Clank’s hidden collectables, the Gold Bolts, were eas𒁏y to spot once you found the path. They floated in the air and glowed. It wasn’t about trying to figure out how a giant Gold Bolt would blend into the world, it was about rewarding the player for exploring because Ratchet & Clank is a game. We see less and less of this now, especially in more realistic-looking titles, since being game-y is frowned upon and stigmatised. You don’t want your video game to be a video game, you want it to be an interactable experience, whether that’s taking you on a daring adventure or putting you into a movie.
Just look at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Doom Eternal’s trailer which was met with backlash for spinning items and glowing loot, so much so that mods cropped up to make things “realistic”, but it’s one of few modern games where looting doesn’t feel like completing a Where’s Wally page. It’s obvious that the bright green vertical mags are ammo, and that the random blue vials are for health. There’s no ambiguity, and that keeps the flow going and stops something so basic from becoming so frustraꦐting.
Clarity can come in a lot of forms, whether it’s blatantly obvious floating glowing objects, or something as simple as a repeating twinkle, a different colour scheme to stand out from the crowd, or splashes of paint. I’ve seen c🎃ountless comments regarding Resident Evil 4 Remake asking why the townsfolk would go around painting all their perfectly good crates, that it’s not realistic, but so what? If every single aspect of a game was realistic, we’d never beat the things. Leon would get shot in the foot and we’d be hobbling about, bleeding to death. Or maybe he’d crawl over a rusty nail and get tetanus. Sounds real fun.
Games aren’t exclusively about re💎alism or immersion, and it’s okay to break that when it comes to vital parts of the experience. You don’t want ammo, an integral part of the gameplay, to be an easy-to-miss commodity that’s hidden away because of a desperation to make the world feel tangible. And as games begin to look ‘greater’, it’s important not to lose sight that they’re still games, and a little relaxing of realism goes a long way in keeping them fun.