I think you make great points here. My issue with "yellow paint" specifically in RE4 and FF7 is entirely aesthetic. Color coding can be made clear and consistent without looking so gaudy. Sekiro's organic-looking white ledges are a fantastic example.
Me too. If you need to littler let slap a bright color onto the critical path, you need to re evaluate your art direction and environmental clues. Of corse the issue is the more subtle and diegetic your guiding is, the more likely someone (and specifically reviews who have limited time and have to juggle a lot of games) will miss it. It’s why I prefer sticking the “paint” behind some sort of sense mode alal persona five, where you tap a button and all the interior objects get highlighted. Sort best of both worlds in my opinion, keeps the aesthetics in line but also makes it so your never mistaking a intractable for a non interactive.
Yeah. This is exactly the point. You can make a ledge clear and obvious to climb without making it look like it was deliberately placed by developers of a video game. The Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima examples being used in FF7 Rebirth would have been totally fine and still fit in with the visual style of the game. No need for yellow paint. It's also not like you NEED the yellow paint because in-game, there's still a UI element showing you where you are allowed to climb and (so far) I've been deliberately led to one of these climbing points by a diegetic element. The yellow paint comes across as weird because even across FF7 Rebirth, they use the more Sekiro/Tsushima style ledges in tandem with the UI. "Why use the yellow ledge at all?" is more the question.
I think the main thing is simply making it fit in the environment without BLENDING into the environment. like exploding barrels, which in my warehouse experience often are painted red or yellow, or otherwise have massive brightly colored symbols on them because its kind of important to know where explosive, pressurized, flammable, corrosive, or toxic chemicals/materials are in a heavily trafficked area. the yellow paint on rock ledges makes no environmental sense. also, that quote about removing a right-hand branch in a tunnel because one singular play-tester got turned around is just an instant facepalm for me. While I understand not wanting to "gatekeep" or push away players, at some point you might just have to ask yourself "do we really need to design a game around the mental capacity of a two-year-old?" Like, there's dumb, there's stupid, and then there's trolling. And frankly, I have a hard time believing that a player ran the exact same loop for 30 minutes out of stupidity. I hope for their sake that they were checked-out, bored, or just trolling. And then they solved it by just removing the branch, rather than adding a couple scrath marks or something so that if you took that "wrong" branch the first time, you would be able to identify it the second time and not do so. EDIT: also, just add the option in the menu to just turn shit like this off. that way, everyone can be happy.
yeah. Portal 2 did it well with the white surfaces that could accept portals. They were easy to see (by design), but blended well into the environment because they were a normal occurrence in the structure of the map. Never once did I think they looked out of place, even in the later section of the game in the salt mine. Yellow paint on the other hand is fundamentally a special occurrence and stands out from the environment of the game because it was designed to. It is immersion breaking.
@@nifftbatuff676almost every game back then was easily readable. No lighting makes things readable. The original thief isn't even comparable to a game like re4 remake.
@@communistwookie1243 There is no technical reason why a modern game shouldn't follow the design of Thief. See the video "Thief vs AAA gaming" if you are interested.
@@nifftbatuff676one of the greatest video essays ever made. Glad people are still spreading the word. It's absurd that all we're saying is that guidance should be subtle and less jarring and we're getting pushback, wtf.
I think Mirror's Edge did optional signposting very well, in that runner vision is diagetic, but turning it off works just as well, and enhances the experience for "puzzle masochists" like me Not sure how I compare to the majority, but I'm a "disable hints always" person, so things like the "NPC hints" in God of War drive me _crazy_ 😭
I think people just don't want their immersion to be broken, which the video nailed. :) It may not make sense for treasure chests to be placed in forests, deserts, beaches, etc. but it doesn't break most people's immersion since we're used to it. I'm not saying we just have to get used to yellow paint. What I'm saying is maybe the old ways of doing things work better. edit: Actually, the assist option by pressing select while playing Final Fantasy 7 was in the original Playstation release of the game too, so all versions of the game have it.
"in the mess of detailed textures and hyper realistic lighting that is moden games" theres your problem, it shouldnt be this way , noone asks for hyper realistic clutter where you cant understand where you have to go, art direction is the one that should guide, look at the fromsoft games, they guide you trough environmetns that make sense structurally and they let the players put the map together in their heads, no paint nothing. sekiro uses that white thing on ledges sure but its important to keep in mind thats the only fromsoft game that has the climbing mechanic which means that for most souls players that was a new mechanic and its the only thing in the game that does that, the rest is the usual formsoft art direction guidance. in elden ring since they dont have climbing theres notihing like that to distract the player from the beautiful environments.
no i actually like it like that. like imagine being in a warzone or a zombie apocalypse and u dont find a a huge mess. that would be dumb. the messy rooms can also be environmental storytelling. like look at any black ops zombie map, u can tell shi went down there because of how messy things are. getting rid of all that would break more immersion than yellow paint. also yellow paint looks fine on man made objects, people just complain to complain
@@lostexodus I agree. I just started watching him and noticed the disingenuous examples he used in favor of his own argument in the last two videos. I'll very likely not subscribe which is unfortunate because the first video was very engaging unlike the next two which instead made me feel annoyed at certain parts.
That this has been exclusively about yellow paint shows how well developers normally guide players diegetically. FFVII Remake is a standout example, because the paint doesn't even look natural.
half life alyx and more just half life in general had very little of the yellow paint problem, which really its not even about the paint being yellow. everything was very subtle in how they stood out. The reason I'm using half life alyx for this example is because its impressive. Not only is it the most graphically impressive half life game, but its also vr, meaning the devs had no way of controlling the camera. Everything in that game was seamless as shit, you could go start to end without ever breaking immersion, mostly due to how as the devs described it, pipes. The pipes were the guide along the set path and I never noticed it until playing the dev commentary. So I would like to compile a list of things alyx did to guide the player: 1. Pipes (as I just explained) 2. Small amounts of contrasted light would illuminate from important objects like mags and resin, most likely why there isn't much blue light used outside of the items. 3. Important things like valves you have to spin were most of the time a calm red, and more detailed. 4. Things like supply crates were very mildly off in lighting, enough to make it stand out, but too little for it to break immersion.
My proposed solution is to REMOVE THE CLIMBING SECTIONS ALTOGETHER thank you P.S. If a game's gonna let you climb ledges, then it better let you climb every ledge in the game for consistency. A ceiling or an uneven surface is the perfect way to tell the player they can't climb there. if I see a flat ledge in a game where I'm supposed to climb those, there's nothing worse than being unable to grab it, besides being blocked by an invisible wall. In the FF7 remakes, the climbing and platforming bits are literally automatic. You walk forward and the character jumps for you. No one thinks that is fun. FFXVI also suffers from unfun movement outside of combat. It was so jarring to go from this fluid, crazy combat system to hold forward on the left stick simulator.
Still playing through FFVII Rebirth and the yellow paint never bothered me too much. Looking back at it though, I think it would have been nicer if they went with something more akin to Ghost of Tsushima’s signposting but it really doesn’t bother me.
There's a mod that removes the paint, and even turns the white paint in the castle into blood, and i'll admit i prefer it, but even tho it was my 3rd or so playthrough i still had to adjust to "ok i can break these", i was use to just scanning for yellow and moving on, but overall this made my experience 1% better, it was NOT a huge game changer that sucked me into the world and changed everything, and if i wasn't experienced in the title already, i'd have missed so many breakable objects
The FFVII yellow paint is more of an aesthetic issues than a game design one. It's lazy. Square Enix crafted these huge, sometimes gorgeous environments, so the yellow paint stands out too much. A giant glowing sign that reads "go here" wouldn't be that much more obnoxious than yellow paint.
I will always defend the yellow paint. In the Rebirth demo when the whole discourse kicked off, the yellow paint was used on the trail up the mountain. Tifa was the guide for this trail. This indicates that it is an actual mountain trail that people climb up. Therefore, it's not unheard of for people to have painted the cliff edges to indicate to the people following the trail that they're meant to go up there. If people actually continued to play Rebirth, they would know that the majority of the climbable cliff faces don't have yellow paint. In fact in the mining section, so many people couldn't find the ledges that I literally saw memes about it? The yellow paint only shows up where it makes sense for it to be: areas that have been previously explored by the population.
I’m a yellow paint enjoyer cuz my vision isn’t that great. But at the same time, I wish a lot of games would just remove climbing in general cuz why tf am I scaling a cliff side in final fantasy
Original FF VII had plenty of climbing but in that game there was no paint, instead of immersion breaking stuff it had a toggle option for markets which showed which spots are climbable.
They need an option for casual gamers who are new or just trying to bress through games with obvious hints and handholding. And for common and or hardcore gamers we get what we expect like jumping to a ledge we already understand should be jumped to. Or a obvious ladder to climb up.
Let me play the opposite side of the argument for a minute. Splashing colors onto interactive elements for guidance can be argued. The idea is ok. The important question is implementation. If guidance becomes the whole game, and especially if there's no variety to that guidance throughout the whole game, then the gameplay loop becomes extremely repetitive and boring. It turns into a checklist rather than an experience/journey. No one wants their video game to turn into boring, repetitive labor. People already work 8-6, they don't want that same experience at home. So the key point is variety. If the developers lack the imagination to create variety for the various elements of the gameplay loop, then they've failed their job. Ok sure, for a 2-3 hour game it's acceptable to have less variety. The game is over pretty quickly anyway. But if this also happens in 20-30 hour games, then there's a problem.
You make some great points here. I think they can compromise by making the yellow paint less vibrant. That being said, I don't think the idea that "travellers paint safe ledges to grab onto so the route is easier for the next person" is that insane of an idea. Can even have a character point it out. BUT, that wouldn't make sense to have that in like an ancient tomb or something. In the case of Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima, their yellow paint surrogate looks more natural with the environment. Also, it depends on the type of game. If you overuse yellow paint in a game ABOUT climbing, like if assassin's creed 2 had yellow paint everywhere the player needed to go, that would be more egregiously bad. Its something that can be improved, but not something worth screaming your balls off over. Its just a video game, and tbh I never find myself seeing yellow paint and feeling like I'm being totally yanked out of the experience by my neck. There are other things that do that, like major glitches, bad loading screens, terrible framerate, constant and intrusive pop up tutorials, unintuitive controls, or every single exploration reward being another god damn Sheikah shrine.
Two options: Less in your face, blended "markers" or a toggle feature; the latter is likely more troublesome in practice. A game could be designed with guiding/yellow "environment-indicators" in mind with a prompt on first launch to enable or disable said placed marks.
For me this discourse is just pointing towards a deeper issue within game designs. Which is for a bunch of "nextgen" games, why do we still have selective environmental interactable instead making all of them interactable? We figured out how to make reflective surfaces, but still struggle to make every rocks a climbable surface. It's a dated game design. It's either you do or you don't. If you want to make rocks that can be climbed, make every rock surfaces climbable similar to BOTW and if you want to make a wood product destructible, make every wood product destructible. We only managed to move forward when it comes to accessibilities and graphics but when it comes to game mechanics, we're still stuck in 2010 (specifically referring to AAA games). I feel like all of those games can be significantly more fun while at the same time can kill this whole entire discourse overall since the dev no longer need to educate us on what elements are interactable to begin with. This dated mechanic is not a deal breaker for me, but it is such a missed opportunity.
The Resident Evil 4 Remake should have done worn down boxes or windows as the setting was something that would have greatly benefited from it. I can understand the paint thing being used as a sort of color blind option but using that paint for everything Interactable in the environment is a sign of laziness.
I still find the examples of Final Fantasy Rebirth and that Resident Evil game to be pretty egregious examples. Making explosive battles red is something that makes sense in universe. Much like how we mark toxic materials with a skull and bones label. It indicates danger. Why would anybody mark random cliff ledges or supply boxes with streaks of yellow paint? The way Ghost of Tsushima or Tomb Raider marked ledges seemed far more subtle and yet conveyed the exact same information just as well. As for Resident Evil's breakable boxes, why not give them an in-universe label that reads "supplies" or something to that effect? Smearing yellow paint on interacable objects just seems like the most thoughtless way to go about it. Like the devs just said "fuck it" and moved on.
It isn't egregious, it's good game design objectively. I don't want to be in the middle of an encounter in RE4 and guess which boxes are breakable... that would be poor design. But people just don't get good game design ig. They should include an option for people who are uptight about it and whine about it so that they can play without it and inevitably get frustrated because they realise how it is actually good :)
@@LunaFelton Nothing "objective" about this topic, just different opinions. I suppose covering your interactive object in yellow paint is better than not being able to tell, which object are interactive at all. But it's still an inelegant solution. Many examples shown in the video were much better integrated in the game world. FF Rebirth and RE were some of the most blatant und unsubtle ways of leading the player's attention to an object. If that's what you need in order to play the game that's fine but others would prefer more elegant and subtle design choices.
@@theletterm5425 Well those people are the same mfs who'd get lost without it as it's LITERALLY been proven humans are too stupid to tell without obvious guidance, it's objective good game design and most people who complain about it don't get the why and just are bitching for the sake of bitching. Pretty sad tbh
@@LunaFelton Again. There is nothing "objective" about game design. How do you think people in the 80s and 90s managed to beat video games with much more obtuse and flawed game design? Also, I specifically criticized RE and FF. There are literally better examples of how this can be done in the video we are commenting under. Ghost of Tsushima is much more subtle at indicating climbable ledges than FF is, without losing anything in terms of clarity. Same goes for Uncharted. Nobody complained about these games back then because the design was subtle, elegant and made sense in-universe. Yellow paint is none of these things. Might as well have a big, bright red arrow on the screen every time you come near a climbable ledge. Would that also be "objectively good game design" to you?
@@theletterm5425 RE is great about it and I don't think you played the game, RE4 is an immaculately designed game and I don't want to be thinking what boxes are breakable when i'm fighting in an encounter. Yellow paint is amazing since yellow as a colour makes it stand out, and if it actually makes the game bad or it takes you out, that says more about the loser then the game itself. Also yes game design is objective, you cannot tell me a game like Sonic 06 is well designed for example. If you don't believe in objectivity you are stupid.
When it comes to the special vision to highlight climbable ledges, I definitely like the Horizon Forbidden West method. It actually makes sense in universe due to the Focus and Aloy modifying it. You can believe she would be able to figure out how to due to how smart she is and that it could help her. In fact, I would be surprised if she wouldn't actually make such a change to it. That's the way it should be, being believable in universe or only visible to the player. The only thing then is have the character not make comments about a puzzle every few seconds. It's better if you only get that with a button press. Like with Power Wash Adventure and Power Wash Simulator showing you dirty spots.
I don't care about yellow paint, but i do think as games get more "realistic" there comes an uncanny valley effect. When i see a glowing item on the ground i know that's a video game thing. When I see a cliff in a game i know that's part of the story, this area has cliffs. When i see a yellow cliff though...is that a video game thing or the story? And that half second of thought can distract.
Gonna be honest and don‘t care that interactible things have markings but what I am saying is that making ledges out in bumfuck nowhere Yellow is stupid when you could have marked them like in Uncharted with just a whitish color or something
Personally i hate in a game when like you have to do a puzzle or something and every 2 seconds a character is like "well the thing said red blue green so what order should we do it?"😊
valve actually had a pretty cool philosophy on this. They essentially did hold your hand but in a subtle way. For them though, they tried to use lighting to guide the player so it still blends with the environment but subconsciously players are drawn to the light
That's just level design 101. I read a long time ago about how levels are always cleverly designed to make players feel smart, especially in FPS games and immersive sims like Dishonored. Players need to know intuitively which walls are climbable and developers always have subtle, underappreciated ways of doing this stuff
That's a good philosophy on level design but there's the conversation of how to point out interactables. Valves philosophy on that was a bit of more colour, limiting small objects lying around, and bright blue outlines which is fine for an arcadey game but would take you out more than yellow paint in re4. In older days there were limitations, cartoons had to have things that did something different to it's environment on animation cells which stuck out, just like games had static backgrounds and interactables were handled differently and stood out automatically - games would also take a more arcadey approach. When getting more realistic you can't just say "valve used lighting" cos it sounds like the solution suggested is to put a street lamp over every breakable barrel lol. But solutions could lie in subtle colouring, or making things look more "used" or "recently moved" etc
@@HeyJoJoTF2 Thats fair but in that case I'd argue that it'd make more sense if intractable objects like breakables were marked with the town insignia or something instead of random yellow paint splashed everywhere. I think the real reason the yellow paint is so immersion breaking is because it stands out so much while having no good lore reason to exist. Ironically I think left for dead style outlines would be questioned less by players because it's obvious it's just a video game thing for the player. Kinda like how nobody questions red barrel = explosion. Not that I think that's what should've been done but the real takeaway is that I think people only care so much because the yellow paint feels like a half assed way of guiding the player while keeping immersion. If the expectation wasn't there it might be more jarring but people would just accept it as a video game thing
@@Regretted we'll be able to know better as more "linear but with mild exploration" games come out and try non yellow paint methods. The sekiro stuff made great sense as since chalk is used for grip it is clever to have it on ledges, whether it was put there intentionally by the people or it's there because people with chalked hands climbed it etc it lines up with real life a bit and immerses you Accepting it as a video game thing I think is an argument with a few shades. I remember with mirror's edge having red paths, it was a very video game thing but also had a lore explanation, but a lot of people still complained that it either was too hand holdy, or immersion breaking and I suppose "the argument" depends on which of the two people are also unhappy with or both. Yellow paint being hand holdy - sometimes yes but sometimes it takes out the guesswork and eliminates the possibility of things being too natural and annoying to recognise like this video touches upon (however part of RE is learning things and replaying it so things not being obvious would still likely work just not for newbies playing once?). Town emblem could work but even then you'd have to make it obvious enough to the point it might be too much for some anyway. Immersion breaking - slightly different in that yeah do you want this third person spin kicking game to make you feel like you're living it yourself, or are you playing a game in the end so you deal with the yellow paint being a half gamey half in universe thing so you know to knife these 3 boxes then move on to the fun part. But yeah no lore reason for it so town emblem could be better but then it can be immersion breaking as you inevitably question it "surely they'd just get stuff from a market why is there branded crates" or they'd have to create an entity/corporation that provides these crates/relief that makes sense. But also it's a historically beloved intentionally corny game. Subtle yellow paint is kinda whatever in RE but for something like Warhammer where the franchise is all about every single thing having a cohesive explanation, random yellow paint would not fly at all. I thought the use of colours/lighting, and the yellow taped box in re2 was perfect. Why not yellow tape on re4 crates? Taped boxes is pretty normal I would've thought. Left 4 dead mostly had the excuse of post apocalypse/everything is cleaned out but they basically had fuck all decoration in their maps to the point you see a small object 95% of the time it's something you can pick up. In other games that want to look full of life it's something to experiment with
What I hate about detective mode, is that usually games that have it don't bother on making clear what you can or can't interact. Which ends using detective mode ALL the time, and that makes it fell less like a world, but just a group of interactable objects and enemies.
@@MaxNMotioni feel like its fine in the batman games because batman is literally a detective known for having near futuristic gadgets and gizmos. it makes a lot less sense for Lora Croft to have it
While you’re right with the whole hand holding thing and guiding the player, I am baffled on how you mentioned Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima having climbable ledges with clear indications but completely ignored the fact those examples look natural in the setting. The problem with the yellow paint is that I get distracted thinking “Who the fuck just paints sections of a cliff?” which is not a thought I have for Sekiro or Ghost of Tsushima because they designed it to be obvious to the player but not immersion breaking. That’s why the Yellow Paint is so annoying when “other colors” aren’t.
To be fair, a lot of old games have things be a different lighting color is because of technical limitations on the console. You can see gears of war do this with some moveable objects. You dont even personally interact with the objects that move, the objects that do just have totally different lighting to stress the engine less.
@@communistwookie1243 I watched the whole video and never heard him.use it in his defense. He pointed out RE4 which released on an underpowered GameCube first, so the technical limitations were a part of it. It's not really a design choice, and I imagine if they went back on that hardware they would've made it look more natural
@@evangel1460 I can't believe I'm having to say this right now. Like genuinely, I think you are stupid. The entire point of this ENTIRE video, is games made with newer lighting can't rely on the old school method anymore, due to the new hardware and lighting capabilities, due to this, games have started adopting more and more often, the yellow paint. The creator of this video says there must be another way that yellow paint, but the old.method your describing cannot work anymore due to modern technology. Obviously they are not going to release ff15 on the fucking GameCube, all your comments imply that's what they should do, release new games on the GameCube. That's the only substance present. It wasn't a design choice because they didn't NEED IT TO BE, now they do, and they've chosen the yellow, there has to be a better way. That's the entire point of the video you supposedly watched.
A perfect example of the "if it's not needed, remove it" philosophy is Fumito Ueda's "subtractive design". If you don't know, it basically consists in saying "this one thing in particular is the point of the game, I want people to focus on this" and then removing anything that doesn't help that purpose. The point of Shadow of the Colossus is fighting the colossi, so there's no need to fill the world with side activities like it's a Yakuza game (non that Yakuza is bad, I'm just saying it's not the goal). In Ico the point is to save the girl from the shadows, so there's no need for a healthbar or a complex combat system, just button mash until the shadows are gone, you're supposed to feel tense when that's happening, and not having fun chaining combos like it's DmC
People can like a game and still hate some part of the design, this will forever be lazy but not a dealbreaker, they should just let it be an option you can toggle like the puzzle helps on the reboot tomb raiders, you could turn everything off, no highlights, no suggestions from Lara, just you and the puzzle. I would argue that missing a supply on a survival horror is a skill issue since they are about this, though this leads to an argument if RE4 even is a survival horror still, I don't think so, but Capcom says it is, so it should do better.
when are being chased by a horde of monsters you dont have time to figuire out what's breakable and whats not unless you just want to instantly die. when you in such a high tension situation as such (that happens alot in the recent RE games) you just need to find ammo and health fast and thats where the yellow painted barrels come in to save you, just break them with a knife and get the ammo or health or if you are unlucky and need health or ammo you are greated with some money.
@@lilbiscuitjz171 Maybe YOU don't. I like having to pay attention to my surroundings in game. Whether that be looking out for loot in high stakes situations or exploring every nook and cranny of a new area for loot. Although that could just be because of the environment I grew up forcing me to keep my head on a swivel at all times.
@@Blackpapalink no it’s an over game design thing, bro capcom isn’t worried if Blackpapalink can server their surroundings well. they appealing to the wider audience, you aren’t the audience yourself
@@lilbiscuitjz171 And it's why gaming is slowly becoming unenjoyable for me, to the point, where I'm starting to make games for myself. The average person's navigation skills have atrophied so much that we can't even identify fixed mechanics, even if they're right in front of us. And the cycle of making games fast, squeezing it for every penny, then moving on is making games less enjoyable to replay. It's no coincidence that I can go back to an OG RE game I played once and figure out my way through trial and error, but can't even stomach putting something newer on because I'm instantly gonna be bombarded with lines and arrows telling me "GO HERE, DUMBASS" or the main character won't shut the hell up about the random caves they keep passing every 5 seconds. People playing games these days want the trial with no error.
The yellow paint is honestly just dumb. I mean, a much more elegant solution would be to just make elevated/protuberant rocks to show where it can be grabbed.
@Rihcterwilker yes. But rocks perfectly aligned to the main characters limb lengths making it the perfect climbing environment is unrealistic. At the end of the day, it's a fake level created specifically for the main character to be able to traverse. Whether the yellow paint is visible or not, it's there in the form of a perfectly crafted unrealistic level enabling the character to make their way through the level with ease. Real life isn't like that
@@tgs5725 _"But rocks perfectly aligned to the main characters limb lengths making it the perfect climbing environment is unrealistic."_ But the idea that some rando is going around painting yellow paint on the exact rocks that are perfect for the main characters' limb lengths without knowing they would even come this direction is totally acceptable?
@@tgs5725 It's really not about realism. Sekiro ledges being all exactly the same green with white stripes is obviously not realistic, it's just about how out of place the thing looks.
In Old School RuneScape, players use a plugin to highlight specific tiles, hitboxes, and drops to make it easier to spot them because there is no method provided by the developers to turn on such assistance. Naturally, the markers are absolutely hideous. They are not real assets, they are just bright colors on your screen that detract from the game's appearance. Yellow paint is not a bright, beating, vascular weak spot on a monster in gory detail. It's a lazy, hideous bright color on your screen that detracts from the game's overall aesthetic. Comparing all visual aids to yellow paint is hiding the point.
no its not. people in the real world use yellow to highlight things so having yellow to highlight man made objects in videogames makes sense and looks fine. the ff7 cliff looks dumb tho
To play devils advocate, nearly every game already has "Yellow paint" in the game. Worlds and levels are created very specifically to guide the players attention to points of interest. Im not saying the yellow paint is required, but I'm offering that outlook to the people who think they are "hard core" because they "dont need the paint"
Yes, and "yellow paint" is the worst way of doing this. Guiding the player is great if done subtley, when its so blatantly obvious it just feels like the game thinks you're stupid
That's not playing devil's advocate that's just missing the point entirely. Level design that doesn't need yellow paint because it's readable and guides the player towards the next objective without the player even realising is good game design and literally no one is going to complain about. Slapping yellow paint on everything so you don't actually have to design your levels well, is extremely lazy at best and incredibly incompetent at worst.
you just basically said what he did in the video during the lara croft and mirrors edge part. its based on the gameplay and type of game, guiding the player isnt a new thing
@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts you didn't watch the video then. He literally explains that the environment being bright yellow has been going on for 20+ years.
My guy that's just called good level design if you get lost in a game your not meant to be then that's bad level design and yellow paint is bad level design.
The issue isn't that special items are marked. The issue is that it's so glaringly obvious that it makes the player feel insulted or sticks out so bad it ruins the immersion. Take resupply creates for example. Valve figured this out in Half Life 2. The game is lousy with all sorts of crates and objects but only one specific type has items. And the player learns the difference early on when these crates are found in caches. Now granted the caches themselves are marked with yellow paint quite literally - but this is because these spots are marked as part of an underground railroad. Everything fits into the experience.
yellow paint on anything man made looks natural. the only game to make the dumb mistake of putting it on cliffs was ff7. if u feel insulted because the yellow paint makes u feel dumb, ur probably dumb and insecure. and what do u know? the yellow paint debate came from twitter, a place full of dumb and insecure people
What kind of snowflake ass take is being "insulted" cuz' the game designers made an important thing shiny? Next you be telling me people will be getting "insulted" by making the character's skin.... oooohhhhh. I get it.
I think most of the problems come from the issue that, even though the paint is diagetic , it doesn't make sense in world. Mountains and ledges having moss, or coloful stains make sense, but things having yellow or white paint all over is distracting. But, a box sealed with yellow tape, ledyes indoor having a yellow and black warning sign, or reflective tape in dark places make sense. It's not a war on signposting, it's more like a war on lazy looking, nonsensical signpost
no its not really distracting. i went through all of re4 remake never once getting distracted by yellow paint. and if u really want to focus on it u can just say the cultist painted the boxes with useful items in yellow paint so they would know whats important yellow paint on natural surfaces looks dumb tho, like it looks fine on man made objects but that ff7 cliff looks goofy
streaks of yellow paint ruin my game immersion. like this world would look believable, but because of a couple yellow streaks i now just cant imagine that real people can live here
I think realistic or immersive game must give you control of the character and how you experience the world not straight up tell you what to do, and yes most linear games don't give you the options but it must atleast feel like your given the options because the feel of the world is what's important right
i dont think its ugly and i hate the color yellow, its the ugliest color, but yellow paint looks fine. while i did notice yellow paint in re4r it didn't break my immersion. its not that big of a stretch that someone painted important man made objects yellow to highlight their importance, and colors look good depending on the context, and yellow is a damn good highlight color
It’s not that the yellow paint is bad mechanically. It’s just how ugly it is In those areas. They should just be more in theme w the game. it can even be slightly immersion breaking as long as it thematically fits. Spider-Man was the worst w this because not only did things barely stick out or shine, but pretty much everything you have to look for just requires you to press R3 and then look for an icon… why even have looking around be part of the mission if there’s no actual effort into telegraphing things? For climbing sections, vines, textures, or even just making something look climbable will suffice for 90% of gamers. Even ones that don’t play games.
Instead of putting paint, put pieces of rope, hooks, nails, climbing equipment showing someone climbed there in the past, if the game isn't about climbing and stuff like that. It's that easy. You can even put your "yellow paint" on the rope and climbing equipment. If it's a jungle, just an obvious bunch of hanging vines or something like that will do. You can even make the vines a bit brighter to stand out. Still want the blasted paint? Put flowers or roots of said colour. Elden Ring has these magical "jump vortexes of air" to signify springboards. It fits. There is no red arrow painted on a rock with a jumping horse engraving. You just need some imagination and effort. Just slapping paint is lazy, and a tad too obvious. And also overused to the point of exhaustion. In my experience it gives "over here, stupid" vibes. If every game has the same design choices it just makes games down the line that tiny bit more gray and repetetive as time goes on, and players are becoming more demanding these days, especially since the price is going up constantly. Even the example of items being "out of place" in old games. It wasn't the case many times. All you need is a tiny simple glint on the edge of the object. That's it. Just... think for a moment. It's that easy. If random shmucks online can think of better ideas, maybe it's time to test them out at least? Decades of game design, and all we can do is turn every "Tripple A" game into a carnival ride or a spooky haunted house from an amusement park? Make it somewhat different at least. If they increase the price non stop, then we demand more excellence for said price even in the most miniscule elements. I personally wouldn't care about it in a 20$ game. If it's between three or four times that... then you should show more work in every single aspect. Even if it's a microscopically small aspect.
the point is for those guides to NOT FIT. he literally talks about it in the video. that's the point to make it look like its not supposed to be there and takes your attention. plus you mentioned so many different genres of games. each genre has their own way of being helpful and tailored as such. the jungle thing is already a thing, in the video about tomb raider, if the gameplay is revolved about finding paths then yes it would be harder in gameplay difficulty as its already done and has sliders to adjust that. Elden ring is an RPG those giant vortexes of air aren't natural so it takes your attention "o what a weird vortex of air, it must lift me up and obviously take me somewhere" it is still unnatural you are defending what you are going against with that one.
At that point you just come back to yellow paint with a diffrent form the entire point is to make it easy to identfiy for a player which would be important if you want them to know they can grab to item or walls in more intance situation like in uncharthed 3 plane sequnace
@@lilbiscuitjz171 Those objects are meant to stand out, not "not fit". Standing out is not the same as not fitting. The red in Mirrors Edge stand out, but they DO fit. Not only as an ability but with the game's art style.
@@Project-Spy same goes for red barrels, they stand out and are easy to notice but they fit (most) places they are in. a wooden barrel with bright yellow paint in a forgotten by god village does not fit
That's like saying turning off map markers on Assassians creed suddenly makes its exploration even half as good as elden ring. Map markers are for lazy worlds just as yellow paint is for bad levels design. If you turn the paint off the world wasn't designed that way so it becomes frustrating. But elden ring's world was perfectly designed to work without yellow paint, so it doesn't suffer this problem
This is what I was gonna say. Some games remove the glow completely for those who want full immersion. The problem with modern devs is that they're being lazy. They wanna force everyone into easy mode instead of leaving options for the hard-core player.
@@rewpertcone8243are you serious? The game literally gives you giant beams of light that come off of half the graces to show you EXACTLY where to go. Ntm with the amount of graces in that game, when you finish the map looks more cluttered with useless stuff than AC lol Elden ring just has reverse map markers, you get your first grace and it literally makes a GIANT YELLOW LINE both in game and on your map that shows you the EXACT direction the story wants you to go in from that location.
I think Ghost of Tsushima did guidance in exploration well. The ridges that you climb on don’t stand out badly and still gets it across that the player can climb it. Also the wind guiding the player to an objective was really cool :D
at the very beggining of the video you showed the train from uncharted 2 and that proves the entire point,yes you can only grab onto the yellow pipes around the train but a train having a yellow metal bar is much more natural than yellow just randomly beign put on a ledge on a cliff,the problem is that with re4make and ff7remake it just comes off a not even trying to make it seem like it fits,as you showed on the video tomb raider has white paint on the ledges but it looks completly natural and no one has ever bitched about it because it fits.and in regards to why no one bitches about messages in dark souls is because even if they are the paint of the game like you suggest you can turn them off by going offline.
Yellow Paint is in the uncanny valley. Obviously videogamey markers: Easy to ignore or fake as part of suspension of disbelief. Diagetic markers that make sense in the world: Don’t take you out of the game world. Diagetic markers that don’t make sense in the world: Uncanny Valley. Why is this here? Everything else tells me to treat it like a real part of the world that bears on the rest of the world like every other fact about it. But there’s no actual explanation for it aside from the gameplay explanation. Okay, so what other parts of the world are lying to me and shouldn’t be treated like genuine worldbuilding? What facts are meant sincerely and what facts are meant to be a facile justification?
I don't have an issue with the "hand holding" aspect of it but as you mentionned, it's moreso immersion breaking for me and it actively makes some elements look uglier. I didn't have a problem with it in RE4, but on those FF7R screenshots it just looks so wrong and unnatural. At the end of the day, I'm all for player agency. So the ideal in my opinion, would be a toggle between yellow paint, and some kind of HUD blue arrow. Maybe a third option for "neither".
the ff7 ledges is like 1% of the game bro. if that breaks your immersion thats just a you problem. if they werent yellow im sure many players would have trouble where to go or do next.
@@lilbiscuitjz171 Which is why I offered an alternative of making them a toggle, or simply a HUD arrow. Shouldn't be too hard for Square Enix, I think that fits the budget.
@@SinderSoyl bro wants companies to make a whole toggle for like 3% of the player base for the most minuscule of sections, personally a mountain side with yellow ledges ain’t gonna stop me from being cool af as sephiroth but hey, maybe they’ll listen to you one day.
@@lilbiscuitjz171 aye, 3% is a lot, and I'm pretty sure that would be enjoyed by more than that. The photography bros who keep getting their photo modes in every game surely would prefer if the background didn't have ugly yellow paint smeared on the beautiful scenery as well. Thanks for the well wishes my friend.
@@SinderSoyl be fr, who exactly is taking an screenshot with a mountain wall in the background as opposed to the scenic valley backdrop in that segment
Realism in games was a mistake and it's a waste of time, effort and resources. Plus it also ages very poorly. As for the solution to the yellow paint issue, it is as simple as it has always been: the megaman way. Introduce the player to the interactive object in a mandatory contained environment and there you go, now the player knows what to do for the rest of the game. The real issue is AAA devs being lazy copy-pasters only worried about promoting woke agenda instead of creating games.
The argument about sign posting holding your hand confused me, ‘cause how does yellow paint decrease the difficulty? Unless you consider lack of direction as “difficulty” then it does not hold your hand. It doesn’t solve puzzles or make combat easier, all it does is tell you where to go to keep the game moving and what items you can interact with. The game plays the exact same with or without it you just don’t get lost as much.
I feel like you missed the point of the topic you're trying to address. The yellow paint could just not be there. It's not my fault that an idiot wouldn't notice where to go otherwise.
I like it. It might be because I've gotten older and my vision worse, but if there's no signposting I'll literally go around trying to interact with every single thing - and this would be fine if I could interact with every single thing, but not everything is coded to be interactable. In Diablo 4, because there is no signposting, I'll hover my mouse over every single doodad to see if it's interactable and it's pretty annoying. I can't distinguish what is supposed to be interactable stuff and what isn't anymore.
Oh yeah. Diablo 4 is godawful for this, with literally zero visual indicator for breakables unless you waggle the cursor everywhere like some kind of bootleg Wii game.
Most of the time people are fucking dumber than a bag pf bricks so some guidance is needed. But I think that some games go way too overboard on the handholding and that actively detracts from the experience.
The little red arrows and the finger pointing at Clouds head in the OG didn't look natural either but many of us needed it to find our way. Maybe they should have developed a select button option (like the og) to turn the yellow paint on/off
Your point about how "making it glow would be worse" is simply untrue, and yes RE4 original is a good example as to why. At one point in time, that game was absolutely convincingly real to people and nobody minded the objects. The "real life paint" raises questions that glowing objects do not. I really, really, REALLY don't understand how people miss that so hard. Even explosive barrels can be explained by having fuel throughout an area for a base.
Yeah like it's a game. If there are "gamey" things in it we are cool with it, but if you make things seamlessly blend in now there needs to be a real explanation.
@@NasuPrimeI think there's an enormous difference between the early 3D polygons of FFVII and the realistic faces and expressions from RE4 but sure, if you wish to oversimplify.
making it glow would be worse because if you took a hyper realistic image, inserted a hyper realistic box and then cut it out and made it glow bright it would look so out of place. yellow paint is just there and is less annoying than a fucking glowing object that is basically asking you to just go hit it like thats more handholding than yellow paint
@@fruitslicerI don't care about handholding or not handholding, but complaining about objects like that makes me wonder if you also wholeheartedly despise UI elements as well. They're so out of place they literally don't exist in the environment. The reason I'm okay with glowing objects is since those can be rationalized as "game" elements, not "real, explained in the setting" elements--in which case rather than accepting it as something contrived by a video game designer, I need to ask about the implications in-setting of someone painting something.
No wonder video games are the way they are now if people think "hey, maybe games shouldn't tell you exactly what to do with no subtlety or care" is somehow a capital G gamer take. The yellow paint in Final Fantasy is annoying because they could've done so many things that would've felt so much more natural and feel more in-place, like fucking bright green moss or something, anything like that, maybe show a character climbing, fuck even having a NPC say something would be so much better. Why should i care about the game world at all if the designers themselves didn't care enough to make it flow smoothly, or trust the players enough to actually engage with the game. Does FF7 even have enough of a casual audience that should be treated like they've never touched a controller before to warrant the game being designed around people like that? I really dislike the trend of big budget video games just being movies where you can also walk around now, the indie scene is stronger than ever and keeps putting out classics and one of the reason for that is that indie devs still take their audience seriously(as in, they trust their audience to engage with the game and it's logic). The Dark Souls example is very disingenuous because in Dark Souls all of that fits perfectly with the game's art direction and doesn't stick out and poke your eyes like yellow paint, same goes for red barrels, they're still a object far more natural than random yellow paint. Sure nothing in any video game is truly realistic but that doesn't mean that "breaking your immersion" is impossible and something that doesn't happen, the immersion is broken when something just sticks out in a way that doesn't match it's surroundings at all, and makes itself aggressively obvious. Good level design does not need to yell at you to make itself playable, the yellow paint example does. Sure it is just one part of the demo but it's a trend in the industry, and it makes sense that the people to whom gaming is a hobby in the same way as films are a hobby to some, just don't like the normalization of dumbing down things that used to be, you know, designed with just a little bit more care. There is nothing wrong with not wanting your hobby to take the same kind of turn that mainstream cinema has experienced with every Hollywood product wanting to please as many people, even if it means not trusting your audience to think at any point of the experience. Cave Story did not need yellow paint to make itself playable, and that's something designed by one dude, Final Fantasy is a massive franchise, with a team of designers, they can do better than yellow paint. I acknowledge the want to have a negative kneejerk reaction to anything GAMERS cry about, as most things Gamers cry about are fucking stupid and mostly just culture war bullshit that has actually nothing to do with video games, but i think this is one of the topics where some backlash is warranted.
You said yourself that it can be done in different ways and with different colors in games like Ghosts of Tsushima. Random splatters of yellow paint is lazy.
Why are there even climbing sections in the game? It would've been a lot cooler if i could jump up some smaller ledges to climb stuff instead of tiny hops around the place its my only gripe
The reason why the yellow paint is there is because when everything is hyper realistic it becomes nearly impossible to distinguished between what is intractable and what is not intractable because nothing stands out we either accept the yellow paint or we don't complain the devs add yet another 'pulse to highlight all the intractable objects' button into our games
I think narrowing down traversal to "the game isn't about this at it's core so it doesn't matter if you put your head down and follow the pheromone trail so you can hurry up and get to the combat/story" is pretty reductive. I think there is inherently more value in entering a room, looking around, seeing a ladder and trying to climb it than simply looking for yellow and going towards it. The latter IS less immersive, regardless of how many other gamey elements exist along side the paint. Also locating supplies in a combat scenario does add gameplay depth in games like RE4. I also don't think better graphics is an excuse for how heavy handed the paint is. Like in RE4R's case, just because there were barrels in the original, doesn't mean they have to be in the new game. They could just as easily place items on shelves and the floor with lighting to guide you to them for example. In the case of ladders they could just make the ladder yellow without someone in universe literally slathering paint all over it like "here you go dummy". They could design the level however they want to draw the players attention. Wish people would stop acting like this is the only way to do this.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider specifically also allows you to disable the paint. There are three settings, actually. Very visible, much more toned down and subtle, and outright disabled. While I think 'yellow paint' is essential and should DEFINITELY exist, it's nice to have an option to disable it if you're just that hardcore about it.
As for Resident Evil 4 Remake. Just make the barrels and crates that can't be broken are aged and worn looking, with the ones you can break look newer (not bright, just newer). But that's just me.
the og re4 used ugly ass lighting to highlight its boxes. but the graphics were ugly already so thats why its fine. if they did the same today it would look ugly
That's sounds like a really weird thing to be upset about. Do they get upset that you can a large amount of items despite the character only wearing a tshirt and pants? Where is the character storing all that crap? All the orifices? Like how consistent are these people when it comes to aspects of a game breaking immersion?
In my experience as I seen a lot of game developing I seen a lot of backlash of people claiming "Stop the yellow paint! We arent *that* stupid!" and well... If you know the amount of people who complain for not doing what to do on certain situations, casual or not, without having to search it up on Google, you might be surprised. Even with me happened! So imo, a little handholding doesnt damage anyone if well applied, other thing of course would be a cinematic every 10 minutes explaining with details what you have to do!
Why anyone would defend yellow paint is beyond me when we have decades of assassins creed, uncharted and many other games as evidence of how to do diagetic signposting correctly. Yellow paint, specifically on climbing ledges, is just plain dumb and breaks the illusion. The final fantasy example is egregious. Yellow paint on a barrel or sign is fine imo, but there are better ways.
Yellow Paint has its own visual language in the real world, though. Typically it means that someone else - some authority - has gone through the area with a fine-toothed comb and marked out the dangerous or out of bounds areas. It implies that the area isn’t genuinely dangerous if you follow the markers that someone else has put there. Obviously that’s literally true of worlds in games, but also a bunch of game design is based around creating the illusion that it isn’t. Building immersive worlds and then calling attention to their artificiality is just counter-productive.
these droolers taking part in this "discourse" only give a crap because a wannabe youtube essayist told them what to think, if theres noone to tell them how to formulate a thought, however will they form their "own" opinion otherwise? thats why your point at 3min is so funny to me, they think OG resi 4 is different, when the gameplay purpose is the same, they don't even know why the paint would be "bad" according to the original complainers.
I think you make great points here. My issue with "yellow paint" specifically in RE4 and FF7 is entirely aesthetic. Color coding can be made clear and consistent without looking so gaudy. Sekiro's organic-looking white ledges are a fantastic example.
Me too. If you need to littler let slap a bright color onto the critical path, you need to re evaluate your art direction and environmental clues. Of corse the issue is the more subtle and diegetic your guiding is, the more likely someone (and specifically reviews who have limited time and have to juggle a lot of games) will miss it. It’s why I prefer sticking the “paint” behind some sort of sense mode alal persona five, where you tap a button and all the interior objects get highlighted. Sort best of both worlds in my opinion, keeps the aesthetics in line but also makes it so your never mistaking a intractable for a non interactive.
Yeah. This is exactly the point. You can make a ledge clear and obvious to climb without making it look like it was deliberately placed by developers of a video game.
The Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima examples being used in FF7 Rebirth would have been totally fine and still fit in with the visual style of the game. No need for yellow paint. It's also not like you NEED the yellow paint because in-game, there's still a UI element showing you where you are allowed to climb and (so far) I've been deliberately led to one of these climbing points by a diegetic element. The yellow paint comes across as weird because even across FF7 Rebirth, they use the more Sekiro/Tsushima style ledges in tandem with the UI. "Why use the yellow ledge at all?" is more the question.
You can even put an accessibility setting to make these pop out more or be more sublte.
Imagine if there were blood streaks instead like someone's tried to get the object but couldnt before death
Same with ghost of Tsushima
I think the main thing is simply making it fit in the environment without BLENDING into the environment. like exploding barrels, which in my warehouse experience often are painted red or yellow, or otherwise have massive brightly colored symbols on them because its kind of important to know where explosive, pressurized, flammable, corrosive, or toxic chemicals/materials are in a heavily trafficked area. the yellow paint on rock ledges makes no environmental sense.
also, that quote about removing a right-hand branch in a tunnel because one singular play-tester got turned around is just an instant facepalm for me. While I understand not wanting to "gatekeep" or push away players, at some point you might just have to ask yourself "do we really need to design a game around the mental capacity of a two-year-old?" Like, there's dumb, there's stupid, and then there's trolling. And frankly, I have a hard time believing that a player ran the exact same loop for 30 minutes out of stupidity. I hope for their sake that they were checked-out, bored, or just trolling. And then they solved it by just removing the branch, rather than adding a couple scrath marks or something so that if you took that "wrong" branch the first time, you would be able to identify it the second time and not do so.
EDIT: also, just add the option in the menu to just turn shit like this off. that way, everyone can be happy.
yeah. Portal 2 did it well with the white surfaces that could accept portals. They were easy to see (by design), but blended well into the environment because they were a normal occurrence in the structure of the map. Never once did I think they looked out of place, even in the later section of the game in the salt mine. Yellow paint on the other hand is fundamentally a special occurrence and stands out from the environment of the game because it was designed to. It is immersion breaking.
To see an example of game that demonstrate that is completely not necessary any yellow painting, look at the original Thief.
But you can still tell what you can climb on in that game because the climbable areas have a blue slight blue glow/aura on them.
@@grifgaming436 I was speaking about the original Thief (1998)
@@nifftbatuff676almost every game back then was easily readable. No lighting makes things readable. The original thief isn't even comparable to a game like re4 remake.
@@communistwookie1243 There is no technical reason why a modern game shouldn't follow the design of Thief. See the video "Thief vs AAA gaming" if you are interested.
@@nifftbatuff676one of the greatest video essays ever made. Glad people are still spreading the word.
It's absurd that all we're saying is that guidance should be subtle and less jarring and we're getting pushback, wtf.
I think Mirror's Edge did optional signposting very well, in that runner vision is diagetic, but turning it off works just as well, and enhances the experience for "puzzle masochists" like me
Not sure how I compare to the majority, but I'm a "disable hints always" person, so things like the "NPC hints" in God of War drive me _crazy_ 😭
I think people just don't want their immersion to be broken, which the video nailed. :)
It may not make sense for treasure chests to be placed in forests, deserts, beaches, etc. but it doesn't break most people's immersion since we're used to it. I'm not saying we just have to get used to yellow paint. What I'm saying is maybe the old ways of doing things work better.
edit: Actually, the assist option by pressing select while playing Final Fantasy 7 was in the original Playstation release of the game too, so all versions of the game have it.
"in the mess of detailed textures and hyper realistic lighting that is moden games" theres your problem, it shouldnt be this way , noone asks for hyper realistic clutter where you cant understand where you have to go, art direction is the one that should guide, look at the fromsoft games, they guide you trough environmetns that make sense structurally and they let the players put the map together in their heads, no paint nothing. sekiro uses that white thing on ledges sure but its important to keep in mind thats the only fromsoft game that has the climbing mechanic which means that for most souls players that was a new mechanic and its the only thing in the game that does that, the rest is the usual formsoft art direction guidance. in elden ring since they dont have climbing theres notihing like that to distract the player from the beautiful environments.
no i actually like it like that. like imagine being in a warzone or a zombie apocalypse and u dont find a a huge mess. that would be dumb. the messy rooms can also be environmental storytelling. like look at any black ops zombie map, u can tell shi went down there because of how messy things are. getting rid of all that would break more immersion than yellow paint. also yellow paint looks fine on man made objects, people just complain to complain
Bro is gonna be one of the biggest gaming discussion channels in a few years
Only if he was consistent
This video is a downgrade from his previous ones. Traded fun banter to nitpicking and complaining
@@lostexodus I agree. I just started watching him and noticed the disingenuous examples he used in favor of his own argument in the last two videos. I'll very likely not subscribe which is unfortunate because the first video was very engaging unlike the next two which instead made me feel annoyed at certain parts.
@@lostexodusI kind of agree. I'm just glad he's not one of those video essay guys who resort to hopping on controversy and rage bait for views.
That this has been exclusively about yellow paint shows how well developers normally guide players diegetically. FFVII Remake is a standout example, because the paint doesn't even look natural.
half life alyx and more just half life in general had very little of the yellow paint problem, which really its not even about the paint being yellow. everything was very subtle in how they stood out. The reason I'm using half life alyx for this example is because its impressive. Not only is it the most graphically impressive half life game, but its also vr, meaning the devs had no way of controlling the camera. Everything in that game was seamless as shit, you could go start to end without ever breaking immersion, mostly due to how as the devs described it, pipes. The pipes were the guide along the set path and I never noticed it until playing the dev commentary. So I would like to compile a list of things alyx did to guide the player:
1. Pipes (as I just explained)
2. Small amounts of contrasted light would illuminate from important objects like mags and resin, most likely why there isn't much blue light used outside of the items.
3. Important things like valves you have to spin were most of the time a calm red, and more detailed.
4. Things like supply crates were very mildly off in lighting, enough to make it stand out, but too little for it to break immersion.
My proposed solution is to REMOVE THE CLIMBING SECTIONS ALTOGETHER thank you
P.S. If a game's gonna let you climb ledges, then it better let you climb every ledge in the game for consistency. A ceiling or an uneven surface is the perfect way to tell the player they can't climb there. if I see a flat ledge in a game where I'm supposed to climb those, there's nothing worse than being unable to grab it, besides being blocked by an invisible wall.
In the FF7 remakes, the climbing and platforming bits are literally automatic. You walk forward and the character jumps for you. No one thinks that is fun.
FFXVI also suffers from unfun movement outside of combat. It was so jarring to go from this fluid, crazy combat system to hold forward on the left stick simulator.
Still playing through FFVII Rebirth and the yellow paint never bothered me too much. Looking back at it though, I think it would have been nicer if they went with something more akin to Ghost of Tsushima’s signposting but it really doesn’t bother me.
There's a mod that removes the paint, and even turns the white paint in the castle into blood, and i'll admit i prefer it, but even tho it was my 3rd or so playthrough i still had to adjust to "ok i can break these", i was use to just scanning for yellow and moving on, but overall this made my experience 1% better, it was NOT a huge game changer that sucked me into the world and changed everything, and if i wasn't experienced in the title already, i'd have missed so many breakable objects
I can’t believe we’re even talking about about this
Never fully appreciated how well Portal's simple, readable aesthetic is worked into the game's story all being a lab experiment.
The FFVII yellow paint is more of an aesthetic issues than a game design one. It's lazy. Square Enix crafted these huge, sometimes gorgeous environments, so the yellow paint stands out too much. A giant glowing sign that reads "go here" wouldn't be that much more obnoxious than yellow paint.
I will always defend the yellow paint. In the Rebirth demo when the whole discourse kicked off, the yellow paint was used on the trail up the mountain. Tifa was the guide for this trail. This indicates that it is an actual mountain trail that people climb up. Therefore, it's not unheard of for people to have painted the cliff edges to indicate to the people following the trail that they're meant to go up there.
If people actually continued to play Rebirth, they would know that the majority of the climbable cliff faces don't have yellow paint. In fact in the mining section, so many people couldn't find the ledges that I literally saw memes about it? The yellow paint only shows up where it makes sense for it to be: areas that have been previously explored by the population.
I’m a yellow paint enjoyer cuz my vision isn’t that great. But at the same time, I wish a lot of games would just remove climbing in general cuz why tf am I scaling a cliff side in final fantasy
Gamers yearn for the riveting hold left stick up gameplay
Original FF VII had plenty of climbing but in that game there was no paint, instead of immersion breaking stuff it had a toggle option for markets which showed which spots are climbable.
They need an option for casual gamers who are new or just trying to bress through games with obvious hints and handholding. And for common and or hardcore gamers we get what we expect like jumping to a ledge we already understand should be jumped to. Or a obvious ladder to climb up.
Let me play the opposite side of the argument for a minute.
Splashing colors onto interactive elements for guidance can be argued. The idea is ok. The important question is implementation.
If guidance becomes the whole game, and especially if there's no variety to that guidance throughout the whole game, then the gameplay loop becomes extremely repetitive and boring. It turns into a checklist rather than an experience/journey.
No one wants their video game to turn into boring, repetitive labor. People already work 8-6, they don't want that same experience at home.
So the key point is variety. If the developers lack the imagination to create variety for the various elements of the gameplay loop, then they've failed their job. Ok sure, for a 2-3 hour game it's acceptable to have less variety. The game is over pretty quickly anyway. But if this also happens in 20-30 hour games, then there's a problem.
9:01 ”it’s like trying to find a needle… *in an asmongold’s bedroom”* PFFFFFFT LMAOOO 🤣💀
You make some great points here.
I think they can compromise by making the yellow paint less vibrant. That being said, I don't think the idea that "travellers paint safe ledges to grab onto so the route is easier for the next person" is that insane of an idea. Can even have a character point it out.
BUT, that wouldn't make sense to have that in like an ancient tomb or something. In the case of Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima, their yellow paint surrogate looks more natural with the environment.
Also, it depends on the type of game. If you overuse yellow paint in a game ABOUT climbing, like if assassin's creed 2 had yellow paint everywhere the player needed to go, that would be more egregiously bad.
Its something that can be improved, but not something worth screaming your balls off over. Its just a video game, and tbh I never find myself seeing yellow paint and feeling like I'm being totally yanked out of the experience by my neck. There are other things that do that, like major glitches, bad loading screens, terrible framerate, constant and intrusive pop up tutorials, unintuitive controls, or every single exploration reward being another god damn Sheikah shrine.
Two options: Less in your face, blended "markers" or a toggle feature; the latter is likely more troublesome in practice.
A game could be designed with guiding/yellow "environment-indicators" in mind with a prompt on first launch to enable or disable said placed marks.
i dont want the devs to cave in. its dumb that people are asking a solution for a non issue. its yellow paint get over it
Ah loot. Who, i wonder, is going around in all these games staching goodies in old boxes, crates and chests.
For me this discourse is just pointing towards a deeper issue within game designs. Which is for a bunch of "nextgen" games, why do we still have selective environmental interactable instead making all of them interactable? We figured out how to make reflective surfaces, but still struggle to make every rocks a climbable surface. It's a dated game design. It's either you do or you don't. If you want to make rocks that can be climbed, make every rock surfaces climbable similar to BOTW and if you want to make a wood product destructible, make every wood product destructible. We only managed to move forward when it comes to accessibilities and graphics but when it comes to game mechanics, we're still stuck in 2010 (specifically referring to AAA games). I feel like all of those games can be significantly more fun while at the same time can kill this whole entire discourse overall since the dev no longer need to educate us on what elements are interactable to begin with. This dated mechanic is not a deal breaker for me, but it is such a missed opportunity.
Anyone know what song he used in the background from 6:20 to 9:10 ? Also W video btw
The Resident Evil 4 Remake should have done worn down boxes or windows as the setting was something that would have greatly benefited from it. I can understand the paint thing being used as a sort of color blind option but using that paint for everything Interactable in the environment is a sign of laziness.
I still find the examples of Final Fantasy Rebirth and that Resident Evil game to be pretty egregious examples. Making explosive battles red is something that makes sense in universe. Much like how we mark toxic materials with a skull and bones label. It indicates danger. Why would anybody mark random cliff ledges or supply boxes with streaks of yellow paint? The way Ghost of Tsushima or Tomb Raider marked ledges seemed far more subtle and yet conveyed the exact same information just as well. As for Resident Evil's breakable boxes, why not give them an in-universe label that reads "supplies" or something to that effect? Smearing yellow paint on interacable objects just seems like the most thoughtless way to go about it. Like the devs just said "fuck it" and moved on.
It isn't egregious, it's good game design objectively. I don't want to be in the middle of an encounter in RE4 and guess which boxes are breakable... that would be poor design. But people just don't get good game design ig.
They should include an option for people who are uptight about it and whine about it so that they can play without it and inevitably get frustrated because they realise how it is actually good :)
@@LunaFelton Nothing "objective" about this topic, just different opinions. I suppose covering your interactive object in yellow paint is better than not being able to tell, which object are interactive at all. But it's still an inelegant solution. Many examples shown in the video were much better integrated in the game world. FF Rebirth and RE were some of the most blatant und unsubtle ways of leading the player's attention to an object. If that's what you need in order to play the game that's fine but others would prefer more elegant and subtle design choices.
@@theletterm5425 Well those people are the same mfs who'd get lost without it as it's LITERALLY been proven humans are too stupid to tell without obvious guidance, it's objective good game design and most people who complain about it don't get the why and just are bitching for the sake of bitching. Pretty sad tbh
@@LunaFelton Again. There is nothing "objective" about game design. How do you think people in the 80s and 90s managed to beat video games with much more obtuse and flawed game design?
Also, I specifically criticized RE and FF. There are literally better examples of how this can be done in the video we are commenting under. Ghost of Tsushima is much more subtle at indicating climbable ledges than FF is, without losing anything in terms of clarity. Same goes for Uncharted.
Nobody complained about these games back then because the design was subtle, elegant and made sense in-universe. Yellow paint is none of these things. Might as well have a big, bright red arrow on the screen every time you come near a climbable ledge. Would that also be "objectively good game design" to you?
@@theletterm5425 RE is great about it and I don't think you played the game, RE4 is an immaculately designed game and I don't want to be thinking what boxes are breakable when i'm fighting in an encounter. Yellow paint is amazing since yellow as a colour makes it stand out, and if it actually makes the game bad or it takes you out, that says more about the loser then the game itself. Also yes game design is objective, you cannot tell me a game like Sonic 06 is well designed for example. If you don't believe in objectivity you are stupid.
"It first started making waves last year..."
- People talked about it for years, it's absolutely nothing new.
"Video games are an art form"
- Goodbye.
It literally just needs to be a toggle. Will that make the level design/readibility a problem? Probably. But that's on the devs.
When it comes to the special vision to highlight climbable ledges, I definitely like the Horizon Forbidden West method. It actually makes sense in universe due to the Focus and Aloy modifying it. You can believe she would be able to figure out how to due to how smart she is and that it could help her. In fact, I would be surprised if she wouldn't actually make such a change to it. That's the way it should be, being believable in universe or only visible to the player. The only thing then is have the character not make comments about a puzzle every few seconds. It's better if you only get that with a button press. Like with Power Wash Adventure and Power Wash Simulator showing you dirty spots.
I don't care about yellow paint, but i do think as games get more "realistic" there comes an uncanny valley effect.
When i see a glowing item on the ground i know that's a video game thing.
When I see a cliff in a game i know that's part of the story, this area has cliffs.
When i see a yellow cliff though...is that a video game thing or the story? And that half second of thought can distract.
Bro, we just wanted stuff to be covered by bird shit again.
Babe wake up Nasu just dropped
22:52 caught me off guard
Gonna be honest and don‘t care that interactible things have markings but what I am saying is that making ledges out in bumfuck nowhere Yellow is stupid when you could have marked them like in Uncharted with just a whitish color or something
Personally i hate in a game when like you have to do a puzzle or something and every 2 seconds a character is like "well the thing said red blue green so what order should we do it?"😊
God of War Ragnarok was garbage.
@TheNuts1225 the new god of war games were what I had in mind but this applies to tons of games
mimir
garbage take @@TheNuts1225
@@TheNuts1225subjective
valve actually had a pretty cool philosophy on this. They essentially did hold your hand but in a subtle way. For them though, they tried to use lighting to guide the player so it still blends with the environment but subconsciously players are drawn to the light
That's just level design 101. I read a long time ago about how levels are always cleverly designed to make players feel smart, especially in FPS games and immersive sims like Dishonored. Players need to know intuitively which walls are climbable and developers always have subtle, underappreciated ways of doing this stuff
That's a good philosophy on level design but there's the conversation of how to point out interactables. Valves philosophy on that was a bit of more colour, limiting small objects lying around, and bright blue outlines which is fine for an arcadey game but would take you out more than yellow paint in re4.
In older days there were limitations, cartoons had to have things that did something different to it's environment on animation cells which stuck out, just like games had static backgrounds and interactables were handled differently and stood out automatically - games would also take a more arcadey approach.
When getting more realistic you can't just say "valve used lighting" cos it sounds like the solution suggested is to put a street lamp over every breakable barrel lol. But solutions could lie in subtle colouring, or making things look more "used" or "recently moved" etc
@@HeyJoJoTF2 Thats fair but in that case I'd argue that it'd make more sense if intractable objects like breakables were marked with the town insignia or something instead of random yellow paint splashed everywhere. I think the real reason the yellow paint is so immersion breaking is because it stands out so much while having no good lore reason to exist.
Ironically I think left for dead style outlines would be questioned less by players because it's obvious it's just a video game thing for the player. Kinda like how nobody questions red barrel = explosion. Not that I think that's what should've been done but the real takeaway is that I think people only care so much because the yellow paint feels like a half assed way of guiding the player while keeping immersion. If the expectation wasn't there it might be more jarring but people would just accept it as a video game thing
@@Regretted we'll be able to know better as more "linear but with mild exploration" games come out and try non yellow paint methods.
The sekiro stuff made great sense as since chalk is used for grip it is clever to have it on ledges, whether it was put there intentionally by the people or it's there because people with chalked hands climbed it etc it lines up with real life a bit and immerses you
Accepting it as a video game thing I think is an argument with a few shades. I remember with mirror's edge having red paths, it was a very video game thing but also had a lore explanation, but a lot of people still complained that it either was too hand holdy, or immersion breaking and I suppose "the argument" depends on which of the two people are also unhappy with or both.
Yellow paint being hand holdy - sometimes yes but sometimes it takes out the guesswork and eliminates the possibility of things being too natural and annoying to recognise like this video touches upon (however part of RE is learning things and replaying it so things not being obvious would still likely work just not for newbies playing once?).
Town emblem could work but even then you'd have to make it obvious enough to the point it might be too much for some anyway.
Immersion breaking - slightly different in that yeah do you want this third person spin kicking game to make you feel like you're living it yourself, or are you playing a game in the end so you deal with the yellow paint being a half gamey half in universe thing so you know to knife these 3 boxes then move on to the fun part.
But yeah no lore reason for it so town emblem could be better but then it can be immersion breaking as you inevitably question it "surely they'd just get stuff from a market why is there branded crates" or they'd have to create an entity/corporation that provides these crates/relief that makes sense.
But also it's a historically beloved intentionally corny game. Subtle yellow paint is kinda whatever in RE but for something like Warhammer where the franchise is all about every single thing having a cohesive explanation, random yellow paint would not fly at all.
I thought the use of colours/lighting, and the yellow taped box in re2 was perfect. Why not yellow tape on re4 crates? Taped boxes is pretty normal I would've thought.
Left 4 dead mostly had the excuse of post apocalypse/everything is cleaned out but they basically had fuck all decoration in their maps to the point you see a small object 95% of the time it's something you can pick up. In other games that want to look full of life it's something to experiment with
Welcome to game design 101, triple A games seem to have forgotten about this!
I've inhaled enough yellow paint to need it to guide me through games 😂😂😂
What I hate about detective mode, is that usually games that have it don't bother on making clear what you can or can't interact. Which ends using detective mode ALL the time, and that makes it fell less like a world, but just a group of interactable objects and enemies.
was about to make a joke, but then realized how I genuinely can never tell where or what shit is in Cyberpunk without detective mode. RIP hahaha
Def the Worst aspect of Arkham Asylum
@@MaxNMotioni feel like its fine in the batman games because batman is literally a detective known for having near futuristic gadgets and gizmos. it makes a lot less sense for Lora Croft to have it
While you’re right with the whole hand holding thing and guiding the player, I am baffled on how you mentioned Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima having climbable ledges with clear indications but completely ignored the fact those examples look natural in the setting. The problem with the yellow paint is that I get distracted thinking “Who the fuck just paints sections of a cliff?” which is not a thought I have for Sekiro or Ghost of Tsushima because they designed it to be obvious to the player but not immersion breaking. That’s why the Yellow Paint is so annoying when “other colors” aren’t.
Honestly, it's no more distracting than "who stashed a sword in this box at the bottom of this cliff".
if that breaks ur immersion than u prolly have the awe inspiring tism
To be fair, a lot of old games have things be a different lighting color is because of technical limitations on the console. You can see gears of war do this with some moveable objects. You dont even personally interact with the objects that move, the objects that do just have totally different lighting to stress the engine less.
What do you mean to be fair
You just restated the exact point he made in the video.
@@communistwookie1243 I watched the whole video and never heard him.use it in his defense. He pointed out RE4 which released on an underpowered GameCube first, so the technical limitations were a part of it. It's not really a design choice, and I imagine if they went back on that hardware they would've made it look more natural
@@evangel1460 I can't believe I'm having to say this right now. Like genuinely, I think you are stupid. The entire point of this ENTIRE video, is games made with newer lighting can't rely on the old school method anymore, due to the new hardware and lighting capabilities, due to this, games have started adopting more and more often, the yellow paint. The creator of this video says there must be another way that yellow paint, but the old.method your describing cannot work anymore due to modern technology. Obviously they are not going to release ff15 on the fucking GameCube, all your comments imply that's what they should do, release new games on the GameCube. That's the only substance present. It wasn't a design choice because they didn't NEED IT TO BE, now they do, and they've chosen the yellow, there has to be a better way. That's the entire point of the video you supposedly watched.
@@evangel1460IF they went back? they literally DID go back and made it look more natural
3:53 That is the most gorgeous looking Shrek I’ve seen in a game.😹
A perfect example of the "if it's not needed, remove it" philosophy is Fumito Ueda's "subtractive design".
If you don't know, it basically consists in saying "this one thing in particular is the point of the game, I want people to focus on this" and then removing anything that doesn't help that purpose.
The point of Shadow of the Colossus is fighting the colossi, so there's no need to fill the world with side activities like it's a Yakuza game (non that Yakuza is bad, I'm just saying it's not the goal).
In Ico the point is to save the girl from the shadows, so there's no need for a healthbar or a complex combat system, just button mash until the shadows are gone, you're supposed to feel tense when that's happening, and not having fun chaining combos like it's DmC
Are we really complaining about yellow paint in video games now? There’s a lot of criticisms you could have about games but really? Yellow paint? Lol
I only knew to click on this video thanks to the yellow in the thumbnail.
People can like a game and still hate some part of the design, this will forever be lazy but not a dealbreaker, they should just let it be an option you can toggle like the puzzle helps on the reboot tomb raiders, you could turn everything off, no highlights, no suggestions from Lara, just you and the puzzle. I would argue that missing a supply on a survival horror is a skill issue since they are about this, though this leads to an argument if RE4 even is a survival horror still, I don't think so, but Capcom says it is, so it should do better.
when are being chased by a horde of monsters you dont have time to figuire out what's breakable and whats not unless you just want to instantly die. when you in such a high tension situation as such (that happens alot in the recent RE games) you just need to find ammo and health fast and thats where the yellow painted barrels come in to save you, just break them with a knife and get the ammo or health or if you are unlucky and need health or ammo you are greated with some money.
@@lilbiscuitjz171 But why is dying in a game bad? Especially with how easy auto-save features make things.
@@lilbiscuitjz171 Maybe YOU don't. I like having to pay attention to my surroundings in game. Whether that be looking out for loot in high stakes situations or exploring every nook and cranny of a new area for loot. Although that could just be because of the environment I grew up forcing me to keep my head on a swivel at all times.
@@Blackpapalink no it’s an over game design thing, bro capcom isn’t worried if Blackpapalink can server their surroundings well. they appealing to the wider audience, you aren’t the audience yourself
@@lilbiscuitjz171 And it's why gaming is slowly becoming unenjoyable for me, to the point, where I'm starting to make games for myself. The average person's navigation skills have atrophied so much that we can't even identify fixed mechanics, even if they're right in front of us. And the cycle of making games fast, squeezing it for every penny, then moving on is making games less enjoyable to replay. It's no coincidence that I can go back to an OG RE game I played once and figure out my way through trial and error, but can't even stomach putting something newer on because I'm instantly gonna be bombarded with lines and arrows telling me "GO HERE, DUMBASS" or the main character won't shut the hell up about the random caves they keep passing every 5 seconds. People playing games these days want the trial with no error.
The yellow paint is honestly just dumb.
I mean, a much more elegant solution would be to just make elevated/protuberant rocks to show where it can be grabbed.
Thats "yellow paint" tho... It's still an unrealistic level design telling you where to go.
@@tgs5725 protuberant rock formations is natural to the environment. Literal yellow painting is "in-your-face".
@Rihcterwilker yes. But rocks perfectly aligned to the main characters limb lengths making it the perfect climbing environment is unrealistic. At the end of the day, it's a fake level created specifically for the main character to be able to traverse. Whether the yellow paint is visible or not, it's there in the form of a perfectly crafted unrealistic level enabling the character to make their way through the level with ease. Real life isn't like that
@@tgs5725 _"But rocks perfectly aligned to the main characters limb lengths making it the perfect climbing environment is unrealistic."_
But the idea that some rando is going around painting yellow paint on the exact rocks that are perfect for the main characters' limb lengths without knowing they would even come this direction is totally acceptable?
@@tgs5725 It's really not about realism. Sekiro ledges being all exactly the same green with white stripes is obviously not realistic, it's just about how out of place the thing looks.
00:01 ah man i didnt click on it sorry ill leave
In Old School RuneScape, players use a plugin to highlight specific tiles, hitboxes, and drops to make it easier to spot them because there is no method provided by the developers to turn on such assistance. Naturally, the markers are absolutely hideous. They are not real assets, they are just bright colors on your screen that detract from the game's appearance.
Yellow paint is not a bright, beating, vascular weak spot on a monster in gory detail. It's a lazy, hideous bright color on your screen that detracts from the game's overall aesthetic.
Comparing all visual aids to yellow paint is hiding the point.
no its not. people in the real world use yellow to highlight things so having yellow to highlight man made objects in videogames makes sense and looks fine. the ff7 cliff looks dumb tho
To play devils advocate, nearly every game already has "Yellow paint" in the game. Worlds and levels are created very specifically to guide the players attention to points of interest. Im not saying the yellow paint is required, but I'm offering that outlook to the people who think they are "hard core" because they "dont need the paint"
Yes, and "yellow paint" is the worst way of doing this. Guiding the player is great if done subtley, when its so blatantly obvious it just feels like the game thinks you're stupid
That's not playing devil's advocate that's just missing the point entirely. Level design that doesn't need yellow paint because it's readable and guides the player towards the next objective without the player even realising is good game design and literally no one is going to complain about. Slapping yellow paint on everything so you don't actually have to design your levels well, is extremely lazy at best and incredibly incompetent at worst.
you just basically said what he did in the video during the lara croft and mirrors edge part. its based on the gameplay and type of game, guiding the player isnt a new thing
@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts you didn't watch the video then. He literally explains that the environment being bright yellow has been going on for 20+ years.
My guy that's just called good level design if you get lost in a game your not meant to be then that's bad level design and yellow paint is bad level design.
The issue isn't that special items are marked. The issue is that it's so glaringly obvious that it makes the player feel insulted or sticks out so bad it ruins the immersion.
Take resupply creates for example. Valve figured this out in Half Life 2. The game is lousy with all sorts of crates and objects but only one specific type has items. And the player learns the difference early on when these crates are found in caches. Now granted the caches themselves are marked with yellow paint quite literally - but this is because these spots are marked as part of an underground railroad. Everything fits into the experience.
yellow paint on anything man made looks natural. the only game to make the dumb mistake of putting it on cliffs was ff7. if u feel insulted because the yellow paint makes u feel dumb, ur probably dumb and insecure. and what do u know? the yellow paint debate came from twitter, a place full of dumb and insecure people
What kind of snowflake ass take is being "insulted" cuz' the game designers made an important thing shiny? Next you be telling me people will be getting "insulted" by making the character's skin.... oooohhhhh. I get it.
I remember the original FF7 where Barrett would finish saying actual dialogue stuff and then be like "Press circle to check items"
Also I'm barely out of the first area in FF7 Rebirth and the yellow paint is mostly gone and ledges are less evident. It was a just tutorial paint😂
I think most of the problems come from the issue that, even though the paint is diagetic , it doesn't make sense in world. Mountains and ledges having moss, or coloful stains make sense, but things having yellow or white paint all over is distracting. But, a box sealed with yellow tape, ledyes indoor having a yellow and black warning sign, or reflective tape in dark places make sense. It's not a war on signposting, it's more like a war on lazy looking, nonsensical signpost
no its not really distracting. i went through all of re4 remake never once getting distracted by yellow paint. and if u really want to focus on it u can just say the cultist painted the boxes with useful items in yellow paint so they would know whats important
yellow paint on natural surfaces looks dumb tho, like it looks fine on man made objects but that ff7 cliff looks goofy
spending 20 seconds exploring around is too hard, I need yellow paint to reduce that time to 2 seconds, i need those 18 seconds to watch more tiktok.
streaks of yellow paint ruin my game immersion. like this world would look believable, but because of a couple yellow streaks i now just cant imagine that real people can live here
Gamers love Yellow Paint. They just hate when they realize it's there, because it breaks immersion.
I think realistic or immersive game must give you control of the character and how you experience the world not straight up tell you what to do, and yes most linear games don't give you the options but it must atleast feel like your given the options because the feel of the world is what's important right
Yeah but something that also breaks immersion is Nathan Drake jumping off to a abyss bc nobody can see the parkour bits
@@lucky_-1y correct. That's why gamers like yellow paint when they don't notice it; they hate losing.
@@queengames8421i love yellow paint, its the best one to huff by far 💛
I agree it's ugly, but it wouldn't be there if people didn't need it, everything looks so fkn touchable in games sometimes
i dont think its ugly and i hate the color yellow, its the ugliest color, but yellow paint looks fine. while i did notice yellow paint in re4r it didn't break my immersion. its not that big of a stretch that someone painted important man made objects yellow to highlight their importance, and colors look good depending on the context, and yellow is a damn good highlight color
It’s not that the yellow paint is bad mechanically. It’s just how ugly it is In those areas. They should just be more in theme w the game. it can even be slightly immersion breaking as long as it thematically fits. Spider-Man was the worst w this because not only did things barely stick out or shine, but pretty much everything you have to look for just requires you to press R3 and then look for an icon… why even have looking around be part of the mission if there’s no actual effort into telegraphing things? For climbing sections, vines, textures, or even just making something look climbable will suffice for 90% of gamers. Even ones that don’t play games.
I don’t think pointing something out in a negative light necessarily means you’re angry about it or hate it 😓
Facts. This video is filled with gross exaggeration and painting with a broad ass brush.
Instead of putting paint, put pieces of rope, hooks, nails, climbing equipment showing someone climbed there in the past, if the game isn't about climbing and stuff like that. It's that easy. You can even put your "yellow paint" on the rope and climbing equipment. If it's a jungle, just an obvious bunch of hanging vines or something like that will do. You can even make the vines a bit brighter to stand out. Still want the blasted paint? Put flowers or roots of said colour. Elden Ring has these magical "jump vortexes of air" to signify springboards. It fits. There is no red arrow painted on a rock with a jumping horse engraving. You just need some imagination and effort. Just slapping paint is lazy, and a tad too obvious. And also overused to the point of exhaustion. In my experience it gives "over here, stupid" vibes. If every game has the same design choices it just makes games down the line that tiny bit more gray and repetetive as time goes on, and players are becoming more demanding these days, especially since the price is going up constantly.
Even the example of items being "out of place" in old games. It wasn't the case many times. All you need is a tiny simple glint on the edge of the object. That's it. Just... think for a moment. It's that easy. If random shmucks online can think of better ideas, maybe it's time to test them out at least? Decades of game design, and all we can do is turn every "Tripple A" game into a carnival ride or a spooky haunted house from an amusement park? Make it somewhat different at least. If they increase the price non stop, then we demand more excellence for said price even in the most miniscule elements. I personally wouldn't care about it in a 20$ game. If it's between three or four times that... then you should show more work in every single aspect. Even if it's a microscopically small aspect.
the point is for those guides to NOT FIT. he literally talks about it in the video. that's the point to make it look like its not supposed to be there and takes your attention. plus you mentioned so many different genres of games. each genre has their own way of being helpful and tailored as such. the jungle thing is already a thing, in the video about tomb raider, if the gameplay is revolved about finding paths then yes it would be harder in gameplay difficulty as its already done and has sliders to adjust that. Elden ring is an RPG those giant vortexes of air aren't natural so it takes your attention "o what a weird vortex of air, it must lift me up and obviously take me somewhere" it is still unnatural you are defending what you are going against with that one.
At that point you just come back to yellow paint with a diffrent form the entire point is to make it easy to identfiy for a player which would be important if you want them to know they can grab to item or walls in more intance situation like in uncharthed 3 plane sequnace
Every visual guide serves the same purpose so ur just basically making yellow paint in a different accent
@@lilbiscuitjz171 Those objects are meant to stand out, not "not fit". Standing out is not the same as not fitting. The red in Mirrors Edge stand out, but they DO fit. Not only as an ability but with the game's art style.
@@Project-Spy same goes for red barrels, they stand out and are easy to notice but they fit (most) places they are in. a wooden barrel with bright yellow paint in a forgotten by god village does not fit
Crystal dynamics solved this problem in shadow of the tomb raider. Give players the option to disable the environmental paint/guidance
Simple and easy solution.
That's like saying turning off map markers on Assassians creed suddenly makes its exploration even half as good as elden ring. Map markers are for lazy worlds just as yellow paint is for bad levels design. If you turn the paint off the world wasn't designed that way so it becomes frustrating. But elden ring's world was perfectly designed to work without yellow paint, so it doesn't suffer this problem
This is what I was gonna say. Some games remove the glow completely for those who want full immersion. The problem with modern devs is that they're being lazy. They wanna force everyone into easy mode instead of leaving options for the hard-core player.
@@rewpertcone8243are you serious? The game literally gives you giant beams of light that come off of half the graces to show you EXACTLY where to go. Ntm with the amount of graces in that game, when you finish the map looks more cluttered with useless stuff than AC lol
Elden ring just has reverse map markers, you get your first grace and it literally makes a GIANT YELLOW LINE both in game and on your map that shows you the EXACT direction the story wants you to go in from that location.
No way… software with options, amazing 👏🏾
I think Ghost of Tsushima did guidance in exploration well. The ridges that you climb on don’t stand out badly and still gets it across that the player can climb it. Also the wind guiding the player to an objective was really cool :D
I'm all on board for a toggle, but I don't need it. Frankly my level of focus is so bad now that I appreciate the help
I was replaying Tomb Raider 2013 last month, and white/yellow paint is EVERYWHERE in that game, yet in 2023-24 it's an issue?
People have been making fun of it as well, they are both modern games.
at the very beggining of the video you showed the train from uncharted 2 and that proves the entire point,yes you can only grab onto the yellow pipes around the train but a train having a yellow metal bar is much more natural than yellow just randomly beign put on a ledge on a cliff,the problem is that with re4make and ff7remake it just comes off a not even trying to make it seem like it fits,as you showed on the video tomb raider has white paint on the ledges but it looks completly natural and no one has ever bitched about it because it fits.and in regards to why no one bitches about messages in dark souls is because even if they are the paint of the game like you suggest you can turn them off by going offline.
Yellow Paint is in the uncanny valley.
Obviously videogamey markers: Easy to ignore or fake as part of suspension of disbelief.
Diagetic markers that make sense in the world: Don’t take you out of the game world.
Diagetic markers that don’t make sense in the world: Uncanny Valley. Why is this here? Everything else tells me to treat it like a real part of the world that bears on the rest of the world like every other fact about it. But there’s no actual explanation for it aside from the gameplay explanation. Okay, so what other parts of the world are lying to me and shouldn’t be treated like genuine worldbuilding? What facts are meant sincerely and what facts are meant to be a facile justification?
I don't have an issue with the "hand holding" aspect of it but as you mentionned, it's moreso immersion breaking for me and it actively makes some elements look uglier. I didn't have a problem with it in RE4, but on those FF7R screenshots it just looks so wrong and unnatural. At the end of the day, I'm all for player agency. So the ideal in my opinion, would be a toggle between yellow paint, and some kind of HUD blue arrow. Maybe a third option for "neither".
the ff7 ledges is like 1% of the game bro. if that breaks your immersion thats just a you problem. if they werent yellow im sure many players would have trouble where to go or do next.
@@lilbiscuitjz171 Which is why I offered an alternative of making them a toggle, or simply a HUD arrow. Shouldn't be too hard for Square Enix, I think that fits the budget.
@@SinderSoyl bro wants companies to make a whole toggle for like 3% of the player base for the most minuscule of sections, personally a mountain side with yellow ledges ain’t gonna stop me from being cool af as sephiroth but hey, maybe they’ll listen to you one day.
@@lilbiscuitjz171 aye, 3% is a lot, and I'm pretty sure that would be enjoyed by more than that. The photography bros who keep getting their photo modes in every game surely would prefer if the background didn't have ugly yellow paint smeared on the beautiful scenery as well. Thanks for the well wishes my friend.
@@SinderSoyl be fr, who exactly is taking an screenshot with a mountain wall in the background as opposed to the scenic valley backdrop in that segment
Realism in games was a mistake and it's a waste of time, effort and resources. Plus it also ages very poorly. As for the solution to the yellow paint issue, it is as simple as it has always been: the megaman way. Introduce the player to the interactive object in a mandatory contained environment and there you go, now the player knows what to do for the rest of the game.
The real issue is AAA devs being lazy copy-pasters only worried about promoting woke agenda instead of creating games.
The argument about sign posting holding your hand confused me, ‘cause how does yellow paint decrease the difficulty? Unless you consider lack of direction as “difficulty” then it does not hold your hand. It doesn’t solve puzzles or make combat easier, all it does is tell you where to go to keep the game moving and what items you can interact with. The game plays the exact same with or without it you just don’t get lost as much.
I feel like you missed the point of the topic you're trying to address. The yellow paint could just not be there. It's not my fault that an idiot wouldn't notice where to go otherwise.
PLEASE lower the bass. I almost can’t watch these Videos because there is so much bass in the voice.
Guy tryna make his voice super deep😂
re4r totally would have been more fun if i had to guess which boxes were breakable mid fight.
bro is spitting false fax 🗣
I like it. It might be because I've gotten older and my vision worse, but if there's no signposting I'll literally go around trying to interact with every single thing - and this would be fine if I could interact with every single thing, but not everything is coded to be interactable. In Diablo 4, because there is no signposting, I'll hover my mouse over every single doodad to see if it's interactable and it's pretty annoying. I can't distinguish what is supposed to be interactable stuff and what isn't anymore.
Oh yeah. Diablo 4 is godawful for this, with literally zero visual indicator for breakables unless you waggle the cursor everywhere like some kind of bootleg Wii game.
Most of the time people are fucking dumber than a bag pf bricks so some guidance is needed. But I think that some games go way too overboard on the handholding and that actively detracts from the experience.
Perfect video to watch when dinner comes. I love nasu
The little red arrows and the finger pointing at Clouds head in the OG didn't look natural either but many of us needed it to find our way. Maybe they should have developed a select button option (like the og) to turn the yellow paint on/off
Your point about how "making it glow would be worse" is simply untrue, and yes RE4 original is a good example as to why. At one point in time, that game was absolutely convincingly real to people and nobody minded the objects. The "real life paint" raises questions that glowing objects do not. I really, really, REALLY don't understand how people miss that so hard. Even explosive barrels can be explained by having fuel throughout an area for a base.
Yeah like it's a game. If there are "gamey" things in it we are cool with it, but if you make things seamlessly blend in now there needs to be a real explanation.
“At one point in time” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. At one point, FFVII had mind blowing visuals
@@NasuPrimeI think there's an enormous difference between the early 3D polygons of FFVII and the realistic faces and expressions from RE4 but sure, if you wish to oversimplify.
making it glow would be worse because if you took a hyper realistic image, inserted a hyper realistic box and then cut it out and made it glow bright it would look so out of place. yellow paint is just there and is less annoying than a fucking glowing object that is basically asking you to just go hit it like thats more handholding than yellow paint
@@fruitslicerI don't care about handholding or not handholding, but complaining about objects like that makes me wonder if you also wholeheartedly despise UI elements as well. They're so out of place they literally don't exist in the environment. The reason I'm okay with glowing objects is since those can be rationalized as "game" elements, not "real, explained in the setting" elements--in which case rather than accepting it as something contrived by a video game designer, I need to ask about the implications in-setting of someone painting something.
I don't mind yellow paint that much, but doing something that fits into the world most seemlessly is obviously best.
No wonder video games are the way they are now if people think "hey, maybe games shouldn't tell you exactly what to do with no subtlety or care" is somehow a capital G gamer take.
The yellow paint in Final Fantasy is annoying because they could've done so many things that would've felt so much more natural and feel more in-place, like fucking bright green moss or something, anything like that, maybe show a character climbing, fuck even having a NPC say something would be so much better.
Why should i care about the game world at all if the designers themselves didn't care enough to make it flow smoothly, or trust the players enough to actually engage with the game.
Does FF7 even have enough of a casual audience that should be treated like they've never touched a controller before to warrant the game being designed around people like that?
I really dislike the trend of big budget video games just being movies where you can also walk around now, the indie scene is stronger than ever and keeps putting out classics and one of the reason for that is that indie devs still take their audience seriously(as in, they trust their audience to engage with the game and it's logic).
The Dark Souls example is very disingenuous because in Dark Souls all of that fits perfectly with the game's art direction and doesn't stick out and poke your eyes like yellow paint, same goes for red barrels, they're still a object far more natural than random yellow paint. Sure nothing in any video game is truly realistic but that doesn't mean that "breaking your immersion" is impossible and something that doesn't happen, the immersion is broken when something just sticks out in a way that doesn't match it's surroundings at all, and makes itself aggressively obvious. Good level design does not need to yell at you to make itself playable, the yellow paint example does.
Sure it is just one part of the demo but it's a trend in the industry, and it makes sense that the people to whom gaming is a hobby in the same way as films are a hobby to some, just don't like the normalization of dumbing down things that used to be, you know, designed with just a little bit more care. There is nothing wrong with not wanting your hobby to take the same kind of turn that mainstream cinema has experienced with every Hollywood product wanting to please as many people, even if it means not trusting your audience to think at any point of the experience.
Cave Story did not need yellow paint to make itself playable, and that's something designed by one dude, Final Fantasy is a massive franchise, with a team of designers, they can do better than yellow paint.
I acknowledge the want to have a negative kneejerk reaction to anything GAMERS cry about, as most things Gamers cry about are fucking stupid and mostly just culture war bullshit that has actually nothing to do with video games, but i think this is one of the topics where some backlash is warranted.
Yellow paint is to me an admitance that the devs have shit world design and cant make sruff atand out because all shit looks the same
People will always find something to complain about.
This whole debate just tells me that gamers in general have too much time of their hands
You said yourself that it can be done in different ways and with different colors in games like Ghosts of Tsushima. Random splatters of yellow paint is lazy.
It isn't. It's actually amazing game design and uses colour theory well :)
Why are there even climbing sections in the game? It would've been a lot cooler if i could jump up some smaller ledges to climb stuff instead of tiny hops around the place its my only gripe
People complaining on twitter.. this is the problem
You said exactly what I've been saying, props!
The reason why the yellow paint is there is because when everything is hyper realistic it becomes nearly impossible to distinguished between what is intractable and what is not intractable because nothing stands out we either accept the yellow paint or we don't complain the devs add yet another 'pulse to highlight all the intractable objects' button into our games
I think narrowing down traversal to "the game isn't about this at it's core so it doesn't matter if you put your head down and follow the pheromone trail so you can hurry up and get to the combat/story" is pretty reductive. I think there is inherently more value in entering a room, looking around, seeing a ladder and trying to climb it than simply looking for yellow and going towards it. The latter IS less immersive, regardless of how many other gamey elements exist along side the paint. Also locating supplies in a combat scenario does add gameplay depth in games like RE4.
I also don't think better graphics is an excuse for how heavy handed the paint is. Like in RE4R's case, just because there were barrels in the original, doesn't mean they have to be in the new game. They could just as easily place items on shelves and the floor with lighting to guide you to them for example. In the case of ladders they could just make the ladder yellow without someone in universe literally slathering paint all over it like "here you go dummy". They could design the level however they want to draw the players attention. Wish people would stop acting like this is the only way to do this.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider specifically also allows you to disable the paint. There are three settings, actually. Very visible, much more toned down and subtle, and outright disabled. While I think 'yellow paint' is essential and should DEFINITELY exist, it's nice to have an option to disable it if you're just that hardcore about it.
As for Resident Evil 4 Remake. Just make the barrels and crates that can't be broken are aged and worn looking, with the ones you can break look newer (not bright, just newer). But that's just me.
People using RE 4 remake to justify yellow paint when it's riding the coattails of a best selling videogame that DIDNT use it is crazy.
the og re4 used ugly ass lighting to highlight its boxes. but the graphics were ugly already so thats why its fine. if they did the same today it would look ugly
That's sounds like a really weird thing to be upset about. Do they get upset that you can a large amount of items despite the character only wearing a tshirt and pants? Where is the character storing all that crap? All the orifices? Like how consistent are these people when it comes to aspects of a game breaking immersion?
In my experience as I seen a lot of game developing
I seen a lot of backlash of people claiming "Stop the yellow paint! We arent *that* stupid!"
and well...
If you know the amount of people who complain for not doing what to do on certain situations, casual or not, without having to search it up on Google, you might be surprised.
Even with me happened! So imo, a little handholding doesnt damage anyone if well applied, other thing of course would be a cinematic every 10 minutes explaining with details what you have to do!
Resident evil 7 is the first resident evil to have yellow paint.
Why anyone would defend yellow paint is beyond me when we have decades of assassins creed, uncharted and many other games as evidence of how to do diagetic signposting correctly.
Yellow paint, specifically on climbing ledges, is just plain dumb and breaks the illusion. The final fantasy example is egregious.
Yellow paint on a barrel or sign is fine imo, but there are better ways.
Yellow Paint has its own visual language in the real world, though. Typically it means that someone else - some authority - has gone through the area with a fine-toothed comb and marked out the dangerous or out of bounds areas. It implies that the area isn’t genuinely dangerous if you follow the markers that someone else has put there.
Obviously that’s literally true of worlds in games, but also a bunch of game design is based around creating the illusion that it isn’t. Building immersive worlds and then calling attention to their artificiality is just counter-productive.
these droolers taking part in this "discourse" only give a crap because a wannabe youtube essayist told them what to think, if theres noone to tell them how to formulate a thought, however will they form their "own" opinion otherwise?
thats why your point at 3min is so funny to me, they think OG resi 4 is different, when the gameplay purpose is the same, they don't even know why the paint would be "bad" according to the original complainers.
Some games are already hard to see because of the graphics so I don’t mind this at all.
You're missing the point. They should find subtler, less jarring ways to guide players.
i was literally waiting on a upload
You have no idea how long I was stuck there, the first time I played FF7 10:14