Since Everyone Got Mad About Yellow Paint Again This Year, Are 5...
Before generative AI became the all-consuming omni-topic upon which we must all opine, everyone was weighing in on the lighter-shaded talking point of developers using yellow paint as a directional tool. Games like Stellar Blade, Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and Star Wars Outlaws reignited the debate about splashing liquid sunshine too liberally across platforms and obstacles to aid player navigation, with the debate spilling over into 2025 as critics called it out as lazy game design.
Numerous game developers offered their perspectives on the issue. Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth's director Naoki Hamaguchi stated there is "definitely a need for that kind of thing" in games, even if players don't like it, while The Witcher 4's lead designer believed the problem "isn't necessarily the yellow paint", but the context in which it was used, and that level designers needed to "properly weaponise the entire arsenal of your toolkit" to prevent players from realising that "'oh, I'm being guided'".
Personally, I think it's easy to criticise developers for whipping out the paintbrush when more subtly guided level design becomes trickier to achieve. But it's a lot harder to come up with specific, workable alternatives. So I thought I'd give it a go, and suggest five ways to help players unstick themselves that don't involve smearing the environment in Grandma's Refrigerator.
Fable 2 famously featured a canine companion who would dig out treasure, aid you in combat, and most importantly for our purpose, help lead the way to quest objectives. I propose that we roll this feature out for every video game, with your faithful hound barking and or/pointing in the right direction if the player is stuck for a certain amount of time.
Some of you may observe that this is similar to how characters like Atreus in God of War: Ragnarok would vocalise puzzle solutions if the player got stuck on them for too long. But there are two advantages to using a dog over a character like Atreus. Firstly, a dog is not an annoying, moody teenager. Second, a dog cannot speak, thereby requiring some interpretation of its behaviour on the player's part.
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This one's inspired by Ghost of Tsushima's Guiding Wind, whose air currents helped point players in the direction of their next objective. Why not apply such meteorological navigation to other types of weather? You could have rain that drives in the direc
Source: PC Gamer
