I dont see why every game has to be immersive and “realistic” to be considered good. I am a huge fan of the immersive sim genre and those usually avoid the yellow paint problem, but the verisimilitude is part of the fundamental design in that genre.
One of if not my favorite game in recent years, Ultrakill, has no pretentions about realism, it has big combo descriptors popping up on your screen yelling SSSHITSTORM. I dont begrudge it for its clearly signposted paths because an immersive world just isnt a major design goal sometimes.
In the case of games like Uncharted etc, i dont think the signposting of ledges and climable objects is a great sin because in a visual medium with environments approaching some sense of realism, it can be extremely hard to make safe areas visible in the midst of hectic action. In real life our depth perception and visualization of objects in 3d space lets us take in an environment in much better detail that isnt reliably recreated in games, let alone 3rd person action games with a somewhat distant camera. I think of it as a necessary evil in some cases where the player needs to take in visual information extremely quickly.
ImSims and similar games dont usually have this problem because they are usually very slow paced, which could hopefully satisfy people who aren’t big fans of the very directed visual signposting in some linear action games. I dont think its necessary to force a square peg in a round hole and abandon obvious visual signposting in fast paced linear progression games in favor of a nebulous desire for complete freedom and verisimilitude - otherwise scope/feature creep can become a real issue (among AAA games especially, just look at the issues with RDR2 for example)
I dont see why every game has to be immersive and “realistic” to be considered good. I am a huge fan of the immersive sim genre and those usually avoid the yellow paint problem, but the verisimilitude is part of the fundamental design in that genre.
One of if not my favorite game in recent years, Ultrakill, has no pretentions about realism, it has big combo descriptors popping up on your screen yelling SSSHITSTORM. I dont begrudge it for its clearly signposted paths because an immersive world just isnt a major design goal sometimes.
In the case of games like Uncharted etc, i dont think the signposting of ledges and climable objects is a great sin because in a visual medium with environments approaching some sense of realism, it can be extremely hard to make safe areas visible in the midst of hectic action. In real life our depth perception and visualization of objects in 3d space lets us take in an environment in much better detail that isnt reliably recreated in games, let alone 3rd person action games with a somewhat distant camera. I think of it as a necessary evil in some cases where the player needs to take in visual information extremely quickly.
ImSims and similar games dont usually have this problem because they are usually very slow paced, which could hopefully satisfy people who aren’t big fans of the very directed visual signposting in some linear action games. I dont think its necessary to force a square peg in a round hole and abandon obvious visual signposting in fast paced linear progression games in favor of a nebulous desire for complete freedom and verisimilitude - otherwise scope/feature creep can become a real issue (among AAA games especially, just look at the issues with RDR2 for example)