At a GDC talk in 2004, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma shared a phrase that Shigeru Miyamoto often repeated during the development of Wind Waker: “Zelda is a series that favours reality over realism.” And nearly the entire video game industry seems to have forgotten this sentiment regarding yellow paint and mini-maps.
For example, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor has tons of little atmospheric touches that bring players into its world. But, despite all its positive qualities, it’s not a great representation of what a Star Wars game can be. The original Star Wars: Battlefront titles were much more mission-focused, yes, but the heavier focus on gameplay aids in their memorability and ease of use. My point here is that with the advent of prettier graphics and more powerful consoles, simple game design decisions such as mini-maps are being thrown away in favour of more complicated ones, such as a higher emphasis on atmosphere.
An appropriately egregious example of this development is the Resident Evil 4 Remake. It’s excellent, one of the decade’s best games, but playing it can feel like a chore due to the lack of a mini-map. Capcom included the oft-maligned yellow paint to provide environmental cues, which is appreciated, but exploring the rich game world can still become incredibly annoying because you’re going to be constantly opening that damn map just to see where you’re supposed to be going next. Many people enjoy the immersion that titles like Resident Evil offer their players, but I’m not one of them. To me, it all comes down to an annoyance. I enjoy the core experience, but once I’ve pressed pause more than a few times, I groan and wish for an option to be included in the main menu.
However, Resident Evil isn’t the only series that suffers from this problem. Zelda‘s open-world titles are intended to be played without a heads-up display. But loads of people just play with it anyway, because it’s simpler and eliminates the countless seconds spent staring at a map instead of the brilliantly realised world. While it’s more than admirable to see Nintendo’s commitment to immersion, you could still argue that it didn’t work because many people played the games like a generic open-world title – which is exactly what Nintendo was probably trying to avoid. Sometimes, having less freedom means no more getting lost.
Let’s contrast this with God Hand, which has some undoubtedly ugly environments. However, those environments allow it to have no cinematic ambitions and thus ignore walls to keep its furious action at the forefront. While it might be hard to imagine a title like God Hand being made today, there’s still no reason it couldn’t be done. Or, maybe we just need a different approach.
The Silent Hill 2 Remake recently came out, featuring a novel approach to clarity and accessibility. Its developers said they knew the challenges that more detailed environments bring to game design. To counter this, the Bloober Team implemented icons that display on screen when picking up items. Even better, the series producer said he was aware of how this feature could potentially annoy people, so he made sure to make it optional.
Then there is Metroid Prime, which took this idea to the extreme by having Samus’ visor display on the screen at all times. Not only does this help with immersion, but it also completely removes the chance of it being a nuisance because you will be looking at it anyway. Again, video games should be played like games, and just like Miyamoto said all those years ago, there is a way to handle scope without compromising on approachability. Of course, using games that are the standouts of their craft is about as advantageous of a take as one could possibly make, so developers shouldn’t constantly feel pressured to be shooting for a higher standard.
Given all these examples, it seems safe to assume that mini-maps and yellow paint are just a natural consequence of the industry’s constant fascination with console horsepower. It’s not like you have to include those conveniences, but due to how long an idea like that would take to implement and how budgets are constantly getting larger, these approaches are quickly becoming a thing of the past. However, the control that reality offers over realism shouldn’t be ignored…