I don't like the yellow paint because of what it indicates about the level design. I much prefer systems-driven movement to linear path programmed to allow you to specifically navigate it. Like the Thief series, where there are all sorts of alternate paths and places you can climb to and sneak around and hide in because you can climb anything that is the right shape to climb on it. Especially things the devs didn't intend for you to climb lol
I agree entirely. I've always loved games where you can skip parts of the path, or choose your own path, or accidentally make things difficult for yourself trying to scale a wall and make some ill-advised jump because you didn't realize that the designers put a convenient door somewhere. That would mess with their dumb forced cutscenes and triggered story events, though, so I'm not holding out hope that we'll see AAA games designed that way. Big game studios seem to be married to the idea that they're making movies with interactive fight scenes instead of games. If they want to go back to systems-driven movement I'm all for it, but given that so many of the environments in these games are just very elaborate unidirectional hallways, the least they can do is visually indicate which part of the environment gets me further down the hallway.
I don't like the yellow paint because of what it indicates about the level design. I much prefer systems-driven movement to linear path programmed to allow you to specifically navigate it. Like the Thief series, where there are all sorts of alternate paths and places you can climb to and sneak around and hide in because you can climb anything that is the right shape to climb on it. Especially things the devs didn't intend for you to climb lol
I agree entirely. I've always loved games where you can skip parts of the path, or choose your own path, or accidentally make things difficult for yourself trying to scale a wall and make some ill-advised jump because you didn't realize that the designers put a convenient door somewhere. That would mess with their dumb forced cutscenes and triggered story events, though, so I'm not holding out hope that we'll see AAA games designed that way. Big game studios seem to be married to the idea that they're making movies with interactive fight scenes instead of games. If they want to go back to systems-driven movement I'm all for it, but given that so many of the environments in these games are just very elaborate unidirectional hallways, the least they can do is visually indicate which part of the environment gets me further down the hallway.
BG3 did just fine without forced linearity and kid-rails