The infrastructure of the fashionable social media panorama signifies that occasionally somebody clips out a bit of a contemporary blockbuster that uses bright yellow paint to information the participant the place to go and says one thing like, “This is why games suck now.”
So it was with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, whose prodigious use of yellow hues to tag climbing ledges and different footholds for progressing the journey sparked minor controversy again throughout launch. Was it a lazy shortcut or intelligent recreation design? The sport’s director has now weighed in on the topic.
THE YELLOW PAINT VIRUS HAS INFECTED FF7 pic.twitter.com/calN0dqHf4
— Dave NewBlood (@DaveOshry) February 8, 2024
“I get there is a debate about that, whether that fits with that world or not, whether some people want it, some people don’t,” Naoki Hamaguchi told Gamesradar in a latest interview. “I think as a game, there is definitely a need for that kind of thing in a lot of ways. I think obviously different developers experiment, try different things about what works best, what fits best, the right way of doing that in their game.”
He continued,
The necessity to information gamers round from a gameplay perspective and present them what could be accomplished, what they should do, there are positively occasions the place that’s wanted. So I feel clearly there’s extra of a debate about the way it’s accomplished, what stage and what works. And there’ll nonetheless be individuals who say, “no, that doesn’t fit at all. We don’t like that.” That’s wonderful, however I feel there’s positively a necessity there, and it’s one thing that’s positively price .
“There’s definitely a need there” suggests Hamaguchi has seen sufficient individuals working round misplaced throughout playtesting to know that yellow paint, whereas removed from essentially the most elegant resolution, is preferable to individuals getting caught and pissed off. Ghost of Yotei is filled with what one good friend described as “bird poop” to mark its climbing ledges, and Ninja Gaiden 4 is much more gratuitously slathered in liquid warning tape than Rebirth. None of us need yellow paint till we absolutely need yellow paint.
Such is the push and pull over immersion in hyper-realistic open-world RPGs (or within the case of Ninja Gaiden 4, visually messy linear corridors) that generally one of the best ways to maintain you ensconced within the fantasy is to momentarily shatter it with non-diegetic signposting. Hamaguchi’s place on the topic received’t put an finish to the talk; we’ll see if the subsequent Closing Fantasy VII recreation implements a distinct resolution or our previous good friend the yellow paint monster returns.
