Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

Celeste was mentioned as a good example in the video.

With that in mind, most games that let you climb anything have stamina but that can get annoying at times. In turn, it makes you think on how to traverse.

Okay, so I'll concede this much. If traversal is an actual game mechanic, then allowing the player to attempt it wherever they want makes sense. In most Assassin's Creed games, you can climb onto almost every building and/or tree, or at least attempt to, and the open world contains multiple navigation paths that give you a sense of freedom as you move through the environments. If you get stuck, Eagle Vision can often highlight valid paths.

Until, that is, you get into a mission that funnels you down a linear path as if you're in a corridor while still pretending to be free roaming, so if you veer from the path for a millisecond, you get desynced. So much for "open world".

If traversal is merely a "push D-pad to continue moving" mechanic, then there's no need for free climbing and the game can be as linear as it wants. In this case, the "yellow paint" or whatever helps the player avoid having to figure out where to go, keeping up the pace.

I just look at Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and think... holy clash of gameplay and world design, Batman!

Edited by Fighteer on May 10th 2024 at 9:53:07 AM

I don't really mind when AC limits where you can go for a mission. It prevents you from accidentally wandering off in the wrong direction, and it's fine in most if not all missions. I can't say I've ever encountered a mission where I felt the limitation was unreasonable.

It's one thing when a mission says you can't leave a designated area. That's fine. What annoys me is when there is exactly one traversal path that can get you from A to B, and if you don't follow it exactly you fail. It's in conflict with the fundamental idea of an open-world game. Sure, we can argue that the Assassin ancestor we're reliving did it in a certain way, but one of the defining features of the Animus as explained to us in-universe is that it offers a certain degree of freedom as long as the major elements get covered.

Regardless, the game doesn't coat traversable surfaces with paint. It trusts the player to figure things out. This can be frustrating at times, I'll admit, but I don't play games to have my hand held through virtual sightseeing tours with glow-in-the-dark paint to mark where I'm supposed to walk, lest I get too disoriented and accidentally wander into an open electrical circuit.

Edited by Fighteer on May 10th 2024 at 1:32:59 PM

Personally I'm fine with something like that being optional. If a player thinks it breaks immersion, they just don't turn it on. Simple as that.

That's a lot like saying "If you don't like the time-saving micro transactions, just don't buy them". The fact is that the game is designed with these elements in mind, and turning them off just causes different problems.

The problem is that they aren’t optional in the first place. Meaning they are not designed to not need them by default.

You can’t compare micro transactions to an optional “easy mode” or hint system.

It is like how some crpg’s have a “Story Mode” difficulty setting for people not used to tabletop rules or character build optimization.

Edited by M84 on May 13th 2024 at 2:07:59 AM

The problem with "time-saving micro transactions" is the "tranactions", not "time-saving". If a game just has a menu option to grant yourself an XP booster if you're too bored, then that is perfectly fine, it also lacks incentive for the design to make boosters necessary. Bring back the cheat codes from before wireless banking made nickel and diming for them possible.

For climbing games, it'd be just putting the yellow paint into accessibility options. It's just an easy mode for that part of the game.

Alternatively, there is also another blast from the past option. Vine thickets. They were pretty common. I'd guess they got replaced by ladders of ledge grabbing because those get to use cooler character animation for climbing or something. But if the only thing you're doing with the climbing is a vertical corridor, they do the job and look much more natural while doing so.

Yeah, there's an element of Older Than They Think to this. Games have done this sort of path signalling for ages. The yellow paint is just the latest iteration on an old trope.

Dante's Inferno marked its obvious climbable walls in a pretty unique and grisly fashion.

See, in that game, the climbable "walls" are the screaming and writhing souls of the damned in Hell, reduced to being mortar for walls.

Yellow paint? It's just fucking lazy and unimaginative.

Edited by M84 on May 13th 2024 at 5:29:56 PM

Look. Highlighting a path is better than having to guess what's interactable or not, I will fight you on this one. In an ideal world, designers could make maps where the geography is both aesthetically pleasing and intuitive to navigate, but they're crunched enough as it is. A bit of paint is a perfectly reasonable compromise, not some horrible immersion-destroying sin

And I am saying you could just have it be an option you can toggle on or off at your leisure.

Design the game first without it being needed, but include it as an option. That way everyone is happy. People who like immersion and people who like more QOL options.

Having to try random objects to see which one actually works isn't fucking immersive

Don’t see why this has to be an argument. Like I said, I would like to see a game that simply toggles such an aid.

I like to have options to tailor the game experience the way I see fit.

Edited by M84 on May 13th 2024 at 6:02:32 PM

Agreed, blindly groping around for the right spot to climb isn't immersion, if anything, it's more distracting than the paint itself.

An option to toggle highlighting is fine if you can actually make out what works on your by just paying attention. If the game is actually built under the assumption that the highlighting is how things will be told apart... I'm really not sure an option to turn it off is a good idea. A lot of people will turn it off and have a shitty time until they realize that the game wasn't supposed to be played this way. And then get mad. While most of them wouldn't have an issue if the option wasn't there

And it clearly is immersion breaking for some people. It is a matter of opinion.

Hence why having options is preferable.

Like I said, no reason this has to be an argument.

Edited by M84 on May 13th 2024 at 6:52:12 PM

...You just didn't read my post, huh?

Also, I imagine that in a number of case the highlighting is just going to be baked into the model and not actually simple to code a toggle for

My point was that the default should be that highlighting is not necessary. But just an added option to make it easier if desired.

I am not advocating just adding the option in at a later date after release.

Edited by M84 on May 13th 2024 at 6:59:59 PM

The way I'm understanding Yahtzee here, it's that he wants one of two options for climbable surfaces, there to be more immersive and less jarring signposting regarding climbable surfaces for games or that you make the climbing a mechanic all its own and let you climb everywhere (and signpost the non-climbable surfaces) where immersion is a main drawing point for the game, like your various open world games.

For the more immersive signposting option, for all our statements of caring about gameplay and less about looks, a games aesthetics is part of the draw for a lot of games. Think of any game you ever played and loved and imagine if the art style and direction were replaced with basic shapes and colored hit boxes. The game play would be exactly the same, but the art style obviously plays a huge emotional role in how you experience the game (same would go for the story). Having most of the aesthetic be sprawling realism, and then when you need to communicate climbable space you get this jarring neon sign, it does take you out of it, so it's up the art direction to properly communicate in a manner that's natural.

Of course, our tolerances for these things are subjective, based on person and game. I'm sure for people with disability issues, taking a hit to immersion for greater accessibility is a worthwhile trade, so having an option in place to toggle on and off would be great. And for games that are more mechanics and less aesthetics, more abstraction is allowed.

Of course the other option is to actually try and make climbing a worthwhile mechanic all its own, but that usually takes time and effort. If you're not going to bother, either make the climbable parts another hallway, or do a doorway and a fade to black and you're at the top of where you need to be, or if you need to use it to relay info, make it a non-interactive cutscene. Having us push a button doesn't increase immersion.

Edited by HeyMikey on May 13th 2024 at 6:59:17 AM

Ironically, the original Final Fantasy VII had a lot of climbing sections that were literally "press D-pad to navigate", with the only challenge being to tell the traversable parts from the non-traversable ones. So Rebirth is at least being consistent with the original in that respect, but then it tacks on all of these quasi-open-world elements that make you think it's going to be a BOTW or Skyrim-like affair.

The point isn't that telegraphing navigable paths is bad. It's the jarring contrast between the telegraphing and the game's overall aesthetic. Accessibility is a valid argument, of course, but that can be a UI toggle, or like in the Assassin's Creed or Uncharted games you can press a key and activate "navigate-o-vision" or something.

Edited by Fighteer on May 13th 2024 at 11:17:17 AM

Stellar Blade | Fully Ramblomatic

Ah yes, the eternal debate about which is more immoral: objectifying women or censoring art that objectifies women. At least Stellar Blade has the excuse that everyone's in custom-made robot bodies, so their tits and bums can be as big as the imagination (and physics) allows.

Anyway, the game's not about that. It's about stock sci-fi anime post-apocalypse #3: the Earth is fucked by monsters and our most effective weapon against them is young women with no personality, wearing revealing outfits while wielding surprisingly advanced technology. The protagonist of this one is named Eve, in case you missed the symbolism.

Is there anything Yahtzee likes about the game, or is he just getting sniffy about anime tropes again? Well, the combat's functional: the light attack/heavy attack/dodge/block calypso. He likes that you can traverse almost anywhere, since there are no invisible walls.

But then all the secret areas contain crafting materials for more outfits and... oh, right. We're back to playing dress-up with the main character.

For the record, I don't mind playing dress-ups. I've diligently collected cosmetics in all the games that offer them. But the game needs to be more than a paste-bland excuse for it to capture my attention.

Edited by Fighteer on May 15th 2024 at 12:49:44 PM

This gets more scathing when you remember his review of NieR:A was pretty critical of the writing for that game, too.

You say that like playing dress up is a bad thing.

Not at all. I love playing around with outfits in games that offer the option. I just need the game itself to be interesting to justify spending the time there.