Edit: I wish I'd addressed this in the video, but I do not believe that "making yellow paint an option in the menu you can turn off" is a true solution. Maybe in some cases. But the fact of the matter is, devs put the yellow paint there for a reason. Because there's a failure of player guidance in playtesting. If you just turn it off, the issue still remains. You still have a part of the game with poor visual guidance. And we aren't asking for zero guidance. We're asking for smart artistic guidance that fits the game. If you just turn off yellow paint in SOME of these games, some sections could be incredibly tedious to deal with and we don't want that either. Optional paint is not a true solution. We need the signposting to be better. First video of 2025! What are you excited about this year? Let's keep it positive. Support me on Patreon: patreon.com/underthemayo Mayo merch here! teespring.com/stores/underthemayo TH-cam Memberships to my channel now available, click the "Join" button. Follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv/underthemayo
So many games do the whole squeezing through tight corridor or bending over to pass through cave or something so much. You should look at how there is in disc 1 of the ff7 remake
I really like the point about how Remake 2's use of yellow paint felt more diagetic to the overall art design of the game that uses a lot of yellow. Whereas in Remake 4 the yellow paint all over the castle and village is extremely out of place and ridiculous. I like to joke that in Remake 4 the CIA must have sent in a covert ops paint team before Leon shows up.
I have an alternate fan theory: When Ashley Graham was abducted, her father originally hired the Green Lantern Corps to go and rescue her. But Krauser knew this was coming and suggested that Saddler spill yellow paint on every critical point of progress or container of valuables. As a result, every rescue attempt by the Green Lanterns was utterly thwarted, and Leon was sent in as Plan B.
in the original the crates were just as contrasting as the yellow paint, the difference being you can't achieve that contrast with ultra realistic graphics without that paint lol
Resident evil 4 og had a great way of letting you know that boxes were breakable and had loot inside without anything, even standing out. In the first 10 minutes, you kill the dude in the house, go outside, run into the shack with the typewriter, and in there are two boxes. One is broken, the other isn't. It lets you know that they are breakable.
I’m playing resident evil 1 the controls are awful and I don’t know where anything is. There used to be companion guides for a lot of games. I rather look at paint than read a guide.
It's so easy to make this an option you can toggle off and on. Reminds me of characters giving you the solutions to puzzles after 5 seconds instead of letting you play the damn game
unless the games are designed around those hand holding features like yellow paint and quest markers - suddenly turning them off might not be a great idea... unless devs put it there to shut down some people from complains. "If you don't like it then turn it off, I don't care that game is unplayable without them git gut blahblahblah".
thats my only problem with it, the fact that it ain't optional, make it standard and give it a option to turn it off like many other features have, when i play a new game first thing i do is to go to the setting anyway and turn off every feature i don't like such the enemy sense (allows you to see them through walls), slow down time when detected, auto reload, auto aim etc, this should be one more.
Higher fidelity graphics also clutters the screen making it hard to see what the player is meant to interact with or not. Back then all you'd have are textures and the one obvious model to interact with, or the intractable object would kind of pop out of the game world unnaturally. Now it all blends together.
its not as easy as you think game design and level design is important, if the game is designed with this stuff on turning it off will have a bad level design.
im pro-yellow paint as an (optional) accessibility feature; I have very poor eyes and my screen is small; modern games in general with their hyper realistic shading make discerning important objects very hard
This is completely fine, fantastic even as long as it's done correctly. What I mean is that the game has to be designed FIRST without the paint in mind so that the game functions as intended without the paint. Adding on extra visual help as an accessability feature does no harm and probably helps a lot of people.
Yeah, in the age of every new game having thousands of accessibility features it would be cool to turn off and on stuff like that. I guess that's probably a big reason they have yellow paint on stuff like that so even gamers with poor eye sight can have a smooth experience too. It would just be cool if people who don't want it could turn it off.
That RE4R mod to replace the paint with the insignia is so good both visually and creatively, but really RE4R really doesn't need an indication because it is infamous for having breakable barrels and items. Besides even now to me the barrels look a little different and all this can be fixed by having the same prompt the original RE4 had where the boxes and barrels before the village had the "I can break this" message, letting players know you can break these boxes or barrels.
Yeah that is cool, it's way less immersion breaking. I use the mod myself but I prefer to remove it completely, the insignia/blood is a good option though and it feels like the devs should have thought of something similar. The whole splash yellow paint everywhere is just lazy game design imo.
To be fair, Remake4 isn't for Resident Evil fans, it is for RE Engine fans. Many casual new players don't have the knowledge of classic Resident Evil design. Yellow Paint is needed for the uber casuals they are trying to draw in.
@@mizark3 I don't know, the marketing was focusing on the fans of the original constantly showing things that were similar and saying that there were changes to it and even old players or rather the players who played the original will have also new surprises. Plus some fans of the OG did want it to remade, honestly the graphics you know the term, I personally was in the bunch that believed the original needed no remake because I still to this day play the original RE4, it is my most replayed game sitting at 65+ playthroughs, it is just that good, when I played the game originally I naturally missed stuff but later I started finding things, and now I know the location of every item in the game, I have modded it, I have played using different weapons and challenges all in all I have played way more than the remake....and all this was is just the PS2 and PC numbers, I still want to play the VR version but Meta Quest not a huge fan. Although I agree with the whole yellow paint being needed for the uber casuals and being there for them. I believe the game was made for both types of players in mind just the greater UI and UX was more oriented to new players. Either way it is bad design and the original was like 10x more creative in 4 different ways.
@@mizark3 *"To be fair, Remake4 isn't for Resident Evil fans, it is for RE Engine fans"* Don't be pretentious. The original RE4 was the easiest game in the series until Village was released. The Remake was a hell of a lot more challenging, regardless of the yellow paint.
10:10 - 100% agreement with this one. Yellow paint is not the problem, but the inorganic application of it is immersion breaking and insulting. This is more egregious when older games already nailed it perfectly and became integrated with its environment. And yes, I did not notice it in Resident Evil 2 remake since how it used yellow is the same as how it was used in real life.
Except the problem is that in those older games, they were able to make it stand out because the graphics were different for interactive items. (It's honestly kind of like how in older animation, you could tell what was just drawn as a background and what is drawn to be moved or interacted. Nowadays, you can't.)
@@keelanbarron928 "Nowadays, you can't." Bro, people don't need yellow paint splashed all over a ladder to know it's a ladder, let alone because 'graphics too good' or whatever. If anything, the graphics being more realistic should make it _more_ obvious what you're looking at.
@@SolidSnake240 That's a true statement, but imo at some point a line must be drawn, because trying to accommodate the worst termite-brain folk ruins the experience for everyone else. I know a developer who was genuinely considering completely getting rid of the difficulty menu you saw before starting a new game, because too many morons didn't READ THE DESCRIPTION IN BIG PLAIN TEXT describing each difficulty option when highlighted. That's the end result of going to extremes trying to accommodate those kinds. I had to convince him not to do that because that completely ruins the game for everybody else who has eyes.
Exactly, it's one thing if it's a collectable or a special interactable like a little lock but if it's something as noticeable as a ladder then I think people will see it.
Funny thing about the mod you mentioned for RE4Make: even without the yellow paint, the boxes and barrels already have this bluish green off-color to them that makes it obvious that they contain goodies. I really don't know why they needed to add yellow paint on top of that.
this is the golden chance for a dev to try and do a "paint the way for the hero" type game where you are the one putting the yellow paint in the world could be really funny if done well imo
The modern examples of yellow painting look like someone dumping a whole bottle of salt into your meal and when you complain about how they're a bad cook they reply "what, are you saying food shouldn't be seasoned?"
It's kinda more like if a resturant defaulted to cooking all steaks well done, because the last ten customers they had complained about their food not being cooked when it came out pink. We know that's dumb, and the chef does too, but if it stops the complaints..
I think a big thing, is back then the yellow paint was a nice reprieve from a gigantic arrow pointing at your objective or those obnoxious "TASK UPDATED: GO TAKE THAT KEY YOU FOUND AND USE IT IN THE WEST WING DOOR" hand-holdey stuff.
The one I don't see getting talked about too much is constant ear chatter. I'm so glad we are (mostly) done with that. The worst one I recall was pretty recent. In MW2 Remake, there's a part where the mission brief lady interrupts your reconnoiter to tell you she's a lesbian, but also to "seek cover and avoid gunfire. Proceed straight ahead towards the treeline." Like lady, I am part of the most elite fighting force in the world of this game, you don't think I thought of that?
@@12ealDealOfficial Oh god yeah, that is maddening. Mega Man X5 was horrid for that, where they kept pausing the game to have mission control give you info, but most of it was common sense like "push up to climb a ladder". Like yeah, no kidding. That stuff can so be so much better done with context clues, especially in 3D titles where they can angle the camera: angle the camera a touch so it frames the treeline to the left and the gunfire to the right, and you've clearly conveyed the options are run for cover or run toward the gunfire, and common sense will dictate the best option for survival.
While I agree that the yellow paint is overused, let's not pretend that older games did it in a non immersive breaking way when a lot of them literally used to make items glow or have a shiny lens flare effect to indicate intractable objects (including the original RE4). As for the white cloth in SH2R, I think it kind of fits the world a bit, especially with the damp aesthetic the game has.
If immersion is the end all be all goal then perhaps it can create the opposite problem of this problem in which there is almost no indication in progression or what to do that players just get lost. People like using the OG Doom games as an example but the more recent one that has this is the System Shock remake in which the environment looks identical to the other that some form of signage and indicators are required. Also in terms of immersion, it sometimes depends on what game you're playing. Sometimes devs or at least creative ones use audio cues instead of visuals to know what kind of progress they are making and what not. And also as mentioned it depends on the setting, like SH2R using white drapes instead.
@@rhyswhittington8759 No, but that doesn't mean older games didn't also have this concept. The original FF7 from 1997 had its own type of yellow paint to guide players. It's not a new concept. It's existed for a long time.
Given how widespread the criticism is, I don’t know why there isn’t an “accessibility” toggle that lets the player decide whether to have the paint on or off, or choose where it’s used (level guidance or breakable objects).
It's only a partial solution though because some of these things do need a signal. I don't think it's paint vs no paint. We need to have better signals. Sound cues, contrast, lighting, etc.
@ yes, the caveat is that devs would have to actually do more thoughtful design for those that turn it off, but that requires more effort than just slapping paint on stuff.
If they did that it would be used as an excuse to have zero player guidance outside of the optional paint. It's like when people used to complain about quest markers in RPGs, and they let you turn them off but still didn't have NPCs actually telling you where to go like there were in games without quest markers.
Yellow metal ladders don't bother me because those exist in the real world. But when they also splash copious amounts of yellow paint on the walls around the ladder, that is immersion breaking.
A metal yellow stair makes sense because many industrial components are standarized in yellow. But there is big difference between objects that are usually yellow IRL and objects that have paint splashed on it like some clunsy worker dropped a paint bucket.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer Yeah if the ledges looked worn down from use or marked with chalk by previous climbers to show safe climbing points it would be a far more natural way to get our attention while the yellow stands out in a bad way
To me I feel like that should be an accessibility option if anything. For it to feel organic to the world is one thing, for it to be plastered everywhere and trying to be so-called organic is another thing. It really should be like a highlight option in the settings and help those who don't know where to go without having to look up a guide.
16:45 not to defend the game, as I think the blood trail should have been sufficient enough to guide us there, but it actually made me think about how interacting with the background was actually part of the experience back when we used to play survival horror 20 years ago. What I mean is when you play an old Silent Hill or Resident Evil games, and you try to interact with something in the background, the games, more often than not, delivered some text describing the thing we were looking at. It was a sort of clever way to incentivise us to keep interacting with elements of the background, which led us to eventually finding items, memos and stuff. Nowadays, games don't encourage us to interact with the background, as you're just supposed to plainly understand what you see, or the character will just talk to himself to make sure you noticed what the dev wanted you to notice, which might lead some players to not even bother trying to do it unless there is a prompt showing up. I don't know what that thought is worth though, but I felt like sharing 🤷♂
@@underthemayo Me too mate. I'm still dreaming about that idea you suggested of having new "old school type" Resident Evil games with fixed camera angles and painted backgrounds being made in parallel to "classic" new opuses. I know it's not happening anytime soon but man do I wish it would
@@underthemayomaybe we should somewhat get rid of button prompts after having shown the player the controls? Especially if you make it somewhat obvious what may be interacted with.
Aren't they supposed to learn how to use coloring in a smart way that not only does it not break immersion, but it visually complements the areas and fits the atmosphere?
@@SolonGaming like when you notice something's off on that wall and found out it's a secret level or a hidden room? Been a while since I've seen those
@@SolonGaming if those devs were given more than 2 days to work on shit then there probally would be but most of the time yellow paint is only added when the devs run out of time to try other sign posting methods
God forbid players actually get immersed in the game and have to actually look and think. We live in a world where all that matters is LOOK AT THE GRAPHICS! and if a game journalists can just have an interactive cutscene experience
All the more reason having good interactions in a game is important, so when people do try to figure it out for themselves, they get positive feedback, even if it doesn't direct them to the goal right now. If you got no feedback, you wouldn't think to try it again (unless you get a pop-up telling you that you can do it now).
@muizzsiddique I just finished my first playthrough on the silent hill 2 (PS2), and I was impressed at how well made the map system is. It marks off stuff that is either locked off or previously explored which only helps to make for a very user friendly experience. This is something many modern games lack for some reason (I just quickly remembered that TLOU 2 had that feature as well lol, great game that was)
Excess detail and focus on realism is the real problem. I dont think that we ever shiudlve went as far away from late PS3 era games detail wise for more realistic games. Still with distinct style. Now its all hyoerrealistic samey soup, only difference if its grimey and dark or painfully vibrant. Texturing style and clear image got lost in the process, same as sensible levels of performance and optimization.
Another item of note is the HL2 supply crates. Sure, they've got a yellow sticker on them. But looking at the other textures, you can see a serial number, text reading "supply", and various other indicators that this is a manufactured product in the context of this post-Seven Hour War world. Also, supply crates were always of a specific size and shape.
Replaying HL2 recently, I noticed Valve's tasteful use of light to guide the player. It is a nice indicator of "lived-in places" where most of the world feel empty and hostile. Puzzles and Progression are an area where Valve really tries to make it easy for you (see Ravenholm electric fence lever commentary node) but it never tries to outright hand it to you. Though lack of backtracking probably alleviated a lot of issues.
But Valve’s developers are game dev gods and they love their games, they love what they do 🤷🏼♂️ well at least back then they did. One thing I know for sure is that every light in HL games has been carefully placed, every light does something. As video game lighting Artist I’m fascinated by what valve did with lighting in HL and Portal games.
Half-Life 2 is fairly consistent in how it presents objects; usually if you see wood planks on a window, you can break them. If you see wood boxes, you can break them. The specific ammo/HEV charge crates have distinct logos on them, so you recognise them. I can't remember it ever putting a bunch of unbreakable wooden boxes in front of you, I did replay it recently too. Consistency is key
back in my days👴 we used to have a shiny blinking thingy in RE games for key items and such.. or a red barrel that can go 💥, great video as always mayo, keep up the good work 😊
Plus, the original just put a note on the first crate that told you to smash 'em. Once you know to do that, you won't need to be reminded afterward, you'll just naturally be on the lookout for any barrels or crates to smash for the rest of the playthrough.
To be honest, having a little arrow floating above an interactable object is much less immersion breaking than having literally every interactable thing stained with yellow paint smears. The arrow is non-diegetic. We can tune it out as not actually existing within the game's world. Just like the UI. We can't do that with paint smears, because they ARE diegetic. So by trying to be more immersive, they ironically do the opposite.
I think yellow paint is not just boring, but is bad game design, a level shouldnt have to tell you where to go. The level should have flow the play can follow. In HL2, the ravenholm chapter, there are lots of complicated areas to get lost in, they dont have giant go here signs, but you find your way though with the level design alone.
Half the problem is that modern game devs don't bloody well play games anymore. They have no passion for the medium or real knowledge of what makes a great game, so we get spoon-fed, brain-dead slop to cater to folk who've never picked up a controller before.
@@dragonmage7980 that's patently false, I didn't stop playing games when I became a developer, actually it made me go back and pick up classics I missed to learn from them. All the developers I know are huge nerds. Development is hard, stressful, unstable and pays like shit compared to adjacent fields. You get paid way more working in like finance or film, instead of games. You have to be passionate about them to get in. A huge part of the problem is audience. Games used to be more niche. Now they're not. Now you need to sell to _everyone_ to break even. As the audience gets wider, you have to accomodate people who actually probably have never picked up a controller before. In this climate right now, even successful games lead to studio closures, so no-one is digging their heels in and refusing to accomodate the most unattentive gamers. If they're buying the game, you don't want them refunding it straight away because they got lost. Yellow paint is absolutely an emergency fix though, imo. I think the problem really is inconsistency and unclear game rules. If you can only break _some_ wooden boxes you're confusing the player. Half-Life is a great example, wooden boxes are breakable, without fail. Metal boxes? Can't break them. They don't use static wooden boxes as decorations. Boom, clear game rules.
the yellow on the re4r barrels was helpful because the entire village is brown and some could be easy to miss for me. I do wish it was less obnoxious. At least in the castle they ditched that and just used vases for more immersion but yeah
Shoutout to Ghost of Tsushima's navigation system. Felt like I could actually look at the gorgeous world they crafted instead of staring at a minimap or a waypoint.
i always liked dead space for this the most, doesnt hold your hand with exploration but if you ever DO need to find your way wave point gives you a hint
Honestly I don't want RE to be like SH2 Remake where the only times I knew what to do were because of the map or the white invisible cloth thats almost barely visible in the white fog
I like it that way better, because then you need to open up your eyes and pay attention to get the hint. with yellow paint I can be half asleep and the yellow paint will play the game for me no matter what.
The ladder thing is the most egregious. I don't know about everybody else, but if I see a ladder ANYWHERE in a game, I'm definitely trying to see if I can climb it
i might be dumb. I never noticed the yellow paint everywhere until Resident Evil 4 Remake. I must have just tuned it out as unnecessary details and never even noticed it. I found my way around without it. Knowing now will make going back and playing it hard.
It's not dumb. You just chose subconsciously to avoid making a big deal out of it. While yes, it does show ineptitude in how to properly convey the environment without obvious markers, if you avoided making a big deal out of it, that's ok.
What's strange to me is the SH2 remake will use the white cloth to mark a path, but then they'll stick other white cloth around, I guess to make the guidance white cloth not stick out like a sore thumb. But that leaves you with a bunch of white cloth, so you have to look around to determine which white cloth is the guidance marker. Which seems to defeat the entire purpose of having the white cloth in the first place.
Weird to paint ladders and levers yellow because whenever I see one I automatically try to interact with it. If there's a ladder, there's a place to go.
I forget what dev said this, but the old saying was light leads the way. There has pretty much always been ways to guide the players, but the yellow being a universal go-to is agrivating.
Like you said... there are so many different ways to condition players. For example, a few years back I was making an FPS game somewhat similar to doom. One of the puzzles required players to jump on a chandelier, but when I gave it to a couple play testers, they didn't know they could jump on chandeliers. They would walk around the area for 5 min looking for the solution, and they didn't realize chandelier's were more than decorations. Eventually I had to give up and tell them they can jump on the chandelier. After those two playtests, I decided to put health pick-ups on that one chandelier they were supposed to stand on. BOOM. instantly, my next play testers jumped on the chandeliers without even thinking and it was no longer an issue. Didn't need to put more indicators on chandeliers anymore because now the player's mind has adjusted to "chandelier's are not just decorations". So later in the level when chandeliers came up, it was no longer an issue.
I think that blanket assuming/concluding homogenization is bad is...well, Bad. There are some things where homogenization is fine and harmless, and others where it is absolutely bad. To pose a few examples. Red barrels are explosive. Health bars are red or more rarely green. Mana bars are blue. Rarity is grey-white-green-blue-purple-orange-yellow. Things like these are the 'Language' of video games, They inform the player and allow the player to immediately understand what is what. If you go into a new game, and you see a red barrel, You know it's probably going to explode. You know when you look at your UI and see a red bar, it's most likely your health. The thing is, though, That there is very little to be gained from changing these things; And these things do not meaningfully harm the development process... IF you have a rarity system, Arbitrarily changing the rarity colors to purple-grey-orange-white-yellow-blue serves literally no purpose except to confuse the player; There is no statement to be made, no untold depths to explore. Likewise, If you have a health bar, arbitrarily making it white is again, only going to confuse players. If you make explosive barrels a different color, Players will most likely blow themselves up once, decide the dev is a damn fool, and then never shoot or approach ANY barrel again for the rest of the playthrough. There's next to nothing to gain from mucking about with this 'Language' that video games use to communicate aspects of itself to us. And a lot to lose in player enjoyment and immersion. On the other hand, There are things where homogenization is bad. Where it stifles innovation, where it stifles creativity. This is the category in which things like the yellow paint reside. When you use yellow paint to show the path forward, You stop being creative. You stop thinking of multiple paths, You stop thinking the player may consider any other path- After all, you painted the path forward, Why would they? This is the category where over-the-shoulder cameras in horror games go... There's so much to explore from first person, from overhead, from fixed camera angles, from an isometric view. This is the cover shooter. This is the block-dodge-parry dark souls system. It stifles creativity and innovation because once that decision is made, you stop thinking of anything new. These are, to use a different word... Crutches. They're the safe decision. People like it, so just replicate it. It's the easy way out... The easy way to please investors and shareholders This kind of homogenization is INCREDIBLY bad for the health of the video game industry. This kind of homogenization is the one that players mock and are so frustrated with.
Personally my biggest issue with yellow is that it blends orange and green together and that's just unnatural. The colors should never mix like that and I'm pretty sure Mayo will have my back on this one.
one of my favorite moments from watching 'yellow paint' discourse on twitter was when someone asked how you were intended to find access point for the DLC in Dark Souls and someone replied with a picture of the specific crystal golem you needed to kill captioned 'they used yellow paint' since this golem was yellow instead of blue like most other golems in the game
The sad thing is I just played Super Mario Odyssey and it didn't do what these games are doing. For the little time I played it, it didn't treat me like I'm dumb, and this is a kids game. Let that sink in.
It's funny because Breath of the Wild was the same. That game just let you go nuts. Even back in Wind Waker, Nintendo would stop you dead in your tracks to literally show you puzzle solutions before you even got a chance to think. Ironic that Nintendo has gone on to let player choice matter, and every other developer moved into that goo goo gaga shit.
Are you surprised? People have become actively dumber every generation. Especially in this one. With the rise of social media apps like TikTok, the dumbification is very blatant. So it's not a shocker that people nowadays have the attention span of a toddler.
The thing is though, most Nintendo games don't throw you straight into the deep end. They LOOK as if they do but they don't. They ease a player in before dumping all the more complicated stuff ont you. The sign posting they need to do is minimal, but they still do lead you around with obvious points of interest to guide you around. Like BOTW does this by making the most important locations on your map HUGE areas that stick out like Zoras domain and the Goron mountains. Even the Sheika Towers are sign posted - they are on higher ground than everything else and typically in the open so you can see them from any direction. But unless you're really paying attention or care that these things are obvious you aren't going to really notice
Fixed camera was the guide for a player. Now that we get control of it, needed different means. They could have used other unique ways to guide instead of a repeating pattern.
A good example of a feature that started out reasonable and then became flanderized. The implementation in RE2R makes sense for the most part, with yellow tape in industrial areas naturally marked by safety features. RE4R went unga-bunga with it, splashing it all around Spanish villages and castles.
I wouldn't say that's perfect. It's almost like I am being lied to. I am not discovering things. I am finding what they painted and are lead to believe that I found it without aid. Am I being manipulated or is this good game design?
I made a Resident Evil mod (Spencer Mansion Incident) for a game called 7 Days to Die. In an older version of the mod, there were some cabinets the player had to break so they could get a key item hidden behind it. The cabinets in question were next to other cabinets that looked normal, while I had the "destroy me" cabinets (1)slightly cracked, (2)opened, (3)flipped on their side, and (4)another colour. And yet somehow, so many people managed to overlook these differences I made to let the player know "hey, you might want to destroy this". facepalm In the current version, the colour is the same as the other cabinets and many more people notice it now!
i guess many people just thought it was just a broken cabinet. if you had light or something shining through or something. on the wall then perhaps. i have not really played that game, but if it´s a common occurrence, that things look that way or similar it will just blend in. in the new version i guess it´s just something with that, which looks more of for some reason. or that the original, just was to much t hat people just don´t think it´s something to be destroyed.
@@basseman4239 I can assure you, it is painfully obvious. The room in question has about 10 cabinets, 8 are in perfect condition, and the 2 needed to break are in the condition I mentioned above. I'd show a screenshot if I could
@@FranticDan yeah, thats the thing. it could be that it´s just way too obvious. that people don´t really think it´s something about it. maybe people just saw it like some prop as you wrote yourself. people found it easier when it wasn´t.
11:42 Just to be fair, I think having an annoying gnome pointing out every little detail about your surroundings might be fun for a bit… provided that you could attack the gnome, haha
3 got remade?! Ohh wait you're talking about that new game which isn't even dlc length. The fact that this is some peoples first intro to nemesis is a disgrace. Absolutely no buildup just hold up on joystick. Thats modern capcom for ya. Oh and that graffiti shows how Little they think of their fan's intelligence. 3 Revision is like 4 little alley ways how you getting lost in that god i hate 3 revised its so disrespectful
The yellow paint is why I can't live without the blood colour mod in re4r. A simple change from yellow to blood red on crates and painted walls feels better.
A related trend I noticed in the segment where you displayed a screenshot of devs responding to this complaint: devs using Redditor speak to talk down to the people who buy their games. "tell me you're [X] without telling me [X]" and so on.
It's crazy how well the yellow paint was done in RE2r. When I recently replayed it, I didn't even notice it once. In RE4r tho, it's so obnoxiously slapped everywhere to the point of being insulting lmao
More people NEED to see this. You sincerely kept me drawn in and I've noticed this but never voiced it. I would sincerely love this to stop! I want to explore! I'm tired of hearing a campaign takes 12 hours to complete (ie SH2 Remake) when I spent 22 hours because I turned off a lot of the indicators and tutorial tips! I like to explore and wanted it to feel authentic. Some modernization is nice. I like that SH2 gave us the option to take some of these indicators off. Remember the backlash from the trailer when you had to press X to get an enemy off you? Mic Drop with this video. Thank you!
It's not that developers don't know how to do anything else it's that people who may have never consumed media outside of tiktok are a large (potential) consumer base that need to be catered to for the sake of maximizing profits when it comes to high budget releases. Yellow paint is impossible to miss, it's the easiest solution that takes 0 effort or time to implement or think about, it's a very easy panic solution when a level playtests badly with the testers who don't play video games often, and thus get lost because they forget that their character can jump or break items etc.
@@DappisI read all of what you said. While that explains why game developers use yellow paint so much, it's not really a good justification for the inappropriate use of yellow paint. We can use signposting to create clarity while still retaining creativity and immersion.
i feel like games just don't take risks, and I don't mean that they don't try new mechanics or designs, it's just that they act as if they can't afford losing your attention, they don't want to risk you losing interest in the game, they have to keep you engaged, so they put yellow paint so you never have to stop and think where to go or what to do
The problem I've had is when the games claim they have obvious art direction (like ~4:00), but they show the pliers without an indicator (even when adjacent), with every other slot filled with other tools equally brightly colored. I just recently played Star Wars Jedi Survivor, and I felt like I had to play with High-Contrast mode on during all non-combat moments. The problem is a wall looks wall-runnable, or climbable, or interactable then isn't. You have these tools, but the game refuses to let you use them all the time, only when pre-approved. I had to use High-Contrast mode to translate every time the devs said "Ok you can climb this part, but not 3ft to the left of it despite looking identical". All too often moss was just moss, not a climbing point, then the moss adjacent to it was climbable. Just silly. When you play Immersive Sims like Dishonored, you can use all the navigation tools all the time. If a ledge isn't climbable, it's because you glitched outside the map and hit an invisible wall (and even then they *still* might let you grab on just to fall). When the games are made more 'cinematic', the times where you can use universal tools becomes artificially limited. Why can I parry scythe attack 1, but have to dodge prompt scythe attack 2, especially when they have shown I can parry a friggin' chainsaw? I should be able to parry every single attack at that point. Even with older games, items 'pop'. You can see they don't fit the drab background. OG4 barrels fit that perfectly as shown. (Oof, pre-typing comment lol. It is discussed at ~8:00). Ok yeah everything after this point is perfectly explained.
i find that a very good example of how to guide a player is in Amnesia: the Bunker. there is no yellow paint, the only red paint you find is the occasional blood smear leading to a rat infested corpse. you get a note telling you the 2 items you need to get the hell out, and you're dropped into the map with the monster with no training wheels. a posted sign from the soldiers says to keep the lights on at all costs on a bulletin next to a generator. you arent given a pause screen with a tutorial saying "hey! it becomes less aggressive in the light! use this button to turn it on!" it just tells you to keep it on and watch the clock. you can walk away without turning it on and the only consequences are the natural ones, and it remains this way throughout the entire game. guidance is offered by metal glistening against the light if the lights are on, and even then its a rare occurence. would love a review of that game if you haven't taken a look at it already.
"Since the backgrounds were 2D rendered paintings any collectible item like ammo, health or puzzle items naturally stood out because of them being 3D rendered models. They didn't logically mix with the world so you knew you could pick them up." It should be mentioned that the OG Resi games are designed to be played on CRT TVs. A CRT display would actually blend both 2D images and (static) 3D models due to the way the device works, so the visual separation actually comes from PC emulators which usually avoid replicating older display artifacts like scanlines and blurring in favor of performance. ☝🤓
Give the Separate Ways DLC for RE4R some credit. Luis' directions in the Waterway were painted on with RED paint. I saw that as a self-aware dig by the developers along with the jokes on how Ada was supposed to proceed there.
It would be better if it was a normally painted ladder instead of the splatter technique. They just need it to be a colour so the ladder doesn’t blend into the wall (I have bad memories of Zelda Twilight Princess having a blue ladder against a blue wall I missed for half an hour when a black or grey or brown ladder woudla been noticed and natural )
I still think the best item/breakable object guidance is the character visually looking in the direction of it, although of course this doesn't work (I think) on FPS games
I think its bc in games set in modern cities or industrial/mechanical settings yellow makes sense bc it serves a utilitarian function, plus it was used somewhat sparingly so it really popped. But like in re4 remake, why would a rural village or castle have yellow paint all over the place? Or in God of War where they had the yellow runes all over the progression path and had to toss in "Faey laid out the path long ago for us" line. Theres just places it doesnt belong bc its jarring
I remember when they used white to mark environmental interactions instead of yellow. Uncharted 4 and Horizon Zero Dawn made good use of it for climbing. Pretty sure every other game uses yellow though. If I remember correctly, even Infamous: Second Son uses yellow for some linear sections where climbing is involved, but it mostly separates mobility with different colors based on what power you need to use them (red for smoke pipes, purple for neon rushing, blue for video signal boosts and so on). I personally don’t think the yellow paint thing is a huge deal, other than that it can make some games feel a bit more like a video game than an actual narrative experience, but I can’t deny it would be nice for devs to find a better way to signpost things that needed it. FFVII Rebirth actually had a problem at one point by not properly signposting a climbing spot and leaving players in a linear sections stuck, thinking their game was soft locked and had to change it, so it makes sense why some devs are a little overhanded on it, because gamers on average have actually gotten dummer as new players enter the medium, and older players leave.
I guess there's just a line between it being helpful and treating the player as regarded children. It's like they think that if the player is ever lost on what to do in an 18+ game even once, then it's a game design failure and the end of the world.
Still Wakes The Deep also did the yellow paint thing really well, because it was an industrial setting where it made SENSE for things to be marked with yellow paint. i think the silent hill 2 remake also did a similar thing really well, where they use white cloth to mark interactable windows or crawlspaces, which is much more subtle and fits the theme. edit: btw not gonna finish the video so idk if you already mentioned these
Coming back from modern games to Resident Evil 2004 remake is so different, 0 handholding, I was caught off guard , couldnt believe I had to use my brain
Speaking of letting gamers figure stuff out for themselves, God of War 2018 does have a great moment where you can find a chest behind you when you open something and you have to go out of your way for it, Atreus asks "how did you know that was there?!" Kratos goes "experience" and im like ha thats actually some clever meta humor
In defense of the Silent Hill 2 Remake's white cloth however, the whole white cloth thing IS actually thematic to the story atleast the one that looks like hospital drapes and at some point in the story it's everywhere. I do understand like strips of cloth being somewhere that's pretty distracting though.
I think white cloth in SH2 is not nearly as bad. It can be justified, as you said. But i'd still rather have something else, and I fear it's just gonna be "the new thing" we see everywhere.
I have always loved seeing how games use lighting and contrast to lead players through the world. It’s often subtle at first glance, but it still instinctively draws you to the right place. So the growing use of these glaring colourful markers is really disappointing to me. It’s showing a trend towards lazier environment design. If you need bright yellow caution paint to tell the player where to go, you need to rethink the environment, lighting and level design. So it’s so much easier for them to just use the paint as a lazy get out of jail free card…
From someone who stoped playing since high school and just bought a PS4 last year I can tell, I recently played RE2 and 4 remake and I agree with some points. I didn't even noticed the yellow on RE2, except for the wood but I noticed it on RE4 and it feels weird, like it does not belong there and make the game too gamy at times and brakes immersion. I would love an option in games to turn that off and leave it to a more casual audience since beleace it or not it is helpful for those not too familiar with the gaming language. We have played games all our life's and we sometime forget how hard it is to grab a controller even. Dev know they can do these things but at the end ate creative decisions that won't change because they work, and if more people get to finish the game better for them. I hope they find more ways to teach the player the visual language of their games, it is obvious in some games. Amazing video dude!!!
yea, it makes way more sense to see industrial yellow in a police station or parking garage than it does a castle or a village that is stuck in the 1940s
lol I never noticed the yellow stuff before I just played the games But now that I know it bugs me Not much but a bit What would look cool and fit the environment for re4 is putting blood on interactive windows and forward paths and keep barrels brown
In RE4 Separate Ways, they took it way too far. I kept trying to imagine how this yellow paint got there in-universe. Did Saddler mess up and the ganados misinterpreted his orders as "draw yellow crosses on all barrels and boxes you can find"? Did they then run around with yellow paint buckets, and thanks to how uncoordinated they are, they just spilled it while climbing ladders? And what happened here? Did they fall over and spill the entire bucket? 6:44
I'd take yellow paint over the "sense" style mechanics which also was pretty wide spread at one point. At least you can see the world instead of always looking through a monochrome wireframe-esque filter.
Valve used other means for guidance, only closest analogue to obvious yellow would be lambda locator caches in Half life 2, and these make sense in universe as supplies left by rebels vs just plastering random rockfaces with yellow paint to "climb here", in that aspect valve never done this in such way. Instead general art and map design, with some light sources rarely used as more overt guidance.
95% of players don't give a F about the yellow paint. The yellow paint also isn't a dealbreaker for those who notice it. If a game is good, a gamer would still play it regardless of the use of yellow.
@@johnbulanadi6204 But it's annoying. You tell me that a multibillion $ company cant be bothered to give an option to disable it? How hard can it be? They're just stubborn fucks at this point.
The definitive argument against obnoxiously signposting the player. This design choice creates the feeling of 'going through the motions' in games you've just started to play. Well done and thank you.
I get lost without the yellow paint. Yes, in every game i get stuck in some one particular way because i did not see the doorway, like in HL office chapter
Yellow paint is just a big excuse for bad art direction. Of course developers will defend this concept, it's easy and cheap. And allow the dumber audience to play any game. It's a sad trend.
Remember Alien Isolation? That game has 0 yellow paint, but every correct way to go is always marked with light shining on it, doors and crates marked with glowing green lights, and every interactive object or consumable literally glows in the dark. It's so good, it's guiding but visually consistent. There's this one streamer I always watch who played it recently, and I love her to bits, but she SO often was completely lost, not knowing where to go and what to do. I'm afraid it's too late, the damage is done, if something is not clearly highlighted by bright contrasting color, it doesn't register.
As a gamer, I would much rather get lost and explore the world you created, than having my hand held through a guided experience with a bright color splattered around like car keys dangling in front of me showing me where I need to go.
Be careful what you wish for in that regard because we will have a problem similar to first Zelda or even Castlevania II where no one knows where to go unless they have Nintendo power
Alan Wake constantly uses yellow paint as well... Among other games, Uncharted makes all of this work by using actual objects colored brightly (often yellow) in order to lead the player along without breaking immersion.
Funnily enough, Alan Wake also makes sure to say the yellow paint is a magic thing that people touched by darkness can see. Secondly, it makes sure the paint is only visible when you flash a light on it. And finally, Alan Wake DOES let you meet the nutjob who sprayed the yellow paint everywhere. Alan Wake has a in-world reason for its yellow paint.
@@robertkovarna8294 Technically so does Resident Evil 4 and 8, in Heisenberg's repeated use of yellow tape and paint. Both series have a lore reason, but neither makes it work in a way that doesn't break immersion.
@@kaelion7133 I think in Alan Wake's case(talking about 1. I don't know how 2 uses it), it also works because of the way that when you shine lights onto signs at night, they look really bright. And so when you're aiming your light all around and you manage to hear that scuba breathing and find some yellow paint, it sticks out just like a street sign in the night does. And Alan Wake takes place at night.
This was actually the first step of "modern audiencing" the gaming industry. I have a friend who started playing games less than 2 years ago. And she just CANT see things that are not highlighted in games. If the game wont have toxic yellow ledge, she wont ever notice it and wont be able to progress. If the item does not have a HUD marker on it, she wont notice it. If the game wont straight up TELL her what to do, she wont do it. This is how "modern audience" who dont actually play games thinks and acts.
Another banger, the mayo is freeh! Off topic but in the SH2 remake I can't always seem to figure out what I can interact with because the prompt doesn't appear because the camera isn't looking at it. In OG SH2 my brain just kinda knows. Maybe it's just the fixed camera guiding you? There has to be a good solution to this.
I'm a Tomb Raider fan, and people in the fandom have bitched about the white paint since 2013 with the reboot. Personally i never gave a fuck about it, there are way bigger problems with those games. I just find it funny how people act like it's a new thing that is ruining games lmao.
Before yellow paint, we had... what were supposed to be white dried up bird droppings, introduced by very early AssCreed titles probably the very original one else the second, but also seen in newer Tomb Raider trilogy and everywhere else, with an occasional visual pun where they put in a literal tub of white paint that got knocked over. They were often used well, you don't have to highlight EVERY single climbable edge, just occasionally give people a hint. Oh btw white cloth appeared in both of these series as well as occasional stand-in. Mirror's Edge is an interesting example, you can turn RunnerVision with red highlights on and off, but regardless any number of surfaces have helpful scrapes indicating they had been climbed before when a strong red highlight wasn't deemed fitting. Sometimes you're just left to puzzle around with no or minimal guidance. It's how puzzle games work, it's not like Portal gives you a beat by beat highlight of what you have to press.
Edit: I wish I'd addressed this in the video, but I do not believe that "making yellow paint an option in the menu you can turn off" is a true solution. Maybe in some cases. But the fact of the matter is, devs put the yellow paint there for a reason. Because there's a failure of player guidance in playtesting. If you just turn it off, the issue still remains. You still have a part of the game with poor visual guidance. And we aren't asking for zero guidance. We're asking for smart artistic guidance that fits the game.
If you just turn off yellow paint in SOME of these games, some sections could be incredibly tedious to deal with and we don't want that either. Optional paint is not a true solution. We need the signposting to be better.
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🟡 Those links should be yellow not blue.
Good video - Doom eternal sucks
The really og of yellow paint is, "Rabbits Go Home."
So many games do the whole squeezing through tight corridor or bending over to pass through cave or something so much. You should look at how there is in disc 1 of the ff7 remake
This was a good video - but could you please make your conclusions in yellow text? Otherwise I don't know what kind of insight to gain from this...
You can use captions and make them yellow; An optional thing! Maybe like it ought to be.
@@hikarikounobut unless those prompts are in yellow they’ll never figure out how to make the captions yellow
😂😂😂😂
Add some “yellow tone” audio too, just to make it clear.
it's ok, he made it in a modern white color
I really like the point about how Remake 2's use of yellow paint felt more diagetic to the overall art design of the game that uses a lot of yellow. Whereas in Remake 4 the yellow paint all over the castle and village is extremely out of place and ridiculous. I like to joke that in Remake 4 the CIA must have sent in a covert ops paint team before Leon shows up.
I have an alternate fan theory:
When Ashley Graham was abducted, her father originally hired the Green Lantern Corps to go and rescue her. But Krauser knew this was coming and suggested that Saddler spill yellow paint on every critical point of progress or container of valuables. As a result, every rescue attempt by the Green Lanterns was utterly thwarted, and Leon was sent in as Plan B.
@@markcobuzzi826genius!
Should've had torn cloth or something dangling from it
in the original the crates were just as contrasting as the yellow paint, the difference being you can't achieve that contrast with ultra realistic graphics without that paint lol
Side effects of Las Plagas are violent outbursts, pale skin, blood red eyes, and the sudden urge to apply paint to boxes/ladders
Resident evil 4 og had a great way of letting you know that boxes were breakable and had loot inside without anything, even standing out. In the first 10 minutes, you kill the dude in the house, go outside, run into the shack with the typewriter, and in there are two boxes. One is broken, the other isn't. It lets you know that they are breakable.
Not to mention there is a prompt to inspect the boxes and barrels in the first two areas of the game, that straight up tells you they can be broken.
@TyrantRE exactly!!
In the OG it was Ashley who figured out that she can use those cranks to open a path in the castle . In the remake it has yellow paint spots .
I’m playing resident evil 1 the controls are awful and I don’t know where anything is. There used to be companion guides for a lot of games. I rather look at paint than read a guide.
@@DrooledOnI recently played the RE Director's Cut and found the puzzles incredibly easy, especially compared to the remake.
It's so easy to make this an option you can toggle off and on. Reminds me of characters giving you the solutions to puzzles after 5 seconds instead of letting you play the damn game
unless the games are designed around those hand holding features like yellow paint and quest markers - suddenly turning them off might not be a great idea... unless devs put it there to shut down some people from complains. "If you don't like it then turn it off, I don't care that game is unplayable without them git gut blahblahblah".
The problem is that games are designed around the ubisoft style markers being everywhere.
Natural level design is pretty dead in the AAA scene
thats my only problem with it, the fact that it ain't optional, make it standard and give it a option to turn it off like many other features have, when i play a new game first thing i do is to go to the setting anyway and turn off every feature i don't like such the enemy sense (allows you to see them through walls), slow down time when detected, auto reload, auto aim etc, this should be one more.
Higher fidelity graphics also clutters the screen making it hard to see what the player is meant to interact with or not. Back then all you'd have are textures and the one obvious model to interact with, or the intractable object would kind of pop out of the game world unnaturally. Now it all blends together.
its not as easy as you think game design and level design is important, if the game is designed with this stuff on turning it off will have a bad level design.
I blame Coldplay for this phenomenon. Have noticed this all started with the release of their first single in the US.
That Martin prick is behind Big Yellow, I knew it!
And it was called "Yellow".
I fucking hate Coldplay.
OK, this comment made my day. Hahaha
@@Justmemyguy ❤️
Thankfully, the yellow in the thumbnail let me know that I should click on this video. :P
yeah lol
yellow is for hell you will see it alot
Lolllll
no your brain did dummy
😂😂😂😂
im pro-yellow paint as an (optional) accessibility feature; I have very poor eyes and my screen is small; modern games in general with their hyper realistic shading make discerning important objects very hard
You know you can turn shaders and other effects down or off, right? You don't have to deal with them if they hamper your ability to play.
This is completely fine, fantastic even as long as it's done correctly.
What I mean is that the game has to be designed FIRST without the paint in mind so that the game functions as intended without the paint.
Adding on extra visual help as an accessability feature does no harm and probably helps a lot of people.
@@bloodleader5you can't on console.
Yeah, in the age of every new game having thousands of accessibility features it would be cool to turn off and on stuff like that. I guess that's probably a big reason they have yellow paint on stuff like that so even gamers with poor eye sight can have a smooth experience too. It would just be cool if people who don't want it could turn it off.
Excuses, I do have poor eyesight as well but I don't want this people treating me like I'm a helpless infant
That RE4R mod to replace the paint with the insignia is so good both visually and creatively, but really RE4R really doesn't need an indication because it is infamous for having breakable barrels and items. Besides even now to me the barrels look a little different and all this can be fixed by having the same prompt the original RE4 had where the boxes and barrels before the village had the "I can break this" message, letting players know you can break these boxes or barrels.
Yeah that is cool, it's way less immersion breaking.
I use the mod myself but I prefer to remove it completely, the insignia/blood is a good option though and it feels like the devs should have thought of something similar. The whole splash yellow paint everywhere is just lazy game design imo.
To be fair, Remake4 isn't for Resident Evil fans, it is for RE Engine fans. Many casual new players don't have the knowledge of classic Resident Evil design. Yellow Paint is needed for the uber casuals they are trying to draw in.
@@mizark3 yeah this is a great way to describe it, unfortunately
@@mizark3 I don't know, the marketing was focusing on the fans of the original constantly showing things that were similar and saying that there were changes to it and even old players or rather the players who played the original will have also new surprises. Plus some fans of the OG did want it to remade, honestly the graphics you know the term, I personally was in the bunch that believed the original needed no remake because I still to this day play the original RE4, it is my most replayed game sitting at 65+ playthroughs, it is just that good, when I played the game originally I naturally missed stuff but later I started finding things, and now I know the location of every item in the game, I have modded it, I have played using different weapons and challenges all in all I have played way more than the remake....and all this was is just the PS2 and PC numbers, I still want to play the VR version but Meta Quest not a huge fan.
Although I agree with the whole yellow paint being needed for the uber casuals and being there for them. I believe the game was made for both types of players in mind just the greater UI and UX was more oriented to new players.
Either way it is bad design and the original was like 10x more creative in 4 different ways.
@@mizark3 *"To be fair, Remake4 isn't for Resident Evil fans, it is for RE Engine fans"*
Don't be pretentious. The original RE4 was the easiest game in the series until Village was released. The Remake was a hell of a lot more challenging, regardless of the yellow paint.
10:10 - 100% agreement with this one. Yellow paint is not the problem, but the inorganic application of it is immersion breaking and insulting. This is more egregious when older games already nailed it perfectly and became integrated with its environment. And yes, I did not notice it in Resident Evil 2 remake since how it used yellow is the same as how it was used in real life.
they added red tape in ada dlc for 4 for one easy to navigate pathway
Except the problem is that in those older games, they were able to make it stand out because the graphics were different for interactive items. (It's honestly kind of like how in older animation, you could tell what was just drawn as a background and what is drawn to be moved or interacted. Nowadays, you can't.)
@@keelanbarron928 "Nowadays, you can't."
Bro, people don't need yellow paint splashed all over a ladder to know it's a ladder, let alone because 'graphics too good' or whatever. If anything, the graphics being more realistic should make it _more_ obvious what you're looking at.
@keelanbarron928 so why is resident evil 4 remake better to play with the No-yellow-paint mod installed?
I kinda still disagree, though you make a good point, i still really dont like the hand holding.
In a linear game like RE4R, if there's a ladder in the only room you can go to, it doesn't need to be yellow. It's probably the way forward.
You say this but I've watched people get stuck in areas with very clear signposting. Unfortunately there's a lot of dumb people that play games lol
@@SolidSnake240 That's a true statement, but imo at some point a line must be drawn, because trying to accommodate the worst termite-brain folk ruins the experience for everyone else.
I know a developer who was genuinely considering completely getting rid of the difficulty menu you saw before starting a new game, because too many morons didn't READ THE DESCRIPTION IN BIG PLAIN TEXT describing each difficulty option when highlighted.
That's the end result of going to extremes trying to accommodate those kinds. I had to convince him not to do that because that completely ruins the game for everybody else who has eyes.
Exactly, it's one thing if it's a collectable or a special interactable like a little lock but if it's something as noticeable as a ladder then I think people will see it.
Funny thing about the mod you mentioned for RE4Make: even without the yellow paint, the boxes and barrels already have this bluish green off-color to them that makes it obvious that they contain goodies. I really don't know why they needed to add yellow paint on top of that.
this is the golden chance for a dev to try and do a "paint the way for the hero" type game where you are the one putting the yellow paint in the world
could be really funny if done well imo
The idea kinda reminds me of DLC quest which is an indie mocking the DLC trend way back when. I like it!
someone did joke some years ago that Heisenberg was the good guy applying the yellow paint on all interactable items to guide Ethan :P
Mirrors edge is 100% this. You can only run or interact with anything that is red in the environment.
The modern examples of yellow painting look like someone dumping a whole bottle of salt into your meal and when you complain about how they're a bad cook they reply "what, are you saying food shouldn't be seasoned?"
yellow is for hell you will see it alot
It's kinda more like if a resturant defaulted to cooking all steaks well done, because the last ten customers they had complained about their food not being cooked when it came out pink. We know that's dumb, and the chef does too, but if it stops the complaints..
A man who can't eat his steak rare is no man at all.
That's what makes a man? Eating steak rare.... Humanity is truly lost. @Frille512
@@0lionheartwho eats their food raw bro
I think a big thing, is back then the yellow paint was a nice reprieve from a gigantic arrow pointing at your objective or those obnoxious "TASK UPDATED: GO TAKE THAT KEY YOU FOUND AND USE IT IN THE WEST WING DOOR" hand-holdey stuff.
The one I don't see getting talked about too much is constant ear chatter. I'm so glad we are (mostly) done with that. The worst one I recall was pretty recent. In MW2 Remake, there's a part where the mission brief lady interrupts your reconnoiter to tell you she's a lesbian, but also to "seek cover and avoid gunfire. Proceed straight ahead towards the treeline." Like lady, I am part of the most elite fighting force in the world of this game, you don't think I thought of that?
@@12ealDealOfficial Oh god yeah, that is maddening. Mega Man X5 was horrid for that, where they kept pausing the game to have mission control give you info, but most of it was common sense like "push up to climb a ladder". Like yeah, no kidding. That stuff can so be so much better done with context clues, especially in 3D titles where they can angle the camera: angle the camera a touch so it frames the treeline to the left and the gunfire to the right, and you've clearly conveyed the options are run for cover or run toward the gunfire, and common sense will dictate the best option for survival.
Yeah, a good example of that is the button from re6 that literally spawns a giant arrow telling you where to go
While I agree that the yellow paint is overused, let's not pretend that older games did it in a non immersive breaking way when a lot of them literally used to make items glow or have a shiny lens flare effect to indicate intractable objects (including the original RE4).
As for the white cloth in SH2R, I think it kind of fits the world a bit, especially with the damp aesthetic the game has.
If immersion is the end all be all goal then perhaps it can create the opposite problem of this problem in which there is almost no indication in progression or what to do that players just get lost. People like using the OG Doom games as an example but the more recent one that has this is the System Shock remake in which the environment looks identical to the other that some form of signage and indicators are required.
Also in terms of immersion, it sometimes depends on what game you're playing. Sometimes devs or at least creative ones use audio cues instead of visuals to know what kind of progress they are making and what not. And also as mentioned it depends on the setting, like SH2R using white drapes instead.
depends what you call older games. the orginal tomb raiders never had this hand holding nonsense.
@@rhyswhittington8759 No, but that doesn't mean older games didn't also have this concept. The original FF7 from 1997 had its own type of yellow paint to guide players. It's not a new concept. It's existed for a long time.
So what? Now items glow, there is yellow paint and preferably a text pop up saying "pick this up"
Yeah, the white cloth was very fitting for the aesthetic, but also for the story (Maria's body covered in white cloth; James' unconsciousness).
Given how widespread the criticism is, I don’t know why there isn’t an “accessibility” toggle that lets the player decide whether to have the paint on or off, or choose where it’s used (level guidance or breakable objects).
It's only a partial solution though because some of these things do need a signal. I don't think it's paint vs no paint. We need to have better signals. Sound cues, contrast, lighting, etc.
Stalker 2 has that option, you can turn off the yellow paint entirely
The problem is that the design is made with yellow paint in mind. Blankly removing it isn't going to put a smart and tasteful design in its place.
@ yes, the caveat is that devs would have to actually do more thoughtful design for those that turn it off, but that requires more effort than just slapping paint on stuff.
If they did that it would be used as an excuse to have zero player guidance outside of the optional paint. It's like when people used to complain about quest markers in RPGs, and they let you turn them off but still didn't have NPCs actually telling you where to go like there were in games without quest markers.
Yellow metal ladders don't bother me because those exist in the real world. But when they also splash copious amounts of yellow paint on the walls around the ladder, that is immersion breaking.
Honestly, it would be funny if you could meet a crazy painter in one of these games that is responsible for the yellow paint
A metal yellow stair makes sense because many industrial components are standarized in yellow. But there is big difference between objects that are usually yellow IRL and objects that have paint splashed on it like some clunsy worker dropped a paint bucket.
The cliff ledges painted yellow in that FF game look absolutely absurd.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer
Yeah if the ledges looked worn down from use or marked with chalk by previous climbers to show safe climbing points it would be a far more natural way to get our attention while the yellow stands out in a bad way
You just want every game to not hold your hand and have an intuitively immersive level design.
"How DARE HE! I bet he wants *FUN* games too! every journl.... I mean GAMER! knows what games are meant to be watched like the snoy!"
To me I feel like that should be an accessibility option if anything. For it to feel organic to the world is one thing, for it to be plastered everywhere and trying to be so-called organic is another thing. It really should be like a highlight option in the settings and help those who don't know where to go without having to look up a guide.
16:45 not to defend the game, as I think the blood trail should have been sufficient enough to guide us there, but it actually made me think about how interacting with the background was actually part of the experience back when we used to play survival horror 20 years ago.
What I mean is when you play an old Silent Hill or Resident Evil games, and you try to interact with something in the background, the games, more often than not, delivered some text describing the thing we were looking at. It was a sort of clever way to incentivise us to keep interacting with elements of the background, which led us to eventually finding items, memos and stuff. Nowadays, games don't encourage us to interact with the background, as you're just supposed to plainly understand what you see, or the character will just talk to himself to make sure you noticed what the dev wanted you to notice, which might lead some players to not even bother trying to do it unless there is a prompt showing up.
I don't know what that thought is worth though, but I felt like sharing 🤷♂
I miss that kind of world interaction. And silent protagonist so you can just read it cause it's a thought.
@@underthemayo Me too mate. I'm still dreaming about that idea you suggested of having new "old school type" Resident Evil games with fixed camera angles and painted backgrounds being made in parallel to "classic" new opuses. I know it's not happening anytime soon but man do I wish it would
@LaSagames hopefully The Mute House and Echoes Of The Living turnout good!
@@underthemayomaybe we should somewhat get rid of button prompts after having shown the player the controls? Especially if you make it somewhat obvious what may be interacted with.
Aren't they supposed to learn how to use coloring in a smart way that not only does it not break immersion, but it visually complements the areas and fits the atmosphere?
That's literally the entire point of the video.
@@zeframmann1641 It's also one of the main points of studying visual/game design. You would expect more from successful triple A companies.
@@SolonGaming like when you notice something's off on that wall and found out it's a secret level or a hidden room?
Been a while since I've seen those
@@SolonGaming if those devs were given more than 2 days to work on shit then there probally would be but most of the time yellow paint is only added when the devs run out of time to try other sign posting methods
Also back in the day when you'd enter a room you'd try to break/interact with everything to figure it out by yourself.
God forbid players actually get immersed in the game and have to actually look and think. We live in a world where all that matters is LOOK AT THE GRAPHICS! and if a game journalists can just have an interactive cutscene experience
All the more reason having good interactions in a game is important, so when people do try to figure it out for themselves, they get positive feedback, even if it doesn't direct them to the goal right now.
If you got no feedback, you wouldn't think to try it again (unless you get a pop-up telling you that you can do it now).
@muizzsiddique I just finished my first playthrough on the silent hill 2 (PS2), and I was impressed at how well made the map system is. It marks off stuff that is either locked off or previously explored which only helps to make for a very user friendly experience.
This is something many modern games lack for some reason (I just quickly remembered that TLOU 2 had that feature as well lol, great game that was)
To be fair, a lot of people get lost for what to do in old Re games without a guide.
@@jlogan2228 gotta cater to the tourist
Excess detail and focus on realism is the real problem. I dont think that we ever shiudlve went as far away from late PS3 era games detail wise for more realistic games. Still with distinct style. Now its all hyoerrealistic samey soup, only difference if its grimey and dark or painfully vibrant.
Texturing style and clear image got lost in the process, same as sensible levels
of performance and optimization.
Another item of note is the HL2 supply crates. Sure, they've got a yellow sticker on them. But looking at the other textures, you can see a serial number, text reading "supply", and various other indicators that this is a manufactured product in the context of this post-Seven Hour War world. Also, supply crates were always of a specific size and shape.
Replaying HL2 recently, I noticed Valve's tasteful use of light to guide the player. It is a nice indicator of "lived-in places" where most of the world feel empty and hostile. Puzzles and Progression are an area where Valve really tries to make it easy for you (see Ravenholm electric fence lever commentary node) but it never tries to outright hand it to you. Though lack of backtracking probably alleviated a lot of issues.
But Valve’s developers are game dev gods and they love their games, they love what they do 🤷🏼♂️ well at least back then they did. One thing I know for sure is that every light in HL games has been carefully placed, every light does something. As video game lighting Artist I’m fascinated by what valve did with lighting in HL and Portal games.
Half-Life 2 is fairly consistent in how it presents objects; usually if you see wood planks on a window, you can break them. If you see wood boxes, you can break them. The specific ammo/HEV charge crates have distinct logos on them, so you recognise them. I can't remember it ever putting a bunch of unbreakable wooden boxes in front of you, I did replay it recently too. Consistency is key
back in my days👴 we used to have a shiny blinking thingy in RE games for key items and such.. or a red barrel that can go 💥, great video as always mayo, keep up the good work 😊
If those mechanics existed now this moron would be making a video complaining about that.
Indeed. And in the old Silent Hill games, the characters simply turned their heads and stared at stuff that could be interacted with
Making barrels obnoxiously brightly lit is better than yellow tape/paint.
Interactable items glow since Resident Evil.
Plus, the original just put a note on the first crate that told you to smash 'em. Once you know to do that, you won't need to be reminded afterward, you'll just naturally be on the lookout for any barrels or crates to smash for the rest of the playthrough.
To be honest, having a little arrow floating above an interactable object is much less immersion breaking than having literally every interactable thing stained with yellow paint smears.
The arrow is non-diegetic. We can tune it out as not actually existing within the game's world. Just like the UI.
We can't do that with paint smears, because they ARE diegetic.
So by trying to be more immersive, they ironically do the opposite.
I think yellow paint is not just boring, but is bad game design, a level shouldnt have to tell you where to go. The level should have flow the play can follow.
In HL2, the ravenholm chapter, there are lots of complicated areas to get lost in, they dont have giant go here signs, but you find your way though with the level design alone.
Half the problem is that modern game devs don't bloody well play games anymore. They have no passion for the medium or real knowledge of what makes a great game, so we get spoon-fed, brain-dead slop to cater to folk who've never picked up a controller before.
@@dragonmage7980 that's patently false, I didn't stop playing games when I became a developer, actually it made me go back and pick up classics I missed to learn from them. All the developers I know are huge nerds. Development is hard, stressful, unstable and pays like shit compared to adjacent fields. You get paid way more working in like finance or film, instead of games. You have to be passionate about them to get in.
A huge part of the problem is audience. Games used to be more niche. Now they're not. Now you need to sell to _everyone_ to break even. As the audience gets wider, you have to accomodate people who actually probably have never picked up a controller before. In this climate right now, even successful games lead to studio closures, so no-one is digging their heels in and refusing to accomodate the most unattentive gamers. If they're buying the game, you don't want them refunding it straight away because they got lost.
Yellow paint is absolutely an emergency fix though, imo. I think the problem really is inconsistency and unclear game rules. If you can only break _some_ wooden boxes you're confusing the player. Half-Life is a great example, wooden boxes are breakable, without fail. Metal boxes? Can't break them. They don't use static wooden boxes as decorations. Boom, clear game rules.
the yellow on the re4r barrels was helpful because the entire village is brown and some could be easy to miss for me. I do wish it was less obnoxious. At least in the castle they ditched that and just used vases for more immersion but yeah
They do it cause its way faster and cheaper than actually find other creative ways to guide the player.
Shoutout to Ghost of Tsushima's navigation system. Felt like I could actually look at the gorgeous world they crafted instead of staring at a minimap or a waypoint.
i always liked dead space for this the most, doesnt hold your hand with exploration but if you ever DO need to find your way wave point gives you a hint
@@jlogan2228 I could go on for hours about how well thought out Dead Space's entire UI system is
Honestly I don't want RE to be like SH2 Remake where the only times I knew what to do were because of the map or the white invisible cloth thats almost barely visible in the white fog
I like it that way better, because then you need to open up your eyes and pay attention to get the hint. with yellow paint I can be half asleep and the yellow paint will play the game for me no matter what.
The ladder thing is the most egregious. I don't know about everybody else, but if I see a ladder ANYWHERE in a game, I'm definitely trying to see if I can climb it
i might be dumb. I never noticed the yellow paint everywhere until Resident Evil 4 Remake. I must have just tuned it out as unnecessary details and never even noticed it. I found my way around without it. Knowing now will make going back and playing it hard.
It was pretty excessive in re8 village. It would be hard to miss
It's not dumb. You just chose subconsciously to avoid making a big deal out of it. While yes, it does show ineptitude in how to properly convey the environment without obvious markers, if you avoided making a big deal out of it, that's ok.
i don’t get it when ppl say “it makes it hard playing”
Yellow paint is in games since 2007 when the first Uncharted came out on PS3, we just got used to it
@@cirotheb5 I didn't get used to it. I didn't realize it was even there until RE4 Remake where it was pretty blatant. Now it's all I see
At least white cloth isn't as immersion breaking as that stupid yellow paint
Yet
What's strange to me is the SH2 remake will use the white cloth to mark a path, but then they'll stick other white cloth around, I guess to make the guidance white cloth not stick out like a sore thumb. But that leaves you with a bunch of white cloth, so you have to look around to determine which white cloth is the guidance marker. Which seems to defeat the entire purpose of having the white cloth in the first place.
@@balthazor44 sounds awful
@@balthazor44Which gets us back to the original point that the game would be objectively better without that lazy handholding.
I just don't know what was wrong with blood lol
Weird to paint ladders and levers yellow because whenever I see one I automatically try to interact with it. If there's a ladder, there's a place to go.
I forget what dev said this, but the old saying was light leads the way. There has pretty much always been ways to guide the players, but the yellow being a universal go-to is agrivating.
Like you said... there are so many different ways to condition players. For example, a few years back I was making an FPS game somewhat similar to doom. One of the puzzles required players to jump on a chandelier, but when I gave it to a couple play testers, they didn't know they could jump on chandeliers. They would walk around the area for 5 min looking for the solution, and they didn't realize chandelier's were more than decorations. Eventually I had to give up and tell them they can jump on the chandelier. After those two playtests, I decided to put health pick-ups on that one chandelier they were supposed to stand on. BOOM. instantly, my next play testers jumped on the chandeliers without even thinking and it was no longer an issue. Didn't need to put more indicators on chandeliers anymore because now the player's mind has adjusted to "chandelier's are not just decorations". So later in the level when chandeliers came up, it was no longer an issue.
I think that blanket assuming/concluding homogenization is bad is...well, Bad. There are some things where homogenization is fine and harmless, and others where it is absolutely bad.
To pose a few examples. Red barrels are explosive. Health bars are red or more rarely green. Mana bars are blue. Rarity is grey-white-green-blue-purple-orange-yellow. Things like these are the 'Language' of video games, They inform the player and allow the player to immediately understand what is what. If you go into a new game, and you see a red barrel, You know it's probably going to explode. You know when you look at your UI and see a red bar, it's most likely your health. The thing is, though, That there is very little to be gained from changing these things; And these things do not meaningfully harm the development process... IF you have a rarity system, Arbitrarily changing the rarity colors to purple-grey-orange-white-yellow-blue serves literally no purpose except to confuse the player; There is no statement to be made, no untold depths to explore. Likewise, If you have a health bar, arbitrarily making it white is again, only going to confuse players. If you make explosive barrels a different color, Players will most likely blow themselves up once, decide the dev is a damn fool, and then never shoot or approach ANY barrel again for the rest of the playthrough.
There's next to nothing to gain from mucking about with this 'Language' that video games use to communicate aspects of itself to us. And a lot to lose in player enjoyment and immersion.
On the other hand, There are things where homogenization is bad. Where it stifles innovation, where it stifles creativity. This is the category in which things like the yellow paint reside. When you use yellow paint to show the path forward, You stop being creative. You stop thinking of multiple paths, You stop thinking the player may consider any other path- After all, you painted the path forward, Why would they? This is the category where over-the-shoulder cameras in horror games go... There's so much to explore from first person, from overhead, from fixed camera angles, from an isometric view. This is the cover shooter. This is the block-dodge-parry dark souls system. It stifles creativity and innovation because once that decision is made, you stop thinking of anything new. These are, to use a different word... Crutches. They're the safe decision. People like it, so just replicate it. It's the easy way out... The easy way to please investors and shareholders This kind of homogenization is INCREDIBLY bad for the health of the video game industry. This kind of homogenization is the one that players mock and are so frustrated with.
Personally my biggest issue with yellow is that it blends orange and green together and that's just unnatural. The colors should never mix like that and I'm pretty sure Mayo will have my back on this one.
I should have left that 8 minute segment in the video!
one of my favorite moments from watching 'yellow paint' discourse on twitter was when someone asked how you were intended to find access point for the DLC in Dark Souls and someone replied with a picture of the specific crystal golem you needed to kill captioned 'they used yellow paint' since this golem was yellow instead of blue like most other golems in the game
The sad thing is I just played Super Mario Odyssey and it didn't do what these games are doing. For the little time I played it, it didn't treat me like I'm dumb, and this is a kids game.
Let that sink in.
yellow is for hell you will see it alot
It's funny because Breath of the Wild was the same. That game just let you go nuts. Even back in Wind Waker, Nintendo would stop you dead in your tracks to literally show you puzzle solutions before you even got a chance to think. Ironic that Nintendo has gone on to let player choice matter, and every other developer moved into that goo goo gaga shit.
Are you surprised? People have become actively dumber every generation. Especially in this one. With the rise of social media apps like TikTok, the dumbification is very blatant. So it's not a shocker that people nowadays have the attention span of a toddler.
@@SeasoningTheObeseI have been playing Wind Waker and I haven't seen that happened
The thing is though, most Nintendo games don't throw you straight into the deep end. They LOOK as if they do but they don't. They ease a player in before dumping all the more complicated stuff ont you. The sign posting they need to do is minimal, but they still do lead you around with obvious points of interest to guide you around. Like BOTW does this by making the most important locations on your map HUGE areas that stick out like Zoras domain and the Goron mountains. Even the Sheika Towers are sign posted - they are on higher ground than everything else and typically in the open so you can see them from any direction. But unless you're really paying attention or care that these things are obvious you aren't going to really notice
Fixed camera was the guide for a player. Now that we get control of it, needed different means. They could have used other unique ways to guide instead of a repeating pattern.
Found a new appreciation for Resi 2 Remake. I never noticed how well these pointers were designed, and that's perfect.
too easy
A good example of a feature that started out reasonable and then became flanderized. The implementation in RE2R makes sense for the most part, with yellow tape in industrial areas naturally marked by safety features. RE4R went unga-bunga with it, splashing it all around Spanish villages and castles.
I wouldn't say that's perfect. It's almost like I am being lied to. I am not discovering things. I am finding what they painted and are lead to believe that I found it without aid. Am I being manipulated or is this good game design?
Ironically enough, Doom Eternal also heavily used yellow.
I made a Resident Evil mod (Spencer Mansion Incident) for a game called 7 Days to Die. In an older version of the mod, there were some cabinets the player had to break so they could get a key item hidden behind it. The cabinets in question were next to other cabinets that looked normal, while I had the "destroy me" cabinets (1)slightly cracked, (2)opened, (3)flipped on their side, and (4)another colour. And yet somehow, so many people managed to overlook these differences I made to let the player know "hey, you might want to destroy this". facepalm
In the current version, the colour is the same as the other cabinets and many more people notice it now!
i guess many people just thought it was just a broken cabinet. if you had light or something shining through or something. on the wall then perhaps. i have not really played that game, but if it´s a common occurrence, that things look that way or similar it will just blend in. in the new version i guess it´s just something with that, which looks more of for some reason. or that the original, just was to much t hat people just don´t think it´s something to be destroyed.
@@basseman4239 I can assure you, it is painfully obvious. The room in question has about 10 cabinets, 8 are in perfect condition, and the 2 needed to break are in the condition I mentioned above. I'd show a screenshot if I could
@@FranticDan yeah, thats the thing. it could be that it´s just way too obvious. that people don´t really think it´s something about it. maybe people just saw it like some prop as you wrote yourself. people found it easier when it wasn´t.
11:42 Just to be fair, I think having an annoying gnome pointing out every little detail about your surroundings might be fun for a bit… provided that you could attack the gnome, haha
That RE3 Remake yellow grafitti is way funnier than i expected 😂
3 got remade?! Ohh wait you're talking about that new game which isn't even dlc length. The fact that this is some peoples first intro to nemesis is a disgrace. Absolutely no buildup just hold up on joystick. Thats modern capcom for ya. Oh and that graffiti shows how Little they think of their fan's intelligence. 3 Revision is like 4 little alley ways how you getting lost in that god i hate 3 revised its so disrespectful
Nice pfp, reminds me of a game better than re3r 😂 @@futurelama5123
The yellow paint is why I can't live without the blood colour mod in re4r. A simple change from yellow to blood red on crates and painted walls feels better.
"13 reasons why Alien Isolation NEEDED yellow paint"
Alien Isolation had the tracker.
It did not.
But you literally had an objective compass on your motion tracker.
Nah
man what a great game that was.
A related trend I noticed in the segment where you displayed a screenshot of devs responding to this complaint: devs using Redditor speak to talk down to the people who buy their games. "tell me you're [X] without telling me [X]" and so on.
It's crazy how well the yellow paint was done in RE2r. When I recently replayed it, I didn't even notice it once. In RE4r tho, it's so obnoxiously slapped everywhere to the point of being insulting lmao
More people NEED to see this. You sincerely kept me drawn in and I've noticed this but never voiced it. I would sincerely love this to stop! I want to explore! I'm tired of hearing a campaign takes 12 hours to complete (ie SH2 Remake) when I spent 22 hours because I turned off a lot of the indicators and tutorial tips! I like to explore and wanted it to feel authentic. Some modernization is nice. I like that SH2 gave us the option to take some of these indicators off. Remember the backlash from the trailer when you had to press X to get an enemy off you? Mic Drop with this video. Thank you!
Developers need to remember they have other tools for signposting other than yellow paint.
It's not that developers don't know how to do anything else it's that people who may have never consumed media outside of tiktok are a large (potential) consumer base that need to be catered to for the sake of maximizing profits when it comes to high budget releases.
Yellow paint is impossible to miss, it's the easiest solution that takes 0 effort or time to implement or think about, it's a very easy panic solution when a level playtests badly with the testers who don't play video games often, and thus get lost because they forget that their character can jump or break items etc.
@@DappisI read all of what you said. While that explains why game developers use yellow paint so much, it's not really a good justification for the inappropriate use of yellow paint. We can use signposting to create clarity while still retaining creativity and immersion.
@@Orange_Swirl I don't disagree at all
i feel like games just don't take risks, and I don't mean that they don't try new mechanics or designs, it's just that they act as if they can't afford losing your attention, they don't want to risk you losing interest in the game, they have to keep you engaged, so they put yellow paint so you never have to stop and think where to go or what to do
No yellow paint -> "I'm lost waaaah!"
Yellow paint -> "So fake waaaah!"
Exactly 💯😂 people are going to complain either way. We should Just enjoy the games lol
It's not just the barrel and ladders . In RE4R while getting chased by chief mendes , it has yellow paint spots on the ground .
The problem I've had is when the games claim they have obvious art direction (like ~4:00), but they show the pliers without an indicator (even when adjacent), with every other slot filled with other tools equally brightly colored. I just recently played Star Wars Jedi Survivor, and I felt like I had to play with High-Contrast mode on during all non-combat moments. The problem is a wall looks wall-runnable, or climbable, or interactable then isn't. You have these tools, but the game refuses to let you use them all the time, only when pre-approved. I had to use High-Contrast mode to translate every time the devs said "Ok you can climb this part, but not 3ft to the left of it despite looking identical". All too often moss was just moss, not a climbing point, then the moss adjacent to it was climbable. Just silly.
When you play Immersive Sims like Dishonored, you can use all the navigation tools all the time. If a ledge isn't climbable, it's because you glitched outside the map and hit an invisible wall (and even then they *still* might let you grab on just to fall). When the games are made more 'cinematic', the times where you can use universal tools becomes artificially limited. Why can I parry scythe attack 1, but have to dodge prompt scythe attack 2, especially when they have shown I can parry a friggin' chainsaw? I should be able to parry every single attack at that point.
Even with older games, items 'pop'. You can see they don't fit the drab background. OG4 barrels fit that perfectly as shown. (Oof, pre-typing comment lol. It is discussed at ~8:00). Ok yeah everything after this point is perfectly explained.
Yeah there was a lot to cover in this!
i find that a very good example of how to guide a player is in Amnesia: the Bunker. there is no yellow paint, the only red paint you find is the occasional blood smear leading to a rat infested corpse. you get a note telling you the 2 items you need to get the hell out, and you're dropped into the map with the monster with no training wheels. a posted sign from the soldiers says to keep the lights on at all costs on a bulletin next to a generator. you arent given a pause screen with a tutorial saying "hey! it becomes less aggressive in the light! use this button to turn it on!" it just tells you to keep it on and watch the clock. you can walk away without turning it on and the only consequences are the natural ones, and it remains this way throughout the entire game. guidance is offered by metal glistening against the light if the lights are on, and even then its a rare occurence. would love a review of that game if you haven't taken a look at it already.
"Since the backgrounds were 2D rendered paintings any collectible item like ammo, health or puzzle items naturally stood out because of them being 3D rendered models. They didn't logically mix with the world so you knew you could pick them up."
It should be mentioned that the OG Resi games are designed to be played on CRT TVs. A CRT display would actually blend both 2D images and (static) 3D models due to the way the device works, so the visual separation actually comes from PC emulators which usually avoid replicating older display artifacts like scanlines and blurring in favor of performance. ☝🤓
Give the Separate Ways DLC for RE4R some credit. Luis' directions in the Waterway were painted on with RED paint. I saw that as a self-aware dig by the developers along with the jokes on how Ada was supposed to proceed there.
Why put yellow paint on a ladder?
Its a ladder
A universally recognizable shape that just yells climb me
It would be better if it was a normally painted ladder instead of the splatter technique. They just need it to be a colour so the ladder doesn’t blend into the wall (I have bad memories of Zelda Twilight Princess having a blue ladder against a blue wall I missed for half an hour when a black or grey or brown ladder woudla been noticed and natural )
I still think the best item/breakable object guidance is the character visually looking in the direction of it, although of course this doesn't work (I think) on FPS games
I think its bc in games set in modern cities or industrial/mechanical settings yellow makes sense bc it serves a utilitarian function, plus it was used somewhat sparingly so it really popped. But like in re4 remake, why would a rural village or castle have yellow paint all over the place? Or in God of War where they had the yellow runes all over the progression path and had to toss in "Faey laid out the path long ago for us" line. Theres just places it doesnt belong bc its jarring
The markings on god of war felt like they belonged. They had design to them that worked far better than just a blob of paint or yellow arrow graffiti
I remember when they used white to mark environmental interactions instead of yellow. Uncharted 4 and Horizon Zero Dawn made good use of it for climbing. Pretty sure every other game uses yellow though. If I remember correctly, even Infamous: Second Son uses yellow for some linear sections where climbing is involved, but it mostly separates mobility with different colors based on what power you need to use them (red for smoke pipes, purple for neon rushing, blue for video signal boosts and so on).
I personally don’t think the yellow paint thing is a huge deal, other than that it can make some games feel a bit more like a video game than an actual narrative experience, but I can’t deny it would be nice for devs to find a better way to signpost things that needed it. FFVII Rebirth actually had a problem at one point by not properly signposting a climbing spot and leaving players in a linear sections stuck, thinking their game was soft locked and had to change it, so it makes sense why some devs are a little overhanded on it, because gamers on average have actually gotten dummer as new players enter the medium, and older players leave.
I guess there's just a line between it being helpful and treating the player as regarded children. It's like they think that if the player is ever lost on what to do in an 18+ game even once, then it's a game design failure and the end of the world.
Still Wakes The Deep also did the yellow paint thing really well, because it was an industrial setting where it made SENSE for things to be marked with yellow paint. i think the silent hill 2 remake also did a similar thing really well, where they use white cloth to mark interactable windows or crawlspaces, which is much more subtle and fits the theme.
edit: btw not gonna finish the video so idk if you already mentioned these
17:46--Nailed it! Excellent vid -glad I stumbled in here. Subbed.
Coming back from modern games to Resident Evil 2004 remake is so different, 0 handholding, I was caught off guard , couldnt believe I had to use my brain
"Coming back from modern games to Resident Evil 2004 remake is so different"
There are so many confusing things about this sentence.
Speaking of letting gamers figure stuff out for themselves, God of War 2018 does have a great moment where you can find a chest behind you when you open something and you have to go out of your way for it, Atreus asks "how did you know that was there?!" Kratos goes "experience" and im like ha thats actually some clever meta humor
In defense of the Silent Hill 2 Remake's white cloth however, the whole white cloth thing IS actually thematic to the story atleast the one that looks like hospital drapes and at some point in the story it's everywhere.
I do understand like strips of cloth being somewhere that's pretty distracting though.
I think white cloth in SH2 is not nearly as bad. It can be justified, as you said. But i'd still rather have something else, and I fear it's just gonna be "the new thing" we see everywhere.
Dude yellow paint on door handles is different than yellow painted rocks😂 thats why it looks so jarring
Especially in horizon, since it's been so long for humanity to cease to exist, yet somehow most fickle paint survived
I have always loved seeing how games use lighting and contrast to lead players through the world. It’s often subtle at first glance, but it still instinctively draws you to the right place. So the growing use of these glaring colourful markers is really disappointing to me. It’s showing a trend towards lazier environment design. If you need bright yellow caution paint to tell the player where to go, you need to rethink the environment, lighting and level design. So it’s so much easier for them to just use the paint as a lazy get out of jail free card…
From someone who stoped playing since high school and just bought a PS4 last year I can tell, I recently played RE2 and 4 remake and I agree with some points.
I didn't even noticed the yellow on RE2, except for the wood but I noticed it on RE4 and it feels weird, like it does not belong there and make the game too gamy at times and brakes immersion. I would love an option in games to turn that off and leave it to a more casual audience since beleace it or not it is helpful for those not too familiar with the gaming language. We have played games all our life's and we sometime forget how hard it is to grab a controller even.
Dev know they can do these things but at the end ate creative decisions that won't change because they work, and if more people get to finish the game better for them.
I hope they find more ways to teach the player the visual language of their games, it is obvious in some games.
Amazing video dude!!!
yea, it makes way more sense to see industrial yellow in a police station or parking garage than it does a castle or a village that is stuck in the 1940s
lol
I never noticed the yellow stuff before
I just played the games
But now that I know it bugs me
Not much but a bit
What would look cool and fit the environment for re4 is putting blood on interactive windows and forward paths and keep barrels brown
Doom Eternal uses green lights a lot to show the player where they be going.The Holt is big on it
Yup, doom's green lights are used in the video
@underthemayo Ok.I didn't finish it bro sorry🤠🍺
havent gottent hat far in the vid but i wll say the red or green lights for Doom at least make sense in design bc its part of the machinery .
I miss the lost art of cinematography we enjoyed through the old fixed camera angles.
I actually never paid attention to this details
In RE4 Separate Ways, they took it way too far. I kept trying to imagine how this yellow paint got there in-universe. Did Saddler mess up and the ganados misinterpreted his orders as "draw yellow crosses on all barrels and boxes you can find"? Did they then run around with yellow paint buckets, and thanks to how uncoordinated they are, they just spilled it while climbing ladders? And what happened here? Did they fall over and spill the entire bucket? 6:44
I'd take yellow paint over the "sense" style mechanics which also was pretty wide spread at one point. At least you can see the world instead of always looking through a monochrome wireframe-esque filter.
Valve used other means for guidance, only closest analogue to obvious yellow would be lambda locator caches in Half life 2, and these make sense in universe as supplies left by rebels vs just plastering random rockfaces with yellow paint to "climb here", in that aspect valve never done this in such way. Instead general art and map design, with some light sources rarely used as more overt guidance.
I dont understand why Capcom is so stubbern with it, that they dont even allow it as a toggable option.
Stalker 2 has it ffs.
95% of players don't give a F about the yellow paint. The yellow paint also isn't a dealbreaker for those who notice it. If a game is good, a gamer would still play it regardless of the use of yellow.
@@johnbulanadi6204 But it's annoying.
You tell me that a multibillion $ company cant be bothered to give an option to disable it? How hard can it be?
They're just stubborn fucks at this point.
The definitive argument against obnoxiously signposting the player. This design choice creates the feeling of 'going through the motions' in games you've just started to play. Well done and thank you.
I just accepted that games aren't for me anymore.
Gaming becoming mainstream ruined gaming.
Seems like it might be ruining "non mainstream" indie games now too. I might join you on the dropping the hobby bandwegon, if that is indeed the case.
I get lost without the yellow paint. Yes, in every game i get stuck in some one particular way because i did not see the doorway, like in HL office chapter
Yellow paint is just a big excuse for bad art direction. Of course developers will defend this concept, it's easy and cheap. And allow the dumber audience to play any game. It's a sad trend.
Remember Alien Isolation? That game has 0 yellow paint, but every correct way to go is always marked with light shining on it, doors and crates marked with glowing green lights, and every interactive object or consumable literally glows in the dark. It's so good, it's guiding but visually consistent.
There's this one streamer I always watch who played it recently, and I love her to bits, but she SO often was completely lost, not knowing where to go and what to do.
I'm afraid it's too late, the damage is done, if something is not clearly highlighted by bright contrasting color, it doesn't register.
1:00 bars homiee
Lmao.
As a gamer, I would much rather get lost and explore the world you created, than having my hand held through a guided experience with a bright color splattered around like car keys dangling in front of me showing me where I need to go.
Be careful what you wish for in that regard because we will have a problem similar to first Zelda or even Castlevania II where no one knows where to go unless they have Nintendo power
Alan Wake constantly uses yellow paint as well...
Among other games, Uncharted makes all of this work by using actual objects colored brightly (often yellow) in order to lead the player along without breaking immersion.
Funnily enough, Alan Wake also makes sure to say the yellow paint is a magic thing that people touched by darkness can see. Secondly, it makes sure the paint is only visible when you flash a light on it. And finally, Alan Wake DOES let you meet the nutjob who sprayed the yellow paint everywhere. Alan Wake has a in-world reason for its yellow paint.
@@robertkovarna8294 Technically so does Resident Evil 4 and 8, in Heisenberg's repeated use of yellow tape and paint. Both series have a lore reason, but neither makes it work in a way that doesn't break immersion.
@@kaelion7133 I think in Alan Wake's case(talking about 1. I don't know how 2 uses it), it also works because of the way that when you shine lights onto signs at night, they look really bright. And so when you're aiming your light all around and you manage to hear that scuba breathing and find some yellow paint, it sticks out just like a street sign in the night does. And Alan Wake takes place at night.
This was actually the first step of "modern audiencing" the gaming industry. I have a friend who started playing games less than 2 years ago. And she just CANT see things that are not highlighted in games. If the game wont have toxic yellow ledge, she wont ever notice it and wont be able to progress. If the item does not have a HUD marker on it, she wont notice it. If the game wont straight up TELL her what to do, she wont do it. This is how "modern audience" who dont actually play games thinks and acts.
Another banger, the mayo is freeh!
Off topic but in the SH2 remake I can't always seem to figure out what I can interact with because the prompt doesn't appear because the camera isn't looking at it. In OG SH2 my brain just kinda knows. Maybe it's just the fixed camera guiding you? There has to be a good solution to this.
I'm a Tomb Raider fan, and people in the fandom have bitched about the white paint since 2013 with the reboot.
Personally i never gave a fuck about it, there are way bigger problems with those games.
I just find it funny how people act like it's a new thing that is ruining games lmao.
I think we have bigger problems.
Before yellow paint, we had... what were supposed to be white dried up bird droppings, introduced by very early AssCreed titles probably the very original one else the second, but also seen in newer Tomb Raider trilogy and everywhere else, with an occasional visual pun where they put in a literal tub of white paint that got knocked over. They were often used well, you don't have to highlight EVERY single climbable edge, just occasionally give people a hint. Oh btw white cloth appeared in both of these series as well as occasional stand-in.
Mirror's Edge is an interesting example, you can turn RunnerVision with red highlights on and off, but regardless any number of surfaces have helpful scrapes indicating they had been climbed before when a strong red highlight wasn't deemed fitting. Sometimes you're just left to puzzle around with no or minimal guidance. It's how puzzle games work, it's not like Portal gives you a beat by beat highlight of what you have to press.
I blame whoever play testers devs are hiring.
That was a thought I had as well. But this goes even further. Non gamers becoming devs is surely a big part of the issue.