You will surely remember the controversy regarding the yellow stairs in Resident Evil 4, with the evident intent of the Capcom developers to lead the player by the hand during the exploration of the game environments. Well, the same discussion was triggered by those who tried the demo of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
As demonstrated in the X|Twitter post that we reported below, Square-Enix has also decided to insert some clear visual cues to guide the player’s exploration. Many users do not appreciate this type of design, since it can reduce the joy of exploration and the sense of identification with the game world.
We can’t even talk about isolated cases, since the tendency of developers to constantly hold the player’s hand has spread more and more in recent years. Think for example of Atreus’ constant suggestions in God of War Ragnarok, which help us solve the various environmental puzzles, or of the same yellow paint jobs in the series Horizon during Aloy’s climbing phases. Clearly the intent of the software houses is to make the gameplay experience accessible and immediate, but on the other hand there is the I risk trivializing it and flattening it in terms of exploration and interaction. What do you think about it?
Meanwhile, Digital Foundry analyzed the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo, finding some technical uncertainty.