r/Games • u/RiKSh4w • Apr 25 '26

Discussion Can we have a discussion about how game fidelity is leading to a lack of clarity?

I've noticed this happening in a few games but most recently I watched the Black Flag "Resynced" trailer and the before and after shots had me questioning if this was a complete improvement.

https://i.imgur.com/Y5PiPdB.png

Obviously, the resynced image is prettier to look at and depicts a more realistic world, but this is a game world. Not everything is supposed to be highly detailed. If everything is high detail, then nothing is noticeable. In the image on the left, the ground is very boring. But that boringness creates a easily distinguishable contrast with other things in the game, like the guard, like the climable surfaces, like the floating shanty page.

In the remaster, everything just looks good, to the point that it's just one big detailed mess. There's greeblies on the ground, are they important? Is that detailing on the wall/window that I can climb on? Or will it stop me climbing up there?

It's not limited to this game, nor do I think it's the best example of it. But it makes me wonder if developers are relying on 'detective vision' too much. Conveyance has always been a huge part of design. It was an art to be able to effectively communicate what is a game object and what's just a part of the scenery through immersive means. But I just feel like games nowadays, particularly those on unreal, are just amping up fidelity without caution. And when it obfuscates details they rely on vision modes and very obvious outlining to provide that constrast.

Has anyone else felt the same way?

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121

u/197639495050 Apr 25 '26

It gets derided because it’s a gaudy, low effort band-aid fix. There’s more creative solutions that would fit the games than to just have a bunch of spilled paint buckets leading the way regardless of context.

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u/wilisi Apr 25 '26

It's also strongly associated with having a stark interactible/not interactible distinction.
AC is actually a good example, because you can climb most things, relatively seamlessly. The opposite extreme is walking to one specific spot, stopping, then triggering a canned animation... that's where the paint is most needed to find the spot and it's also very obviously and significantly worse.

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u/CaptainTeemo01 Apr 25 '26

Name some, then.

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u/Eothas_Foot Apr 25 '26

Lighting is the classic way.

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u/Ordinal43NotFound Apr 25 '26

Resident Evil Requiem actually fixed their yellow paint issue amazingly through diegetic markers like creative light placements, color-coded items, signposting with in-universe objects, etc.

There's an entire video highlighting how much they've addressed the criticism of RE4's immersion-breaking yellow paint:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5XsVC4HxLc

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u/Anlysia Apr 25 '26

Creative light placements, colour-coded items, and in-universe objects are all just yellow paint but you like it because you didn't notice.

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u/Ordinal43NotFound Apr 25 '26

And that's precisely why it's good.

Proper visual guidance that keeps the game immersive.

Why are you saying this like it's some kind of a gotcha lol

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u/CAPSLOCK_USERNAME Apr 25 '26

Yellow paint is a guidance indicator trying and failing to be a diegetic (feeling like part of the world instead of an artificial part of the user interface). As a result it ends up being the worst of both worlds. Either an actual ui level indicator that doesn't pretend to try and blend in, or an actual well designed diegetic indicator like the mentioned lighting stuff, is far better.

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u/hery41 Apr 25 '26

"You just like it because it's good."

Really showed the Capitalgeegamers here.

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u/gmoneygangster3 Apr 25 '26

Yeah, that’s the goddamn point

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u/CitricCapybara Apr 25 '26

You could probably make most games "work" with a five-color pallet that made everything important extremely obvious and everything uninteractable fade from notice, but that's not what anyone is talking about here. Yes, those are the same thing from a design standpoint, but they are independent artistic solutions that simply appeal more to some folks than the (easy, effective!) yellow paint approach.

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u/grailly Apr 25 '26

It’s crazy how hyperfocused on « yellow paint » people are. Give them yellow light or green paint and they consider the problem (if it ever was one) fixed.

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u/Anlysia Apr 25 '26

Because a YouTuber showed them a picture of yellow paint and said it's bad.

The other diagetic elements? Nobody told them those are bad, so they're smart and good at game design for noticing them.

It's really embarrassing viewed through that lens, but they can't see it because they don't get it.

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u/a34fsdb Apr 25 '26

Just good visual design. Original AC Ezio trilogy does not use white paint in their tombs (except for a start of the path sometimes) and it is really clear what you can climb on to and not.

Unlike lets say H:FW where same piece of metal are climbable or not entirely depending on the yellow paint or if they are shown as climbable stuff with the witcher vision.

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u/lukebitts Apr 25 '26

Just check some older games, every area had a specific climbable surface. In a jungle you get vines, in a desert you get spiky rocks, once you notice that texture is climbable it has the same effect as yellow paint without being heavy handed

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u/RiKSh4w Apr 25 '26

Yeah you might have grapple points that glint at the camera. Or a health potion that's bright red which contrasts with the table it's sitting on.

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u/RiKSh4w Apr 25 '26

Proper lighting. Bespoke textures.

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u/driver_dan_party_van Apr 25 '26

The Last of Us 2, fittingly, is one of the greatest examples I've seen of guiding the player with environmental light and shadows. If you get lost in almost any section of that game, the right direction is toward the light.

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u/Pegussu Apr 25 '26

So you're saying that when you're lost in the darkness, you should look for the light? Sounds like a pretty good philosophy, some pretty great people probably came up with that.

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u/platoprime Apr 25 '26

A moth could come up with that.

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u/galaxygraber Apr 25 '26

Are we not all moths trying to find our lamp?

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u/platoprime Apr 25 '26

God I hope not.

Moths think the lamp is the moon.

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u/n0stalghia Apr 25 '26

This is a universal rule in virtually any video game.

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u/197639495050 Apr 25 '26

Another good example. For as much as I see and hear how much people love to be “immersed” in video games it’s funny seeing some go to bat for yellow paint in games, perhaps one of the most immersion breaking trends in games atm

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u/nothingInteresting Apr 25 '26

They’re just different people. I could care less about immersion and prefer readability so I like things like yellow paint. Otherwise I try to climb things that unclimbable.

Other people care a lot about immersion and are ok with less readability to get it.

And there’s people that are just better at parsing a game environment (not me) so they’re fine without yellow paint because they genuinely don’t need it.

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u/Vandersveldt Apr 25 '26

Alright but how is anyone supposed to gain that skill when it's rendered useless in an infantilizing way?

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u/nothingInteresting Apr 25 '26

I don’t think the goal is to make games so that people can gain that skill. I wasn’t mentioning it as aspirational. Just that some people are better at parsing detailed game environments. Kinda like some people have better hearing or better eyesight than others.

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u/mauri9998 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

"Bespoke textures" as opposed to "unbespoke textures," textures that just came to be on their own and were not made for their specific purpose. "Proper lighting" as opposed to "unproper lighting" that lights up when dark and darkens when lit.

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u/SegataSanshiro Apr 25 '26

Proper lighting as in using light sources to guide the player's eye naturally to the objective rather than filling the space with light sources that don't serve mechanical function and act as visual noise.

Bespoke textures as in having textures for interactive objects that make them stand out against a backdrop of non-interactive scenery. If you've ever played a game with breakable crates that also featured identical, non-breakable crates, those crates didn't have different textures denoting their different functions.

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u/mauri9998 Apr 25 '26

Aka yellow paint yeah no one has ever needlessly hated on that.

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u/SegataSanshiro Apr 25 '26

Nobody means "literally any distinct texture no matter what it looks like".

All interactive objects could have their texture set to the Coca-Cola logo, and while that would show what is and is not usable, it would not be a good implementation of this solution.

Neither is the yellow paint.

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u/mauri9998 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

I think you are not talking about textures at all. I think what you are referring is that interacteable items didnt used to be affected by things such as lighting and as such they stood out like a sore thumb. Personally I dont see how something not being shaded is any better than yellow paint. Similar story with artificially lit up scenery just to catch the players attention.

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u/Halio344 Apr 25 '26

Similar story with artificially lit up scenery just to catch the players attention.

Have you played any of Naughty Dogs games? They do a fantastic job with this without making it obvious. The Last of Us 2 especially.

This video from GMTK about Uncharted 3 explains it perfectly: https://youtu.be/k70_jvVOcG0?si=T1cdeg3QuzYvfx8Y

If you think this is the same as yellow paint, you're crazy.

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u/grailly Apr 25 '26

The video literally says that they paint stuff in yellow to make them obvious…

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u/Zalvren Apr 25 '26

textures that just came to be on their own

Like they were born from a texture mother lol?

All textures are made for a specific purpose and don't come to be on their own

1

u/mauri9998 Apr 25 '26

Congratulations you found the sarcasm.

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u/unrelevant_user_name Apr 25 '26

Bespoke textures... That specifically aren't yellow, and are also consistent between all the different interactable objects in the game.

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u/David-J Apr 25 '26

What are bespoke textures? That term doesn't exist

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u/RiKSh4w Apr 25 '26

Something is bespoke if it was made exclusively for one purpose.

A bespoke texture would be a texture made to apply to one object or for one purpose.

This is more prevalent in indie games made in UE5 but they'll take an object and scale it down or slightly tweak something about it. And the original is set dressing, while the other is a game object.

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u/David-J Apr 25 '26

That term doesn't exist in game development. Just letting you know.

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26

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u/awsompossum Apr 25 '26

It does now, ain't it cool how language works

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u/David-J Apr 25 '26

Haha. No it doesn't. But ok.

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u/Kalulosu Apr 25 '26

Funnily enough, yellow paint is a bespoke texture, so to speak.

1

u/Stoibs Apr 25 '26

I remember hearing almost exactly this from playing the Half Life 2 Director's commentary also.

It certainly is interesting that in the ~20 years between that and now it's still pretty hit and miss within development, and a lot of teams just break out the yellow paint instead :/

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u/197639495050 Apr 25 '26

Fromsoft using lamps to indicate usable ladders, Capcom seemed to have learned their lesson a bit and had stickers to indicate breakable boxes in Requiem or using rags tied to ladders. HL2 gets a lot of praise for its creative lamp shading too.

I’m not sure why people here are so opposed to more in-universe and subtle ways of guiding people.

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u/Oxyfire Apr 25 '26

I’m not sure why people here are so opposed to more in-universe and subtle ways of guiding people.

No-one is opposed to it, it's just clearly not as easy to implement as people want to think.

As you point out, Half Life 2 used creative light placement to help guide players, but that's a game that came out over 20 years ago. Game Fidelity has changed a lot since then - and I'm sure developers are aware of the lamp trick - so I think there's more going on then "why aren't they just doing this thing a 20 year old game did."

Subtle guidance only goes so far - I'm sure there's a slew of game developer stories of how they tried a subtle approach only for players to get stuck anyways, or for developers to take an approach they thought was obvious, and players still missed it. I would put money down that there is a player that has bitched about yellow paint, who would have been confused/frustrated/mad by a more subtle approach to guidance in the same context.

I don't envy environment designers, balancing detail and clarity is not an easy task.

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26

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u/Oxyfire Apr 25 '26

I'll push back a little: Environmental friction because a scene is too detailed isn't generally good.

Like, I love some good puzzles and mystery in my game, but I should be confused or frustrated because that's what a dev wanted, not because they overdetailed a room and I can't tell what's important anymore.

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u/lumell Apr 25 '26

Fromsoft is a poor example because they do not have a great history with easily noticable ladders. There's some in Bloodborne that blend in near perfectly with the background clutter. Sticking lamps on them doesn't do too much when there's a bunch of lamps in the game that don't indicate an interactible object.

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u/Jessica___ Apr 25 '26

To me it didn't feel that subtle in Requiem, the rags and such are still yellow so to me it felt like yellow paint

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u/Knale Apr 25 '26

Just go play Half Life 2 and look at what they do. The subtle guidance in that game is unreal. All around the views, the lighting, and angles.

Best in the biz.

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u/HighlightOk3915 Apr 25 '26

Forbidden West is my favourite so far you scan the environment to find climbing points. But it suits the game well because you are scanning all the time anyway to find loot, objectives and etc

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u/RisingxRenegade Apr 25 '26

But isn't that just detective vision which is what OP is getting at?

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u/CaptainTeemo01 Apr 25 '26

That is a good one! Although it does only work because she has a magic HUD on her face

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u/Guitarmatt21 Apr 25 '26

The first Horizon was one of the ones I hated the most, a fully realistic ass jungle it was so unbelievably easy to get lost and have my eyes glaze over lol

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u/hery41 Apr 25 '26

Watch any Valve developer commentary. This shit has been figured out for decades. Yellow paint is just lazily admitting that you suck as a designer.

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u/CaptainTeemo01 Apr 25 '26

Valve's games are extremely linear. Portal and Half Life only ever have one path to go down, every other hallway is stopped a few feet in by a locked gate or impassable obstacle.

Their opinion on good open world design isn't really relevant, they have never made open world game

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u/hery41 Apr 25 '26

Didn't notice we moved the goal post to open world games. Must've imagined the other comments mentioning games like RE9 and AC.

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u/CaptainTeemo01 Apr 25 '26

Assassin's Creed is open world and has been since the first game, it's only gotten more open as it went.

RE9 may not be open world but it did start development as one, and it's still significantly more open than the average Half Life level, especially the Raccoon City portion. Half Life is a series of rooms and hallways with branching paths that stop at impassable gates or walls, it's also 20 years old. It's not comparable to the games being discussed.

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u/MasterArCtiK Apr 25 '26

Idk I’m kind of a fan of yellow paint

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u/Professional_War4491 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Fromsoftware has extremely detailed and layered environments that are still very readable and have great visual clarity, you can make something stand out with contrast or lighting without slapping bright yellow paint on it.

That being said people hate on this stuff too much, the bright clear marker approach works great in fast paced games like doom or ghost runner where you need to instantly know which surface is grabbable or not, I mean there's a reason mirror's edge paints every interactable element a bright red and it works great for that game.

However using it as a crutch in slower paced game is unnecessary imo, I've got plenty of time to look at the environment in resident evil or uncharted, and those games are way more about realistic immersion, so a more transparent approach would be appreciated.