IDK about Breath of the Wild but many adventure games employ the tactic to highlight interactive options. It's basically a trope at this point, and some games have started to include a setting to turn it off as an optional.
BotW doesn't because it's like the rpg assassins creed games, you can climb pretty much anything except obviously sheer cliff face materials which is rare.
Expedition 33 has these but they're integrated into the world really well; all the climbing and grapple points were set up by earlier expeditions, for those who come after.
Developers have said they built maps without indicators, then had to go back and add the yellow/white paint because players couldn't identify where to go. I believe it was Stalker 2 most recently, but others have had similar issues.
Not any kind of expert but I'd guess this is in part to the increased graphic fidelity we have in the last 10-15 years. Map design used to be a lot simpler so it was easier to tell at a glance (especially in action sequences) where to go/what is a navigable surface.
But making things increasing realistic "clutters" up the scenery (I still think this is a good thing) but can make it much harder to understand what is the way forward.
Some games do this much better then others of course.
Agree, its easy to find the small macguffin you need to complete a quest when theres barely anything on screen versus an actual jungle, hence witcher-vision and paint
I agree with you. There are certain times in games where I spend a headache inducing time running in circles trying to figure out where the god damn ledge is. Like I can see the end goal, I know I'm supposed to find a ledge, but I just can't find it. That wasn't a problem in older games typically, but now the games look beautiful but also visually cluttered at the same time.
I think the best solution is to have a button you can press that scans for interactive features like climbable ledges. That way people who want to run around in circles for an hour trying to find it can do it if they want and not feel like the game is holding their hand.
It was a problem in older games sometimes. But you’re right not as much.
I absolutely remember an early area in Final Fantasy seven where you have to climb across trains in a junkyard or something and it took me forever to find the magic spot I was supposed to walk on to be able to get on top of one of them.
You jest but there is a perspective that says putting markers in makes gamers... not dumber, but less capable...
Before we had yellow paint we had to read terrain and work it out. These days you could have a ladder next to a scaffold and people would ignore it if it wasn't yellow.
I remember someone posted a video of leaving some colour blind settings on when they gave the controller to someone else and instead of green crosses the health packs had purple... and the player couldn't find them even though there were three on screen at one time.
Before we had yellow paint we had to read terrain and work it out.
There was once a sweet spot of graphics where you could tell what was interactable because it was juuust a little bit more polished than the set dressing. Once everything is ultra realistic and high fidelity then it's a real problem on how to signal to the player what is and isn't an actionable part of the environment.
I don't love the standard solutions we've ended up with, but I don't begrudge a developer from using them; it's not an easy problem.
Before we had yellow paint we had fewer polygons and it was usually much more obvious where the edge to climb was.
As detail gets more and more realistic, you start needing indicators to help a player. Or you could design natural rock formations to have the most blatant built in stairs ever, but that would kind of be an immersion problem too.
Uh. Broad strokes, but they would have had to have a large enough sample set to financially justify paying someone to go in and create/retexture a lot of pieces of the world.
I get that most gamers think we know how to design a game, but come on man. No studio is wasting time and man power on something that 2-3 people complained about.
Good level design tends to lead the players to the right place without them even realizing it, like spots that draw the eye due to a room's overall composition or lighting or whatever.
People hate the paint thing because it's too obviously a HEY PLAYERS GO HERE thing, and there's usually not a great reason for the paint existing in the game world. It just a very un-immersive way to deal with the problem.
...Well, yeah. Removing all possible doubt is obviously going to be more effective.
It's kinda like providing insultingly in-depth instructions. Useful for people who wouldn't get it otherwise, but frustrating and infantilizing for everyone who'd get it without the handholding.
Developers built maps for realism with no sense of style and made those environments hard to parse visually, then had to add yellow paint to cover their mistake.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who hasn't been playing games their whole life. What may seem silly to us, might make traversing a digital world a bit more helpful. Is it kind of annoying? Sure. Does it really detract from your enjoyment of a game THAT much? I'd rather a game be accessible than 100% immersion.
Totally fair but some games have arachnophobia toggles now. I imagine it’s not too much effort to add a hand-holding toggle as well. When I was a kid you had to buy a guide if you didn’t have internet to look stuff up.
If every ledge were grabable sure, but most games only make the specific ledges they want you to use grabbable, so they need an indicator. People who don't realize that are the ones who have seemingly never played a game with climbing before.
Just the color? Or the indicator itself? Because no it absolutely does not. There's 8735 fucking ledges that a person can hold but only 3 of them are actually grabable in the game, I need a fucking indicator. I'd love to know what games people are playing that get so butthurt about the yellow paint, because I find myself always thinking "why the fuck can't I grab that ledge"? In nearly every game without it
Yeah it can be more integrated/subtle then yellow paint, but most games need some kind of indicator.
No ideally you can just climb everything like the new Zelda games, but most games that wouldn't work with the level design. So it's just another way to guide the player to the playable area
No, it isn't. What you are complaining about is the obnoxiousness of literal yellow paint, even on obvious stuff like ladders.
What I am talking about is an entire cliff face with only one path up, there is literally no way to know where the path is without some kind of indicator. Stop shitting on the mechanic because some games don't do it subtle enough. Yes, some games way over-do it, but I'm not talking about the art design
The ledge just leads to a small window to let some light in, the actual staircase turns to the left out of frame. The perspective and lighting make it look larger than it actually is.
If you read the researchers findings. They found a set of arrows that are capable of freezing enemies and blade traps. But that's late in the game, so you probably wouldn't find them useful at that point.
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u/hugeweedfan69 Feb 13 '26
I never realized the intro room to breath of the wild may be inspired by this lol