Oh, That Darn Yellow Paint | Semi-Ramblomatic

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I like the idea of a game where you play AS the ledge-painter, having to navigate dangerous cliffs with a paintbrush and a limited amount of paint. Then, the "real hero" takes the path you marked out, and you get graded based on ease of traversal, speed, whether or not they survived, etc. Edit: If you used a spray can instead, you could call it Spray & Pray.

One reason he didn't mention is that as graphic fidelity has increased, it made discerning "important" textures from "random background" textures more difficult, necessitating an extra layer of visibility. Edit: And the yellow paint is a very ham-fisted way to accomplish this, I'm not defending that part of it, just listing an additional reason behind it occurring.

I think its worth mentioning the one 3D cinematic platformer that did have engaging combat (combat in the sense of directly engaging with, reacting to, and bringing down enemies): Shadow of the Colossus. Which only did so by marrying them together until they are literally the same thing, with platforming being your means of bringing down the Colossi.

Let's not forget Dishonored's Blink (plus Far Reach and Displace), for letting the player aim precisely where they want to jump to with a marker, allowing precision jumping in a way that makes sense for a first-person perspective.

one of the problems that cause the yellow paint issue is instead of designing a high detail evoirnment while fitting in how to make it readable, it was designed first and at the end they had to retrofit readability.

I just don't get why its has to be paint. This is a mountain side. Moss, flowers, different types of rock make sense. A rouge rock climbing graffiti artist with only one color does not.

Traversal in Warframe is insanely good - any surface can be wall run or jumped, there's aim glide, there's ground slam (aim where you want to land and you'll go straight to it), there's double jump, ledge grabbing and bullet jump (faster forward jumping). Then some frames can fly, one uses a hoverboard most of the time, one can turn into a giant super monkey ball, some can teleport, one turns into a flood of water, another a cloud. it really does have a lot of variety.

Another aspect I think is the increasing visual business of modern games.

Speaking of history running in cycles: I remember when Assassins Creed was coming out, reading an article breaking down the technical marvel of a character climbing a wall by putting their hands and feet on actual hand- and feet-holds. The style of the time was to indicate a climbable section of a wall using a texture, like green vines or moss. So we've come back around to that, where you look for the climbable texture but it's much more luxuriously animated.

I think "just play indie games" is kinda the only way to play without a subtle subtone of guilt.

There's something wacky about games adding a third dimension of mobility just to say "actually nuh-uh this is actually boring"

I like how Ross Scott got you thinking about the overhead ledge pull-up and how hard it is

I'd like to see it become more of a Accessibility option, Pathing Paint. Basically settings for "Climbing, Ledges, or Walkable paths" and being able to customize how that color shows up or if you want press a button to see it.

To this day, a game like Neon White shouldn't make 3D first-person precision platforming look as polished as it is. It's a miracle.

Loved how Doom 2016 uses the spraypaint bit to kinda show you where to go but also as something to hunt for to find the many secrets in every level. You gotta use them like bread crumbs, not street lines

It's also just one case of visual clutter and graphical fidelity being used to make a game look more immersive, but then you need a way to make interactive parts pop up, in turn making it more "gamey" and less immersive... There's also highlighted crates, doors, plants, exclamation points on quest givers etc.

Fondly remembering Sunset Overdrive an open world game with a fast travel system that truly felt superfluous because they made traversing the space (even when they sent you clear across the map) feel incredibly fun.

Walking in the woods, the term beaten path is literal: a nature trail, deer trail, etc, a path worn down by frequent travel to the point were no grass grows. They are obvious and under utilized. Yellow paint is a series of failures being masked. Start with "why am I climbing up?", because we need an interesting terrain. This could have been done better, we've seen it done better and if your going to cheap out, expect to be called out on it. Just like when Cloud teleports 5 inches to the designated "animated drop off higher terrain" point. In contrast, PS1 ff7 had arrows on the ground to designate points of traversal via new area, ladder, or drop off point. >It never pretended to be existing in the world of the game, that is the key point.<

The new Doom games use something similar but far more elegant than yellow paint: diegetic green lights. They tell you what direction to go and what ledges are climbable, but they look very natural in the context of a high-tech space facility. It gets slightly silly in the Hell levels where the path forward is hinted by a skull torch of green flame, but it still looks and feels much better than yellow paint up the side of a mountain.