Oh, That Darn Yellow Paint | Semi-Ramblomatic

This video is sponsored by GameMaker, the free, fast, and easy-to-use 2D game engine that’s helped power modern classics like Undertale, Hotline Miami, and Yahtzee’s upcoming Starstruck Vagabond - opr.as/GM-SecondWind
Yahtzee finally weighs in on the yellow paint discussion.
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[@SecondWindGroup]

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[@deusexvesania1702]

Congratulations! Happy birthday? Half-birthday? Happy something!

[@jacksonteller3973]

i'm just not that big on most indie games

[@AdamKirbyMusic]

Congrats guys! It's great to support employee-owned outfits like yours.

[@aturchomicz821]

@@jacksonteller3973 Such a horrible mindset lol

[@LocalSlasher]

​@@jacksonteller3973Why not? There's an absurd variety out there all over the web! It's not a genre, you know.

[@MX-oz5rx]

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.

[@FubukiTheIcyKing]

I'd play that

[@enzolabre6295]

I rarely comment when people suggest ideas like this, but that is a seriously good concept for a game. Sounds fun and somewhat cozy. I skilled developer could create quite a charming game with this idea.

[@scaper12123]

that would be a really amusing game ngl

[@Hurtdeer]

honestly its such a solid game concept its a bit of a shame you just gave it up for free. get the feeling someone is going to steal that one soon

[@mauree1618]

Go make it!

[@TheMarkoSeke]

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.

[@timogul]

Yeah, I prefer "Detective Vision" alternatives to this though, where if the background _is_ too cluttered to tell the important stuff at a glance, have a button that temporarily highlights these things, as in "you the player might just see a wall, but Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, sees a ladder."

[@okamileek006]

​@@timogul sure but that might take you out of the experience if the game setting doesn't accomodate it into it's universe, like detective vision makes sense in batman and assassins creed, but it wouldn't make sense at all in resident evil

[@StevenUlyssesPerhero]

@@timogulAnd I very much don't prefer the "Detective Vision" solution. Obviously the ideal is having strong enough visual design that what can be interacted with stands out from what can't, but I'll take the yellow paint over "we dedicated a button to a vision mode that color-codes everything" any day of the week.

[@amaryllis0]

Necessitating yellow paint, or a modicum of skillful and thoughtful game design

[@Tildryn]

@@timogul That just transitions into being annoyed at constantly having to turn on the Detective Vision.

[@Tenosyn]

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.

[@JJAB91]

Hell, you can just use expressive character traits to do the same job. Remember how in Wind Waker Link would look at points of interest? Whatever happened to that?

[@This-Was-Sparta]

Even the walls the ledges are attached to look weirdly out of place in FF7:Rebirth. I get that environment art time consuming work but the one at 1:15 especially looks like it was just pasted in.

[@personhumanthing]

I feel like so many game have to cater to the dumbest people, because they're the most likely to complain they couldn't see the ledge they were supposed to climb.

[@NotFunctional-ever]

Shockingly, Golem did one good thing, and that was replace yellow paint with vines.

[@charliericker274]

Because it's recognizable and easy to implement. Why think of a new solution when one already exists that most people are okay with. The whole yellow paint think just proved this IMO. For every person railing against the immersion breaking random yellow paint on a mountain side, there were a dozen people calling that person a nerd and a loser for caring about such details. The casual audience (for lack of a better term) doesn't care. So yellow paint.

[@TheLadyFl3x]

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.

[@TripleTowerStudios]

Shadow of the Collosus is an outstanding game. Make no mistake. But the platforming mechanics are by no means innovative or refined. The challenge of the game is derived from finding out how you can get on to the fuckers. Once you've managed to latch on to a collosi like a tick you basically just hold the "don't fall off" button and are free to move in any direction.

[@AzureIV]

Great, now I am thinking of Colossi with yellow painted climbable parts.

[@BainesMkII]

Breath of the Wild has "you can go anywhere" traversal, while retaining decent combat. You could even create natural "cinematic" moments if you felt like it. Sunset Overdrive technically had a limited set of traversal options (bounce pads, grind wires, wall climb, wall run, air dash, etc), but the city was completely packed with them, and both the combat and the enemy behavior was designed around the player being constantly in motion.

[@randomprotag9329]

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.

[@simplysmiley4670]

Yup. It gotta look amazing in trailers and promotional materials first. Gotta be playable way afterwards prolly crammed in at the very end of development because some executive wanted you to be able to tell how many hairs a characterh as in their nose over making sure the game functions at all and plays well.

[@dglsconklin]

As much as it is a Jiminy Cockthroat game, Horizon kind of "solved this" through the use of the Focus. You can walk up to a wall without scanning it, look at the footholds and say "that looks climbable." You can try it and it either works or it doesn't. Then you enable your focus and it shows you (in bright yellow -p-a-i-n-t- *augmented reality*) where the actual footholds are. Granted this is only for mountain climbing, and for whatever reason they still decided to paint climbable structures with yellow, but they were close.

[@Catheidan]

Also I like people don't remember how hated climbing puzzles were getting. Everyone talks about the cool train scene in uncharted2 but go back and play it now. Almost everything outside the train scene is sucky climbing puzzles

[@Delmworks]

Shit, I think you got it…

[@josephdanejackson]

@@dglsconklin Zero Dawn had yellow footholds and yellow rope. As much as I love Horizon, it's part of the problem, here.

[@Cptn_Fabulous]

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.

[@RobinClower]

You saying "blink" makes you also appreciate Overwatch's traversal. Tracer can blink horizontally 10m in any direction, and maps feel made for her to be able to just make it from ledge to ledge. But then you have characters who can climb, rocket jump, jetpack, wallride, grapple hook, etc and they all feel equally well designed for.

[@Bricklemore]

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

[@zUJ7EjVD]

Also the only way to keep pace with the obnoxiously high pace of game releases since I think late 2023. SOME OF US HAVE JOBS PEOPLE (Not me though, hurray for unemployment ...).

[@xeladas]

Oh indies are just as capable of being hotbeds for awfulness (see the allegations against Alexis Kennedy). It's just that it only really comes out if the studio becomes big enough ("head of indie studio nobody has heard about is a creep" is hardly newsworthy).

[@joshconfer209]

It's for comedic effect of course, but honestly I think AA is where the sweet spot is. Decent price model, QoL updates, polished graphics and no need to make excuses about "it's only a couple of devs" or "it's an aesthetic choice".

[@hrmmmmmm]

Platforming with good combat is alive and so well in the 2D indie/AA space…. Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Ori… so many more

[@SimuLord]

Indie is an interesting space, because your entry point will inevitably be some game that manages to get a lot of mainstream (or at least enthusiast) hype, and you'll briefly think that "wow, Stardew Valley and Return of the Obra Dinn and Banished, this place is paradise"... ...then you'll inevitably get snookered by some godawful Early Access game that gets abandoned or rushed into 1.0 or swerves wildly from its initial promise, or you'll play a real dog of a game that is so amateurish that you start thinking that maybe AAA ain't so bad after all... The upside is that eventually you'll find your sort of golden mean, and while you'll play fewer games overall, you'll spend a lot less money and a lot more time in the indie games you DO let into the tent (looking at you, American Truck Simulator and the 2,150 hours I have in it, or the 1,300 I have in My Time at Sandrock, or the 350 I have in Medieval Dynasty...)

[@Oscar_Myk]

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.

[@personhumanthing]

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

[@ArcaneAzmadi]

This is what happens when "fun" is removed from the equation of making games.

[@SFJake250]

Despite adding a dimension to the entire games, 3D games tend to be surprisingly more one-dimensional than 2D games. Its funny (sad) that way.

[@M4Dbrat]

It's one of the things Quake fans felt when Counter-Strike came out 25 years ago

[@Vastin]

@@ArcaneAzmadi More specifically, it's what happens when the complexity of your animation system starts to balloon to the point where no-one can comprehend (or afford) it. Animation systems with several modes of movement tend to start increasing in complexity exponentially due to all the transition states between modes and directions of movement, and they can become VERY unwieldy, even for a big studio to handle. 2D greatly limits and simplifies these transitions, while 3D makes them much worse. You can combat that by limiting how you can use them, and what transitions are possible - but the player experiences this as a bunch of limitations on how, when, and where they can move. There's the other issue that complex animations applied to arbitrary geometry are still nearly impossible. An open world game like TotK just can't do the kinds of parkour animation sets that Mirrors Edge or PoP might use, because they can't hand craft the fixed geometry those require into their entire world, so they stick with a much simpler set of animations, but allow much more freedom of movement. Honestly - not a fan of games with ultra-high fidelity animation models. They always feel too restrictive. It's like I'm trying to play in some 3D animator's thesis project rather than playing a game.

[@BainesMkII]

@@Vastin I believe it is more the level design than the cost of more animation. It is substantially easier to design "compelling" restrictive areas where the player is forced to travel linear paths, compared to designing truly open areas.

[@selib6819]

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

[@Hysteria98]

It's exactly the reason why, but there are better ways of doing it that game developers refuse to do because they all fall over themselves copying each other for the most watered-down ideas that work that don't challenge player perception, because there has been a constant statistical complaint that most players don't finish single-player games- therefore our games aren't dumbed down enough to sell.

[@Prototype-357]

I loved JM8 video about that, his game already seems like a nightmare from the level design perspective but you add in visual fidelity and It just seems impossible.

[@mayjou6605]

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.

[@bt1234567892010]

This is also why I stand by that Assassin's Creed Unity had the best Parkour of the AC games. The hand holds blended well. your cues were Arno's animation when climbing, and if the button would function. They said nah to that in Origins and Odyssey, I'm not counting Syndicate because the grappling hook you get about halfway in makes the parkour completely ignorable in 90% of cases. Valhalla was a hybrid that didn't quite click.

[@scoolio]

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

[@timogul]

It'd be funny if one of these games had multiple selectable characters, and while some could do extreme parkour maneuvers, another would try to do a ledge pull-up and just flop back down after a couple seconds.

[@VioletKatana64]

​@@diamondmx3076Monosodium Glutamate 2:Salt of Liberty

[@armorhide406]

I think Yahtzee touches on that idea in one of his Ego Reviews. He made it his goal one year when he was a kid to climb up to his attic under his own strength

[@Sherin974]

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.

[@doomspud6302]

That's one of my main problems with the yellow paint. Its clearly attempting to be that kind of immersive diegetic guidance, since its something that exists in the world, and the characters themselves can see it. But it always ends up being so nonsensical as an in-world thing that it ends up feeling even more artificial and "because video game" than actual non-diegetic arrows or map icons would have been. So it just ends up ruining the player's immersion, instead of enhancing it. And its extra annoying, because all it takes is just a tiny bit more effort to keep that from happening. There have been plenty of other games that used much more subtle effects to guide the player to key points. But current "AAA" developers are either too lazy/inept to pull that off, or they think we're all too stupid to notice anything subtle. Either way, its a cheap and lazy solution to a problem that was already solved decades ago.

[@BlazeMakesGames]

that's one of the things that gets me so much about how yellow paint is used in FF7R. They *do* use those non-diegetic arrows to denote interactable things like ladders and buttons and such. So they clearly don't care about some aspects of the game trying to look like they fit in the world. So then why did they even bother making the climbable walls slathered in yellow paint? It would ironically be better imo if they just kept using the non-diegetic floating arrows because at least then like you said it's not trying to pretend that it fits in the world of the game. But by using Yellow paint instead in those places, it makes it look like they were trying to make it diegetic and then failed.

[@Alloveck]

Yeah, the arrows are an excellent point. If the marking method isn't absolutely, completely 100% in-world justifiable, then don't even try to make it an in-world thing. Just put in arrows or highlights or something. The middleground solution of things that could physically be there but make no sense to be there is the worst possible solution by far. I'd gladly take abstractions like the Mirror's Edge runner vision thing or original FFVII's arrows over unexplained paint any day.

[@KyteM]

@@Alloveck FF7R2 DOES use the non-diegetic arrow. It also uses three different diegetic methods to mark climbing paths (the ledge has a specific shape, the path is tinted blue, the ledge is painted yellow). People still miss'em. And you can't tell players to use detective mode all the time in an open world. The alternative is having an always-on detective mode or highlight mode but that'd ruin the aesthetic even more deeply.

[@davidwilson6577]

The original FF7 did not have arrows on the ground. It had toggleable triangles in the air.

[@fyzxnerd]

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.

[@Yodah97]

It's annoying how few options a lot of Triple A games give players. They should have scores of advanced settings. Yet I'm much more likely to see an option like that in an indie release.

[@russianbear0027]

​@@Yodah97accessibility has definitely improved a lot in the last 10 years, but its still got a ways to go

[@DivineOne-vb6td]

@@Yodah97 Yeah, for how much AAA games loooove to justify simplifying mechanics and game-play as 'improving accessibility', they sure do leave out things disabled gamers would actually like to have in their game experience.

[@calvin7330]

Just let us choose the rgba values of the paint. You can even default it to yellow and casual players won't see any difference

[@sayakai7561]

This is one of the few things Shadow of the Tomb Raider actually did right.

[@Dhlamedia]

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.

[@erakfishfishfish]

One of the reasons why it works is they keep the graphics simple and uncluttered, so you can actually focus on traversal and goals rather than getting confused by the environment. It’s almost as if the devs valued fun over realism.

[@RacingSnails64]

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.

[@GalvatronRodimus]

Honestly, green skull torches aren't even that out-of-place in Doom. I'm pretty sure the '90s games had them as set-dressing too!

[@armorhide406]

Eternal had yellow paint though. The monkey bars were yellow, and climbable walls had very distinct appearance. At least those weren't yellow

[@Dschonathan]

@@armorhide406 Eternal "arcade-ified" it's visuals so much that a blinking yellow monkey bar, between which you literally pick up floating double-jump pick-ups, is perfectly fine imo. The problem is games that are realistically beautiful, but artistically too lazy to think of a way of visually telling the player where they can and can't go.

[@Alloveck]

@@GalvatronRodimus Nobody's questioning the green fire itself. The issue is that it doesn't make sense for the demons to go out of their way to put green torches by things Doomguy can climb.

[@ObadiahtheSlim]

Miyazaki loved his candle lit paths in the Dark Souls series. A number of games out there will use lighting cues to signify the path ahead and path to side areas over the less subtle yellow paint approach.

[@soldier257]

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

[@Triforce_of_Doom]

oh yeah Doom's secrets are just hidden enough to trip you up & it's great. Like yeah the way forward is a cracked wall bathed in green lights but you can easily miss the similarly cracked wall that's in the corner that has a figurine behind it.

[@BurstVessels]

"Corridor climbing" nice coinage. BTW I recently noticed after 2k hours in Elden Ring that there are a few places where difficult jumps are indicated by TINY splotches of white paint. It's so subtle it literally took hundreds of hours invading in Stormveil Castle alone to notice it. When I finally did see it I felt like Neo seeing the Matrix code.

[@FubukiTheIcyKing]

Really. That saves me a lot of unfortunate platforming deaths.

[@BurstVessels]

@@FubukiTheIcyKing It's not universal but there are a few places where a jump that might seem impossible is indicated as possible by a little bit of paint.

[@Pimploaf_YTP]

It's been a while since I played, but is it even paint? Isn't it meant to be wear marks from others jumping from the same spot repeatedly?

[@mrsacapuntas7412]

@@Pimploaf_YTP it can be many things - paint, candle wax, lit candles, lanterns, floor scratchings and probably more I'm forgetting. Once you start looking for them, the game is absolutely littered with it. Quite ingenious design, really

[@mjc0961]

And this proves why so many games go for obvious, bright yellow paint. People always ask "why can't they be more subtle about it?" and the obvious answer is "if they're subtle it doesn't get noticed and fails to do the job"

[@armelior4610]

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.

[@joffrerey]

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.

[@TheMoogleKing93]

That games put so much resource into their realism and graphical fidelity but so little into their art direction is truly a sad trend in modern gaming. Look at this beautifully realistic textured cliff, no I can't be bothered to organically infer to the player that it is climbable.

[@Vincent_Quak]

Death Stranding did it well, it is strange no other developer has followed the same route

[@svenbtb]

That's kind of a huge insult to all the talented artists that work on these games. The art direction isn't what the issue is.

[@OzixiThrill]

@@svenbtb Both the level and visual design teams are artists. The lack of clear communication to players of what can be interacted with lies on the shoulders of those two teams. And it doesn't matter how good or talented they are, if they can't solve this issue that has been solved more times than anyone would bother to count, then the "insult" is well deserved.

[@simplysmiley4670]

@@Vincent_Quak It isn't strange. The basic gist of it is: some executive or shareholder wants their money fast and the devs can't put time into making sure the game functions well and plays well without fucking over the art direction and immersion of it. The yellow paint trend is basically the simplest, laziest and cheapest way to tell the player where to go without looking horrible in the trailers (a giant arrow looks worse in trailers and marketing material), unlike making sure the area organically and fittingly nudges the player the right direction.

[@simplysmiley4670]

@@OzixiThrill There's also the case of "the artist wasn't given enough time to solve the issue and was held by his balls by upper managment to finish everything needed for stunning trailers and promotional materials first by the deadline"

[@balisticemerald8512]

Sonic Frontiers being loaded with air control moves was such a baller decision. It's like everything that makes Celeste work in 2D, but cranked up. Like as if you gave Madeline a blue fur suit and 12 cans of monster energy

[@renendell]

I realized recently that all my current go-to games are indie games. Factorio, Balatro, Pacific Drive

[@Yodah97]

Same. It's either indies or 10+ years old games.

[@orangesilver8]

In Assassin's Creed the climbing serves a purpose in stealth. The climbing isn't linear as well since there's a whole city. Finding the right way to climb a very tall building might be a bit difficult. But if it isn't difficult it's fine because it's just a part of getting to a good position to fall 300 feet and stab somebody.

[@stonerhino83]

Pseudoregalia is one of the best modern 3D platformers, IMO. I loved it, and I don't even normally play that kind of game.

[@daaaah_whoosh]

Yellow paint (or white scuffs, or ropes, or whatever) is better than not having it, if you're going to have the same underlying mechanic of going in a linear path with no danger. Something like Assassin's Creed doesn't need it because (a lot of the time) it's more of a sandbox where you can go wherever you want, so the whole world needs to be climbable. Something like Far Cry or the Tomb Raider reboot is more constrained, either by the linearity of the level or the general lack of climbable surfaces, so they need to be clearer about where you can or should go. I think FPS games have also had a series of renaissances in movement mechanics in the last 10-20 years, but again it's best when it's "climb/vault/wallrun anything" rather than "here is a section where you can grab on the ledges we've marked".

[@Aelesis]

It's interesting that you mention AC as a game that doesn't need it, because at least the older games made use of white sheets to signify places where you could easily climb to the rooftops

[@greedtheron8362]

The main problem is the video game feels too video gamey. It might be the same problem that park rangers have to deal with overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest tourist.

[@FerretWarlord1]

"Feels too video gamey" is what killed my interest in ever playing Stray. I was on board until I learned that the bulk of the game would consist of performing fetch quests for NPCs while being closely trailed by robo-Navi. I just wanted a cat game about doing cat things. I may have to check out Little Kitty, Big City some day.

[@starmaker75]

Basically it suspended the suspension of disbelief in video games.

[@mauree1618]

Too video gamey while at the same time going for photorealistic graphics; poo.

[@normalguycap]

Wrong use of video gamey. Video gamey is actually a good thing, you're misdefining it.

[@Deliveredmean42]

Not exactly the right term.

[@rosuppp]

3:50. Such a poet

[@rkken]

that limerick was so subtle i almost didnt catch it

[@MoskalMedia]

I didn't even notice this was a limerick until you pointed it out!

[@JackFoz454]

Me neither. Good KZbin comment!

[@rosuppp]

@@JackFoz454 I thank ye

[@nevarran]

Hey, hey, in Tomb Raider I was not staring at the wall, thank you very much!

[@johnnydarling8021]

Great video. I love these in-depth analysis of a specific game mechanic or trend. I'm a bit surprised that he didn't mention how Dishonored solved the first-person precision-platforming problem, by making teleporting everywhere a major part of its primary gameplay-loop. (without using yellow paint, but still letting you know where you can go)

[@vincentrose8725]

Surprised we didn't mention shadow of colossus. Cinematic climbing + good combat. Yes it's usually a corridor, but the system is built for variety and allows a bredth of movement.

[@SystemBD]

Good combat? In Shadow of the Colossus? It was serviceable at best

[@Delmworks]

The climbing is the combat in SoTC…though to be fair is is also VERY clunky Edit: damn I’m glad I have an edit button, did I have a stroke when I first wrote this??

[@GabroGames]

Great analysis - I think you've really hit on a greater trend here: - new mechanic introduced, starts clunky and unrefined - improves slowly, more refinement of the mechanic, more fun games - gets streamlined for "flow", reduced to a couple of button presses, becomes a ghost ride feature

[@KingOfElectricNinjas]

Yeah, that features are clearly more interesting in older games even with their clunky and unrefined state and then ended up flattened into effectively automated sequences is a sad sight to see.

[@SimuLord]

I liked ledges a lot better when the phrase "Skyrim jumping" was worming its way into the lexicon. To this day, if I'm describing a way to sequence break/get someplace the player is not supposed to go, and I say "just Skyrim jump up the wall in place X then drop down from the ledge into the area", any reasonably experienced gamer knows exactly what I mean.

[@AlbinoCheesemonkey]

I always call this "Bethesda-ing" because I've been doing it since Morrowind. Like, "Oh, I just need to Bethesda up this wall"

[@freedomtrain69]

@@AlbinoCheesemonkey Haha, as another Morrowind onward vet I personally refer to this jumping process as "scrolls-ing"

[@SimuLord]

@@AlbinoCheesemonkey I started with Oblivion, but Skyrim's the one even people who aren't generally Bethesda fans have probably played. It's also the most utterly flagrant example because of just how many mountains there are all over the map.

[@AlbinoCheesemonkey]

@@SimuLord I agree, Skyrim Jumping would be the most widely recognized name for it. I do love that you, me, and @freedomtrain69 all independently have a name for it!

[@snackplaylove]

Agree - just shorten it to ‘Rimming

[@petermann673]

1:21 That's surprisingly nostalgic for me. Because at my grandmother's house that was built on a hill, she had a rock staircase made with piled large rocks and dirt. And on the rocks, she had spraypainted it yellow so that it'd stand out against the forest foliage. So to a maybe 4 year old me, ascending that was basically Cloud's climbing corridor. 😂

[@GriffinPilgrim]

I know it'd be a bit of a "screw you" but it'd be fun if just occasionally the painted yellow route was a trap set by the villain who noticed the hero always follows yellow painted climbing areas.

[@jaffa4242]

Haha I can defs see that working in the right game. Put it in a fail-forward kinda context and you're golden

[@grand_tourist46]

When he did that examination of the use of various colors in video games a few weeks back, I was honestly surprised that he missed this particular aspect of the color yellow when it came up.

[@SolaScientia]

I think that's why I'm fine for a game, even an open world one, to not allow climbing or even jumping. Kingdoms of Amalur has no jumping unless you go to specific ledges and get the prompt to jump down. I don't have to waste my time seeing if something is or is not permitted. Yes, it's still pressing a button, but at least I'm not running around looking for out of place yellow paint. I got so used to not being allowed to properly jump in the Souls games and Bloodborne that it took me ages to get the hang of it in Elden Ring and I frequently felt like I was going out of bounds when exploring the big legacy dungeons. I still am not great at jumping to avoid attacks even with over 100 hours in the game. I'll jump attack plenty, but I still just dodge roll attacks instead of jumping over them unless it's a specific boss (goddamn Elden Beast, for example). Astro's Playroom does 3D platforming very well, I think. It's a ton of fun and even now I'll play through a section or two when I want something light and happy but not fully mind-numbing.

[@pneumaofthedreamrealm8977]

Honestly, this is one of the few instances where I feel like a video and the sponsor segment actually flow together thematically, which is really saying something! Well done SW!

[@Tribow]

Building on the "just play indie games" point, there's actually a lot of 3D indie platformers that feel amazing.

[@Gearmond]

Was wondering when Yahtzee would remember the word "ladder"

[@Mustafa_AhmedPGH]

So was I. "Vertical corridor," a ladder is a thing that exists and explains the concept perfectly! You don't need to make up new terms all the time. Still a good video overall, I'd say.

[@Notsogrimreaper98]

The word "ladder" is expedient and informative, yes, but doesn't effectively convey how stupid it is (plus a lot of them go sideways in places so it's a very strange ladder anyway)

[@daiyadoggo]

Calling it a ladder would be an insult to actual ladders

[@EmperorSeth]

A ladder in a video game only counts if the "Snake Eater" theme plays while you climb it. Or it's long enough that you can play it in your head.

[@wariodude128]

I think the real problem is that a lot of games don't make climbing around on walls interesting. Just about every God of War game up to Ascension made it so by adding in various hazards along the climb. Even the 2018 one along with Ragnarok, with the aforementioned yellow paint, often gives you alternate routes you can go at points.

[@chefrowlet]

i felt FarCry had that nailed since 3, where those bits of abandoned climbing rope meant "you're supposed to climb this part". Easy to pick out visually, not immersion-breaking... I'm normally on the side of Sacrifice Realism for the Sake of Playability but wow that was my first time seeing the FF7 yellow paint thing and... they might have a point. Semi-related but I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 again these days. Weirdly, that game does traversal better than most, especially since you can upgrade to get a super-jump or double-jump to help getting around. Everything that looks climbable IS climbable, leaping up to a catwalk in a firefight can give you a height advantage or better cover, the animations are quick without being jarring, the precision is forgiving enough that you aren't left swinging in the wind, you can actually see your feet in whatever silly outfit you assembled for yourself... and that's one of the few games i can think of where random graffiti highlighting secret paths makes sense in-universe. It's no parkour game a la Dying Light but it's pretty damn good for a Jiminy Cockthroat.

[@saph_fire]

See Ghostrunner for a first person game with a focus on both platforming and combat, succeeding in making both *quite* satisfying

[@gus.smedstad]

It's worth bringing up the original Crackdown, which had lots of free-form climbing without definite paths. While it was primarily a shooter, there were challenges where the game stuck rewards in high places and said "go get them" without telling you how. A good part of combat was often finding some high spot to shoot the baddies. In contrast, Crackdown 2 took the same city map, and eliminated a lot of fun by adding squirrel traps. Various ledges and things designed to prevent you from climbing wherever you wanted.

[@Chameleonradio]

Truly, I welcome the 2dification of games. Hollow Knight is a great example of how you can have both intense platforming and great combat, because the techniques you use in platforming become relevant in combat. Except for the platforming sequences in Spiritfarer. Maybe it was the fact that I was on keyboard, but those were truly some of the most frustrating challenges I dealt with.

[@Sopsy_Hallow]

i dont think there can be a "2dification" of games, seeing as games started out as 2D and a good chunk have stayed 2D

[@henryfleischer404]

Hollow Knight was great, but I liked how Touhou Luna Nights mixed platforming and combat in a 2d metroidvania better.

[@eclipserepeater2466]

Maybe that's part of why 2d metroidvania games are so appealing. We get to go back to when you could have good deep platforming and good deep combat co-existing.

[@matthewclements3476]

It makes sense if it’s a common route. If you spend any time bouldering you quickly learn that the chalk left on the holds is a useful hint for how to finish a climb.

[@warmachine5835]

Which makes you wonder why they didn't choose white. Someone else in the comments pointed this out and I distinctly remember it as well--even established top rope routes at popular climbing spots will have chalk left behind if they're sufficiently sheltered from the rain. Never mind lead and trad routes. I have a feeling there would be the same reaction though--the venn diagram of climbers and gamers is a relatively small overlap, so you'd still get people thinking it was unrealistic, especially when going somewhere you wouldn't expect to be well-traveled like the secret entrance to the BBEG's fortress that shouldn't be getting much traffic.

[@matthewclements3476]

@@warmachine5835 I guess just to make it stick out 🤷‍♂️

[@ZKtheMAN]

@@matthewclements3476 This is probably correct, honestly. White on gray boulders would be unidentifiable as all hell in one of these games.

[@jasonblalock4429]

I feel like the Metroid Prime series deserves a mention for being rare FPP games that manage to do both jumping and shooting well. Although mostly just by slowing the player down a bit and making Samus's ground hitbox extra-big to make long jumps easier to land. I replayed it last year and was a little surprised how well the mobility generally held up.

[@niictar]

They also tilted the camera/first person perspective view downwards and towards the upcoming platform, which provided another subtle layer of assurance that you were going to make the jump.

[@richardhunter9779]

I am quite sure they also change the height of your jump to let you land jumps more consistently. For every room, there is a graph of surfaces that you are assisted when jumping between.

[@jasonblalock4429]

@@richardhunter9779 Hah, didn't know that, but I could totally believe it. If that's true, they did a good job hiding it from the player.

[@niictar]

@@tha1whonox that is pain, full agree

[@user__214]

I'm guessing that Yahtzee would say - and I think this is a good point - is it a platformer just because it has jumping? I think the platforming in Metroid Prime served its purpose of adding verticality to the world (and gave you a reason to give a shit about the double jump), but I question whether the game was *about* platforming. The jumps to me didn't particularly feel good, as in "yes this movement is awesome and I want to do more of it." The swinging with the grapple beam actually felt good to me, and I suppose that's part of the platformer's movement arsenal. But the jumping ranged between "fine" and "annoying". I totally agree that Metroid Prime pulled it off. They had platforming and it didn't suck. But I think I agree with Yahtzee that if platforming is about precision jumping, you can't have precise jumps in a game where you can't see your feet.

[@CapnBry]

For some of these corridors, the issue is that we removed loading screens. If you want to make an environment where there is any elevation, sometimes the character needs to traverse elevation. In the past the character might see a tall spire and approach it, and there's a rope / ladder / tunnel entrance and "Press X to enter Spire Top Temple" and you'd just loading screen there. Now you have to actually get there because the target is in the same map as the overworld.

[@rikamayhem]

We could still fade to black for an instant and teleport to the other end, or any other kind of transition, but that doesn't help adding artificial playtime to the average playthrough or something.

[@frankstahlcgn]

Brilliant analysis. Thank you!

[@akaimizu1]

One thing I immediately enjoyed about the original Tomb Raider games, was pretty much related to how you mentioned the original Prince of Persia 2d Game before talking about it. The exact same Jumping, ledge grabbing, and running distance rules, applied to both games. It's like Tomb Raider ripped the exact rules straight out of the original PoP Game. Standing forward jump could jump over one full square onto another one. Or that same motion will be able to jump over one square to ledge grab if the hole was 2 squares long. Running forward jump could clearly jump over 2 squares range of holes, however if the length of the hole was 3 squares, you'd ledge grab the earth just beyond the 3 square length hole.And so on. If it worked in the original Prince of Persia, it worked in Tomb Raider.

[@Shadowlyger]

Very funny for Yahtzee to include Uncharted among this list considering his complaint in the ZP of it that he sometimes couldn't tell what was climbable and what was background. This yellow paint, Mr Yahtz, is for you.

[@jorgemontero6384]

Without the yellow paint, Uncharted is still full of vertical corridors: It's just that they are yellow corridors in he dark! Or, at best, a modernized version of the Maniac Mansion school of pixel hunting. The issue is no tthe yellowness: but the fact that there's only one way to do said climbing. It's unnatural either way you slice it, and it's also unnatural when in other places you can't climb. See God of War Ragnarok, where Kratos, god of war, finds mildly uneven terrain impassable. so he has to solve some stupid puzzle, only solvable if you have a magical axe

[@rikamayhem]

@@jorgemontero6384 > The issue is no the yellowness: but the fact that there's only one way to do said climbing. Honestly, it's both. It's a double whammy of lame gameplay and weak, copycat art direction.

[@definitelynotbutmaybe4610]

If the only alternative to yellow paint in 3d games is the Skyrim-esque constant jumping to see if I can scramble up a rock crotch, then sliding slowly on my face to my death, then I'll take the yellow paint.

[@HelixSnake]

speak for yourself I love that shit

[@HelixSnake]

@@diamondmx3076 oh yeah I'm with you on that

[@Toogzoog]

If anyone wants to investigate 3D platforming in more recent game releases, I highly recommend both Demon Turf and Pseudoregalia. They have amazing movement to them. But, accurate to Yahtz's claims, they do have somewhat lackluster combat. Still worth playing, if you love good movement in your video games.

[@djeka415]

Thank you for your work!

[@rafaelblackman9879]

Maybe parkour is the secret to making 3D Sonic finally work

[@Deliveredmean42]

Or let modders e fans do it... They have a lot of 3D Sonic fan games that solved that problems without the need of parkour.

[@UltimaKeyMaster]

Sonic Lost World had that. It was not a good game.

[@rafaelblackman9879]

@@UltimaKeyMaster that game doesn’t count

[@Deliveredmean42]

@@UltimaKeyMaster Lets be honest, Sega team doesn't exactly have the talent to perfectly execute an idea... Half of the time sadly.

[@M4Dbrat]

Cloudbuilt

[@MrSubejio]

My complaint wasn't so much that the climbing was linear. I actually enjoyed Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and that was linear as hell. What it had was decent environmental design. I could look at a wall and realize it was climbable sans special paint. When every climbable surface needs spray paint or a ribbon to designate it, that takes me out of the experience and smacks of "if we unclutter the view in the slightest, the publisher will shoot our dog, so this is the best we can do."

[@Jaytheradical]

One of the underrated strengths of virtual reality games is how much more immersive climbing and platforming are when you have a visible body and fully controllable vertical mobility. There's a great genre of climbing games out there and the dizzying heights (or, more accurately, *depths*) that greet you when you look down are what really make the whole thing come alive. Can't recommend enough.

[@TheOrangeFondler]

Two of the things that make 3D platforming more manageable are watching the player's shadow on the floor and turning your camera to an angle where you can see the dimensions better

[@Pimploaf_YTP]

A lot of the painting has to do with platoons of visual artists making the props and environments without the intention of them communicating a path, so this is the simplest (most boring and immersion-breaking) way to make the way forward obvious without changing any other assets. Probably evolved partly from games being playtested to death until even the furthest reaches of the left side of the bell curve can find their passage.

[@PJSproductions97]

It's weird, because there's definitely space for some first-person platforming; the popularity of minecraft parkour is proof of that.

[@Merlewhitefire]

My favorite game of all time is an early 3D platformer. Spyro the Dragon and its two original sequels were classic and fun, and the remake only had to do minimal polishing of the controls to make them acceptable to the 2010s consumer's eye.

[@Cambiony]

One of the best 3D platformers I have seen in a while was the last year's Pseudoregalia. It also feels pretty parkouresque in it's movement system, while it's theme is way more fantasy, akin to how 2D platformers tend to be. It just nails it's movement and unlocks, pretty much every time you unlock a new movement ability, it feels like it should break the game, like how doesn't this trivialize the whole game, but it never does. I'm convinced that type of platformer is very fertile soil for future developers also.

[@topcatfan]

I preemptively want to say: there better be a wizard of oz joke

[@deusexvesania1702]

Morale of the story, gaming has peaked with Mario 64! Dark Souls eat your heart out.

[@williamswanepoel4442]

That little ad in the end made me laugh. Love it

[@jedisalsohere]

love the cheeky limerick at 3:49

[@kingsleycy3450]

In Uncharted the climbing isn't just to get from point A to point B though. It gives you limited interactivity but immerses you to the environment. One amazing moment in Uncharted 2 is when you scale a hotel, the camera zooms back to show the whole city. It might not be amazing gameplay, but you really feel you are there

[@nicklager1666]

One fun thing about the edge climbing is that its a time for me to relax. There is very little threat getting into to that locked in game loop. The game holds your hand and lets you know that until you are out of this section nothing will interupt the climbing for the most part. Just direct Aloy to the right spot and just chill. Weird though you get the training wheels climbing up but for some reason they decided that if you climb down you must push crouch to detach. Really that is not how you have conditioned me.

[@zanec14]

Why not just pause the game?

[@MrWhygodwhy]

@@zanec14 Pacing.

[@zacharynovak2180]

That’s interesting, since I’m the kind of person that hates forced relaxation. If I’m wanting to take it more slowly, I can just walk around or look at the nice scenery for a bit. It definitely is all about conditioning the player, and I guess while I’m forced to climb in a specific way I can just take out my phone while I hold forward/occasionally tap x, haha

[@thegardenofeatin5965]

I am reminded of the promotional material for Portal 2, which often showed Chell doing long strings of acrobatics, placing portals in mid-air while bouncing off spring pads and dodging spike traps, while the game itself is rarely that dynamic.

[@jesusgonzalez6084]

3:49 he just drops a limerick like it was nothing and doesn't even draw attention to it This is why i love yathzee.

[@spikey556]

I was kind of enamoured by Pseudoregalia's fluid movement and the fun in its platforming using N64 graphics but modern QoL controls. A tiny masterpiece gem that went by generally unnoticed

[@ianbowden2524]

3D platformers of quality are still made now and then. Especially in the Indie Scene. Nitro rad covers a lot of them.

[@GameDevYal]

At this point I think like 90% of my Steam library is stuff covered by NitroRad and Iron Pineapple's "a bunch of soulslikes you've never heard of" series...

[@metaloverlord7465]

Oh my God, the footage from Rascal and Croc hit me with nostalgia like a brick to the head.

[@britishninja]

3:49 i can picture the sure smug joy on Yahtzee’s face when making this section into a mini limerick

[@loziclec.1295]

I don't think that's the main thing people mean when they complain about the yellow paint. It's the ledges, but it's also Resident Evil 4 Remake painting breakable boxes in yellow paint. Basically it's yellow paint being shorthand for "hey player, this is interactable." It's immersion breaking, but it's probably less so than having objects glow. The controversy boils down to "is there a better way to do this?"

[@OzixiThrill]

The "controversy" does go beyond just asking that and goes straight into the territory of yes, it can and should be done better. Sometimes it's something subtle enough like changing what communicates that something is interactable. Other times, the question becomes more of wether the thing needs to be interactable or not. Take the ledges as a perfect example for this - If it's a linear section that is only ever relevant once, does it need to be a cliff the player has to press buttons on to get through or is just a simple corridor enough? Maybe a staircase? Something that's just there in a static fashion.

[@2canwin635]

The reality is, most people don’t give af. It’s that simple. Nobody cares if re4 remake has yellow crate’s because it’s a action heavy survival horror game that does what it sets out to do really well, the same way people don’t give a flying fuck about the yellow ledges in rebirth because their too busy tryna get their queens blood deck together or figuring the best party configuration.

[@theresnothinghere1745]

The thing is the yellow paint is not at all needed at times and often shows the developers are just adding to much to a game without considering how it helps them. For example interactable boxes, why isn't there a consistent model for them? Let every wooden box be breakable, it communicates the same idea without the notion of someone going out of their way to paint them all and if its not breakable make it out of steel instead. The only reason why this wouldn't work is if the devs added wooden boxes that aren't destructible and so now rely on paint to determine the structural integriry of the box.

[@loziclec.1295]

@@theresnothinghere1745 Making every box breakable could have the side effect of players breaking a few empty ones, figuring that boxes are pointless, and not breaking any more. FFVII Remake actually did use consistent models for breakable boxes though, and they were often even themed appropriately for each area. As long as they had the Shinra logo, they were valuable. I'm guessing Resident Evil 4 Remake uses yellow paint on boxes and Rebirth uses it on ledges is for visibility. In large, dark, realistic environments, you need something to clearly signal to the player what they can do.

[@loziclec.1295]

@@2canwin635 It is probably just the usual issue of Twitter users making a mountain out of a mole hill for the sake of having something to complain about, and that sparking a backlash to the backlash. Twitter users: "Yellow paint in games raagh!" Normal people: "Hey man what's up?"

[@Alloveck]

Finally, someone nails the actual problem. The yellow paint itself isn't the real problem with "yellow paint," and never was. The real problem is the climbing implementation you always get with yellow paint: Super artificial and gamey feeling trails of perfectly defined ledges that stick out like sore thumbs among the more naturalistic environments they're placed in, placed EXCLUSIVELY where you actually need them which makes them feel even more artificial, that are functionally a set of rails that give you the player zero choice and almost no interactivity. Hold direction to go from point A to point B only. Yellow paint climbing is basically an in-engine cutscene, and that's what sucks so much. It doesn't matter how the climbable areas are marked, the problem is climbing on completely linear fake feeling climbing paths in the first place. Focusing on the paint itself is treating the symptom rather than the cause.

[@Nickle_King]

It would be a nightmare to balance and program, but I would love a sandbox game where the upgrade tree fundamentally changed how your character interacted with the environment. If you went down a Climber or Agility tree, you would start playing the game in a Mirror's Edge or Sands of Time. In the latter example, you would even be given the option to switch to a 3rd person camera. If you went down a Survivor or Soldier tree, you would play it like 7 days to Die or Call of Duty. If you went down a Blacksmith or Mechanists tree, you would be playing more Satisfactory or...more of an Iron Man build your own gadgets to get around and upgrade other's abilities kind of thing. I can't think of an example of that right now. Think like the different traversal methods in Overwatch. Teleports, grapple hooks, jet packs, massive jumps. Now imagine those abilities being upgradable, and being set loose in a world like Ark or Valheim or Grand Theft Auto. All classes being able to do different things, carry different equipment, come up to answers to problems in different ways. As an example, let's safe there's a safe that the players want to get into. Agility classes could find a way around the safe (ceiling vents or sneaking in when someone comes by to open it) or lockpick it. Silent, and if done right, safe. Soldier classes could use C4 or shape charges to blow the hinges off. Quick, but very loud. Mechanist might be able to hack the lock or cause the power to the building to go out for long enough to get the safe open. In combat situations, Agility would be able to run away easier, or maneuver around the enemy to take out commanders or just cause havoc in the back lines while Soldiers can lay down heavy fire from the front with the mechanist doing things like throwing EMP grenades to knock out enemy tracking software, radios, and vehicles. The point to this whole diatribe is to say there should be a game made to explore how people want to explore a world more than just another glider or another A to B grappling hook. Make several ways to get around, all of them fun in their own way, and create problems for these kinds of classes to solve in either team or solo ways. Something like someone just saying "Hey. I want a briefcase from this one guy in the middle of a military base. Go get it. Don't care how. Then, depending on your playstyle, you get that briefcase by playing either Mirror's Edge, Watchdogs, or Battlefield.

[@GameDevYal]

It's not super fundamental changes, but Craftopia has some stuff like this... there's a melee upgrade tree, a magic upgrade tree, a farming upgrade tree, and then an exploration upgrade tree with stuff like double jumping, reduced fall damage, getting buffs whenever you hit resource nodes etc. And then of course the stuff you build can affect how you play, you can build conveyor belts to fully automate resource gathering but I liked roleplaying so I built a little town full of the tables that invite visitors and then just bought stuff from merchants whenever I had a chance (which I could do because I had a massive surplus of fish fillets after filling the shore outside my base with crab traps). It's really trying to be every game at once, if you can get past the jank you'd probably find a bunch of things to enjoy. (Though IMO the devs' other game Palworld feels better by being more focused on one system instead of spreading itself so thin)

[@Arakus99]

This really reminded me of streets of rouge, not exactly the same as what you describe but I think you might like it (and it’s upcoming open world sequel) based on this

[@CuriousMoth]

Jumping Flash had a good 3D jumping feature: when you jumped, you saw your exact trajectory down to the object you would land on.

[@WaddleMoogle]

In 20 years, historians will come back to this video and crown Yahtzee the man who put AAA gaming out of its misery with his simple yet utterly devastating closing line.

[@soundrogue4472]

See THIS is why I support journalist channels like this and not other kinds of journalist like Kotuku or any of the others with your honest takes and saying it how it is!

[@2canwin635]

This is not fucking journalist channel My guy what are you talking about lmao

[@soundrogue4472]

@@2canwin635 How are they not gaming journalist?

[@gemini4489]

It almost feels like Rebirth’s climbing bits were designed without the yellow paint in mind. Like in the clip used in this video, most climbable places in the overworld either have other visual indicators like the darker cliff face, or are just alternatives to walking around the long way. And even without any other indicators, you could always just look down and see the big blue arrow on the ground.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

That was great. I genuinely appreciated the history lesson.

[@infinitesquarez]

"Have you ever tried to do [a single pull-up]?" Yes.

[@Pimploaf_YTP]

Not a pullup, pulling your entire body up a ledge while *only* using your arms. It's definitely possible, but most people probably can't do it.

[@FrostedCreations]

It's more than a pullup though because it's not a bar, it's a ledge, it's not designed to be easy to hold

[@svenbtb]

Doing a pull up and climbing up over a ledge when you're just gripping the side with your fingers and no other support are 2 entirely different things. That's like saying "You walk everyday, why can't everyone just go out and do a full marathon?"

[@prjndigo]

no dad jokes on the patreon scroll this time?

[@birdsbayes]

I think Just Cause 2 pulls off the interesting traversal in a game that isn't purely about interesting traversal trick, and in a game where you are very much focused on where you're going. That basic movement system is just so satisfying.

[@RipleySawzen]

FINALLY someone really nail the whole yellow paint thing. We don't hate the paint, we hate what the paint is marking. Though I am surprised you didn't put more mention on games that just let you climb anywhere. Doing away with the corridor and simply let the player climb.

[@harrypearson6675]

the way I see it is that yellow paint is a crutch but some games need crutches.

[@SimuLord]

In the case of AAA, they all seem to have been used for practice by Mafiosi learning how to extract loan payments.

[@furgel7717]

It just feels lazy I think. DOOM 2016 had "yellow paint" but it was all diagetic green lighting. If there's light anyway, but the important parts are green instead of white, it helps you subconciously to find where you need to go without looking like an eyesore on the environment.

[@harrypearson6675]

@@furgel7717 how would a game without so much artificial lighting do that?

[@furgel7717]

@@harrypearson6675 I'm not a game designer, but you can incorporate something that doesn't stand out as much as just yellow paint. You could make climbing areas more diagetic by using vines, or mark them with something more natural like flowers or moss.

[@LazarheaD]

I rather it be signposted and gamey, than realistic and fiddley. Sorry.

[@sdstorm]

I'm super grateful for the yellow paint. Saves tons of time and frustration.

[@sageoftruth]

Playing Tomb Raider reminded me of how much I missed the fuck-ups. Reaching the end of a climbing section often felt like an actual victory, rather than just a transition period in the game. What really made it stand out for me was going straight from classic Tomb Raider 2 to Enslaved: Odyssey To The West when it came out. The climbing was flashier, but all you did was hold a button, press a stick, and watch as your character did the rest. It definitely did not feel like gameplay.

[@samadams8533]

I don't get the issue with the Yellow Paint, its just visual shorthand, no one has complained about red barrels always exploding.

[@FubukiTheIcyKing]

It's the fact that it sticks out like a sore thumb. In real life red barrels are more often than not an indicator of flammable stuff. So it makes sense. Most other games make climbable walls indicated by looking bumpy or have large enough rocks to grab, and not climbable walls are smooth.

[@Megamike144p]

Terrible comparison. Did you watch the video? It's not even about that, it's about shitty segments where you're forced to perform "linear platforming", where you don't actually do anything as the player, you just hold a direction and press one button while the game plays itself.

[@Mustafa_AhmedPGH]

Usually, you can come up with a reason for the barrels to be there. I'm not entirely sure who's been going around a science-fantasy rpg and spray-painting random cliff faces, and I don't think anyone else does either. If the devs had used something like distinct moss, people wouldn't be as upset. As it stands, the yellow paint strains immersion a bit too much.

[@samadams8533]

@@Megamike144p Oh yeah, its just a disguised loading screen and platforming sucks now, but thats not most peoples complaints about how "immersive breaking" the yellow paint is, sorry it was adjacent to the videos commentary on 3d platforming not a response to it

[@samadams8533]

@@Mustafa_AhmedPGH I mean for FF7 they're marked as climbing paths, in GoW they're marked as paths by the locals

[@neetpride5919]

Am I the only person this doesn't bother? I play a lot of retro games made in the time before this became the industry standard. I guarantee all of the people whining about yellow paint, quest logs, and goal markers would whine twice as loud if they weren't there. The best compromise is give players the option to turn off the yellow paint... so they can waste 20 minutes randomly spamming X on different pieces of walls until they found one that's grippable to make the experience closer to reality. PS: if you're not pioneering a new path, rock climbing paths irl usually have some sort of indicators

[@TheMoogleKing93]

Good art direction and level design would confer that information organically. Lighting that draws the eye where you need to go, the flow of water directing through a level, vantage points with clearly designed destinations and targets. From Software are typically great at this sort of thing, as an example.

[@LieutenantAlaki]

@@TheMoogleKing93 I distinctly recall that the only FROMsoft game with rock climbing in recent years, Sekiro, had white paint denoting grabbable ledges and certain walls you were supposed to sidle along. And all the souls-ish games have player messages doing a bunch of heavy lifting as well.

[@AmanoKagaseo]

@@TheMoogleKing93 ngl feels weird to talk about Fromsoft when the conversation relates so closely to platforming. Something they're not especially good at, so says my Bloodborne ptsd. Atlernatively, the Torrent jump spots are kinda just yellow paint spots with one 'ledge' and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[@iamawsum2]

The issue with the yellow paint is it’s there even when you have nowhere else to go. It’s not like botw where you can climb literally any vertical surface. You can only climb these very specific spots and the wooden planks in the wall are obvious enough as “oh I can go up here.” Painting them yellow is immersion breaking, because who came through before you and spray painted them all yellow? It’d be less distracting if it was just a ladder or some vines you can climb

[@AmanoKagaseo]

@@iamawsum2 I think roads are pretty distracting too, ngl. Who came through before you to pave them? Pretty immersion breaking.

[@spospartan-104]

Bubsy 3D has been living rent free in my brain for years. Glad to know at least someone else had to fight it

[@superspider64]

a while back I head an interesting idea to make the yellow spray paint a menu option, that way players who want to try and search the world without being guided can just turn the feature off

[@blue-eyesdepresseddragon3753]

I really don't mind the yellow paint. Sure, it could be something more fitting, but sometimes it's nice to have a game with little to no platforming (say, oh i dunno, FFVIIR.) go "hey, buddy, this wall is a glorified staircase. you can go up this one" instead of me fumbling for half an hour. I just think that everyone got REALLY pissy about something completely inconsequential.

[@AmanoKagaseo]

Criticism about SE games in a nutshell: people get really pissy about completely inconsequential things. Even their own fanbase actively tries to find reasons not to like their games.

[@waylander9265]

The paint isn’t the problem it’s that the ledges are slow and boring, and both players and developers would be better off if the game had zero vertical traversal mechanics instead. Its bad game design as it kills the pacing and pulls players out of the game, the yellow paint is just insult to injury as it makes things even more immersion breaking. A staircase is much better than the ledges because it’s still faster than climbing. People are sick of it because it is overused and incredibly boring

[@AmanoKagaseo]

@@waylander9265 Let me make sure I heard you right: FFVII Rebirth would be a better game if it had literally no vertical traversal mechanics whatsoever, instead of some yellow paint.

[@postblitz]

Just play Super Mario Galaxy / Odyssey

[@Kytetiger]

SE could have added a toggle option to hide or show the yellow marks, like in Tomb Raider. Also, in Junon, if you look at the walls climbable for Chocobo's, it's like there are 3 textures on top of each other: the flat rock textures, the scratch textures (as if a chocobo already climbed on it), the chocobo graffities, and then the big arrows. Seems like during testing, some players couldnt find where they could climb and the dev added more and more clues and we get that in the end.

[@auzell1449]

"Just play indie games" might as well be the tagline of Semi Ramblomatic at this point