You Underestimate My Ability To Get Lost.
Oct. 24th, 2024 12:48 pmIt's time for one of those posts where I ramble about an aspect of videogames! I've been thinking about how videogames guide the player to where they need to go.
My first experience with videogames, if I recall correctly, was the Sonic the Hedgehog games we had for our SEGA Master System II. Working out where you're supposed to go in a 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game is pretty simple. There are two directions: left and right. When you start the level, Sonic is facing right. Go right.
'The character is facing in the direction you need to go' is simple and clear. You'll see it in a lot of sidescrolling platformers, such as the Donkey Kong Country series and early Mario games. Unfortunately, as environments become more complex, 'just point the character in the correct direction at the start of an area, and the player can just continue in that direction until the area is finished' becomes less helpful.
I was eleven years old when I played Pokémon Red. It was my first RPG. It wasn't sidescrolling; you could move in four directions. But, to start with, I was able to deduce where I needed to go.
In Pokémon Red, you start in your bedroom, which has one exit. Great; obviously I left the room. You talk to your mum, who says that Professor Oak, next door, is looking for you. Perfect; I know where I'm supposed to be going. I left the house and went to the building next door, which, according to the sign outside, was Oak's research lab.
In the lab, Oak's grandson told me that he wasn't there.
I was extremely confused.
Was I... was I supposed to wait for Professor Oak?
What you're supposed to do is try to leave town, at which point Oak will show up and tell you it's dangerous. The game designers had assumed the player would want to explore, and would naturally end up taking the road out of town. But they'd made the mistake of giving me a clear but unachievable goal: meet Professor Oak in his lab. Professor Oak was not in his lab. Therefore, I concluded I was expected to wait for his return.
I just checked whether the FireRed remake changed this sequence at all. The answer: it doesn't change the dialogue, but it does make a small visual change to the path out of town - removing the long grass for the first couple of steps - to make it clearer that it's a path, and Oak now shows up just before you actually enter the grass, rather than just afterwards. If you're playing the original for the first time and don't know how to interpret the 'long grass' texture, you might not realise you can walk on it at all.
It's easy to slip up when you're trying to guide the player, particularly if they're a new player and not yet fully acquainted with the conventions of games! But there are a lot of tools developers use to tell the player where to go next, both obvious and subtle. For example:
- The character faces the direction you need to go, as mentioned. This tends to be most useful in 2D games where the possible directions are tightly limited.
- You're told where to go with an icon on a map, or overlaid onto the environment. This is common in open-world games, where the environment is vast and freely explorable. If 'run two hundred miles away from the objective and do something else' is an option, you need to make sure the player will always be able to track the objective down easily, regardless of where they are in the game world. This is a very reliable way of making sure the player can get where they need to go, but it can be immersion-breaking, so some games, such as Assassin's Creed or Horizon Zero Dawn, come up with an in-world explanation for why these helpful 'your destination is here' icons exist.
- You're told where to go through dialogue. This is pretty straightforward. For example, at the start of Final Fantasy VIII, Quistis tells you to go to the Fire Cavern and that it's 'east of here'. Unfortunately, there's no way to double-check this instruction; if the player gets distracted exploring the nearby town, they might forget where they're supposed to be going. I once had to restart Final Fantasy VII from the beginning because I'd set it down for too long and I had no idea where I had to go next. Final Fantasy IX is the first Final Fantasy game that really accounts for the possibility that the player will forget their destination; if you visit any marsh in the world, you can ask the moogle there for directions.
- A companion indicates where to go. You'll see this in the Uncharted series, where the protagonist is often travelling with allies. Sometimes your ally will travel ahead of you, so you just need to follow them. Sometimes they'll just stand near where you're supposed to be going, as a way of drawing your attention to it. Occasionally, if you've lingered in the same area for too long and the game concludes you're not sure where you're meant to be going, your companion will call to you to point out, for example, a ladder.
- You're told where to go using light. This is a useful one for dark sequences. If you shine a light on the door the player needs to go through, the player's attention will be drawn to the light and they'll notice that, oh, hey, there's a doorway there.
- You're told where to go using bright, eye-catching colours. When you're looking around an area in The Last of Us, the way out is often marked with yellow, e.g. you'll need to pass through a gate that has torn yellow caution tape attached to it. In games where you're expected to climb, climbable ledges on a dark wall or cliff face will often be white to contrast with the background. As with the use of light, the goal is to catch the player's eye and make them realise there's a way to progress over here.
- You're not told where to go. The player is expected to explore with minimal guidance until they stumble across their destination; they may be given a map that fills itself in as they explore, so they can check where they haven't yet been. You'll see this in survival horror games, which are designed to keep the player uncertain and off-balance. It works best in enclosed environments, such as a building; if an environment is too large and open, it can be frustrating and confusing to try to find where you're meant to be going. In the case of Silent Hill 2, I can navigate the hospital or the hotel, but I often get lost when I'm in the streets of the town.
Those are the player guidance methods I can think of! Let me know if you have any to add.
There are definitely things I haven't covered here. For example, I'm sure game designers have clever ways of indicating 'this is a surface you can stand on' versus 'this is just part of the background', but they're so clever I can't pin them down. I suppose Spyro games will visibly put gems in out-of-the-way places to indicate to the player that it's possible to get there; I wonder what strategies less collectible-heavy games use.
My first experience with videogames, if I recall correctly, was the Sonic the Hedgehog games we had for our SEGA Master System II. Working out where you're supposed to go in a 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game is pretty simple. There are two directions: left and right. When you start the level, Sonic is facing right. Go right.
'The character is facing in the direction you need to go' is simple and clear. You'll see it in a lot of sidescrolling platformers, such as the Donkey Kong Country series and early Mario games. Unfortunately, as environments become more complex, 'just point the character in the correct direction at the start of an area, and the player can just continue in that direction until the area is finished' becomes less helpful.
I was eleven years old when I played Pokémon Red. It was my first RPG. It wasn't sidescrolling; you could move in four directions. But, to start with, I was able to deduce where I needed to go.
In Pokémon Red, you start in your bedroom, which has one exit. Great; obviously I left the room. You talk to your mum, who says that Professor Oak, next door, is looking for you. Perfect; I know where I'm supposed to be going. I left the house and went to the building next door, which, according to the sign outside, was Oak's research lab.
In the lab, Oak's grandson told me that he wasn't there.
I was extremely confused.
Was I... was I supposed to wait for Professor Oak?
What you're supposed to do is try to leave town, at which point Oak will show up and tell you it's dangerous. The game designers had assumed the player would want to explore, and would naturally end up taking the road out of town. But they'd made the mistake of giving me a clear but unachievable goal: meet Professor Oak in his lab. Professor Oak was not in his lab. Therefore, I concluded I was expected to wait for his return.
I just checked whether the FireRed remake changed this sequence at all. The answer: it doesn't change the dialogue, but it does make a small visual change to the path out of town - removing the long grass for the first couple of steps - to make it clearer that it's a path, and Oak now shows up just before you actually enter the grass, rather than just afterwards. If you're playing the original for the first time and don't know how to interpret the 'long grass' texture, you might not realise you can walk on it at all.
It's easy to slip up when you're trying to guide the player, particularly if they're a new player and not yet fully acquainted with the conventions of games! But there are a lot of tools developers use to tell the player where to go next, both obvious and subtle. For example:
- The character faces the direction you need to go, as mentioned. This tends to be most useful in 2D games where the possible directions are tightly limited.
- You're told where to go with an icon on a map, or overlaid onto the environment. This is common in open-world games, where the environment is vast and freely explorable. If 'run two hundred miles away from the objective and do something else' is an option, you need to make sure the player will always be able to track the objective down easily, regardless of where they are in the game world. This is a very reliable way of making sure the player can get where they need to go, but it can be immersion-breaking, so some games, such as Assassin's Creed or Horizon Zero Dawn, come up with an in-world explanation for why these helpful 'your destination is here' icons exist.
- You're told where to go through dialogue. This is pretty straightforward. For example, at the start of Final Fantasy VIII, Quistis tells you to go to the Fire Cavern and that it's 'east of here'. Unfortunately, there's no way to double-check this instruction; if the player gets distracted exploring the nearby town, they might forget where they're supposed to be going. I once had to restart Final Fantasy VII from the beginning because I'd set it down for too long and I had no idea where I had to go next. Final Fantasy IX is the first Final Fantasy game that really accounts for the possibility that the player will forget their destination; if you visit any marsh in the world, you can ask the moogle there for directions.
- A companion indicates where to go. You'll see this in the Uncharted series, where the protagonist is often travelling with allies. Sometimes your ally will travel ahead of you, so you just need to follow them. Sometimes they'll just stand near where you're supposed to be going, as a way of drawing your attention to it. Occasionally, if you've lingered in the same area for too long and the game concludes you're not sure where you're meant to be going, your companion will call to you to point out, for example, a ladder.
- You're told where to go using light. This is a useful one for dark sequences. If you shine a light on the door the player needs to go through, the player's attention will be drawn to the light and they'll notice that, oh, hey, there's a doorway there.
- You're told where to go using bright, eye-catching colours. When you're looking around an area in The Last of Us, the way out is often marked with yellow, e.g. you'll need to pass through a gate that has torn yellow caution tape attached to it. In games where you're expected to climb, climbable ledges on a dark wall or cliff face will often be white to contrast with the background. As with the use of light, the goal is to catch the player's eye and make them realise there's a way to progress over here.
- You're not told where to go. The player is expected to explore with minimal guidance until they stumble across their destination; they may be given a map that fills itself in as they explore, so they can check where they haven't yet been. You'll see this in survival horror games, which are designed to keep the player uncertain and off-balance. It works best in enclosed environments, such as a building; if an environment is too large and open, it can be frustrating and confusing to try to find where you're meant to be going. In the case of Silent Hill 2, I can navigate the hospital or the hotel, but I often get lost when I'm in the streets of the town.
Those are the player guidance methods I can think of! Let me know if you have any to add.
There are definitely things I haven't covered here. For example, I'm sure game designers have clever ways of indicating 'this is a surface you can stand on' versus 'this is just part of the background', but they're so clever I can't pin them down. I suppose Spyro games will visibly put gems in out-of-the-way places to indicate to the player that it's possible to get there; I wonder what strategies less collectible-heavy games use.
