You Can't Fix Open World Games By Taking Away The Map Markers

thegamer.com:

Well, who saw this one coming eh? There has barely been a whiff of an ‘easy mode’ debate with Elden Ring, with FromSoftware’s brand clearly established and everyone involved on either side knowing what to expect. Accessibility has still been discussed, as has the UX/UI (both in incredibly toxic ways), but the main talking point has been the maps. Elden Ring is Dark Souls, open world-style, and it takes cues from Breath of the Wild’s worldbuilding and FromSoft’s usual obtuse methods of player assistance by providing few map markers, no quest arrows, and very little push to go in one direction in particular. The joy of Elden Ring, if you can ride the difficulty and arcane menus, is in the exploration, and the game gives you total freedom here. It’s a distinct change from Ubisoft games that scatter the map with icons wherever you go, but to get the best of both worlds, you just make the icons optional, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

First of all, it’s worth pointing out that Ubisoft is not the only one to make games like this. In fact, while we’ve complained about the maps becoming oversaturated in recent years, this foundation of open-world development has been incredibly successful over the past decade, with many teams copying Ubisoft’s simple but effective methodology. It’s easy to mock Ubisoft, as the many Elden Ring memes show, but Ubisoft has been top of its class in this department for a long time. The only issue is it might have overstayed its welcome, and with Ubisoft unlikely to change a formula that works and seemingly hell-bent on just making the same game but bigger, plus with many other studios copying Ubi’s homework, the admiration the studio might have garnered for transforming the open world