cannedtunaYellow Paint
mortoWhat games use yellow paint? I can only recall mirror’ edge, but it was white
Most modern AAA games with some degree of exploration tend to use yellow (or any bright colour, but usually yellow) paint to tell a player where to go.
Mirror’s Edge’s environment itself was mostly white but used bright red highlights to guide the player if I remember correctly. So not yellow but kind of the same.
Horizon Zero Dawn is the one that I know that does the yellow paint thing completely straight and in the most obvious way.
Really it’s something any 3D game design has to face, you don’t want players to be too lost and disoriented. It’s just not fun. Lots of (well-designed) games do that by clever use of lighting and environmental clues. When it’s done right you mostly don’t realize it unless you’re looking for it, but it’s enough that you know the right way.
But if it’s too obvious, it can be a bit jarring.
GrailIn Horizon it makes sense because the Nora designed all the yellow stuff to be climbable. It’s diagetic. They put yellow paint there on purpose to help you.
It works for Nora territory that’s like a quarter of the map. The paint is everywhere including places that are completely forbidden to them, and only a couple of isolated bannished people have left their land.
And the real problem I have with it is not that it’s not explained, it’s that exploration is frankly discouraged in this game. If and only if you know you’re supposed to go somewhere, follow the trail. If there’s no trail, OR if you don’t have a quest here yet, don’t go, you’re losing your time.
I don’t know about paint exactly, but
- Control uses yellow markings, like tarps, in some places to offer some hints about which ledges the player can reach
- Wolfenstein II uses yellow markings to indicate surfaces that can be destroyed
- Doom (2016) uses distinctive lights (green in this case) to give the player a hint about which jumps are safe