I don't usually post here these days, but I honestly feel like more developers of good games really need to be aware of the fact that having too much HUD on the screen for certain games is bad game design, especially for exploration games in the third dimension. The reason? Well, some developers don't seem to care that much about how important immersion is for exploring, and that's honestly a problem.
Whenever I play a third person game that feels good, having no HUD (or at least not too much and is far away from the center as possible) really gives me more of an immersive feel of the world that surrounds me. Take Shadow of the Colossus for example, there is a HUD but it naturally hides from the screen when you don't really need it, and the remake of the game allowed options for it (despite it already being dynamic rather than static). Sometimes I like to see a HUD, such as the dreaded mini-map, but as long as the option to hide it is always there in case I just want to explore without feeling like it's a 'game' (yeah, ironic I guess), it's good.
Let's show how different a clustered HUD can impact the game. I'm going to just show a picture of an area from Shadow of the Colossus (from PS2) and then take another picture and modify it a bit:
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| A world that I feel part of. |
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| This doesn't feel right... |
Note: The HUD at the bottom and bottom right is actually from the game, but as I said it does auto-hide.
The game wouldn't feel the same if all that stuff was on the screen at all times. It would honestly ruin the sense I have with the world when such stuff happens and becomes pretty much a deal breaker if there is no toggle option for it. Whenever a HUD is so small and far from the center, or there is no HUD during exploration, it feels better and doesn't actually feel 'fake'. Zelda Breath of the Wild is another game with immersion, and thankfully despite the HUD being a bit clustered, there was this option to hide most of it which was very useful to get that feeling I wanted.
Back then, when 3D platformers was pretty much king, there was often a design where the HUD on the screen would auto-hide. Banjo Kazooie for example did such that except for when health is low. Even the Super Mario Galaxy games did that (but such dynamic feature was forgotten during Super Mario Odyssey?), and now these days that feature seems to be more missing, but maybe it's just me.
I feel like this sense I have is not just me either. I believe there are a lot of people out there that feels the same, and I really wish this gets recognize more with many great developers who aren't aware. I hope more great developers becomes more aware of this idea I'm trying to share!
Why was this article made? Well, as someone who is desperate of owning (owning a physical game for a Switch is really important for me) good third-person exploration games, E3 2021 was really terrible for this year, and Nintendo was the only hope I've had. Sadly the only other third-person game they've shown outside of Zelda Breath of the Wild's sequel, was a game called Shin Megami Tensei V. The trailer during E3 looked great, but when I saw the Nintendo Treehouse Live gameplay, it became pretty much a deal breaker and felt like a final straw for this article.
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| Maybe there will be an option? |
Anyway, that's it for today. I apologize for any sloppy writing here.
