- 4 hours ago
Control: Resonant is taking a very different approach to guiding players through its world.
Director Mikael Kasurinen has explained why the game intentionally avoids using yellow paint to highlight climbable surfaces, doors, and other important environmental elements. Instead, Remedy wants players to pay attention to the world around them, make their own decisions, and feel like they actually figured things out for themselves.
But is that approach more immersive, or can it become frustrating?
In this video, we take a look at Kasurinen's explanation, the philosophy behind player autonomy, and the debate surrounding accessibility and visual indicators. Some players appreciate being encouraged to explore, while others argue that optional visual cues could make the experience less frustrating without taking away from the game's creative vision.
What do you think? Does Control: Resonant benefit from making players figure things out themselves, or should games provide clearer guidance when needed? Let me know in the comments!
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Game On.
Director Mikael Kasurinen has explained why the game intentionally avoids using yellow paint to highlight climbable surfaces, doors, and other important environmental elements. Instead, Remedy wants players to pay attention to the world around them, make their own decisions, and feel like they actually figured things out for themselves.
But is that approach more immersive, or can it become frustrating?
In this video, we take a look at Kasurinen's explanation, the philosophy behind player autonomy, and the debate surrounding accessibility and visual indicators. Some players appreciate being encouraged to explore, while others argue that optional visual cues could make the experience less frustrating without taking away from the game's creative vision.
What do you think? Does Control: Resonant benefit from making players figure things out themselves, or should games provide clearer guidance when needed? Let me know in the comments!
👍 If you enjoyed the video, give it a thumbs up!
🔔 Subscribe and ring the notification bell so you don't miss my upcoming gaming videos!
💰 Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/JamesSchierer
For just $1 a month, you can get access to my Patreon-exclusive videos. My most recent exclusive is “When Did Video Games Become Too Big?”
Thanks for watching, and as always...
Game On.
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GamingTranscript
00:00There's a pretty interesting debate happening in modern video games right now, and it involves
00:05something you might not normally think twice about, yellow paint.
00:08If you've played enough modern games, you've probably seen it.
00:11A yellow painted ledge that tells you, hey, you can climb this.
00:15A yellow object that lets you know, this is probably important.
00:18A bright marking on a door or piece of scenery that basically says, the game wants you to
00:23go this way.
00:24It's become one of those small design conventions that many players barely notice anymore.
00:29But Control Resonant is taking a very different approach.
00:33The game's director, Mikhail Kazurinen, has explained that the decision to avoid using
00:38yellow paint to guide players wasn't an accident.
00:40It was intentional.
00:42And according to him, there's a very specific reason why the developers wanted players to
00:47figure things out for themselves.
00:49So today, let's talk about why Control Resonant is avoiding one of the most recognizable navigation
00:54tools in modern gaming, what the director means by wanting players to participate in the experience,
01:01and why some players are already questioning whether there's a line between encouraging
01:05exploration and simply making things frustrating.
01:08Control Resonant is a much larger game than its predecessor.
01:12While 2019's Control was already heavily focused on exploration, mystery, and figuring out how
01:18the world works, Resonant expands that concept with a much larger open-world environment.
01:23That creates an obvious problem for the developers.
01:26When you make a much bigger game, there are going to be plenty of situations where players
01:31aren't immediately sure whether they're supposed to go or what they're supposed to interact
01:35with.
01:36And one very common solution is to make important environmental objects stand out.
01:41That's where the infamous yellow paint comes in.
01:43Instead of expecting players to stare at every wall and every ledge wondering whether it's
01:48climbable, developers can simply put a bright yellow marking on it.
01:52Problem solved.
01:53Except Remedy apparently didn't want to solve the problem that way.
01:56Speaking in an interview on the Dropping Frames podcast, Control Resonant director Mikhail
02:02Kazurinen explained that avoiding yellow paint was a conscious decision.
02:06The developers wanted players to actually engage with the environment instead of simply following
02:11a series of visual instructions.
02:13And that's an important distinction.
02:15The goal isn't necessarily to make the game harder just for the sake of making it harder.
02:20The goal is to make the player feel like they're actually figuring out the world.
02:24Instead of the game saying, go here, the developers want you to look at what's around you, recognize
02:29clues, and make your own decision.
02:32Kazurinen explained that his philosophy surrounding game design involves three important ideas.
02:38Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness.
02:40When it comes specifically to navigation, autonomy is particularly important.
02:46The player needs to feel like they're the ones making the decision.
02:49And that's where something like yellow paint can potentially work against that philosophy.
02:54Imagine you're exploring an area and you see a giant yellow marking on a ledge.
02:58You don't really have to think about it.
03:00You don't have to wonder whether it's important.
03:03You don't have to experiment.
03:04The game has already given you the answer.
03:06You climb the ledge because the game told you that was the thing to climb.
03:10And Kazurinen's argument is that the experience becomes more satisfying when the player instead
03:15looks at the environment and figures it out.
03:17There's a difference between, the game told me where to go, and I figured out where to
03:22go.
03:23That second experience could potentially create a much stronger sense of accomplishment.
03:27And I think that's really what Remedy is going for here.
03:30The developers don't want players to feel like they're simply moving from one objective
03:34marker to another.
03:35They want players to feel like they're participating in the process of solving the game's world.
03:41Kazurinen went even further when discussing this philosophy.
03:45He talked about how satisfying it can be when you feel like you found this solution.
03:49And that's something games have been doing for decades.
03:52Think about some of your favorite older games.
03:54Sometimes you weren't given a giant waypoint telling you exactly where to go.
03:59You had to remember something an NPC told you.
04:01Or you had to notice a strange object in the environment.
04:04Or you had to recognize a particular room that looked different.
04:07You had to experiment.
04:09And when you finally figured it out, there was a sense of accomplishment because the game
04:13didn't simply hand you the answer.
04:16That's the feeling Control Resonant is trying to preserve.
04:19The developers are using things like lighting, environmental props, and the layout of the world
04:24to guide players without necessarily putting giant obvious markers everywhere.
04:28Essentially, the world itself becomes the guide.
04:31And that could be a really interesting design philosophy.
04:34But there's an important catch.
04:36Not everyone enjoys that kind of game design.
04:40One of the most interesting things about the story isn't actually what Kazurinen said.
04:45It's how people reacted to it.
04:47Because the comments surrounding the discussion show that there are clearly different opinions
04:51about how much guidance a game should provide.
04:53Some players are perfectly happy with the idea of looking around and figuring things out.
04:59Others argue that there are situations where the environment simply isn't clear enough.
05:04One commenter specifically pointed out an issue involving the game's gravity mechanics.
05:09According to them, determining which surfaces can actually be landed on
05:13when switching gravity can be arbitrary and unintuitive.
05:16Another commenter responded that the system made sense to them.
05:19If something looks like a floor or roof, you can attach to it, while a normal vertical wall isn't usable
05:25in the same way.
05:27And that's actually a perfect example of the larger debate.
05:30What one player considers intuitive, another player might consider confusing.
05:35That's especially true in a game where the developers intentionally don't want to spell everything out.
05:40Then the discussion gets even more complicated.
05:43Some commenters brought up accessibility.
05:45One argument was that visual indicators could potentially be offered as an optional feature.
05:50The idea wouldn't necessarily be to force every player to use yellow paint.
05:55Instead, players who want the more immersive, discovery-focused experience
05:59could leave the indicators turned off.
06:01Players who struggle with navigating complicated environments could turn them on.
06:05That would potentially allow the developers to preserve their intended experience
06:09while giving players more control over how much guidance they receive.
06:14But there was also pushback against treating a lack of yellow paint as inherently an accessibility problem.
06:20One commenter pointed out that struggling to figure out where to go isn't necessarily connected to having a disability.
06:26A player without any disability can absolutely spend two hours running around in circles
06:30trying to figure out what they're supposed to do.
06:33And that's an important distinction.
06:35There are really two separate questions here.
06:37First, does Control Resonant provide enough information for players to understand its world?
06:42And second, should players who have difficulty interpreting that information have additional options?
06:48Those aren't necessarily the same question.
06:50One commenter who identified themselves as having ADHD explained that they personally have difficulty with this kind of design,
06:58particularly when figuring out the next step requires remembering an area
07:02or methodically checking everything for something that can be interacted with.
07:06Their argument wasn't necessarily that Control Resonant shouldn't have its creative vision.
07:11Instead, they questioned whether optional visual indicators would actually hurt that vision.
07:16And that's probably where the discussion gets the most interesting.
07:20Because there's a very real balance that developers have to find.
07:23If you make everything obvious, players can feel like they're being led around by the hand.
07:27But if you make absolutely nothing obvious, players can become frustrated and stop enjoying the experience.
07:34And neither extreme is necessarily what a developer wants.
07:38The interesting thing about Konserenant's comments is that he actually acknowledges this risk.
07:43He knows that Control Resonant can feel impenetrable at first.
07:47He understands that some players might not immediately know what they're supposed to do.
07:51And he acknowledges that this approach could alienate people.
07:55But he also believes that the potential reward is worth taking that risk.
07:59That's because he doesn't want Control Resonant to be a game where you simply complete the instructions that were handed
08:04to you and then move on.
08:06He wants players to wonder whether they made the right choice.
08:09He wants them to go back, explore, try something different, question what they saw,
08:14and potentially discover something they missed the first time.
08:17That's a very different philosophy from designing a game around efficiency.
08:22And there's another interesting part of this philosophy.
08:25It could potentially make Control Resonant more memorable.
08:28Think about the difference between remembering,
08:31I followed the waypoint and completed the mission,
08:33and remembering I had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to go,
08:37noticed something strange in the environment,
08:39tried something completely different,
08:41and somehow discovered the answer.
08:43The second experience becomes a story.
08:45It's something you're more likely to talk about with another player.
08:48It's also something that might make you want to go back and explore again.
08:52And that's exactly what Consoranen says he wants.
08:56He wants players to return to the game and question whether they made the right decisions.
09:00He wants people to explore again and see what they could have done differently.
09:04That's particularly fitting for Control because the series has always been built around mystery,
09:10strange environments, and asking players to piece things together.
09:13So in that sense, avoiding obvious visual markers isn't completely out of character for the franchise.
09:19At the same time, I don't think this debate needs to turn into
09:23yellow paint is bad or yellow paint is good.
09:27Because the reality is more complicated than that.
09:30Sometimes a yellow marking can be incredibly useful.
09:32If you're playing a massive game with incredibly detailed environments,
09:37it can be difficult to distinguish between something that's decorative
09:40and something that's actually interactive.
09:42A visual indicator can save players from wasting time examining every single object.
09:47It can also make games more accessible to people
09:50who have difficulty interpreting subtle environmental clues.
09:53But the opposite can also be true.
09:55If every climbable surface, objective, and interactable object is highlighted,
10:00then the environment itself can start feeling less important.
10:03You stop looking at the world.
10:05You start looking for the game's visual language.
10:09And once you recognize that language, you don't necessarily need to think.
10:13You just follow it.
10:14That's exactly the type of experience Remedy seems to be trying to avoid with Control Resonant.
10:20And honestly, I think that's why this discussion is more interesting than simply arguing about yellow paint.
10:25The real question is, how much should a game tell you?
10:28Should games always make sure you know exactly where to go?
10:31Should they occasionally let you get lost?
10:34Should developers give players optional tools that make navigation easier?
10:39Should accessibility settings allow players to customize how much information they're given?
10:44There probably isn't one answer that works for every game.
10:47A linear action game may benefit from very clear direction.
10:50A puzzle game might deliberately obscure the solution.
10:54An open world game might want you to discover things naturally.
10:57And a game like Control Resonant, which is built around mystery and exploration,
11:02has a pretty good reason for wanting players to pay attention to their surroundings.
11:06The important thing is that the developers understand what kind of experience they're trying to create.
11:11And in this case, Kusurinen has made it very clear.
11:15The lack of yellow paint isn't an oversight.
11:17It's part of the design philosophy.
11:20So what do you think?
11:21Do you like the idea of Control Resonant refusing to use obvious yellow paint and instead asking players to figure
11:27things out for themselves?
11:29Or do you think optional visual indicators would make the experience more accessible without taking away from the game's atmosphere?
11:35And if you've played Control Resonant, I'd definitely like to hear how you feel about the game's approach to navigation.
11:42Does figuring things out yourself make exploration more rewarding?
11:45Or have you found yourself wishing the game would just tell you where to go sometimes?
11:50Let me know in the comments below.
11:51And if you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and ring that notification bell
11:58so you don't miss any of my upcoming videos.
12:01And if you want to support the channel even more, check out my Patreon.
12:04For just $1 a month, you can get access to my Patreon exclusive videos.
12:09My most recent exclusive is When Did Video Games Become Too Big?
12:13where I take a look at how the increasing size and scope of modern games has changed the gaming experience.
12:19So if that sounds interesting, head over to Patreon and check it out.
12:23Thank you for watching, thank you for your support, and as always, game on!