I honestly believe a HUD minimap is one of the worst game UI elements a game can have. There is rarely a canonical explanation to begin with as to why your character magically knows the layout of rooms they haven’t entered and even worse that they know the position of enemies.
Even further, in the rare case that it does make canonical sense, you find yourself staring at this little 2D representation of the map that frankly looks terrible in comparison to the game world, yet you are forced to use it for navigation.
The most egregious example of this is GTA V and RDR2. In GTA, you could maybe explain that there is a GPS, but why isn’t this mended with the phone your character has? And in RDR2? No explanation at all. It’s near impossible to get from A to B in RDR without missing a turn because I’m usually trying to pay attention to the environment. This absolutely does not foster exploration. It becomes a checklist of locations to visit and naturally finding elements in the game world rarely happens.
An example of this being done well is something like Watch Dogs or Assassin’s Creed where you could argue in Watch Dogs that their augmented reality tech makes sense to be able to get the drop on enemies and building layout. AC has the whole simulation aspect.
Another example is something like The Crew where you can reliably disable the map entirely with the overhead GPS line that guides the player. More games would benefit from this by keeping your eyes on the world.
I’d love to see more games where disabling the map doesn’t ruin gameplay. In AC and Watch Dogs, they were mostly made for this and a large portion of the game can be played almost entirely HUD-less.
One last thought to leave on is that of you feel you absolutely must guide the player by map, why not make the map in-engine like many journals in games. Hell, RDR2 has an in-world journal that feels super life-like. Why not extend this to the map?
I’ve actually been kinda sacred to look at it because bg1 was probably the happiest memory of my childhood, really glad to see people loving it and I’ll probably give it a go
(And yes I’m exaggerating a bit but I used to play with my grandma on her computer, she’d sit and watch and we’d chat about things and she’d take notes and stuff or suggest strategy - it was such a great game in every regard, the story and the combat were fantastic with such beautiful areas to explore… Then when 2 came out and you could load your old save and import the party you finished with as the characters you start with! It was the best thing ever
Of course now I have grown as a man, times have changed and I have changed - I feared that there would be an empty shell under such a cherished memories name but tentatively I have started to allow myself to become excited to play it, sadly my grandmother has passed but what she taught me is you can’t live in the past, she loved new things and new ideas so I’m not wanting it to be exactly the same I’m just hoping it has that same feeling of fascination and depth of its forbearers as I hope I’ve gained from mine… Certainly im very excited to try out the new mechanics and gameplay elements that have gone into it, like having sex with a man that’s transformed into a bear.
I have a better idea: Instead of piracy, just don’t use/consume products that are exclusively distributed through shitty business models. At least when it comes to software, that’s much more effective.
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