Quest Markers and Navigation
DesignComments
But what about audio cues... like how some games use sound to lead you? I wonder if that's a middle ground between a GPS line and total blindness...
That sounds fine for people with forty hours a week to play, but how does that work for someone with a job? Do you actually have a way to track goals without spending an hour backtracking?
Is the marker actually the problem? Most "corridors" are just poorly designed levels where the marker is the only thing giving the player a goal. Why blame the tool for bad level design?
We saw this same debate during the early open-world boom when "diegetic" navigation became a buzzword. Usually, it just leads to players spending half their time staring at a paused map screen.
Elden Ring proves that omitting markers can actually make the world feel more tangible. When you find a landmark visually, the sense of discovery is genuinely higher.