The trend of earmarking every single interactive object in a game with a special colour or tooltip has made hyper-realistic cinematic games less immersive than a lot of PS1 games.
Hot take: no it hasn’t. Because the alternative is you don’t mark interactive objects. And then the stairs are somehow blending in with the background because of some color choices, or the day/night cycle makes you miss some object in the dark, or the ring you’re supposed to get for the main quest is lost in the grass and can’t be found etc.
And you know what you get then? The least immersive option in the world: the player can’t find the thing they’re looking for and can’t progress, so they log off and post a question on a forum and they continue to play in a day, when they receive the answer. I don’t think that’s more immersive than marking the object.
Then you’re gonna like Skyrim, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, Nier Automata, Portal(?my memory is fuzzy on this one). I’m saying these because it’s the ones I know they don’t have suggestions like that and because they are narrative
I think portal 2 (I forgot about 1) did have some stuff like that at the start in the little room with Wheatley.
the “space to say apple” room
Yeah I’ve played a bunch of them. Games should just do one popup at the beginning “(x) this is my first video game ever” and then only explain mechanics that are new or rare. “Press W / Joystick up to move forward” yeah no shit
