A short demo video recently released by Final Fantasy 16's official Twitter account in Japan has sparked great controversy among players. The video shows the player character huddled through a narrow cave, and many players are already disgusted and tired of this design that is often seen in many games.
Demo video: https://player.youku.com/embed/XNTk1MjMyMjU0MA?client_id=5a73c0df8eb0d91d
The video is meant to demonstrate that the player's dog companion can guide them through the world, and in the video the dog Torgal leads the player to a crack in the wall that leads to a hidden area. However, many people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the "drill hole" animation.
Similar designs are found in many games: Uncharted, Tomb Raider, The Last of Us Survivors, God of War, etc., and basically all third-person action games will have similar scenes.
Critics are divided into those who don't like Final Fantasy 16 in the first place, and those who are tired of the design appearing in modern games. Most people think of it as a way to hide loading.
"Isn't this PS5 exclusive? I thought [SSDs are powerful] to eliminate those hidden loads? ”
"Please bring the loading screen back. I've had enough of this stuff. ”
One player posted on Reddit that he didn't particularly care about the 3-second "drilling" animation, but he was curious because he could see from the clip that the environment on the other side of the cave had already loaded, and there was no need to use this design to hide the load.
While this may seem logical, like an elevator or door opening animation in a game, many developers have said that they are usually designed to control the player's pace or prevent the player from coming back, rather than to hide the load.
Kurt Margenau, co-director of The Last of Us 2, explains, "We designed the drill holes to limit players to prevent them from coming back. "Of course, any time you stop the player from moving forward or backward, it also helps load." "The most common valve in naughty dog games is a cliff that can't be climbed after falling."
Grant Parker, a developer who has worked on Tomb Raider and Marvel's Avengers, said: "Drill holes are almost never used to load invisibly before them. Controlling the pace, the tone of the game, and preventing regression are indeed all goals. But for hidden loading, only 1 out of 100 examples I can think of could be. ”