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The debate over the difficulty of video games never ends. The latter concerns the so-called yellow stairs in Resident Evil 4 Remake, that is, the paint that the developers applied to some of the stairs to make it clear that they can be used. According to some players, this is an unnecessary decision. However, some developers explained that sometimes realism is not the right solution.
Alex Rushdie of @13amgames noted in his post:
“We had to tell a few adults how to hold the controller so they weren’t holding it backwards.”
Damion Schubert of Boss Fight instead explained that the more realistic game graphics become, the greater the need for visual offerings of this kind, even if they are not very realistic:
“This is one of those counterintuitive cases where realism is less exciting. Immersion is not measured by how realistic the grass looks, but by how immersed the player is in the flow of events. What breaks engagement is what breaks the flow of the game, usually because you know what you need to do but can’t figure out how to interact to do it.”
The developer then explained that trying to open thirty doors to find the right one ends up breaking the flow because the resulting boredom draws attention to the simulation’s flaws. In short, a little yellow paint saves time and doesn’t distract the player from the really fun stuff.