I’ve been thinking about maps a lot recently, probably because I’ve been reading The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands, in which various real authors explore the maps of books they grew up with, as well as those from their own books. Then, I started playing Carto, a cutie indie puzzle game where the player is able to alter the world around them by literally rearranging fragments of a map. This got me thinking about video game maps in general – what are my favourite video game maps, and what makes a good video game map, anyway?
The perfect video game maps, and usually my favourites, manage to elevate the game by being more than ‘just a map’ – more than just a way to navigate a place through an image on a piece of paper (or screen, I guess). A great game map might be very aesthetically pleasing and visually unique, making the player believe that every charted mountain is real, and whether it’s made of pixels or not is besides the point. Or instead, a game map might just convey important information and tools to let us traverse the game world intuitively. A really amazing map might be bold enough to do both – beauty and utility crammed into one pause menu. Crammed even more so if we’re talking mini-maps, which need to condense the important bits to still be useful, and without becoming an eyesore on the HUD.
And yet… if we’re being completely honest here, I struggled to come up with many examples of the ‘perfect game map’. Why? It boiled down to this: for every map I thought of, there was always a little niggle, a small something that reduced it to short of perfection – a visual or practical aspect of the map that, actually, drives me crazy when I think about it for too long.
So, in this vein, here are my demands: 5 things I wish developers would stop or start doing when they make maps for their games (please).
1. Start Creating Mini Maps That Show Without Telling
What is it that makes maps so fascinating? It’s never been the concept that maps are an all encompassing source of information about a place – it’s the opposite. It’s the empty spots that lure us in, and dare us to fill in the gaps with our own imagination. This is the same force that drives us to explore those big open world games. When a yet-to-be-explored portion of a game map is fogged out, it’s just begging to be explored and revealed. So, let me explore properly – I want to discover things for myself, stumble on places that have never been touched by (computer generated) man. I don’t need an icon for every little thing there is to find – yes, it’s helpful for collectibles, but it also kills any special feeling when I stumble across the ‘stash’/ ‘hidden treasure’ icon for the hundredth time.
I distinctly remember that in the early days of release for both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild and Red Dead Redemption 2, people would gush about the fact that we can turn off the mini map and navigate the whole game through just character dialogue (and compass points in RDR2). I’ve tried this with both games many times, for as long as possible. Yes, it can be done, but boy, it is not easy. In RDR2, mission locations are specific enough that I had to cave in and activate the mini map, because I couldn’t find the exact place that I needed to stand to activate the mission. In Breath of the Wild, references to locations and people were just too sparse to give me any real sense of direction. Sure, BOTW isn’t totally linear in regards to the fact that you can do the main story quests in any order – but aimlessly wandering until you find the right place to go doesn’t really feel like exploring.
The closest I have ever come to this sensation has been The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and this boils down to a) the wooden signposts that point the way to major towns and b) the glorious compass. It is essentially a bar going across the top of the screen which shows the direction of points of interest. I love this style of ‘mini-map’, because it conveys what types of places are nearby by only giving us the direction they are in; we can’t see what kind of terrain we’ll have to traverse to go over it, or whether there is anything in the way between us and our destination (in my case, it’s going to be wolves 95% of the time). Is there anything more thrilling than walking around the snowy peaks of Winterhold and seeing the icon for a Dragon Lair? I think it’s an important reason why Skyrim has endured as ‘that game people dip back into after years to just have a wander about’, and I can’t help but question why we don’t see this style of compass often in other games.
2. Stop Being Coy and Just Tell Me Where People Are
I know this one sounds like it’s in direct conflict with the point above, but I am talking about a very specific thing that I wish devs would tell me the location of. Actually, not things at all, but people (and let’s not start any discussions about whether video game characters are things or people). As someone who plays a lot of RPGs that allow you to build relationships with other characters, my mind was positively blown recently when I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses. There are a lot of things I loved about this game, but in particular the ability to see where all other interactable characters are on the map and instantly fast travel there. Cue flashbacks to all the time spent running around Skyhold in Dragon Age: Inquisition, desperately looking for Cullen and/or Dorian. Or running all over Persona 4’s Inaba until realising that Kanji was on the first floor of the school this entire time and I could have been hanging out with him for weeks. I’m not saying every item and every character in all games need to be labelled, but it would be nice if games in which furthering relationships with characters by spending time with them made it a little more obvious so I don’t tear my hair out thinking I missed my chance to be BFFs with Garrus.
3. Give Me As Many Markers as I Want
In the spirit of exploration and giving the player the chance to forge their own path, what could be more useful than a map marker, a little dot that is (ideally) visible in-game and can be thrown about the map as you please? Breath of The Wild/Tears of the Kingdom do this well, though even I run out of those little coloured squares frequently, and must reluctantly remove a bunch that I couldn’t really remember why I put down in the first place, but I’m sure were super important.
Games with a marker cap, or not enough markers, or even no markers at all often opt for marking ALL points of interest for us, and this isn’t really in keeping with the spirit of adventure. That said, I’m okay with some things being marked, and would beg:
4. Please, Please Tell Me Where That Last Collectible Is
I’ve never been a massive trophy hunter, and collectibles are an important reason why. I have neither the patience or skill to spend hours after completing a game to clean up collectibles. I’ve done this with two games previously – Assassins Creed: Odyssey and Yakuza: Kiwami, and both instances very nearly killed all the love I had felt for the game while playing through its main campaign (and no, I’m not just bitter that I still haven’t got the platinum for Yakuza. Damn Mahjong).
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart does something brilliant – it tells you where almost all of the major collectibles are located on the map, and there are few enough of them that collecting them still feels special. In fairness, AC: Odyssey marks many collectibles too, but the sheer number of them, and the tedium of getting them all still cancelled out my enjoyment. Ratchet and Clank made it so that once I finished the main story, there were a few more hours of collectible clean up that I, for the most part, enjoyed. I also really appreciated not having to whip out a collectible guide every few minutes, leaving me free to marinate in the vibrant dimensions of Rift Apart a little longer. Other games that suffer this flaw and could stand to make me feel less internal violence while platinum trophy hunting include the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Paper Mario: The Origami King. I suppose really it boils down to not having too many collectibles cluttering the game map, and the choice between tedious clean up or a fun treasure hunt.
5. Toe the Line Between Being Useful and Being a Nightmare to Look At
This is in the same vein of finding balance, and we can also flip this as toe-ing the line between being aesthetically pleasing and absolutely useless. In Disco Elysium, there is no map of the city of Martinaise. At first. You can get a map by heading to the local bookstore and purchasing one. This is the map we get:
This map tells me nothing, beyond what I already knew of how the city is split up. Where are the markers (see point 3)? The fast travel points? My in-game partner, Kim Kitsuragi, actually made a few comments about how much time my detective spent running back and forth everywhere. I know – this isn’t the sort of game that treats us to a full HUD with waypoints and compasses. But money is a precious commodity for an alcoholic, extremely broke policeman who may actually have to sleep in a dumpster if he can’t scrounge enough for a room, and I couldn’t help but feel bitterly disappointed when I realised I had wasted my cash on a barebones drawing.
I’ve come to realise that I love the 3D game map style the most – they are both visually very pleasing, and provide an accurate lay of the land. Horizon Zero Dawn and Skyrim come to mind (and the real time weather movement in the latter gets extra points for ambience).
BONUS: Please Include the Option to Toggle Mini-Map Rotation
I thought wanting the mini-map to rotate with the direction the player character is facing was a no-brainer, but based on my partner’s initial answer and this Reddit post, it’s a divided argument. I am firmly in the rotating map camp, and frankly cannot understand what kind of monster prefers a fixed map.
What is your favourite game map? Are you a fixed map heathen? Let me know in the comments below!
