10 Obvious Video Game Features We Can't Believe Don't Exist
Are video games ever going to have holograms?
The release of the Nintendo Wii was ground-breaking due to its motion controls. This mechanic was so revolutionary that it felt crazy it took so long for a system to implement it into their hardware.
But here's the thing; motion controls have existed since 1983! The concept was first used by two consoles; the Atari 2600 and the Commodore. However, the controls sucked. It took 23 years before motion controls were precise enough to be used as a selling point for a gaming system.
But there are some concepts that seem far simpler than motion controls, and yet they are absent from modern gaming. We live in world with functioning VR, and yet pausing in a game's cutscene is still not a universal feature. We have controllers that can tap into the magnetosphere of the Earth, but we still can't use a keyboard for a console without hacking.
Now, some of these features do exist in a handful of games, but this just makes it all the more bewildering that they are not mainstream. With technology having evolved lightyears in the last few decades, it seems surreal that the features in this list are still not a universal part of gaming.
10. Welcome Back Feature
One of the most frustrating things about playing an open world game is forgetting where you are supposed to go. You may have stopped playing for a few weeks so when you come back to the game, you realise you you are clueless about your destination or objective. You might have even forgotten what the controls are!
This can get so frustrating, you may have to start again. Modern open world games can take over fifty hours to complete, meaning the chances of getting lost or forgetting where to go are far more likely.
A simple way around this dilemma is a Welcome Back Feature. This option would allow a brief recap of the story or controls.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild uses a mechanic called The Hero's Path that shows the chronological path of your character from the very beginning to where he is now. You can access this on the map to see where you have already been and, more importantly, where you have yet to explore. A mechanic this helpful should be a necessity for every open world game.