10 Open-World Video Game Tropes EVERYONE Is Sick Of

We touched on this in the last entry, but even a good map can be ruined by poor waypointing or an inability to easily access the map. If the only way to get to your map is to hit pause, open Items, select map, then watch a map opening animation - then we're gonna have a problem, friend.

There's a school of thought that minimaps in the corner of the screen are bad UI design and detractors who say minimaps are better than not having anything there. I won't bother to open up that debate here - but we should all consider how the game tells us to get from point A to wherever point B may be located.

There's tons of clever ways to handle this - from an NPC with the player saying "Hey, I think we need to go through that door" to just having stuff glow a certain color. But in open world games so often it's entirely up to the player to choose where to go.

Ghost of Tsushima's wind and the Mafia remaster's road signs when driving are excellent examples. Genshin Impact's elemental sight that goes away when you move is not.