Also, we dulled the color palette.

Not sure about that one. 2008 was firmly inside the "make everything brown for realism" era of videogames.

And THANK FUCK for that, if you can have a minimal UI and still make the game ergonomically playable, then I love you and shall worship you till the death of the universe.

Mirror's Edge (2008) looks like the one on the right, and is an absolute work of art IMO. The sequel sucks tho

"Gotta find that item"

30 seconds later

"Hmm, that items gotta be around here somewhere"

30 seconds later

"I can't be messing around right now, gotta find that item."

I hate when they remove hud elements and do fuck all else to convey relevant info about shit you can't see. Like they remove the hud elements that tell you what direction you're being attacked from while also having the absolute worst fucking sound design ever so absolutely none of your senses work.

Also, we dulled the color palette.

Be happy it's not Holywood style TEAL AND ORANGE EVERYWHEREEEEE!!!!

While I do wish they’d keep the visual styling, I personally feel we should aim for a less cluttered HUD in games. There are so many games where it feels insanely satisfying to rock HUDless and just feel like you’re in direct control of the action.

If you can integrate your HUD into the lore to make it part of the story, you get bonus points.

Generally I find it's the opposite?

The start of the franchise is a minimalist work of art. The 5th entry is a bloated completionist campaign with a million ways to burn time and zero ways to enjoy doing so

Be sure to pre-order the Ultimate edition to get the exclusive limited edition gold-plated revolver.

No wait I like this. Kinda. Less UI in games please!

I like the mini debate here about UI. I think less UI is winning, and for good reason in FPS games where visual real estate matters more than status info. I kind of feel we've gone too far in 3rd person ARPGs, though-- specially in removing minimaps and to a lesser extent quest log stuff for games with side quests and collectables.

At the end of the day, how important is that visual real estate? MMOs and RTS, yeah, not important. FPS and some other 3D games? Important. But there's definitely a middle ground I want explored more for ARPGs and any other game with info that goes beyond ammo counts and health.

Lmao, we remember 2008 games waaaay differently XD

Fallout 3 GTA IV

The piss colored pile of afterbirth that is the Gears of War series….

And the right is way better. Minus the color thing.

If I wanted a menu simulator, I'd play an RTS or MMO.

one of the things I like about vr games is generally less ui and if you really need stats you'll probbly have some watch type thing or even a tablet you can hold up to look at. you can count the bullets you shoot and load and if you fuck up the number it would probably happen in real life too.

Really it should be Epic Steampunk Adventure Remastered Edition*

did we get a new bioshock or dishonored this year?

I wish ALL games did this.

I don't get it. 2008 was the time where most games had a puss filter and i don't think bloated ui has ever been a plus.

I remember when I was in college for game development. At the time Mirrors Edge was in development. My instructor for UI made us study it as the perfect example of a good UI. The dot wasn't so much a reticle as an anti nausea measure.

This was also a time where UI layers were occasionally just made in Adobe Flash (I think it was just after Adobe bought out Macromedia) so having a UI with crazy out of theme colours and issues syncing with the rest of the game was a real problem.

Designers felt the UI layers were often clunky, mechanical and in the way damaging the immersive experiences that had been becoming increasingly more "life like". It also saves a lot of localization cost.

I didn't end up in that industry but it seems like this became the norm for quite a while. Though I am starting to see better accessibility in game UI's games depending less on audio or visual only feedback. Which is good as we are all getting older.