In Defense of Waypoints

Mission: clear out the drone camp. Area of operation: south of Two Lakes Valley. You’re loaded for bear, and have every anti-drone perk you can find. You’ve got this. Once you remember where the hell Two Lakes Valley is, because you turned off assisted mode. Good luck finding it on the 2000km² map, six months after you took on this quest and stopped playing Ghost Recon Breakpoint for some reason!

Ghost of Tsushima has revealed that it won’t have waypoints, relying on you finding your way with directions and landmarks. Similar to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or the aforementioned Tom Clancy game above. They also have a take on the Metro series’ lighter smoke, with the wind guiding you.

However, I’m going to put it right out there and say that I don’t like it. I love that Skyrim holds your hand, and you can bet your arse I kept assisted mode on Breakpoint. And it’s not because I have a poor sense of direction - unlike my colleague who gets lost following a straight corridor.

Where the hell do we go from here?!

I don’t have time to play a ton of games. I’m a father of four and do my share of housework, as well as working for this publication. So when I do get to play a game, I don’t want to spend 45 minutes re-reading journal entries and scouring maps. Worse - I find the place and mark it on the map, before being called away from the game. Then, returning I get distracted by something in-game, and remove the marker that I set before realising that I was heading to it.

Then there are times when I haven’t played a game for an extended period of time. I haven’t played Yakuza 0 in four months, for example. If I had to rely on knowing where places were, like Two Lakes Valley, then I might as well restart the blasted game. Luckily, Yakuza 0 uses waypoints - though not always. At one point I was wandering around absolutely lost for two sessions that I’d eked out to play it…

Holy hell you do not want to miss this scene because you got lost

I have a list of games that I own, due to bundles, that I haven’t even attempted to play. It’s things like Cities: Skylines and multiple editions of Sid Meier’s Civilization. These are great games, but I haven’t touched them because I know at some point they’ll say “Now you take over, do whatever you want.” I need a game to tell me what to do, otherwise I lose interest. If my imagination was as powerful as some games think, I wouldn’t need a videogame in the first place.

But let’s go back to my colleague. We’ll call him Gary. Now, I once watched a VOD of Gary playing Alien: Isolation on stream. It was horrifying, and not because of the xenomorph. At one point, he walked down a corridor, went up a ladder and searched a room. Then, ignoring the door next to him, he went down the ladder and back off down the corridor, genuinely believing that this was a brand new area.

Pity that's not a frigging map

I remind Gary of this on occasion, but it’s not because I like to tease him, or poke fun. It’s because it haunts my dreams, that he could get turned around so completely by looking around a room. I’m left wondering if he’s ever completed a 2D platformer, because I genuinely cannot tell whether he’s joking when he says that he gets lost in those!

But my point isn’t that Gary has no sense of direction, my point is that waypoints help people just like him. Sure, not every game should have them, but if you’re in an open area and have a compass of some kind, then a reminder now and then is a must.

Every distracted parent needs a game to show them where to go next. The directionless need a helping hand. Those who crave structure clearly need it. So developers, please don’t completely get rid of waypoints. I love waypoints.