Specifically, there's item
highlighting. Stuff you can pick up or interact with either has a
shine effect to it (Thief: Deadly Shadows) or is outlined in some way
(Deus Ex: Human Revolution).
And a lot of the opinion
about that is... that it sucks.
Generally the argument is
that this is too much handholding once again, you shouldn't be told
what you can take and what to interact with.
However there is an issue
with that which kinda is more a result of technological development
and what it means for art design that makes it somewhat necessary.
Artists and level
designers are now able to put a lot more details in the games, tons
of furniture, a lot of decorative items and the like, which all makes
games feel more real.
But just this has the
issues, you aren't able to interact with a lot of those decorative
items.
When you have 10 boxes in
a room but you are only able to open 1 or 2 of them, the others being
purely decorative, what you'd have to do is click through every
single one in the hope that it opens. When a huge table is set with
all kinds of cutlery and food, but you are only allowed to take the
silverware and health potions served you'd have to interact with
everything to find the right stuff.
Slightly annoying example
from one of the early levels of Thief: DS was a painting you can
steal, there are several paintings in the entire castle you invade
but you can only steal that one. Yea it did have a different texture
on it but still it was a little annoying.
And to prevent the
frustration of having to do all this clicky guesswork a lot of
game designers resolve it with highlighting the relevant objects.
It's a solution but by far not the best one.
Now there is a better
solution but it is a lot of work, but it has been done and you
probably know about an example already, make everything interactable.
And the example, the TES
series from Morrowind forward. If it's an item you have a 99% chance
you can pick it up (some items like wicker baskets and small pillows
excluded), if it's a container you can probably open it (again only
with small counter examples).
And as a result, you don't
need any kind of highlighting; if it's there you can use it somehow.
As you might be able to
guess though, while this solution would be a lot better it is a lot
more work as well, you'd have to make stats for all the different
items, all the containers need to have properties added to them. And
as the detail capabilities of game worlds rise the need to stat all
of those items rises as well
Also this does create a
lot of clutter, things you either can't use or that are worthless to
sell. However there are solutions to that as well, crafting and
creative uses.
In DX:HR you sometimes
encounter carts full of cleaning utensils, those could be used to
make makeshift poisons, explosives or throw them around. A face full
of bleach could do wonders against a guard.
Useless items like wooden
spoons could still be burned, damaged swords and armors broken down
for raw metal, or have an option to sell “bulk” which gives you
something for clutter items.
As a little related note,
this also applies to being able to take things from killed enemies
and creatures. It's annoying when they wear a full suit of armor that
could fit you but you're not allowed to take it. Or you're starving
to death but can't take the meat of a killed creature because it's
not classed as something edible.
Generally Fallout 3 onward does
well on that front, you can take pretty much everything off a fallen
enemy and most of them also have edible meat... well as edible as you
get in a nuclear wasteland. And they even extended that to being able
to eat human flesh, though with a silly “crime against nature”
penalty attached, but lets best not get into an ethics debate here.
Anyway that's my thought
on the topic.
Highlighting would be less
necessary if you weren't inherently limited to certain objects in a
selection of much more, but the extra work is an issue.
