How Shadow of the Tomb Raider guides players without the white-paint trail

I’ve never designed a 3D world for a video game, but I can imagine that it is frustrating. A company like Tomb Raider developer Eidos Montreal employs an army of artists and designers to build a realistic and immersive environment, but then it also has to make that space fun and easy to navigate for millions of players. That’s when studios begin to rely on tricks. In the reboot of God of War, Sony Santa Monica gave players a companion to act as a guide. In the recent Tomb Raider games, Eidos elected to go with a trail of white paint that always points players to the proper path.

If an explicit trail of white paint sounds like a cheap trick to you, though, you’re not alone. Following the release of Rise of the Tomb Raider, a fan movement called “GROWL” (Get Rid of White Ledges or, possibly, Group for the Removal of White Ledges) sprung up in response. The problem is that while people hate getting lost and disorientated in games, they also don’t want designers to rely on such an obvious bread-crumb trail as a shortcut.