- Ubisoft open-world games typically take place across a map that’s filled with quest markers, and players are often guided with a compass or arrow that directs them to their next objective.
- For Oxygen, however, the developers planned to drop a lot of those helpers in favor of requiring players to search harder to figure out where to go, by tracking animals, following the wind or navigating via the position of the stars in the in-game sky.
- A core inspiration was FromSoftware’s 2022 hit Elden Ring, which sold millions of copies despite throwing players into an intriguing, hostile world with few obvious pointers about how to survive or proceed.
I disagree. The UX design is a critical part of the design language of a game. The Settlers has a completely different setting than Assassins Creed or The Division. For The Division a “cold” and technical UI feels fitting, since this matches with the world it plays in. For Assassins Creed it’s a mixed bag, but since the back story in AC is also extremely futuristic and technical, it still fits. It would likely still be better if the UI was more aligned with the main-setting of the game than with the background-setting, IMO. And finally The Settlers doesn’t fit at all into this theme, yet the UI still looks like it.
Re-using the engine and the development tools is completely logical and a good thing. But the UX should be in line with the setting of the game, not the company that it was developed from. Because that breaks immersion.