Skyrim is the notorious example where you just magically know because of a GPS marker. Too many games right now over-rely on the HUD for things that should be made more apparent to players in the environment itself, especially regarding finding objectives in open-world games.

In both games the full HUD legitimately distracts from the beauty in their graphics and art direction.įor other games though, a lot of my disappointment comes down to environment and overall visual design in conjunction with the HUD. It definitely should've had Horizon's level of HUD customization. It's a main reason I decided not to continue the game. I'm still baffled by the HUD options in Assassin's Creed Origins. I hate minimaps, especially in multiplayer fps games, it takes away the chance of surprising people and being sneaky, it forces you to divert your eyes from the gameplay and toward a little circle on your screen instead, it's just annoying to me and ruins what fps games 'could' be if they got rid of that all together and let people you know, rely on their own sight and hearing. Other games have contextual hud elements, like combat elements appearing only when you're in combat and health bars only showing when you are damaged, etc.

The best hud designs are the ones that can get out of the way and let you enjoy the visuals of the game, only showing up when you want them to. On top of that everything was TOGGABLE and contextual. Hide the map/compass and show it with a simple touch on the touchpad (on the pc this could be a simple hold a button down and release for it to disappear). I sadly don't think half of the people that played it looked at the options it had because it did one thing I wish EVERY modern 'open world' game did. God of War hud is the best modern hud design imo.

Less intrusive hud 2