The next installment of the (sort of) "Dark Souls" series of games by FromSoftware, Elden Ring (not part of the Dark Souls franchise proper, but being part of the general genre) was quite hyped prior to launch and, perhaps a bit unusually, not only lived up to this hype but in fact surpassed it ten-fold, taking the gaming world by a storm. (Perhaps no better indication of this is the fact that the publisher, Bandai Namco, predicted to investors prior to launch that the game would sell about 4 million copies in the first 5 weeks. The game ended up selling 12 million copies in less than 3 weeks.)
Many people noted how different the game was to typical western open-world games, not only in terms of the brutal difficulty, but when it comes to the graphical user interface and "player hand-holding".
In a typical western open-world game the player is usually being constantly told what to do and where to go, and what to expect at the next destination. Quests will usually be explicitly given, and quest markers will be shown on the world map and on screen during gameplay (typically on some kind of compass or similar). The player will basically never encounter a situation where he doesn't know what he should do or where he should go. The game pretty much always holds the player by the hand, guiding him to the next location, with clear direction markers, sometimes even showing the exact route to take (sometimes so blatantly that the route to follow is literally drawn on the ground).
Elden Ring broke this mold quite significantly. While there is a main quest and several optional side quests, none of them are in any way explicitly explained or shown anywhere (there's no "quests" menu, like in so many other games) and, most prominently, there are almost zero indications anywhere on where to go or what to do next. (There's only a very slight hint at certain bonfires, indicating the general direction of the next significant bonfire, but that's about it. Once you go away from the bonfire you won't see it anymore and you are on your own.)
In fact, there are so little hints on many side quests that many players are actually unable to complete many of them (at least on their first playthrough) because there's usually literally zero indication on where to go next, and sometimes how to trigger the next part of the quest is really obscure. (The first published version of the game had literally no indication of any sort on how to proceed with side quests. A subsequent patch added a slight hint in that the location of significant characters would appear in the world map. Sometimes this helps, sometimes it doesn't.)
This minimalistic design choice works surprisingly well. It really strengthens the sense of exploration and discovery. The game isn't telling you where to go next or what to expect there. You literally have to find the next location by exploring the world and reaching places you have not been before. You will eventually find significant places and enemies that are part of the main (or side) quest. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, it's hard to get "stuck" in the game in the sense of not knowing where to go next and how to advance. This is mostly thanks to the open nature of the game world: There's almost always an unexplored part of the game where the storyline will advance and you'll get closer to the final goal. Even in the few instances that advancing has been blocked (usually be a very strong enemy) it becomes very clear what to do (ie. kill that enemy so that you can progress).
A sort of "mini-controversy" arose when some western game developers criticized the game for its minimalism, and when many fans of the game ridiculed western open-world games for their player hand-holding. Some created memetic pictures of the sort "if Elden Ring was a western open-world game" (with a screenshot of the game but with tons and tons of GUI elements added to it, such as direction markers, quest markers, and so on and so forth).
One particular game developer (from a big game company with big-name games) defended their designs (I don't remember now the exact game or game franchise) because they give the player a choice of what to show and what not to show. In other words, in their games you can turn off most GUI elements in the options menu. Thus, players are given a choice of how they want to play the game: Those who would prefer all the helpers and indicators can have them turned on, those who would prefer not to have them can turn them off.
This does sound good on paper. After all, isn't player choice a good thing? The less choices a game gives to the player, the more restrictive it is, and the more it forces the hand of the player. You should be able to customize your gaming experience to your liking! How can that be a bad thing?
I would argue, however, that at least when it comes to this particular aspect of game design, giving players too much choice, too many options, especially when it comes to turning on or off visual aids and info boxes, is actually detrimental. It might sound strange and crazy at first, but hear me out.
There are two main reasons for this.
One of the reasons is that games will inevitably be designed with a particular user interface in mind. This is in fact the case with most "difficulty settings" in games as well: Most usually the game will be principally designed for a particular difficulty level, a level in which the game is most fluent and natural to play, with the other difficulty levels feeling artificially tacked on by essentially breaking the design. (For example the most typical way to increase difficulty is to make the player's bullets do less damage. Something that the game was rarely explicitly designed with that in mind, and thus the game essentially becomes artificially unbalanced.)
Most open-world games will be designed assuming the default settings for the GUI. The game easily becomes less fluent and less enjoyable, even frustrating, if this GUI is changed via options. Conversely, if the player is given the option to make the game easier with options, it may remove all challenge from it and make the game outright boring. Like a glorified walking simulator.
This segues into the second reason: If players are given the option to play in "easy mode", most players will do so. This especially if the "easy mode" is the default.
More particularly, in this context, if all the GUI elements that make playing the game easier (such as visible quest markers) are on by default, the vast majority of players will leave them on, and will have no incentive to turn them off. This even if the game would actually be more enjoyable with them turned off (assuming the game has been designed to be most playable with them turned off).
I would argue that, perhaps somewhat ironically, in this case it's better to not give players the choice of making their gameplay easier (or harder) than it needs to be. I would argue that it's better to "force" the player to play the game in the intended manner, as the game has been designed, by simply not giving any other options. If the game has been designed well enough, the player will not even notice that there could be other options. (This is most certainly the case with Elden Ring, which is magnificently designed for its minimalistic GUI.) If you give the player options to make the game more trivial to play, and especially if these options are turned on by default, the vast majority of players will play the game in that mode, and probably miss the actual fun and challenging way to play it.
This is not really saying that "the average player is dumb and doesn't know what he wants". It's not dumb to choose the path of least resistance. We do it all the time, in everything. We mostly take the challenge when we have no choice. Only few people take challenges willingly even when they don't have to, just for the sake of the challenge.
Sometimes it's better to "hold the player's hand" by not giving the player the option for the game holding the player's hand.
