GAMES UX
Mafia: Definitive Edition’s Clever Navigation System
How navigation can be both useful and thoroughly diegetic
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The actual size of open-world games grows ever more humongous with each release, which means bigger maps, more exploration and even more in-game travelling. The exceptions lie in games that are so linear that players can only either move forward or backward like in Need for Speed titles, or a game like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City where a rather small open-world quickly becomes as well known to a player as is like their own neighborhood. Otherwise, finding your way in a huge open world without any pointers can get very perplexing and frustrating.
And this is where the ‘mini-map’ and ‘waypoints’ come to the rescue! You mark a point on the map and then the mini-map guides you on how to reach it. Easy!
But how do you make this navigation system more immersive, finding a method that adds to the player’s experience instead of making it feel like a chore?
You see, the game is not happening inside the mini-map; it’s happening outside it, in a much bigger screen area. The mini-map exists only to help the player get a little more information about all that really exists in that bigger gameplay screen area. But then why is the player being forced to look at the mini-map more often than the actual gameplay area when travelling and navigating the open world?
Enter Mafia: Definitive Edition, which did a really great job in merging the game’s navigation system with the game’s environment to deliver a much more immersive experience that does not feel like a chore but much more like a natural experience in the real world.
Curiously, you do not find this navigation system in the original Mafia game which delivers the same ‘look at the mini-map to navigate’ experience, as do many other newer games such as Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead’s world is huge and there is no way you are going to find your way around without waypoints in that game. This leads to a drawback in the experience.
Players may want to look around and appreciate a game’s beautiful environment when travelling, but they would instead be forced to look at the mini-map more often to keep making sure they are on the right track.
Sometimes when in a hurry in the game, this is really what my navigation experience looks like:
This is because I am not looking at the actual gameplay screen which in fact occupies the majority of the screen real estate. When I am navigating in a game’s world, I am actually looking at the mini-map, which only occupies a fraction of the screen, almost until I finally reach the location.
Certainly, other games have come up with good solutions too, like in Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5, where blue tracks on the road help guide you navigate to your marked location. This is pretty immersive too, as it doesn’t require you to frequently look away from its world at a mini-map to learn about where to turn next.
But in my personal opinion, Mafia: Definitive Edition did it the best. You are driving around in a developing city and what better way to clue in the player than to put navigational road signs blending with the game’s environment to subtly and seamlessly guide the player to the final location.
This clever navigation system not only removes the need for having to look at the mini-map every few seconds when travelling to a specific location, but it renders the in-game travelling experience much more immersive; when you are actually focused in the game’s world and are further noticing the environment to maneuver about it.
It’s good to see developers working on small game mechanics like these that definitely add a lot to the players’ experience. Navigational road signs may not work for all open-world games out there, but it does give you an idea of how to embrace your game’s environment and setting to deliver immersive experiences to your players, even if it’s just creatively telling them where to turn next.
